your name here -- high street

your name here
high street

High Street was recorded between May 1996 and August 1997. Rob (bass and vocals), Mark (guitars, keyboards), and Paul (vocals, percussion) were renting a house in Wayne, NJ, and had the basement set up as a recording studio. It wasn't originally intended to be a CD, which is why the album varies widely in its focus.

Anything goes was pretty much the credo, so besides the usual guitar/bass/drums, instruments ranging from french horn and dijiridoo to djembe and tin whistle show up on most of the tracks.

On Horton Buys A Head, that really fucked up sounding thing at the top is Mark playing a French Horn through a Marshall stack. The unique vocal sound was achieved by having Rob shout through the head of the djembe into a mic placed inside the drum.

A lot of the tracks were written as instrumentals, and vocals were added later. On ,Tonight, Mark recorded the music track and shelved it. Paul later grabbed the Book of E and found some lyrics that seemed to fit.

Tunes like The Boy in the Plastic Bubble Went Home Today and Another Step were written using the more traditional acoustic guitar and voice method, while To the Tight Circle and She Waits were full on band tunes, with Drew (drums) pounding on the drums and lots of volume.

By the time we all moved out, we had amassed quite a collection of DATS (about 50, more or less.) So after sitting on them for a year, Mark and Rob began the painstaking process of sifting through all of them. High Street ended up having 24 tunes on it, if you count the 4 that make up The Bridge Freezes, which is an 11 minute long opus with some really weird shit in it. That's the studio cat, August (RIP), being brushed and not liking it very much on Auguste Escoffier.

1. Damn Good Question
2. Comma Tonight
3. Another Step
4. The Boy in the Plastic Bubble
5. I Think I'm
6. Disco Willie
7. Magnus Ver Magnusson
8. Origin of Life
9. She Waits
10. To The Tight Circle
11. Lets Twist Again (Pts 1&2)
12. Ritual Chant
13. song title
14. Vast Grey Nothing
15. Horton Buys a Head
16. what's this?
17. Lets Twist Again (Pts 3&4)
18. One Kiss
19. how bout this?
20. Bridge Freezes Before Road Surface