I forget, except for that it was my idea, and I think we got tired of talking about it. We had gigs coming up, and we had to call it something. I remember the naming process being sheer agony, and in retrospect I think we could have done better, but I don't know how we would have done better. We were trying to come up with a name that would have worked in the Cleveland bar circuit, and settled for something alliterative. When we named the band, we didn't have an original music identity. There was really no way to name what we were doing anyway. The sound just exploded in the rehearsal room, and we rode the wave until the wave was gone. And then we went our separate ways and got on with our lives, more or less. We're all still playing out, just not with each other. But it was a shitload of fun while it lasted.

We were much better live than you could believe. We were young, thin, and good-looking. We had an eclectic mix of cover material, and played these three songs on every gig as soon as we could. Bob wrote a couple that we did on jobs as well while he was in the band, but they never made it to tape in a presentable form. There was an energy and a sexual tension that fueled the music, and in my opinion we never played one bad gig. This is all pretty much ancient history. But we're glad to see that it's been so highly regarded on Soundclick, and getting two songs into the top 100 validates it all for me. As I update this, "A Matter Of Time" is at #46 in Classic Rock, over twenty years after it was written, and with no one promoting it! It's nice that people all over the world are getting the chance to hear our work, and are apparently enjoying it.

It's fabulous. You can get your stuff in front of the world without all the hassles. Making money would have been great, but getting yourself heard without having to deal with industry people is even better.

We're too old now, but we probably still would. Cough up some cash and we'll do a reunion tour. I'd even lose some weight (like anyone cares about that, except my wife and maybe me). Have your people call my people, whoever they are.

Props, and thanks, to all who were involved (and every person was absolutely essential):

Fred Tafel - guitars, vocals, songs
Cathy Murch - vocals, keyboards
Jim (Beth) Gladden - bass guitar
Bob Penko - bass guitar part creation (he quit to get married, as I eventually did)
Fred Murch - drums (he and Cathy are married now, so neither had to quit)
Rich Matanowitsch - live board-op/my designated driver/my best man/random insanity
G.G. Greg Agency - bookings
Greg James - digital re-mastering/damage control

It was truly a team project. Details are withheld to protect the guilty.

This is 80's pop/rock. It was written to fit in with what was going on at the time, but also to expose our individual strengths. It worked out as well as we could have hoped. Too bad we don't have any live recordings.

Spuddy's Tavern and Restaurant, Mentor-On-The-Lake. Cheap drinks, GREAT bar food, low prices, good people. And on a bad night, I can crawl home if I have to.

Believe it or not, those guitar parts were recorded with a 1972 Telecaster Custom through a hot-rodded pre-CBS Super Reverb with a 12" EVM speaker. We're getting into guitar geekdom here, so I'll let it go at that. I don't know anything about anyone else's gear, except that the bass part went straight into the console when we recorded it. I did not approve, but I wasn't about to make a federal case out of it, either. The songs were recorded in a basement studio, albeit one with a very nice control room with some nice digital effects for that point in time, on an 8-track recorder. Our only expense was a reel of Black Watch tape (plus the cost of the beer, of course). The master was lost many years ago, and this recording is a salvage operation that was accomplished from a first generation stereo cassette. I did that in 1998 with Greg James at his Clockwerke Studio in Rocky River. Thank goodness for Pro Tools. Mixing the original master was sheer torture and took one week for each song. Rich, Jim and I handled that part of it, so I guess we were the producers and engineers. I remember times where we needed six hands on the console to get the mix done the way we wanted it. And it wasn't even intended to be the final finished product.

We had a great time. These songs were recorded over twenty years ago and are holding up just fine over time, actually better than I thought they would. I'm glad we were able to salvage the original recording in a somewhat listenable form. It's impossible to judge your own work objectively, but I always had a feeling that this was pretty good stuff. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it, but somehow I don't think that's possible.