Plastic Money

Plastic Money came into being around 1983 evolving from the Caines which formed in 1979 or 1980. The original members were: Mike Bloomer - Guitar, Vocals, Bill Law - Bass, Keys, Vocals, and Joe Lemieux - Drums, Vocals. Posted here is "Cat in a Window", the follow up to the critically acclaimed "Irony of Solution". "Cat in a Window" and its follow up "Accelleratum en Pyros" were never formally released due to tensions in the band which ultimately led to it's demise.

The group picture shows the band as it was during '80 -'91 when "Cat" and "Acelleratum" were recorded. In addition to Mike, Bill, and Joe were Ben Ridgeway on Bass, Lisa Heitmann on background vocals an Dr.Z on Bass and Keyboards. (L-R- Bill, Lisa, Ben, Mike, Dr.Z, Joe) The music on Cat in a Window is highly personal and introspective, the subject matter revolving around relationships sexual, interpersonal and spiritual in nature. It was our intent when we recorded these songs that the music be transcendental in nature, with the ability to have a psychotropic effect on the listener, a psychedelic experience without drugs if you will. Indeed, many who have listened to this album have reported temporal effects such as lost time, and other perceptual distortions so I can only conclude that it succeeds on some level. Headphones will enhance these effects. It is also recommended that caution be exercised when listening to this album while driving. Cat was my way of dealing with a particularly rough breakup that really made me question a lot about my life, and what was this human existence thing all about anyway? There were plenty of dark moments and plenty of realizations some of which are reflected here... The album opens appropriately enough with "Broken Monday" a poppish break up anthem replete with catchy guitar hooks. The next song "Point of Focus" is a bit more existential and refers to the empathic bonds people sometimes share. "Cat" is about ambivilance towards sensuality. "Ciggarette" was an experiment in minimalist lyrics the meanings of which are pretty much self explanatory. Bill and I had already done the music on 4 track and it seemed a good fit. In the next song "Willimantic Sunset" I tried to capture the feeling that dusk in Willimantic, CT instills . I was depressed and walking the streets quite a bit at that time with my Walkman... Bill came out with "Amnesia" while he Joe, and I were doing pre-production on Cat and it was just gorgeous. The original Cat in a Window was intended to be released on vinyl and or cassette and "Amnesia" was the last song on side 1. I wrote "Roaxanne on the Roof" for my cat Roxanne who used to sneak up to the roof... the other parts of the story about looking for love in all the wrong ways just kind of filled themselves in... Ben played bass and Lisa helped write the bridge. I think Dr. Z played some keys on this one. "Falling" just goes well here. Bill wrote it around the same time as Roxanne and it is a good response. "Frankenstein" was one of the earlier songs on this project and we used the original drum machine part. I think I played most of the parts myself. "Dream Zone" was started by Bill at Hole in the Wall Studios. It was originally drum machine and keyboards and then Bill had me add a guitar part. We revisited it while we were looking for more material for Cat. Somewhere along the line we got the bright idea to replace the drum machine with real drums because we didn't like the feel. Joe, much to his credit was able to do it in two takes. Then it came time for Dr.Z to add bass, but he was so stoned that he just couldn't grasp it so decided to have him come back when he was less impaired. When he came back we put his new part on a different track so we could keep his original part for reference as there were a few good things going on with it. His new part wasn't much better(he wasn't any less inebriated...)and while Bill and I were trying to convey to him what we were looking for we inadvertently played both parts back simultaneously. It worked! The two disjointed parts actually made one good part. The good Doctor of course made like he had planned it that way..... "Goodbye" was actually the first song written for Cat in a Window and in many ways was the impetus for the whole project. Fitting it should go last....