Nothing Painted Blue - Sorely Tempted (1993) [Jupa Records, JUPA-008, 7"]
Tracklist:
A1 - Sorely Tempted
A2 - Lab Rat Blues
B - Going to Fontana
"Lab Rat Blues" is a Mountain Goats cover.
This one has a surprising catalog reference: a Sonic Enemy catalog from 1995 includes it among available releases, probably due to Peter having joined up with Nothing Painted Blue full time by then and playing on "Going to Fontana":
Nothing Painted Blue "Sorely Tempted" + 2 (Jupa)--one part jangly pop,
one part rockin Mtn Goats cover, one part gorgeous majestic tower-
ing melancholy. Beautiful sleeve, too.
You can hear all three of these songs on the 1997 Nothing Painted Blue compilation Emotional Discipline. Notes on these, from those liner notes:
Sorely Tempted:
(rec. Westfall sessions)
KYLE: If the video for this song ever
got made, it would document
the rest of the band teaching
Franklin to ride a bike.FRANKLIN: These Westfall recordings
have one flaw: my vocals. I think
I recorded them the day after
an in-store that ended with me
running around Rhino Records
screaming and throwing copies
of our first album. Song written
in twenty minutes, taught to Joey
in half that.
(That we never got the hypothetical music video described here is a world-historical tragedy.)
Lab Rat Blues:
rec. Dec. 1992 in San Francisco by
Greg Freeman on on 8 tracks
FRANKLIN: John Darnielle points out that
I've changed a line in this, which
I'll leave owners of The Hound
Chronicles to ferret out. John, if
you register this one with BMI,
we'll get those mechanicals right
to ya.
(I offer my ferreting of all lyrical differences here:
HOUND: i saw you and i sank in to your eyes
FJB: i saw you, i saw your eyes
HOUND: you tell me quiet down but i have no doubt
FJB: you tell me quiet down but there's no doubt
Franklin also says "you can't fool me anymore, i'm onto you now" at the end of both choruses, but John D only adds "anymore" in the second pass of the chorus near the end, and sings "you can't fool me, i'm onto you now" every other repetition.)
Lastly for Emotional Discipline notes, Going To Fontana, which has some Mountain Goats connective tissue as a song in the "Going to [...]" format:
rec May 1993 in Santa Monica CA by
Marty Brumbach & Richard Ornstein
on 24 tracksKYLE: Empire native Peter Hughes
replaces Joey Burns, who leaves
for greener (and sandier pas-
tures) in Tuscon with Giant Sand.PETER: The first song for which I got
to work up my own part. We
went to record it at Village Re-
corders in West. L.A., where the
walls were lined with gold and
platinum records that had been
recorded there, bands like Heart
and the Village People, but it was
only when I reached the top of
the stairs and saw Neil Dia-
mond's Beautiful Noise did it hit
me: I'd arrived.KYLE: The studio had ridiculous
amounts of gadgetry that has no
place on any record of ours. Sort
of like putting racing tires on a
1985 Toyota Corolla.FRANKLIN: Our only work on a mixing
board with Flying Faders. Re-
corded in a day with Placehold-
ers' "Weak" and an as-yet-
unreleased Fall cover. Directly
influenced by the last chapter of
Mike Davis' City of Quartz-read
this if you want to know about
Fontana-and the eastbound 10
Freeway. Robert Vodicka, visiting
from Japan, found himself stuck
in the studio again, trying to get
me to sing better.
You definitely want to read City of Quartz. Or like, any Mike Davis.
Peter's love of Neil Diamond is known to anyone who, like me, covets a physical copy of Sonic Enemy live compilation Hot August Night, named after a Neil Diamond live album recorded in LA in 1972.
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