Very Pleasant Neighbor, or Music was better in the 80’s

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I was recently asked to pull some tracks together from a long ago digitized cassette done in (I think) some old version of Audacity.  Fun on a bun, but I managed.

The band is called Very Pleasant Neighbor and if you don’t know them (and you don’t)… you should.

I didn’t want to do too much.  Some de-noising when absolutely necessary, resolved some L/R balance issues, some EQ and  track to track volume matching.

Here is the link and following that is lead singer and my longtime friend/bandmate Gideon Kendall’s take on it.

 

From Gideon Kendall:

Back in the day, ’88-93 approx., I was in a band called Very Pleasant Neighbor. I started the band with Austin Hughes while we were in art school (we were a VERY art school band). I wrote the words. Austin wrote the music and played guitar, and the songs were arranged by the band which also included:

Patty Hughes (banjo, vocals),
Jean Rodd (bass, vocals),
Edward Francis Gormley (drums, sawblades, electric drill, etc.)
Chris Urbanic (bass).

We were noisy, fast, surreal and ridiculous. We put on a good show. I was the front man/lead singer, despite the fact that everyone else in the band could sing better than I could (Jean sang our more melodic and accessible tunes). I sound positively prepubescent on these recordings. I won’t lie, it’s emotional to rediscover these tracks. This band was the most important thing in my life during this time. It was hard for me when this phase ended. The band went on without me and changed direction. I moved on to other bands: Mess, Fake Brain, Cooling Pies, The Ditty Committee, and worked with amazing musicians who turned into life long friends (Kevin Lacroix, Marc Friedlander, Andrew Solin, James Pertusi, Dan Gottesman, Bob Byrne, Lee Patrick and others) but I think I was always chasing the magic of the time documented in these recordings. Another important thing about this band: without it I never would have gotten my longtime crush and eventual wife Julie Peppito to pay any attention to me.

Originally released by Douglas Wolk on his Dark Beloved Cloud label.

Thanks to Chris Rael for unearthing the bonus track and special thanks to James Pertusi for digitally remastering these very old and hissy artifacts.