“Only Everything“- The Casuals played this quite a bit for a few years, and I always loved it, clearly right in Aaron’s romantic yet rockin’ wheelhouse. He was fairly prolific, usually had a couple new songs ready to roll when summer rolled around; I’m not sure what the circumstances of this one were, obviously a studio thing, which means it was probably recorded by Chris Blood at Trout Towers. From our recent singles and rarities collection, “Bottomless Pit“.

Don’t know how many folks really appreciated Aaron’s lyrics, but this is one of my favorites, though some of it is sadly prophetic now; especially love these two verses:

I remember it a long time ago
I took your picture in the rain
I remembered you were laughing at the time
But I see now that you were crying

“Ghost In My Amp“- a jaunty little number that we frequently used early in the set to break folks in, w. a Stones-reminiscent guitar riff from the Brat himself and some bitchin’ drumming from Ms. Bates. This one’s from our latest (and probably best sounding) live album, “Doggy Bag Deluxe“, recorded Labor Day, 2006.

“Love Affair“- We originally put this out on “Nature Calls“, but I always loved this live board mix version from August 22, 1999; beautiful, heartbreaking little song, w some particularly nice color work on guitar from Johnny. (None of these are properly mastered- I definitely chose speed over polish, just wanted to get something out to everybody asap, woulda faded in and out if I had time…)

“Crawlin’ Out Of the Rain“- Did we really never do a proper studio version of this? Seems unthinkable, but I think it’s true. Occasionally there were songs that struck us as not really needing to be done in a studio, because we felt like there really much to add to the live version, and that may have been the case with this one, always a workhorse live. Actually, I think we may have started on a studio version of this, maybe even back when Clarke was with us, but it must not have been coming out to Aaron’s satisfaction- would be hard to top this one, anyway. From “Yearbook ’04“.

“Grunions“- Aaron didn’t write this one (I did), but I know it was a favorite of his. and he played such terrific guitar on it (it really might’ve been impossible without him); plus, it’s kind of a funeral song anyway, godammit, so what the hell? Originally issued on our last studio effort, “Nature Calls“.

“I Wanna Play Loud“- I probably should’ve ended with this Spampinato classic (also from “Your Sounds“, as well as our best-of collection, “World Championship Songs“), as we used to at so many shows, another one we all just loved blasting away on, but I didn’t- ha! But whenever I hear it, I think about when we recorded it, at the Warehouse in Philadelphia with our pal Bill “Bear” Scheniman at the helm (another guy who went MIA not that long ago, much to our chagrin, right around this time last summer; need I say that I hate this particular trend?) Anyway, we were looking for something explosive to end the song with, and Aaron came up with the idea of throwing his guitar, turned up to 10, against the wall, which he proceeded to do. And not just some back up, beater guitar, but his first his first string tele he used all the time. And not just a gentle drop- he actually flung it across the room.
You gotta love him!

“Spiders“- I think this one’s just brilliant, an episodic melange of sounds and ideas that embraces both beautiful and scary, in some ways reminiscent of the work Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks did on “Smile”. Standing for Van Dyke as lyricist was octogenarian Ernest Noyes Brookings, one of the early leading lights from David Greenberger’s stable of elderly stars at the Duplex Planet, a magazine we all loved. We wrote many songs to Ernie’s lyrics over the years, all released on various Duplex Planet compilation albums alongside a fascinating assortment of fellow contributors like Yo La Tengo, XTC, the Figgs, Morphine, Brave Combo, Robyn Hitchcock, and many others; “Spiders” appeared on “Outstandingly Ignited- Lyrics by Ernest Noyes Brookings Vol. 4“, as well as on the Incredible Casuals’ “The Future Will Be Better Tomorrow“. It’s certainly not a regular old song, and it also displays Aaron’s considerable mastery of various production techniques, and that he had a great ear and knew his way around in the studio.

“You Bring Me To My Knees“- This is just a little sweetheart of a tune that Aaron used to play on ukulele, which took some balls in the middle of a raucous set at the Beachcomber. I always had a hard time getting the Casuals to play ballads, because for the last ten years or so of our careers (with occasional exceptions), we mostly just played at the Wellfleet Beachcomber, where high energy was almost always the order of the day, and the prevailing wisdom was that pretty ballads (like “Summer Nights”, “Miracle”, “There’s A Reason”, “Paper Roses”) would only slow things down- the band called these bathroom songs, because the dance floor would usually thin out, and we mostly tried to stay away from them. But this one’s a beauty, so simple and heartfelt; somehow, it snuck into our repertoire in the last few years, and it’s probably the last song Aaron wrote for the Casuals, from a live digital only release called “Rip Your Mother“.

Aaron was a terrific singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and he changed the Casuals in a big way. It’s always a shame to lose someone that talented, and I’ll always regret that I didn’t try harder to get him out of his shell the last few years, and didn’t sense how much trouble he was in. But damn, we sure had some fun together and did a lot of work I’m very proud of, even going back to his high school band with Tom Carns and Dana Squire, the Hitchhikers, who were also terrific (hopefully those tracks will get released one of these days), or his later work with Overnight Sensation and the Spampinato Brothers Band.

We’ll miss you, bub- wish things could’ve gone better, but awful glad for all the times they went so good we could hardly believe it!

C.T., July 11, 2023

Well, we got kind of sentimental, as we tend to around Memorial Day and July 4th and Labor Day, and wanted to tell you all how very much we miss rocking for you all at the Beachcomber on those days and all those  other summer Sundays as well. As it happens, we’d just unearthed a multi-track from Labor Day, 2006, and just sort of dove in for no good reason other than just missing the good old days. It has been fun listening, and also a bit of a surprise to me that I never really dove in before, as far as mixing Casuals live tapes; if I’m not mistaken (and lord knows I could be), all of our past live releases have been board mixes, whatever came out good instantly, so it has been fun actually doing some real mixing for a change! We didn’t pick this one because we remembered it being a particularly great show, it just sort of appeared, and we started monkeying around with it earlier this week and it was fun enough that we may put out a bunch more of it, but for now, happy Memorial Day, we miss you!

Occasionally during the pandy, someone would suggest that I write a song addressing the situation, and I usually resisted; in particular, I never wanted to use the word “Covid” in a song, and never did (I feel similarly about the words “blog” and “wellness”; the first two just sound awful, and the last is two syllables where one – “health” does fine.) But I did eventually write a real long one about it called “What I Want” (from “SOTW 2020”, and useless now, because it mentions our president at the time, though not by name, thank god, Trump being another word (and person) I always avoided like the plague, and then when that whole situation went on way too long I eventually succumbed to writing another, kinda. This one’s much less specific, but still pretty whiny, but sometimes it was just hard to keep that mood at bay- sorry, world! 

Just waxing nostalgic about lost friends and family, and so grateful for my incredible luck in both categories; nothing but sincere, but somehow so far this has ended up sounding too much like a beer commercial (not that there’s anything wrong with beer commercials, of course!)

The idea with “Small Potatoes (The Incredible Expanding Album)”, which includes “You Were the Best”, is that we’ll be adding an unspecified number of tracks by various unspecified line-ups to it during the course of the year, as we’ve tended to do with Song of the Weak (SOTW) albums for the last few years -this time, we’re just making it official! These albums sometimes end up being huge (the first, 2013’s “Song of the Weak!!!”, had 102 tracks on it, so I’m guessing that may have gathered tracks from a few preceding years; more typically, they end up being 20 or so, though last year’s, “eyebrows up”, was really more of an EP (just 6 tracks); plus, the selection can be pretty random/irresponsible, so it’s a crap shoot, but at least it’s a free crap shoot, though we always encourage donations, in the event you feel something is deserved. (And I suppose they may not be free forever- no promises!- but they are now.)

So that’s the deal- you pays yer money (or not), and you take yer chances (or you don’t!)  

ps I have no idea what the first four lines of this song have to do with this picture, but SOTW tradition requires that I post an image, so here’s an image. Boy, Hillary sure looks great here!

You’ll never be completely alone again, sweating, panting, and engorged, all for the genuinely outrageous April giveaway price of $401.22!

This is an odd one- one song (we expect to eventually add a couple more) from our appearance last fall at the Payomet Performing Arts Center in “THE BOMB: Anti-Nuke Songs of the Sixties and Beyond”, “Political Science”, written by one of my heroes, Randy Newman, plus a re-recording of another song we unearthed for that show from thirty years or so ago called “Sayonara”, about the crew of the Enola Gay returning to Hiroshima decades after destroying most of the city by dropping the first atomic bomb.
The live bomb show at Payomet was the brainchild of Dan Lombardo, and also featured some fine work from Kami Lyle, Stephen Russell with Broadway Central, John Shuman, Kathleen Healy, with Heydey and Randy Patterson, and Alex Brewer. I don’t think any of us knew what to expect, but we all enjoyed ourselves enough that we may try something similar this summer! 

Recently dug up kind of a nice Travis & Shook track I’d forgotten about completely, “One Step Forward” (not to be confused with the Three-O’s “One Step Forward” on their debut CD, “This is What Bears Look Like Underwater”– completely different song.) And I really liked it, so figured I’d just pop it on at the end of our latest release, “Memoirs of an Opening Act”, as a bonus track, because that’s the kind of whacky thing you can do on the WorldWide InterNet, you can just add a track to some album you did years ago, FOR NO GOOD REASON! Coool! It’s all free anyway- who cares?

As I say, I’d completely forgotten about it, but it’s got to be a cover, though I have no idea of who at all- so embarrassing, this has literally never happened to me before that I couldn’t figure out what the original song/artist was at all! So stupid, but I’m gonna keep working on it (just not very hard). But I think it’s probably a Jamaican thing, maybe a reggae rhythm… got to track it down , this is crazy! Help! 

Does anyone know this song? The legendary Mad Dog Hart of Rye, NH has typically solved this mystery: the original “One Step Forward” was recorded in Jamaica around 1991 by Leonard Dillon, so at least I was right about the country of origin and general drift… brain cells vanishing, YAAYYY!!

But, hey, not bad! Terrific song, not too badly ruined!