THUNDERING LIZARDS, 1991-96

I first met Scott Prato in the spring of 1990, in the first weeks of my initial move from New Jersey to NYC. Some friends of mine were hosting an open mic event in the space next to CBGB and tapped me to judge the event, with the grand prize of a spot on a cable access TV show (which never actually made it past the pre-planning stage) going to the performer I thought was best. This young dude with dark curly hair, glasses and a beard came up and performed quirky folk songs with a Syd Barrett influence and outrageous titles like "I'm Not A Fucking Salamander, I'm A Man" and "There's An Elephant in My Soup But He Doesn't Care Cuz I Put Him There." That was Scott, and needless to say, he won my vote. Talking after the show, we became fast friends and vowed to keep in touch, and I played his first demo tape on a few late-night WFMU fill-in shows I was doing at the time, a favor for which he was quick and generous with his gratitude. We also became friends with another young eccentric antifolkie by the name of Jason Trachtenburg (who at the time hadn't even started the actual Trachtenburg Family yet, let alone the Slideshow Players) and the three of us began to do some jamming together.

Several months later, Scott came to the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn to record his second demo "Head First" in a studio just a few blocks from where I was living at the time. The studio was actually an apartment set-up and the engineer had the unique idea of using VHS videotape to record everything. Impressed with my guitar skills, Scott invited me to the sessions to lay down a solo on a song called "Sure You Do," which was to be the demo's big climax. Unfortunately, one of the female vocalists Scott had also asked to contribute to this demo tape took exception to the song's allegedly misogynist lyric, interpreted by one Evil Jim Friendly, and thus refused to appear on the tape unless the song was dropped. So "Sure You Do" never was released, but nonetheless the seed was officially planted for a future collaboration between me and Scott. And what a crazy union it would turn out to be.

In the summer of '91 I gave Scott a tape of some of my 4-track recordings, and he absolutely went wild over it, calling me up not long after to inform me he was listening to it on repeat. With a mutual admiration for each other's music now in effect, he asked if I would help him record his next tape. I agreed, and the next thing I knew I was bringing my 4-track over to his apartment for a wild Saturday session in his bedroom, with friends including myself and Jason contributing to the music. This was to become Scott's next demo, until he heard the results and decided his new songs needed something more... like a full, actual band. His first two tapes had been generally stripped-down acoustic affairs with just a bit of electric guitar and percussion here and there, but now it was time to rock.

I was asked to play bass in this new band, and told to show up at a practice session he'd booked at the famous (and now defunct) Coyote Studios on the Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront. I arrived to find Scott waiting for me with a familiar figure in tow -- drummer Michael J. Zwicky. I'd been a fan of his free jazz-punk trio Demo Moe ever since I first encountered them back in '87 on my very first visit to ABC No Rio, so I was thrilled to get to work with him. The chemistry between the three of us proved so immediate that we were in Fly Ashtray's Toxic Shock studio on lower Broadway just a few weeks later recording "Magistrates on Pontilions," a tape I'm still proud of all our performances on. We played our first live shows around the same time, and thus officially began the Thundering Lizards of Love, the name eventually shortened to just Thundering Lizards. By now it was late September '91 and Evil Jim Friendly had joined the band as second vocalist, and soon EJ and Scott were my new roommates as well. Here's one of my favorite songs from the tape, with the amazing (if I do say so myself) rhythm section of myself and Zwicky, and very special guest keyboardist Jason Trachtenburg...

Early on, Scott had a penchant for being a bit unhinged onstage, and quite reckless with his equipment. The first time he and I played out together was at a rooftop party on the lower east side, and before we went on I had to talk him out of his plans to end our set by throwing his Danelectro guitar off the roof! "You'd better hope that thing hits solid ground and not someone's head or you're in BIG trouble!" I told him, then kept a close eye on him during our last song to make sure he got the message. Weeks later, at ABC No Rio (a show from which the shot below is taken -- I so wish I still had that X-Ray Spex t-shirt!), he took that same guitar and slammed it on the floor, which splintered the back of the fretboard to the point where he thought he'd broken it. I took the guitar and inspected it while he wasn't around a few days later, determined that it was still totally playable despite the minor neck injury, then gave it back to Scott claiming I had miraculously "fixed" it... when in truth I hadn't done a damn thing to it!

Eventually, in the spring of '92, three songs from the "Magistrates" tape were pressed to vinyl as our first of two singles (which you can hear in its entirety below!), and the leadoff track, "Do You Wanna (Get Some Marijuana)," became the Lizards' anthem. The artwork for the picture sleeve was done by our resident artist, Karl "KL" Lorenzen, a truly trippy fellow and a heck of a nice guy who also contributed his poetry and percussion to some of our tracks. We somehow managed to get the EP promoted in High Times magazine, thinking this would lead to a flurry of orders. Naturally, that never happened, but by that time we'd already built up a nice local following, packing places like the Spiral on Houston St. and the Ship's Mast in Williamsburg for some sizzling live shows featuring Evil Jim's occasional cross-dressing and my thrashing on the floor in fake seizures. And this first incarnation of the Lizards was short-lived, as this bunch of highly temperamental personalities was bound to clash on more than one occasion. I finally left for the first time in September of '92, serving Scott my resignation in the midst of Wigstock in Tompkins Square Park that Labor Day and citing my ever increasing tensions with Michael and Evil Jim as reasons.

Scott promptly replaced me with another bassist, Tom Gabel, and added the world's first and foremost punk rock accordion player, Malcolm Tent, and the Lizards soldiered on. Of course, I had no intention of rejoining, but within the space of just six months, both Michael and Tom were out of the band and Scott was begging me to come back. He finally got me to return in the spring of '93 with the promise of a tour of the midwest. But with Zwicky gone, we now had to find a new drummer. Malcolm tried to help out by bringing in the guy who had played drums on his recent tape "Angst For The Memories" (a truly unsung '90s tape-culture classic) for an audition, which he passed with flying colors. We voted unanimously to hire him and figured we were set. Then this drummer completely disappeared from our radar.

At this point, the saga of the Thundering Lizards becomes almost like a real-life Spinal Tap story. With no other drummers seemingly available or willing to go on tour with us, we finally had to settle for the late, great Billy Syndrome to fill the void. Now, Billy was a great musician in many regards, but his drumming (which he did eventually get good at) was very much a work in progress at that time!  To make matters worse, the reason Scott had put together this midwest tour in the first place was the colossal mistake he had just made of signing a one-shot deal with a subsidiary of Celluloid Records to put out a CD that was to be delivered just in time for the tour. This same label had tried to court another band who were very good friends of mine, only to have none other than Iggy Pop warn them against signing. If only if had been Scott who'd had that random encounter with Mr. Street Walkin' Cheetah.

Anyway, somewhere along the way, the master tape for the Lizards' Celluloid album either got lost or ruined, and it became quickly obvious the CD would not be ready for the tour. Desperate to have new product to sell on the tour come hell or high water, we rushed back into the studio with less than a month to go before departure time to make what I still regard to this day as one of the very worst records ever made -- our second single, "Looking For A Dolphin." This 45 was given a merciless review completely worthy of its sheer awfulness in a local music rag called Splatter Effect, and I hate to admit I agreed with every word of it. If you really want to hear how bad it is, you can buy it on Discogs (though even at three bucks it's way overpriced), because I sure as fuck ain't gonna stream it here! Perhaps it's fitting, though, that this record was a trainwreck, because the Lizards' Midwest Tour -- ten days in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio in November '93 -- followed suit accordingly.

Scott booked eight shows through contacts he'd found in some issue of Maximum Rock & Roll, and half of them got canceled while we were on the road. In Michigan, we were hosted by the "Flint Hemp Society" and still managed to clear the room in spite of our appropriate lyrical content (though, to be fair, our hosts were very nice people who graciously put up with us for two whole days afterward while we awaited a second gig in Detroit that, you guessed it, never happened). In Milwaukee, we actually had legendary psych-punks Plasticland open for us (great band, but what on earth???) and of course blow us off the stage, though someone actually bought the "Dolphin" single afterward and even made us autograph it -- don't ask me why. And in Indianapolis, when we contacted the promoters who had booked us to let them know we were in town, we found out we'd accidentally been put on a straight-edge hardcore show, only to have the other bands take offense to our weed-friendly lyrics and promptly boot us off the bill!

The mere thought of Indianapolis will also forever remind me of the absolute most vicious, brutal band argument I've ever witnessed in my entire life, between Scott and Malcolm. It began as some simple blowing off of some of the steam which had built up out of our not having any space apart from one another for an entire week, and could very well have ended quickly enough with the other three of us insisting they both just shut up and have another beer or two. But before we could suggest that, Malcolm decided it was a most opportune time to make a very unpleasant remark about Scott's wife. Oh my dear lord Jesus. I thank my lucky stars there was no gun in that van, because if there had been, one of us would have been dead and the rest of us would have spent the rest of the tour in jail in Indiana. It took all of our best efforts to curb our respective tempers long enough to play the last two dates, incurring the wrath of more straight-edgers in Muncie before finishing up at a pizza restaurant in Columbus, Ohio to an audience of the sound guy, the bartender, the promoter and the lame cock-rock hair metal band he'd billed us with.

(Even after all I've described here, though, I would be lying if I said the Lizards didn't have any fun at all on the road. We had a great time making friends and exploring the city of Flint with our aforementioned hosts there, I had fun driving everyone crazy filming a never-released "tour documentary" with my super-8 video camera, and two songs were directly inspired by the whole tour experience: I wrote one called "State Line In The Sky" (which you can hear on my Bandcamp site) that deals with some of the lighter, more tourist-like aspects of the trip, and Malcolm wrote "Midwest Tour" which took a humorous view of the darker side of it all. So there's that.)

After the tour, Scott fired Malcolm and Billy and hired some NYU student named Kirk to finally restore some order to the rhythm section. He played three more disastrous local shows with us before I finally quit the band for good, though not before playing on a few more 4-track demos which wound up as secret bonus tracks on the Celluloid disc. "Width of an Octopus" (recorded mostly during my six-month absence from the Lizards and much better than the "Dolphin" single for sure) did finally come out in the spring of '94 and the label promptly threw all its promotional energy behind an all-girl punk band called Gloo Girls while giving us the royal shaft. I still recall my frustration when I discovered that Tower Records on 4th and Broadway had tons of Gloo Girls CDs and not a single copy of ours. I guess we just weren't cute enough.

Scott kept reinventing the Lizards in various forms, first as a sort of Fugs-type beat thing with KL and Jim Fourniadis before expanding into a sort of stoner Zappa/Mothers-esque unit with up to seven or eight members. This lineup recorded the final Lizards release in late '95, "Eyeball Sandwich" (partially produced by Kramer and their most psychedelic album for sure), and took a second trip to the midwest which according to Scott was much better than the first one. Meanwhile, Malcolm and I had stayed in touch following our parting of ways with the Lizards, and at the end of '94 he tagged me to help him form his next project, Thai Raid. Thus began a whole new wild 3-year ride for me which included at least one "hit" record (our EP made #1 on Bill Kelly's Teenage Wasteland on WFMU two weeks in a row) and a lot of crazy times at the Right Bank on the Williamsburg waterfront.

The Lizards finally called it quits in '96, and when I left Thai Raid in '97, Malcolm brought in none other than Scott to replace me, which in light of the blowout in Indianapolis was a heartwarming and humbling thing to see indeed. Scott also joined up with Billy and Evil Jim in their space-rock project The JFK Jr. Royal Airforce for several albums before moving onto the Brian Wilson Shock Treatment, as well as World of Tomorrow and Big Plastic Finger with his wife Bonnie Kane, herself an occasional Lizard who'd lent her saxophone stylings to a few of the band's recordings.

In light of all the recent tragedies documented here on the Brazenblog, I'm happy to report that except for Billy Syndrome, all the ex-Lizards are still of this earth -- but not a single one still lives in NYC. Malcolm is now in Atlantic City and still going strong well into his sixties, Michael J. is in Appleton, WI and playing drums for a fine new band called Sharp Left Turn, I'm in Orlando and part of a great underground music scene there, and Evil Jim, well, he's in Jacksonville just three hours away from me! Scott and Bonnie now live in Holyoke, Massachusetts running their online vintage vinyl shop Starry Night Records. And wouldn't you know it, just a few weeks back, Bonnie came out to Florida to play some shows in conjunction with the International Noise Conference and she and I got to hang out together for the first time in well over a decade! If only Scott had come along for the ride...

WEST COAST 1988: A SPECIAL NEW RELEASE FROM RAY BRAZEN!

Many years ago I took a trip out to the west coast. It was a whole lot of fun. During the trip I made the discovery of a Mexican rock band called Los Dug Dug's who would change my world forever. But that part of the story has been told many times. The rest of the story has never been fully told... until now.

Thanks to the support and encouragement of the very dedicated Brazen fan and supporter Matthew Moyer, who went crazy over a tape of recordings from the trip which once belonged to our dear, departed mutual friend William Berger, I am finally telling the full, untold story of that trip. And with that in mind, Matthew and I are proud to announce the official release of WEST COAST 1988 on Popnihil. Admittedly it's a bit of a departure from the label's usual electronic and experimental music fare (much of which is really quite good -- I suggest anyone into that sort of thing check out my new labelmates Jackie Ransom, Fjshwjfe and Von Nacht sometime), but it's nice to be the one chosen to break the mold, so to speak!

WEST COAST 1988 is now available in both cassette and digital forms. The cassette comes with a 16-page booklet which tells the story of the trip and the project in Brazenblog form, and the download includes the booklet in handy PDF form. This project took Matthew and I nearly a year to complete and get out there, and I think you will find it was well worth our time... and yours.

CLICK HERE to go to the official order/stream page. And stay tuned, folks... I know the Brazenblog has been silent lately, but it won't be for much longer, as multiple new entries are already in the works. Coming soon: The Thundering Lizards Story!!!

THE RAYBRAZEN.COM STORY, PART 4D: THE ARMANDO NAVA DIARIES, APRIL 30, 1998

I'd hit the sack at around 9-ish the evening before, planning to sleep till the 3:30 AM alarm I'd set for myself, but instead I caught just enough sleep to be able to stay awake through my final duties tending to Armando and came to around 2:30. Upon realizing that I was just a couple of hours away from my final meeting with Armando, I instantly decided the matter of even attempting to get that final hour of sleep in before 3:30 was a pointless one, cancelled my alarm and just laid awake in bed for that last hour. Quiet as a mouse, careful not to awake anyone in the house, I got ready to take that one last ride. By about 4:30 AM I was on the highway to NYC, gearing up for my final hour with Armando.

With no traffic to speak of the whole way through, I made it back to Brooklyn just in time for Armando's 5:30 AM pickup. After saying adios to his friend who had put him up the last ten days, we packed the luggage into the trunk, Armando hopped in the passenger's seat, and we were off to Newark Airport in record time. It was our last hour together, and Armando made sure to make the most of it: no sooner were we smoothly on our way out of Brooklyn than he grabbed a tape out of his backpack and asked me, "Want to hear some more unreleased stuff?" My answer was definitely affirmative! Popping the tape into the car stereo, we were soon listening to a short compilation of new live tracks taped off recent appearances by Los Dug Dug's on Mexican TV, with a couple of rehearsal extracts interspersed.  The new songs all had the classic Dug Dug's power trio sound a lot of us know and love, and with their passionate lyrics (which Armando summarized for me as we listened) and Armando's passionate vocals, they remind me a bit of some of El Tri's better material, though they remain distinctively Dug Dug's. By the end of the tape I was encouraging Armando to get himself into a studio to record these songs as soon as he possibly could!

Listening to the new tracks sure did make the ride go fast, perhaps too fast in fact, as we made it back to Newark Airport from Brooklyn in just over half an hour's time, though it didn't seem that long. Armando told me it was a smooth trip taking his girlfriend back to Kennedy Airport the night before, and as they parted he made sure to throw her his car keys, so that she could fetch his car the next day and drive it to the airport in Mexico City to pick him up once he arrived. He also managed to voice one little complaint about her visit: "Man, all she wanted to do was go shopping! We walked around all day until my feet were killing me!" At Newark, there was another small spell of confusion over where the proper place to drop Armando off was, and there was a lot of traffic going to the upper level of Terminal C, forcing me to drive him to the lower level instead to let him off. There was still the matter of the piece of luggage Continental was still holding onto for him, and we both kept our fingers crossed. Hopefully he was able to get it back without too much of a hassle (though I won't know for sure until I call him back in Mexico later).

We shared a big, big hug and a few backslaps as we parted ways. Armando was off to catch his flight (and hopefully get his piece of luggage back) and I was off to slowly but surely start getting my life back to normal after these past ten crazy but wonderful days. As I drove off, away from Terminal C, out into the misty New Jersey dawn, I realized that this was it, the end of my final meeting with Armando. I won't lie, it brought tears to my eyes. Armando Nava had come to New York, taken me completely by surprise, and put me in another world for awhile, and in the process I gained a very wonderful and unique new friend.

I may have felt like crying at that moment, but through my small tears I realized: Armando Nava was now a trusted friend of mine, we had each other's phone numbers, and we had both promised to keep in touch. The pain of saying goodbye soon lifted and gave way to the realization that this wasn't a goodbye, but rather a "till we meet again." I dried my tears, thanked the stars above for the good fortune that I'd been blessed with, and headed back home, already starting to think about what other wonderful things the gentle hand of fate might bring my way in the future.

(Dear Brazenblog Readers: I hope you've enjoyed The Armando Nava Diaries, and had as much fun reading it as I did reliving it. As a special bonus, here's an in-depth interview I did with Sr. Nava four months prior to his 1998 visit to my home, in which he tells the wondrous history of Los Dug Dug's. It is the only English language interview with Armando currently available online, not to mention another highly treasured moment in my crazy musical life. Enjoy, and thanks as always for reading! Much love, BRAZEN.)

THE RAYBRAZEN.COM STORY, PART 4C: THE ARMANDO NAVA DIARIES, APRIL 26-28, 1998

SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 1998:
It's a grossly overcast Sunday, with rain pouring from the heavens all over New York and New Jersey, and low visibility on the roads making for dangerous travel. A perfect day to have Armando and his girlfriend over for dinner, eh? Guess they'll have to provide the sunshine on this dreary day (or should that be brillo de sol?). And believe me, they did. As Mom cooked up chicken cordon bleu with all the trimmings, I set out to the Port Authority where I was to pick up Armando and Alejandra. The appointed meeting time was 3 PM, but I knew I'd be waiting a little longer than that. And of course, it's impossible to try to pick them out in the crowds outside the place when there seems to be nothing I can do but keep driving around the block again and again until the two of them appear, another task made impossible by the curse of gridlock.

So when an actual parking space miraculously manifested itself before me as I was gearing up for my second attempt to cruise around the block, I knew this would be another day where magic things were going to happen. Safely parked, I then spent the next 15 minutes crawling the Port Authority trying to find them, but I never did. No, Armando and his girl found me instead, walking around with a confused look on my face, and Armando acted just as surprised to hear that I had found a parking space as I was when I found it. His girlfriend Alejandra looked younger than her supposed 40-plus years (until her age was revealed I assumed she was in her early thirties!), and although her command of the English language was virtually nonexistent, she never once displayed any lack of enthusiasm in the entire afternoon and evening following.

We went to the car and headed out of NYC as fast as we could. I'd brought along a tape of the Beatles' Anthology 2 and immediately popped it into the car stereo as we took off. This led to a long conversation about the Fab Four, whom Armando absolutely admires. We both quickly discovered that we had the same favorite Beatles songs in common, and it was a joy to hear Armando sing along to some of the songs, providing some live vocals for my entertainment! (I was particularly impressed by the fact that he knew every word to every song, and delighted in showing off this knowledge!) Armando eventually revealed to me that in the early eighties he organized and led an orchestral concert tribute to the Beatles that played a string of gigs in Mexico!

We arrived back at Mom & Pop Brazen's, and it was there that the party kicked into high gear right from the get-go. No sooner were we settled than Armando brought out all the unreleased recordings that Frank Mangano had given him a few days earlier, over an hour's worth of material on reel-to-reel tapes and unissued acetates, and of course I had the cassette deck rolling to tape my own personal copies of everything as we listened. We took a brief break after listening to reel #1 of two reels' worth of Dug Dug's live recordings from 1968 to sit down to dinner, and let me tell you, not only was Mom's cooking completely spot-on this afternoon, but none of us can recall having two people as guests in our house who were as enthusiastic about the food as Armando and Alejandra! Armando, in particular, smothered almost everything on his plate with gravy, saying he absolutely loves the stuff and that back in Mexico, hardly any food you order there comes with it!

We sat around from there comparing various observations on Mexico for awhile, then resumed our listening party, after which Armando took out his camcorder, which I didn't even know he had actually brought with him until that point! After taking the time to capture some footage of our little gathering, we hooked the thing up to the TV and Armando showed us the footage he had just shot of all of us, as well as some already existing footage on the tape of a Nava family gathering at a Chinese restaurant in Mexico City, pointing out everyone from his 12-year-old daughter to his nephew (on whose computer Armando first got to see my website!) to his 70-plus-year-old mother, still his manager to this day! Fascinating footage, I wish I'd thought to pop a tape into the VCR! Both my parents were absolutely enthusiastic about the company I'd brought over for dinner the whole time. Even my dad, who's not particularly social and stayed in the background for much of Armando's visit to the house on the day he arrived, mingled freely with the guests, traded a few jokes with them, and afterward told me how much he enjoyed them!

The hour was growing fairly late and I had a long haul ahead of me, so at around 8 PM we loaded up the car again and I set into the grueling task of driving Armando and Alejandra all the way back to Brooklyn, with the rain still pouring down from the skies and low visibility making for a truly neck-risking experience, but with Armando aboard, somehow I knew fate would once again be kind and everyone would make it home safely in the end. On the way back to Brooklyn, Armando pulled a cassette out of his pocket and popped it in the car stereo, treating me to one unreleased track we didn't get to at our listening party earlier, a nice version of Brenton Wood's "Gomme Little Sign" recorded at the sessions which produced the four new tracks on the new compilation CD Los Dug Dug's are on. I followed that with one of my own homemade comp tapes, playing some of my favorite music for him (not surprisingly, Armando was very quick to notice the thundering double-bass drum sound on Motorhead's "Overkill"). And my luck continued onward from there as the rain gradually stopped as we headed for Brooklyn, allowing for a much safer commute home for me once I'd dropped the two of them off. Again, my body was exhausted when I got home, but my mind was still on overdrive, so instead of forcing the issue, I stayed up and ate some leftover chicken cordon bleu from the afternoon and replayed a few of the unreleased Dug Dug's tracks I now had in my grasp, until I finally felt like sleeping at last.

MONDAY, APRIL 27, 1998:
Precious little sleep the night before, so many things to catch up on today, and by the end of the day I was even more exhausted than before. It's good that this day wound up being another day off from the Armando adventure for me, because I needed a rest! I knew Armando wanted to have some time alone with his girl, so I left the two of them alone this evening and concentrated instead on listening more closely to the unreleased tapes and acetates I now have on cassette:

The two live tapes from 1968, both half-hour reel-to-reels compiled from at least a few different performances (although I have no info on exact dates, venues etc.) are just the sort of unreleased, tapes-that-sat-unknown-in- someone's-basement-for-thirty-years wonders that make garage-rock addicts salivate. They feature the band tearing through a truckload of covers of popular hits of the day in a very punky style indeed, with Armando playing very prominent, very garagey-sounding keyboards throughout, Gustavo Garayzar taking some very raw and exciting turns on lead guitar, and lead singer Jorge de la Torre offering very good diction of the English lyrics. It's mildly disappointing that we don't get to hear any originals done live, but Los Dug Dug's play with so much energy and enthusiasm throughout that after a short while the energy level makes it inconsequential that they're doing cover tunes. There's 60s punk standards like "Pushin' Too Hard," the Strangeloves' "Nighttime" (here with some astounding siren effects done with feedback!) and the Music Explosion's "Little Bit O'Soul" in the set list, but even when they're doing songs not associated with the garage genre, they still sound like a garage band: "Gimme Some Lovin'" completely wipes the floor with Steve Winwood and there's an insane cover of "Summer in the City" that kicks off with a minute-long freakout sequence that must be heard to be believed! I also like the double-shot of Yardbirds tunes on reel #2, "I'm A Man" followed abruptly by "The Nazz Are Blue" off the Roger the Engineer album, an inspired choice indeed. Great, great stuff!

After the live tapes, the second best item in Armando's pile of unreleased Dug Dug's goodies is the "World of Love/Eclipse" acetate, two noticeably different early versions of tracks that would later be redone for the first LP. "World" has a similar feel to the album version, but throws in an extra verse, while "Eclipse" is faster and punkier than the album version and is noticeably missing the instrumental portion that begins and ends the version we all know. The remaining stuff is a bunch of solo recordings Armando made with a bunch of studio hacks shortly before his return to Mexico after the Frank Mangano deal soured. Armando himself acted a bit sheepish when I threw them on the turntable during our listening party the day before, saying the recordings "really aren't all that good," and I would have to agree with him. Of the four songs, Armando only wrote one of them, "God is Crying (Teardrops in the Sky)," which, not surprisingly, is the best of the songs, a fairly pleasant ballad of sorts inspired by his living in Brooklyn Heights and viewing the East River on a rainy day. But that and the other songs (written by the session's producers) are awash in syrupy strings and a turn-of-the-decade orchestral pop sound, and much though Armando's voice sounds as fine as ever, songs like "With the Wind at My Back" and "Beautiful Green" go in one ear and out the other in the end. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad.

After listening to the unreleased Armando/Dug Dug's tracks, I finally got caught up on my sleep once again, putting my body clock back into synchronization from the craziness of the past eight days...

TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 1998:
...only to learn by the end of this day that I would have to work to throw my body clock out of whack again for the culmination of my duties accommodating Armando: when I called him this evening, he informed me of his departure plans, which involve taking his girlfriend back to Kennedy Airport on Wednesday afternoon to see her off, then rushing back by train to Brooklyn, catching as much sleep as possible, then waking up super-early for his own flight back to Mexico City, which requires his arriving at Newark Airport no later than 6:30 AM Thursday morning. So of course, I have to get my own self out of bed by 4 AM to arrive in Brooklyn to pick him up by 5:30. One last insane morning and the whole Armando visit is over for the both of us. But let this much be said: though I've pretty much bent over backwards to make sure all has gone well for my special, special guest, you won't hear me complaining about it, now or ever.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 4!