INDECISION - Live cassette
Side 1 (1995)-Saving for Trumpet Lessons (Howe's Tavern Jan 7) / Swallow This! (Taz Mar 5) / Tweedle Dumbest (Taz Mar 5) / Smells Like Dead Cobain (Taz Feb 5) / Lotshark (Taz Mar 5) / Repent or Die (Taz Mar 5) / Treadmill (Howe's Tavern Feb 24) / Blood, Shit and Lanolin (Taz Feb 5) / Cindy (Taz Mar 5) / Now You Must Die (Howe's Tavern Feb 24) / Metal Health (Taz Mar 5)
Side 2 (1994)-El Cabasa Cono Cobayo (Gush's May 8) / Flush (Taz July 30) / Step Into the Confessional, Johnny (Taz Aug 19) / Bumperstickers (Gush's May 8) / I've Got Popcorn in My Throat (Taz July 30) / Guy Lombardo (Taz July 30) / Free Bird (Gush's May 3) / Whose Hat Is This? (Taz Aug 19 soundcheck) / Rest Stop Story (GIAC July 16) / Chugging the Pitcher (Taz July 30) / Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Taz April 7) / Tanglewood Nature Center (Taz Aug 19) / The Big Finish (Taz Aug 19)
Compiled by John Beatty
Performed by Indecision:
Jeff Guinness - Vocals
Johnny VD - Guitar
Martysaurus Rex - More Guitar
Rob D. Souls - Bass Side 1
Scotty Cognito - Bass side 2
Clint Beige - Drums
with special guests:
Mike Dickinson - second vocal on Popcorn and Guy Lombardo
and Big Jim Bigg as the Peanut Gallery on Flush
Recorded live in 1994 and 1995 at:
The Tazmanian Embassy, Binghamton, NY
Howe's Tavern, Binghamton, NY
Gush's Thirsty Bear, Elmira, NY
GIAC, Ithaca, NY
All shows recorded with the Indecision Mobile Unit except for the last two Taz shows which were board tapes.
NOTES: Somewhere along the way, someone (I forget who) thought it would be a good idea to put together a live compilation tape. So, I put one together and it was released instead of 18. The tape was compiled from the stack of live cassettes I had of our live performances. At the time I had about half to two-thirds of our shows on tape. The best were room tapes from the Taz recorded with the "Indecision Mobile Unit," which at the time consisted of a couple of microphones, a small 16 channel board and a cassette deck. The worst was a tape from the GIAC which required a lot of work to even become listenable.
Band reaction to the tape is mixed. Marty thought it was the best thing we ever did and Jeff thought it was so bad that we shouldn't have released it. The rest of us were somewhere in the middle. This came out in a limited edition of 27, each with a different title nicked from another band's live album (e.g. Indecision Live at Budokan, Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Live from Warsaw, Poland). The few "promo" copies handed out to band members and a couple friends had the title area left blank so the recipient could provide his own title. The cover photo was taken at a poorly attended show at the Taz. It was, of course, in black & white, but is reproduced here in color because we can.
This tape also caused a bit of trouble for me. Some idiot got ahold of a copy of it and apparently took offense to my comment in the liner notes about the "rednecks and yahoos" who gave us a hard time at Gush's for playing a 47-second version of "Free Bird." This is, of course, fine. What wasn't was him calling my house twice on a Saturday morning while I was trying to sleep and making an asshole out of himself. (Oh, to have had Caller ID then...)
(reproduce original liner notes here)
Jeff would like to apologise for the inclusion of "Trumpet Lessons" and "El Cabasa" even though it wasn't his decision.
Jeff and John would both like to apologise for ever writing "Tanglewood". We'll play it again at our last show, maybe...
We did this tape for those few of you out there who like those included songs which will probably never be recorded (you can probably guess which ones) and for anyone who was unlucky enough to witness us making stuff up on the spot when equipment broke or when we got stiffed by bands and had to play longer even when we'd played all our songs.
You may notice that there are more actual songs on the first side than the back. That is because we knew even less (believe it or not) about set timing and such things than we do now. And our stuff breaks less now.
Special thanks to everyone who actually came back to see us after witnessing our first couple shows...
Notes on the liner notes:
Opinions have changed on some of these things... The impromptu songs and improvisations are seen as a generally positive thing. As for the note about "Tanglewood," at the time we weren't playing it anymore although after the final Indecision show we started playing it again and it has once again become a fixture in the set.
Notes on listening to this again:
Wow... I don't know what I was thinking when I compiled this. First off, the board tapes sound terrible. I don't know why we bothered with them in the first place. It really is worth hauling recording equipment to the gig. Secondly, the version of "Cobain" on this tape is shit. I was drunk at that show (one of two ever), so why I would have used anything from it is beyond me, especially that song as the rest of the band played it as badly as I did. The second side choices are quite a bit better. I think recording a couple more shows would have been in order. I promise that if there's ever a live Fink Squad release it will be much better than this.
Notes on the notes:
Apparently the idiot is some friend of some people I know who thinks he's funny. He's not.