Yeah, we had some REALLY good times at that job; it might be my favorite straight job ever.  I wouldn’t be on Drag City if it weren’t for Muze, because it was my coworker Chuckles that turned me on to the Palace Brothers, and egged me on to send my tape to their label, AND did the artwork for my first album.  (The cover had a photo of a puddle, and in the puddle was a reflection of one of the WTC towers.  Sigh…)

Patrick came over last night to hang out and work on music with John, and ended up spending the night in our guestroom.  There were parties going on upstairs AND downstairs from us, and John & Pat were blasting music too, so the whole building was rockin’, it was hilarious.  Everybody joins in, nobody complains.

Sigmatropic FINALLY got my package today, thank heavens.  The one I sent THREE DAYS ago, not the one from two weeks ago!!  Registered mail is a crock’a'shit, don’t ever use it for anything that’s time-critical.

They liked it, too!!  :-) Theo, who’s the spokesperson to the various musicians involved, said my stuff was cool and it’d be hard to choose which song(s) to use. I’m well pleased to hear that, because I’m too critical of my own shit. It’s always really hard to discern what’s truly bad from what’s only bad in my mind.  I might hear little teensy variations in my pitch or whatever, and it might drive me nuts, even if it’s something only dogs can hear.  But I can tell when something is spot-on, and I know there were at least a couple of songs like that amongst the ones I submitted.  I’m very psyched they thought so too!!

Produced by Rian Murphy
Engineered & mixed by Jim O’Rourke
Photography by Chuck Cors

Musicians:
Edith Frost, Jim O’Rourke, David Grubbs, Rick Rizzo, Rian Murphy, Sean O’Hagan

Songs:
Temporary Loan; Follow; Calling Over Time; Denied; Pony Song; Too Happy; Wash of Water; Shadows; Thine Eyes; Give Up Your Love; Albany Blues

About the musicians:
This is Rian Murphy’s handwriting, on a piece of paper that I’ve always kept tucked inside my copy of the CD.  It’s the legend of who played what instruments on what songs.  I asked Rian to write it all out for me after we recorded the album; I knew I’d forget that stuff.

About the artwork:
The image on the cover of Calling Over Time looks like a painting, but it’s really just an upside-down photograph of a puddle.  (If you turn your head a little, you can see the water, the pavement and the melting snow around the edges.) The photographer Chuck Cors is an old pal of mine from the Muze days… he took the picture around 1996 when we were coworkers there doing data-entry in Brooklyn, just across the East River from the always-looming World Trade Center towers in New York.  Chuck snapped the photo while walking along the Westside Highway in Manhattan, and the building you see in reflection is the north tower of the WTC, with the south tower hidden behind it due to the angle.  This picture has always meant a lot to me — it’s always been my favorite image of the city, and my favorite photo of Chuck’s.  It’s a spooky dream-view that somehow perfectly represents the seven years I spent living and working in NYC, where I wrote and demo’ed all the songs that ended up on that first album.  And obviously, the picture means even more to me now that that particular view is gone forever.  :-(

A music video for the song "Ancestors"
Video by Chuck Cors / Sonic Cinema Productions
Music: Edith Frost (vocals, guitar), Kramer (bass, synth)
Music and lyrics written by Edith Frost
Appeared on the Ancestors 7" / CD-EP

(I’m not sure of the exact date when this was finished; it was sometime in 1996.)

You can also view this at Archive.org