Track By Track: Harvey Milk's "The Bob Weston Sessions"

Posted January 29 by Jeanne F.

By Paul Trudeau (above right, with bassist Steve Tanner) the original drummer who played on The Bob Weston Sessions.

We recorded this record with Bob Weston in the summer of 1993 (maybe 1994?), because we had this guy from North Carolina who had a record label and he loved the band. We convinced him to pay for a recording session with Bob. He agreed and we hopped in the 1968 Ford van and headed to Chicago. While there, I spoke to the record label guy over the phone a few times and he started to freak me out when he talked about wanting to shoot people with his shotguns. Little did we know at the time that my fears were well-grounded; the guy disappeared and never released the record. He had the master reels, and all we had were cassette dubs. Ah, cassettes. Such sustainable little fuckers. They lasted long enough to see the record be released after all. It's magical. So here's what we recorded that fateful summer.

Blueberry Dookie: Probably one of the first songs we ever wrote, and one of several on this record that we originally recorded with Kelly Noonan in 1993 ("Plastic Eggs," "Dating Pressures," "Anthem," "Smile," etc.). It was released with "Smile" as a split single with Hayride. Let's see, it's very slow and heavy, what a surprise. Listen for my breathtaking falsettos.

Plastic Eggs: Our first experimentation with troll-in-the-cave reverb on the vocals. In hindsight, pretty strange. And that low rumble you hear at the very beginning? That was the ancient growl of the Scottish Highland Ogre, recorded in 1952. This song has a good riff at the end that gets longer each time. It's, uh, really slow and heavy.

Merlin is Magic: REALLY FAST! Then it gets slow. Good guitar solo. I don't know—Creston was writing some fucked up shit. But songs like this one with a fast drumbeat really got me in with the ladies.

Dating Pressures: Harvey Milk's first charting single. Always a crowd favorite, which is why stephen never wants to play it now. It has a hot riff that repeats over and over. I think it might be ripped off from that riff in "Tom Sawyer," but who knows. Creston's probably never heard of Rush.

My Father's Life's Work: A real tear jerker. we always called it "Shitpile." It has really good lyrics, probably the first song where I understood what the hell Creston was saying. We used to play this live and people would get confused. Sso quiet, then so loud. There was many a loud ending to a sentence from someone talking in the sparse crowd when it got quiet real quiet; all you would hear is, "Milk fucking sucks."

Probolkoc: My first contribution to the HM music library. Naturally, it was mostly ripped off from all the Jesus Lizard I was listening to at the time. We played it much faster live; I was very surprised to hear how slow this version is. I recorded the demo on a Tascam 4-track, which I foolishly sold many years ago. I loved that machine. This song was named after a front page feature on a porn mag that Stephen and I espied in a convenience store stop on the way to practice one day. Something about "Pro Ball Cock."

Smile: Another excuse to play something fast. Did Stephen write this? I can't remember. Goodness gracious, oh baby baby. C'mon little darlin', you sweet thing you. Smile! I think Creston wrote that about his horse. Side 2 of the HM/Hayride split single, "Pals Forever."

Jim's Polish: One of the harder songs we had to learn, lots of parts. We tried to re-learn for our "reunion" back in 2005 and couldn't figure it out. Lots of drum stuff = lots of ladies! 24/7, baby. We named this song after the famous "Jim's Polish" establishment in Chicago, where Mr. Weston took us one evening during recording. It was in the hood and I thought we were going to die. Dudes were selling porn movies on the street. Great sausage dogs, however.

F.S.T.P.: Creston being Creston. The song got its name because the guitars would stop on the f-chord, so we called it f-stop and it morphed into f.s.t.p. no, not "Friends of Stone Temple Pilots." We played this song live several times and many people wanted to stomp on our heads. If you can make it through all the f-stops, the ending part is very pretty.

Anthem: The party song of the 90s! You'll find it on several K-Tel compilations. It's got the awesome ace solo at the end, then the tape slows down and the end just like in the Kiss song "Lick it Up" off Animalize. Ok, it's not "Lick it Up" but I can't remember which Kiss song does that. Believe it or not, we used to end many shows with this danceable number. Listen very closely for the bonus track at the end of this song.

Buy the Bob Weston Sessions here.

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