Hi everyone,




so as I write this, Lost & Found, the Slackers retrospective cd is in production at the cd factory.




If everything works out, we should have copies on the road with us in Europe.  At first it will only be available thru us on tour, but after that it should be possible to get it through our usual distributors, interpunk.com in the states/canada, phonocaster.com in europe, and disk union in Japan.




SO what is this album?  Is it "new" or "what?"  Well, it is in the sense that none of these tracks have been released before.  Its a compilation of tracks that we have had sitting around since 1998 thru to 2007.  Some of them were complete and just never got mixed or we didnt figure out how to fit them onto the album we were working on at the time.  Some of them had a "mistake" on them that we couldnt fix back in the age of analog tape.  Others were just skeletal rhythms and needed to get worked into final form.  Hence, the title, Lost & Found.  These are songs that were in need of a home.




Track 1: IF YOU SEE MY BABY
This track goes back to 2000.  Its an American RnB/RocknRoll meets BlueBeat kind of tune.  Its full of southern references in the same way that Henderson Swamp and The Nurse are.  At the time, we were playing down south a lot more than we do now.  Also, Vic was beginning his love affair with the Band (the group) and was listening to a lot of other hippies who made southern influenced music.   Im not exactly sure where or why this song fell off the radar.  The vocal tracks were left incomplete back in 2000.  Probably had trouble getting the right takes back then..... but with the magic of cubase and having a home studio, it was very easy to finish them in 2009.  Jay came up with a great idea of combining the different takes and makes this very John Lennonish double-lead vocal track out of them.  Check it out!




Track 2: It Will All Come Back
This track was originally recorded around 2005 by Vic and Ara.  That is, it was just keyboards and a drum rhythm.  Vic called it, 'whatcha gonna do' and probably had an idea for lyrics.  OF COURSE, he never remembered to come back to it.  So it languished until this year when we started adding tracks to it one by one.  Marcus added some bass.  Jay some guitar.  Suddenly the rhythm started reminding me of the Jimmy Cliff songs my dad used to listen to when I was a kid.  So I wrote some lyrics and me and Glen finished the song up in his living room.  Its theme is about the cyclical nature of life.  Which I guess is appropriate for a recycled song. hehe.  Its funny cause this track is the least "live" of all the tracks on the album but it has the most "organic" feel to me.


I got to give the rhythm section some props on this one.  It lurches and almost stumbles at first but when the train gets going it really gets going.  Powerful stuff.


Track 3: What Went Wrong
Of course, as everyone knows the more famous version of Glen Pine's opus, What Went Wrong, was on the 2006 Peculiar album.  This version however, is the follow up of an old suggestion by Vic.  He had been wondering what would happen if we played WWW all the way up the whole time.  Like Stevie Wonder did on "Uptight" or Sly did on "Dance to the Music."  So when we got a couple of xtra hours of studio time in 2007, we decided to find out!




Track 4: Tonight
The original of tonight was done back in 1996 for Better Late Than Never.  I think I wrote the song about 2 years before.  I guess I was younger and cockier and enjoying partying in New York City.  Pretty silly lyrics.  But this one also dates to a couple of xtra hours of studio time in 2007.  Whereas the other one was an post-adolescent romping ska, this one is a groovy rocksteady that tries to lure the unsuspecting listener into its seductive trap.  Shades of the heptones I think.




Track 5: Lonely Nights
This is a fun track.  Vic has done it before on one of his solo albums.  I think it was "Hamburguru."  I had been listening to the album and encouraged him to bring it into the studio with us when we were trying to finish Self Medication.   We tried to do it as swing.  Tried it as Ska.  Nothing seemed to work.  Finally, we tried it as a slow meters-esque New Orleans groove.  This seemed to have some promise but try as we might we couldnt get all the chords and bass lines to line up.    We were in a rush to finish Self Med so this song was tabled for later, plus its slow and Self Med already had a bunch of slow songs.


But coming back to this tune when we were searching through the archives to make this record I was struck by how groovy the drums were.  It really doesnt sound much like anything we had done before.  So we strarted cleaning up the rhythm section building around the drum groove.  Vic added harmonica and cut the lead vocal.  We had some call and response horns.  Suddenly, it really started sounding like Dr. John might do.  A personal favorite.




Track 6: We Can Work It Out
This is a cover that some of you may have heard us playing live over the last couple years.  We had half completed this version.  Glen was having trouble getting the vocals right.  Then as we were working on this collection, he had an inspired moment.  What if I stop trying to sing it like the original and instead sing it in a more reggae style like Horace Andy would?  15 minutes later we were rushing towards a completed track. 
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Track 7: Prophet
This is an alternate version of Prophet done in the now ever popular "skinhead reggae" style.  Ah.  My old cries for biblical retribution upon those who would take my royalties.  Will I ever get my "stew?"  My mind says no! but my expanding belly says...take it easy on the stew man!




Track 8: Wasted Days
When Ara had to miss gigs due to other committments, Glen Hackett came aboard as an off again - on again substitute.  He started playing Marcus Geard's theme song, Wasted Days, in a fundamentally different way.  When we had a chance to record with Glen in 2007, it was inevitable that we got this track down as a memento to a moment in time. 


Glen Pine had been wanting to tackle this song for a while and his exuberant vocal style is in marked contrast to Vic's wistful approach on the original.  Whereas, Vic sounds like he is trying to convince himself that he hasnt done anything wrong to his woman in the original, on this version, Glen Pine is completely convince of his innocence! 




Track 9: My Way
This track was originally released as "Funk Week" on Boss Harmony.  This version brings it back as a distorted vocal romp...Im not even sure what to call it....shades of Fishbone...or Iggy Pop....Glen uses a megaphone to create an almost psychotic effect on the track.  Maybe a little bit of an early 90s influence creeping back into the band?


Y'know this song began as a joke in the band, "this ain't funk week."  I think it started with Ara talking about his youthful days with the band, "Das Booty."  Hehe.  I smile everytime I think about that band name. 


Speaking of funny band names. I was in a band called, The Donkey SHow.  You all know what that is.  TJ used to be in a band called Jah Wombat.  Glen was in a band called "Maelstrom" that played around Boston in the early 90s.  Ah...our chequered past.


Track 10: Two Blues in One
This is another very old track.  It goes back to around 1998 from the Question sessions.  This track was always frustrating for me.  We had tried the song back during the Red Light session and it never managed to jell.  


This version had a lot of spirit.  Simon Chardiet even came by and sat in on it.  Probably about the same time as he cut his solo on the Mummy.  However, his solo was cut in the same space as Glen's trombone solo.  No one had bothered to do the 2nd solo spot.  A typical slackers comedy of errors.


So bringing this tune back and bringing out the strength of the original groove became my mission.  You can judge for yourself whether I succeeded.




Track 11: Estranged
This is a demo version of Estranged that was done sometime around 2005-2006, right before we recorded it with the entire band.   It had vic playing acoustic guitar and glen harmonising with himself on two tracks on top of it.  Jay was wondering what it would have sounded like if a Sitar player had been hanging out too...so he just had to go there!




Track 12: Two Face
This is a haunting reggae version of the Better Late Than Never ska romp.  Vic's harmonica is especially nice and chilling.  Come to think of it, he plays a lot of harmonica on this album.  Hmmmm.
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Jay really has a great sense of how reggae his supposed to sound and this take really showcases his mixing skills.  Its pumping and bumping. 




Track 13: Cupid
Cupid was originally done by Sam Cooke as a plaintive love song.  Glen does it like a powerful command that demands the listener's attention.  This is another one that people will recognize from our live shows.  




Track 14: Watch This
Watch This was our calling card for many years.  Our most popular tune off of the first Give Em The Boot compilation.  This is an alternate ska version that reminds me a little bit of the early Wailers.  2 minutes of magic.
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Track 15: See You In My Dreams
This a slow RnB track that me and Vic originally recorded as a duo.  That version was lost when a laptop was lost.  I guess that's another story.


This version is a slow plaintive love song.  I like to picture it as having a bit of that old RCA room sound.  Y'know the big rooms that they used to record bands in up until the 1970s.  They have this great echo, but its warm.  Songs like "I only have eyes for you" have this kind of echo.   This one of my favorites of vic vocal tracks on the album.




Track 16: Lost & Found
This song began as a rhythm from a 2005 demo session.  The band played an Ethiopians inspired bass line in a blues pattern.  We never really figured out what to do with it.  No one could write any lyrics so we re-made it into an instrumental.  It has a nice blues meets Lee Perry attitude.  A forgotten track, it became the mascot for the session, hence the name.




Track 17: Area 51
This one also dates back to the late 90s.  Vic says he wrote it on a Rancid tour and the Tim Armstrong influence is palpable as are the conspiracy theory references which en vogue at the time.  I dont even remember recording it, but I am noodling away on saxophone so I must have been there in some shape or form!  Im also not sure why it didnt get included on the question.  Probably cause we had 19 other tunes vying for space already.


There were also a bunch of technical errors that we didnt have the money to spend on studio time to fix back then.  Of course, with cubase it took about 5 minutes to solve that problem.  My personal favorite were the 4 different bass tracks that were laid down and then finding the correct one, it had been labeled "timbale!"


At first, I thought this song was a little smug.  A young guy who knows it all singing about conspiracies but as I listened to it, I started wondering...is Vic saying that the heroine of the song is as dangerous as the conspiracies that are supposedly threatening us?  Whoa!


Track 18: Mommy
This is another demo recorded in Glen.  Its just vic & glen harmonizing around a guitar.  We played this version of Mommy for a little while as an intro the Ska version that appeared on Close My Eyes.  It has a haunting quality that was helped by the fact that it was recorded in a blackout.  IF you listen you can hear the cars going by on the BQE in the background.  Talk about atmosphere!


So there you go.  Lost & Found.  Coming this Fall.  Also coming this fall, will be more live releases on whatevski.org and yes, the rumors are true, we are re-signing to Epitaph for another studio album that should be out in spring of 2010.