The Band Hits It's Stride

With a solid new lineup in place, we were able to continue on with an even harder edge than before. In fact, many people have since told me this version of the band proved to be their favorite.

Our first gig together was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and while I don't really remember too much about the show that night, I'll never forget the festivities afterward...

Of course, there was the usual partying between the three rooms we held on the 3rd floor of a motel at the edge of town. It was one of those places where all the room doors opened out onto a balcony overlooking the pool. We were feeling pretty good about the band's potential and were getting a bit drunk and rowdy when one of our stage hands, Rick Reeder, was speculating on his chances of diving off the balcony, clearing the concrete deck below and making it into the pool alive. Before long, Hoppy our road manager, started taking bets on whether Rick would actually do it or not. He started treating the whole thing like a big sporting event and acted like Ricks "manager" trying to get as much money in play as he could.

After about 10 or 15 minutes of this, Billy got tired of all the talk an hoopla. He asked Rick if he was "actually gonna jump, or not?" because Hoppy was holding out for more money. Rick said he didn't know, so Billy said "to Hell with this" and stripped down to his shorts, ran straight out of the room and jumped over the rail. A few seconds later he landed in the pool. Billy Harrell didn't put up with any crap. Rick soon followed.

Back home in Virginia Beach, nightclub owner Ron Zoby was planning an all new-music club at the oceanfront, after seeing how well we were consistently drawing in his current club, Michelle's. We told him to just make sure there was a real dance floor. He took our advice and soon The Wave club opened in the location formerly occupied by The Pequod. It was an immediate success. We played there many, many times to a packed house and a floor full of exuberant dancers. It was great!

X-Raves

Shortly after opening The Wave, Ron loaned us money to record an album of our original songs. With the aid of our new road manager, Peter Ridley (who had worked at EMI Studios in London) we booked time in a local studio and laid down tracks for ten songs. This was the first time any of us (except Peter) had been in a recording studio with the time and money to experiment and develop material. We added a few sound effects and used some overdubbing and layering to enhance a few of the basic tracks. For instance, at one point in "Too Hip To Be Happy" we needed the sound of a gun cocking. Lacking that particular piece of hardware, Kelly discovered a briefcase spring latch had basically the same sound. For "Hit and Run" we overdubbed Billy's marshall drum cadence several times so it sounded like a whole drum corp. For Driving in the Rain, we were looking for some sort of sonic "set-up" when a thunderstorm suddenly rolled through downtown Norfolk. We opened the studio door and shoved a microphone into the alleyway. A sudden thunderclap peaked the meters right off the scale but we were able to use it in the final mix. I'll tell ya, making a record is hard work but it's also a lot of fun. Thank you, Ron and Peter.

After mixing down the individual tracks, Kelly, Mac, Bob Hockenberry (one of our production assistants), and I flew the tape to New York City for mastering by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound. This was the single-best thing we did for the recording because Greg had mastered some of the biggest, best-known recordings in the world and really added a "finish" to the sound. Thanks, Greg. Although the final production was not as professional sounding as many recordings you hear, we at least got our stuff on vinyl so we could get some airplay and have a tangible product to represent us when we weren't performing.

Now kiddies, if you're looking for a lesson out of all this, this is it... We spent half of our money on the recording time and the other half on the pressing. We neglected the fact that you need that whole amount again to promote your record! We ended up deep in red ink with unsold albums. Say... might I interest you in a collector's item?

As noted before, the band had always been an unmanageble affair, for us or for anyone else foolhardy enough to try. This tendency was finally leading to internal dissention that caused the release of the album to be delayed by many months. In those months, more changes were to occur...

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