The Savage Breast
“Music hath charms to soothe The Savage Breast”
Self-recording since 2001, most of my early output before 2013 was captured surreptitiously on my trusted and treasured 16-track digital recorder, with me playing all instruments and doing all the singing, while I was institutionalized. I recorded in a storage room at The Living Museum in Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, the bathroom on the locked ward of the hospital, and the bedrooms of halfway houses while living on the campus. Subsequent releases were recorded in the same multi-tracked one-man-band fashion in my home studio in Queens, NY. when I was fortunate to win release from the asylum and acquired an apartment.
My last release of original recorded material was 2017’s pseudo psychedelic, psychosis informed Pop Brut. It was recorded quickly in 2017 in a crazy haze of anti-Trump derangement and reoccurring schizophrenia. So quickly in fact that I didn’t (wouldn’t/couldn’t) bother to put proper instrumentation to it. Ultimately, by autumn 2017 my mania overrode the injectable meds that I was required to take and eventually I went from loose to unmanageable, needing to be briefly re-hospitalized. Pop Brut is the fruit (or detritus) of this experience, pure unbridled outsider psycho pop; over modulated, no bass guitar on most of it, and doo-wop free-range rock and roll insanity.
In 2020, after 20 years as a semi-professional musician I choose to retire from the music making business, letting my vast catalog speak for itself. While reflecting on my hobby turned career and contemplating where to go next, I decided to respect my legacy, compiling, collating and contextualizing the official albums and emptying out the archive, releasing collections of unreleased tracks, demos, alternate and rare mixes.
My last releases have been variations on a theme…tying up loose ends. I’ve discovered and uncovered many unheard and unloved tracks and found joy there, diamonds in the rough. Awkward and immediate unvarnished gems created under the pressures of asylum life. Clues to a mystery and remnants of a beautiful dream of how a schizophrenic failure became a pop singer.
Late 2024 saw the release of the Greetings from the Latrine complete discography 21 CD Box Set. It is a career-encompassing retrospective of my recorded music output, celebrating “all the noise” from my bathroom studio, dubbed “Latrine Studios”. Around the same time, with my old 16-track recorder now disabled and unusable, and after years of prodding from long-time admirers and encouragement from many including ace indie musician and friend Steve Stoeckel from The Spongetones, I decided to enhance my toolbox with sophisticated recording software. It was still just about getting a good take and tracking but made much easier with many more interesting sounds to incorporate and experiment with. I rediscovered audio joy and remembered how much I loved making music and recording. Here’s to phase two!
‘White Trash in the Ghetto’ is a protest song having a dig at colonialism, gentrification, housing inequity, structural racism, and cultural appropriation. It had been kicking around for several years until I finally felt it was time to commit to tape. It helped that the few people who heard it played live banged out on an acoustic guitar believed it was a standout song and would make a good track. So here it is, in all its unapologetic glory, but please know that behind the bile and vitriol is a smile, a nod, and a wink.
‘Black Babylon’ was written while in Creedmoor with a hospital employee and long-time collaborator who helped with the animal themed bridge. There’s more than just a bit of XTC sprinkled on here, and I’m very pleased with how “eastern” and old world the song sounds while still also being very modern pop.
The writing of ‘Minstrel Boy’ began in 2009 for my band DSM5, but it was left unfinished. I finally completed it and decided to record and dedicate it to the late Jordan Neely, a true minstrel boy of the NYC subway system who was taken out too soon. Rest In Peace. My minstrel’s name is “C.P. Elvis”, an acronymous appellation for Criminal Procedure Law, the legal determination that follows a verdict or plea of ‘Not Responsible by Reason of Mental Disease or Defect.’ Also, while in the band I jokingly referred to myself as the colored people’s Elvis.
‘Neighborhood Watch’ was written after the Trayvon Martin killing reflecting how the term "neighborhood watch" became a buzz word for so many things wrong with safety, protection, and policing young Black boys in America. I tried to respect the tragedy, and also get my head around what many feel is lost in communities in modern society, all in a breezy, Squeeze-y, poppy two and a half minutes.
‘Music Police’ questions and confronts my own legitimacy as a musician while also telling the interesting story of rock and roll’s shift from early 60’s teen male pop idols to the birth of the Beatles. The song borrows the opening riff from The Crystals’ 60s girl group chestnut “Then He Kissed Me” and when I wrote it, I imagined Phil Spector coming to collect, so while recording I opted to obscure the similarity by using deep double bass voicing instead of the original’s 12-string guitar. This bit of dodgy bait and switch encapsules what “the music police” is all about.
‘I’m Evil’ and ‘Island Paradise’ were written while detained at Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island in 2018. I debuted them in a rehab poetry group there, singing in full throat with no guitar for the psychologists and fellow patients. They loved it, letting me know the songs were worth recording.
‘Soft Suicide’ is a co-write from a lifetime ago, when I was involved in an affair with a smoker who gave me the title and “grin and bear it, don’t share it” lines. As the singer extolls the joys of smoking the truth is it's a dire warning.
‘Innocence and Decay’ is a playful ode to Linda Blair in The Exorcist, a film that horrified me as an 8-year-old and I still can’t watch. This song features string instrumentation, mariachi styled horns at the end, and backwards “devil voices” that channel the film’s creepiness…but don’t be afraid, it’s only pop music.
‘Let Freedom Ring’ is my earnest plea for peace and tranquility, with a “Lift Every Voice” vibe complete with Gospel choir. This was the first song I recorded after my 7-year hiatus from music creation and though I was apprehensive I found my stride.