"Expansive...Yet Inexpensive" was TA-80's 2nd release...it's also my least favorite. In fact I kinda hate the album, yet this album was actually important to us in that there were a lot of firsts:
1. First album we made since relocating to Arizona
2. First album with Russ 80
3. First time songs were co-written
We started recording "Expansive... Yet Inexpensive" in July of 2001 and finished it in early 2002. It was recorded in Amy's dad's garage , where we recorded about 50 songs which we narrowed down to the 25 that made it onto the final album.
In retrospect we should have narrowed it down to about 8.
It was recorded in 3 distinct sessions:
1. A set of recordings similar to "80-83", where Amy and I recorded acoustic and drum machine songs onto a 4-track casette recorder.
2. A few sessions that were basically try-outs with various musicians. John Chace (guitar), Stephen Smith (bass), and Gary Heronemus sitting in on drums, that were also recorded onto 4 track.
3. The final set of sessions, recorded digitally using Powertracks Pro Audio 4, with Russ 80, who had officially joined us after I'd met him at work and showed him some of the stuff we were working on.
Unsurprisingly the album is a mess.
Using different recording methods and shifting line-ups, the songs range from punk rock ("No Way Out", "Nothin' To Do"), acoustic ballads ("It's Always One Step Away", "Don't Go"), Blues Rock(?!) ("Abandoned Husk of a Locomotive", a gigantic jamming version of Cream's "Sunshine of your Love (yes, I'm a "Disraeli Gears" fan)), heavy metal parodies ("Broken Soundwaves") and some utterly indescribable shit that even I can't wrap my mind around (the backwards music and forward vocals of "Waking, Sleeping, Dreaming" and a song where the music isn't actually the music we played, just an echo of it (the title track).
This was when we wrote albums just for the hell of it, expecting no one to hear it but friends and family. No second takes. Improvised songs. Copious mistakes.
We never fixed mistakes back then. Anyone that was meant to hear didn't care about mistakes. They were used to us making them.
Against any common sense we ended up selling a few (of the maybe 40 copies ever made) at a local record store. This album will NEVER be re-released.
I actually think some of it kinda holds up. I think "It's Always One Step Away" and "Don't Go" are great, I really like the last half of "I Don't Want to Feel Your Pain Anymore" (which we unofficially refer to as "Tapedeck") and some of these sound like promising rough demos ("Cheap", "Inflata-Tanks Unite", "Dinosaur Gardens") and I still get a kick out of "These Acoustic 80's" and "My Incredibly Drunk Stunt Double".
I was still avoiding straight punk because I had just spent 10 years doing punk rock with my previous band D.C. (Deranged Chimpmunks). For some reason I also decided that my lyrics were getting too bizarre so I decide to take a more "straight forward" approach on about half the material. Big mistake! The lyrics seem dull and clichè compared to what we usully do, as a result I refuse to listen to this album with anyone else around.
I don't listen to it alone either. I like to pretend it doesn't exist.
I drew the front cover on the inside of my day planner at work and the back cover (don't have it scanned yet) a bright orange picture of a vinyl record was drawn by Amy.
Track Listing:
1. These Acoustic 80's
2. The Abandoned Husk of a Locomotive
3. Kick it Down
4. My Incredibly Drunk Stunt Double
5. Going Home for the Winter
6. Headache Weather
7. Sunshine of your Love
8. Nothin' to Do
9. Barleypop
10. Your Brother's Tape Collection
11. Desert Waves
12. Hey! Hey! Retro Rockets are Go!
13. No Way Out
14. Friday Night, Saturday Morning
15. Inflata-Tanks Unite!
16. The Disappearing Planet
17. Cheap
18. Dinosaur Gardens
19. It's Always One Step Away
20. I Don't Want to Feel Your Pain Anymore (Parts 1&2)
21. Broken Soundwaves
22 Don't Go
23 Expansive...Yet Inexpensive
24 Waking, Sleeping, Dreaming
25.Goodbye
We later re-recorded "It's Always One Step Away" as a single, which was also released on "Atari Du Cirque" (more on that one at a later date).
At later live shows we've played "These Acoustic 80's", "Kick it Down", "My Incredibly Drunk Stunt Double", "Desert Waves", "Inflata-Tanks Unite!", and "Broken Soundwaves".
- Jamin 80
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I can't even speak the title of this album without cringing in embarrassment. This album has 2 of my most horrible songs ever written on it, along with a bunch of other songs written by various These Acoustic 80's members. A 25 song shitfest. 25 songs?!? What were we thinking?
We moved out to Tucson, AZ in August 2001 and immediately started working on our next album. Jamin got an awful job at an organ shop in the mall and met a bunch of musicians. John was an amazing blues guitarist and he played on "Abandoned Husk" and "Sunshine of Your Love". Steven was an incredible bassist that played on "Friday Night, Saturday Morning". Russell was a jack of all trades that listened to the same type of music as us and thought our music was brilliant. Russ stuck around. He immediately became our third songwriter, guitarist, singer, bassist, drummer, keyboardist and his stage presence next to Jamin's was undeniably awesome. Russ entering the band is a shining moment that took place on this album.
I do have some fond memories of recording the album. Thanksgiving when Jamin and Russ got really full and drunk and recorded a bunch of songs. Endless hours of laughing. Getting to play with new and insanely talented musicians. And even though this is a semi-terrifying thought, it was great that we finally made official looking copies of the album, got them shrinkwrapped, and took them to a local record store which shamefully agreed to sell 5 copies. No, I should say that the record shop made our 5 sad copies available. They certainly never sold and after about 4 years, they finally took them off the shelf. I'm thinking they were either recycled or taken home by some poor employee who thought he'd give it a listen. Hopefully they were just destroyed. Support local music!
Some of the songs aren't too bad. "It's Always One Step Away" originally appeared on this album. That song was later recorded for a single with "Think Tomorrow". I've always been a big fan of "Inflata Tanks Unite!" and would love to work it into a live set sometime. The song "These Acoustic 80's", our TV show theme song! All terribly recorded but good, fun songs. It could probably be cut down into a 12 or 13 song album and be halfway decent. Nah, it'd still be pretty awful.
- Amy 80
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Still with us? Cool. Okay, I was sittin' over there while Jamin was finishing his part of this and I thought I could really illustrate my experience with this album in the form of a short one act play. It mighta actually been okay as a device (I was gonna use italics fer the "scene" directions and everthing), but I realised that I could sum it a little more succinctly: "Hey! we should do something on this song like that thing we did on that one song from 'Expansive...'"
"Oh yeah? You should put that on." And then Jamin looks like someone just put a gun to his head...
So, yeah, I've heard the damn thing and I'm not gonna say it isn't exactly what Amy 'n Jamin've told ya it is, but, and this is important, here; that album isn't terrible for what it is. It's easily the only collection of TA-80 blues-rock songs (good Lord, I can't even describe just how sureal it was to walk into the studio the night of the "Sunshine" sessions) and there're some pretty decent first-draft concepts scattered around that album, like the theme song and tapedeck, and, me 'n Amy's dad is on it. This is the last album he worked on (hopefully not the last (although, I doubt he'll be on another TA-80 (nothing personal, he is a really great drummer), but we don't do a whole lotta blues-rock anymore)) and I Iike it 'cause of that.
The other thing about describing my feelings toward this album is that I just haven't really gotten to hear it very much. If Jamin's around, there ain't a chance in hell that anyone's gonna get to hear one bit of it. That, coupled with the ridiculously small print run, mean that my opportunities fer listening have been, more and/or less, nonexistant. But I, as previously stated, have heard it. It's cool for what it is. There's way too much of it, sure, but considering that at that point most everybody we knew was telling 'em that music was just a waste of time, they managed to D.I.Y. a sprawling 25 song album as a sophomore release (that they did manage to get in local music store, too!) They sure as hell weren't wasting any of their time.
Oh, and the title of "Inflata-Tanks..." is in reference to this magician named Jasper Maskelyne that the British employed during the North Africa campaigns of the Second World War. Jamin, Amy and I watched a documentary about him around that time... He's really cool, you should look him up.
- Jens 80
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I don't know what to say... I...I ..I don't know what to say...
-Klae 80
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