"Junk Car Grand Prix" is the 7th TA-80 release and our 5th full-length album. It was recorded in 2004 and released early 2005. It was recorded on Powertracks Pro-audio in Amy's dad's garage. The line-up is Amy, Jamin & Russ with Jens joining us on the song "Soft Noise." The title is taken from an episode of "Speed Racer."
I basically consider this the first of a string of cursed albums and nearly resulted in the breakup of the band.
"Are Go!" was pretty well received locally and everything about the band was going up,up,up...this album was kinda the let down. Promises made by Right Time had fallen through and we parted ways with them.
A partial list 0f bad things that happened during the making of the album:
1.Cullen quit the band to pursue his college studies.
2. Russ quit the band 3/4 into making it to pursue work.
3. Places that would let us play kinda dried up. Either going out of business or banning us.
4. The 4-track tape I used to record the albums demos was lost halfway through the recording, resulting in us not recording most of the best songs written for this album.
5. The computer crashed right when we finished recording and we could only rescue rough mixes (so yes, the album is composed of mostly rough mixes... hello, shitty drum sound in "Never Forget").
6. After recording a good chunk of the album, which was originally a concept album about Michigan (our home state) called "The Great Lakes Statement", someone else put out an album with the EXACT SAME CONCEPT, resulting in me having to hurriedly rewrite most of the albums lyrics (in a drunken state, which has resulted in me vowing to write every TA-80 lyric, after this album, strictly sober). A few of the lyrics I never changed, "Great Lakes Statement" is still a quick Mid-Michigan history lesson and "Never Forget" is about leaving Michigan.
As of the time Russ left we were still about 3 songs short of an album, and the band was back down to only me and Amy. To fill out the album we used a Russ outtake from "Are Go!" entitled "Ya", an outtake of mine from "Are Go!" called "Heaven?" that me and Amy re-recorded and a new song we wrote called "Soft Noise" which featured Amy's brother and future TA-80 member Jens 80 on feedback and hollerin'. Oddly enough "Heaven?" and "Soft Noise" are kinda the highlight of the album for me, along with the Herb Alpert parody "Mambo #80", which was a damn blast to record.
The album holds up fairly well considering that by the end of the recording there was basically no band. Easily the best album we had made up to this point. We consciously decided to toughen up our sound to better reflect our live shows and it makes all the difference. For the first time we sound like a real punk rock band with a distinct sound. So most of it is in the TA-80 punk style, with a few detours into ska ("Crash Course"), dancey stuff ("Heaven?"), Noise-Rock ("Soft Noise"), power ballads ("Occupy her Mind") and hardcore ("See it Thru"). I think "Out(Count Me(Don't))" is maybe our funniest title.
Most of my problems with the album are due to the fact that all we were able to save from the crashed computer were rough mixes that we couldn't change... and we didn't have enough songs to have the luxury of outtakes. So we were stuck with the drums that sound like they were buried under a blanket in "Never Forget"... and the weird chords in the chorus "Tell Me".
Oh, and I CAN'T STAND "Exhumed Cadillac"... I don't know what happened. THe demo was good, but the final product? Ecchhh. Except Russ' slide guitar is the shee-yit on it!
This was also the time that an enthusiastic kid with a real talent for self-promotion named "Matt 80" joined the band. His exhuberance was a real life saver for the band at the time and we love the guy... he later left to move to California but we did re-unite with him years later and did a U.S tour with him in 2009.
So yea...to sum up the album...don't write lyrics drunk.
Track Listing:
1. Tell Me
2. The Great Lakes Statement
3. Crash Course
4. Occupy Her Mind
5. Out(Count Me(Don't))
6. See It Thru
7. Exhumed Cadillac
8. Never Forget
9. Warm Kites
10. YA
11. Writing Songs 4 U
12. Soft Noise
13. Heaven?
14. Mambo #80
Note: "Junk Car Grand Prix will likely never be re-released, but the tracks "Occupy Her Mind", "Warm Kites", "Writing Songs 4 U", "Soft Noise", "Heaven?" and "Mambo #80" are all on the TA-80 compilation "Atari Du Cirque" which is available at http://interpunk.com/item.cfm?Item=68094& . "Never Forget" and "Warm kites" were later re-recorded for the 2008 "Angry Young Computer" e.p (which is getting a re-release very soon...you read it here first, folks...)
We played some of these live over the years, most notably "Never Forget," "Warm Kites," and "Heaven?". We also played "The Great Lakes Statement" a few times.
The cover was originally a hand drawn picture based on an Austrian beer bottle our good friend Gerhard gave us, that Jens 80 later re-created digitally. There were very very few copies of this made. Maybe 35 or 40. We really didn't do very many shows during this time period.
-Jamin 80
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Tonight, I'm the last person to write my thoughts on this album. In a weird way, this was kind of my first album, meaning this is the first album that I really started writing the music. I was still trying hard with lyrics on this album too (something I tend to stay away from apart from the stray chorus or bridge here and there...) I really came into my own on my music writing on "Junk Car".
I think "Occupy Her Mind" was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. I was doing a QA job for a big Internet provider when we started this album. That pretty much translates into me doing countless hours of repetative, monkey work that didn't require me to actually speak to a single other human being. I loved it. I used to bring in about 20 CD's a day with me and listen to them as I, basically, pretended to do a job that actually meant something.
I listened to a lot of Elvis Costello during this time. When I came up with the lyrics for "Occupy Her Mind" I was listening to Elvis. I had already written the music because I was coming up with bass parts like crazy. I had found a style that was comfortable for me and the bass kind of got easier to play. Hey, it's gotta sink in at some point, right? Anyway, I was sitting at my desk, listening to Elvis, and I came up with the first verse. When I say that a girl is listening to someone singing but he's not singing to her...That's me singing to Elvis Costello.
I wrote the lyrics to "Tell Me" at Lane's house. Lane was a DJ for the Tucson local station. He did a show called Avante Garage and played all punk and related music up to 1980. The show came on at 2 a.m. on Tuesday nights. We rarely missed a show. We called in all the time and requested our favorite songs and Lane was mighty impressed with our music knowledge. This was mostly coming from Jamin. Now we all love the stuff but at the time, I'm pretty sure it was mostly Jamin doing the actual requesting.
So we ended up becoming friends with Lane and he had us on his show and played one of our songs, going completely outside his show's boundries. I ended up hanging out at his house one night while Russ was practicing for a different band. They were this weird, metal/emo/punk type of thing. Russ really got into that for a few years. I don't get it and I decided that I would rather hang out (very quietly) at Lane's place while he typed his dissertation or something. I told Lane later that I wrote the lyrics for "Tell Me" that night and he seemed really excited about it. He liked our band. It was nice.
I still really like this album. It's hard to say that because I wrote a lot of the lyrics and it's ultra personal and super girly and lame but the songs as a whole are pretty damn decent. This album is the specific reason why I really don't try to write lyrics anymore. I'm awesome at writing music and come up with a lot of the music you hear on any of the new TA-80 stuff. Lyrics, on the other hand...I leave that to Jamin. I gave up lyric writing to Jamin on "Crash Course." I originally wrote lyrics and sang vocals for it but it was awful. Even me, with my amazing ego, couldn't deny that it was terrible. I handed it over to Jamin and felt that, for as much as I loved the music, if he couldn't come up with good lyrics, we'd scrap it as an outtake. He came up with great lyrics and this was when I realized that I could write music, let Jamin write lyrics, and then I could sing it and it would still be an awesome TA-80 song that I wrote.
I grew up listening to the Beatles and whoever wrote the song, sang the song so that's how I thought it was supposed to be. Hey, it worked for them but not for us. We're not the Beatles. If we were...well, that'd be awesome.
This album is always a little sad for me too. This was the album we lost Russ. I thought we were done for. In a way, we kind of were. I mean, we didn't have another full length release until Russ came back to us almost 5 years after this album came out. I actually sent an e-mail to Dr. Frank (of all people) and told him how I was afraid we were going to be done. He (extremely kindly) sent some encouraging words back and we did continue to plug away. There's more to this story to come.
"Junk Car Grand Prix" was a really fun album. My dad, Gary Heronemus (who appeared on "Expansive, Yet Inexpensive") helped me with recording vocals. He taught me some stuff that I've incorporated into the way I record vocals now. He comes from a different time of recording but, damn, he makes some valid points. I'm not embarrassed of this album. I wish we could've had the recordings we wanted but it wasn't possible. As it is, I like it.
- Amy 80
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This is the best one I ever heard
-Klae 80 (whom I'm not sure has ever even heard this...)
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Ooh-ee-oooh... I did this cover... God, I wish that I had re-did this cover... Actually, I did re-do it, a couple of times, I just wasn't very good at doing art on the ol' computer. Nowadays, I'm perdy sharp when it comes to graphics. Hell, I'll brag all damn day about how tight my shit is when it comes to MS Paint, but this cover kinda makes me cringe. I do love that rooster, though (hmmm... I should get that tattoo, mebbe.) I think this might be the first TA-80 album I was on, albeit breifly (when we did soft noise) and I started to play live with the band around this time. That was cool. And I knew Randy... Who we'll get to soon enough.
-Jens 80
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