For the year of 1989 there is exactly one recording of LOOB....and that recording contains exactly one song! ("Some Other") That means a bunch of songs from that year are as lost and gone-for-good as an old silent movie. There are, however, recordings one or more LOOBites did outside of the band and this is one of them.
One day, Hubie came to rehearsal and at some point we went into his car in the driveway of the Rocky Point house and listened to this tape of demos he had made, bouncing between two cassette machines. To this day I don't know if he did this all in one sitting, or over how much time, but it was a batch of quirky, sometimes very short, songs. At first, Ted and I were a little cold and standoff-ish towards this collection. I think we were looking for songs we could do with the band, and didn't hear any.
But, over time, this tape became a cherished thing! So cherished that, years later, I perchanced to see the naked, caseless tape languishing on Hubie's car floor! I asked him if I could take it and dub it -which I did. And I'm really happy I did because the original tape was eventually lost! On top of that, by the time I dubbed it, Hubie had accidentally erased short sections of a couple of songs!
If you ever wanted some undiluted Poole, this is your chance! It's a full-blown Hubie solo album, I put this right next to Syd Barrett, and Skip Spence, it's as compelling as that. Thankfully, unlike Syd and Skip, our LOOBan brother went on to live life as a functioning adult, but with its soft, disembodied voices and general mood, the tape does give one the impression of being inside Hubie's skull! Years later we did add "Jack" and "Cats" to our sets, but nothing else was really adaptable and so it became this sort of enigmatic, mysterious oddity that kicked around forever. Even the titles are just my own guesses, something I put on the tape card years later, something to jog my mind as to what they were. The only thing that was written on the original cassette was what was on the tape label: "Hubertsongs".
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Water damage. See why I need to do this blog? It's funny seeing the Grateful Dead on the flip side of this tape. I was not particularly enamored by the Dead until I was literally dragged to see them that year (1989). I was impressed by how they structured their shows, their songcraft, and their willingness to take chances and play free form, something we already did to an extent. This ended up an unlikely influence on the next couple of years of LOOB, along with Fela... and all of Bob Marley's albums!
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Listen.....do yourself a favor: get mellow, turn the lights down, maybe put on the headphones and let this tape take you back into Maestro Poole's world of 1989, a world of never-ending work, responsibility and expectation, wistful sadness, regret and melancholy...but also a whole lot of humor, playfulness and brilliant musical ideas to get through it all! Of course that's in there! After all...these are Hubertsongs!
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Hubertsongs, 1989
I Know You (You Should Have Been A Dancer)
Big Black Cloud
Jack
Social Requiem
A Rose In Winter
Cats; Call The Dogs
...information...
Captain Jack
Fascination
A Man And His Dog
Going Home
What's The Matter With Godfrey?
Standing Alone In The Rain
In The Cellar
Instrumental
tape-to-tape recordings by Hubert Poole. For some reason, I am getting the hazy memory that these were recorded at his parents' place in Stony Brook, but that may be totally wrong.
BONUS!
At the end of the tape, there were a few things that were recorded a little later, including a demo of Hubie and Howie playing an early version of "I'm Crying" at Hubie's place in Glen Cove, and solo renditions of "This Is Not The Case" (a song I'm not sure LOOB ever did) and "End Of The Story" (aka "Violin Without A Bow").
guitar
I'm Crying
This Is Not The Case
guitar
End Of The Story
mp3
http://www.mediafire.com/download/018x9sd0znxbt0q/1989_Hubertsongs.zip
