At some point in early 1987, I was mailed a cassette of Ward & Hubie running through a few tunes. After we made the 1986 demo, Ted was in Fredonia, so - as with the previous year, when Rich was in England - Life Out Of Balance once again went on hiatus. Ward was at NYU. I remember being really excited to get this tape, I was dying to play!
They run through a song called "The Bushman". The real "Bushmen" are among the most-oppressed peoples in the world. At some points in the song, it seems like they're aware of this ("society is giving them the kiss"!), or maybe they were just using "the bushmen" as a representative symbol for all mankind and his senseless, violent nature ("they don't have any minds at all, they just fight and fight until they fall"...."I am the Bushman"). Just in case someone gets bent out of shape over it, I'm not sure it was highly considered, I tend to think it's just a catchy song, written by a couple of kids!
And a catchy song it is! I love Ward's vocal performance on this - the other night, Ward was being self-deprecating about his singing; I always thought he had a distinctive voice, with great phrasing as well as possessing an innate melodic sense, shared by the rest of us. On rehearsal tapes, he could sometimes go flat because we didn't have PA monitors at that point, and he'd have to overblow, just like anybody who can't hear themselves sing. But, as you can hear on this tape, Ward's "natural" singing is just fine.
Unfortunately, by the time we actually came to rehearse "The Bushman", in the spring of 1987, Hubie could not remember the chords! More about this when I post the June 1987 tapes!
"I'll Be There" is a song LOOB never played, at least not more than once. Hubie and Ward wrote this as a sort of band....encouragement! Like....hey guys, I'll be there, we're in this band, we're a gang, I'll be there for you, bro! When Hubie told me this, I reacted like an 8-year old reacts to kissing a girl..."Ew! what are you talking about?" Now I think it's touching they'd write such a song! (Also....the band I joined was always having these disagreements and arguments - kid stuff! But at the time, very real! So, I wasn't so sure about these guys I was joining up with, yet! Would they really be there? Would I? I'm sure they were asking the same questions!!!) One thing is for sure: Ward really was "there"! He ended up managing the band for years, taking care of all of our bookings, helping us load in, set up, and load out...he was at my 40th surprise party....the guy has totally been "there"! And this on top of being a college professor!!!
So, after the sweet, but ultimately rejected "I'll Be There"....
......wait a second, one more thing.... let me say that though it did happen sometimes, there were very few Hubie songs that were ever "rejected", his batting average was pretty great! Songs fell by the wayside, of course, but virtually all were played, worked on....and enjoyed! The number of songs we flat-out said "no" to could probably be counted on one hand.
Ok, so after the sweet, but ultimately rejected "I'll Be There" comes one of my favorite Hubie songs, and one we actually didn't really play much. "Don't Despair", great melody. I dug this song so much that I wrote my own lyrics to it when it was left unfinished. They werent good, but I include the end of my "Don't Despair demo as a "bonus" to this tape, as it had a cool ending). Sometimes we'd do that, Ted wrote a verse for "I Paint" that we used, for instance. Anyways, we ended up not doing "Don't Despair", but TO THIS DAY, I play it from time to time on guitar, when I'm by myself. To this day! In fact, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure this song actually taught me how to play a barre chord!
I think the reason we didn't do "Don't Despair" much is simply because Hubie suddenly had a major spurt of material, including lots of sad love songs ("On The Cover", "I'm So Tired", "Easier Said Than Done"). He also might have been put off by me presuming to write lyrics to his song! Ar, y'lil upstart!"
The only song of this batch that LOOB actually ended up doing for any period of time was "Difficult Dance". It appears on most of the 1987 and 1988 tapes, including "The Pete Kang Show". I think this song didn't make the transition to the next incarnation, when we added Howie, but it was always a lot of fun to play - we swung like hell!
So - along with some really funny conversation of Hubie & Ward debating the nature of love - and some goof songs ("I Love You So Much", and "I Don't Like You Anymore") (best line from "I Don't Like You Anymore", describing what it's like to go out with "you": "I feel like I've been drafted in to the Army.") - that's what I've always known and thought of as "The Ward & Hubie Tape"
UNTIL NOW!!!!
As soon as Ward and Hubie sign off.....a couple of seconds later, Mike and Ted appear! I love surprises like this, when I do these tapes! Even though I had no idea it was on here, I knew exactly what it was! It's Ted and I, in his "library", and we lay down a chorus for a song he was working on, "Don't Be Afraid". Obviously, I was at his house, played him the tape of Ward and Hubie, and then we started playing and needed to get down this idea! This song eventually had a verse added ("I don't mind idle chatter" was the first line). There's no other recording of this early Ted song, this is almost definitely the only one. So there's that! Ted & Mike making an appearance on what has aways been labeled as :
BUT WAIT......there's more 'bonus" stuff:
As I said, there's an excerpt of my own 4-track demo of "Don't Despair", one of my favorite early Hubie tunes, and one we never really did.
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND
In that first summer of 1986 (first summer for me, that is), Ward and Ted had come up with a chorus...."tell you when it happens out of sight, out of mind....." I loved this chorus, and it was just laying around, so seizing the opportunity, I went home and wrote a bunch of verses, and a break, and demoed it up. It wasn't very good, to be honest! So we didn't do it. But a couple of years later, I used it as a coda to a song, so....just to document this Ward & Ted fragment, here is "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind", performed and preserved by moi.
AND LASTLY...........
NIGHT (1986, tape-to-tape demo)
After I was in the band for a couple of weeks, and I saw all the in-fighting and power struggles between Rich, Ted, Ward and Hubie, I thought to myself ...."What this band needs is another writer!"
So the first thing I did was try and adapt some things I was working on, and got them spiffed up. And then, to round it off, I sat down and wrote what I imagined a "Life Out Of Balance-style" song sounded like. It was called "Night", Hubie would sing the first verse, Ward the second, I'd sing the last verse....we'd all sing harmony on the chorus . I made demos of all these songs, and when I recorded "Night", I did the best Hubie impression that I could muster, ditto Ward, and sang in my normal voice for the last verse. Even though it was tape-to-tape I managed to achieve a cool, primitive stereo production for the demo. All in all, I thought.....hmmm, not bad!
And wouldn't you know it....at our next rehearsal....in Hubie's basement, the one and only time we rehearsed there...we tried out this song! And it probably sounded better than any Mike song that came after! I remember Ward laughing (and changing) "the darkness womb protects you", ha! Quite right, Professor! But it worked, it was in the Life Out Of Balance, "Feast Of Reason" style. There's no tape of us playing it...and maybe it's just better in my memory..but we bashed away on it for a good chunk of the rehearsal. On the other hand - I was the new guy - and when you're the new guy, LOOB always welcomes your songs! Ha! You know it's true!
Anyways, the fate of "Night" was.... we didn't rehearse again for another six months! This time in Ward's garage. By that point, Hubie had a slew of new tunes. Ted, too. And we still had "The Bushman" and the other tunes from the "Ward and Hubie Tape". Plus we wanted to brush up on all the old stuff! I didn't care, I loved all the new songs, was dying to play the old ones, and besides....didn't we have all the time in the world?
In fact, we had one more marathon set of rehearsals in Ward's basement over a weekend in June of '87.....and then we were a trio. And as a trio.....we couldn't very well do "Night" without Ward, who I had written it for! Plus we weren't even doing "Feast Of Reason" anymore, our style had slightly evolved into something else.
Amazingly, the day after I digitized this track I went to my storage space and inside a very 80s-looking folder that hadn't been opened since, probably, the 80s.....I found an original lyric sheet for "Night", confirming the Hubie, Ward, Mike conception. (I've been having a lot of coincidences like that). So.....feast your eyes of this!
Ward & Hubie, early 1987
The Bushman
I'll Be There
Don't Despair
Difficult Dance
I Love You So Much
I Don't Like You Anymore
recorded by Hubie & Ward....I think this was in Ward's dorm? Or maybe at Ward's house.
Ted and Mike, circa 1987
Don't Be Afraid
recorded by Ted & Mike at Ted's house
BONUS
Mike demos
Don't Despair (excerpt, mike demo of hubie song) 1987
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind (mike demo of ward and ted chorus) chorus written 1986
Night (1986 tape-to-tape demo)
mp3
https://www.mediafire.com/?in2k8kafy5gtnes
(If anyone wants this in lossless flac files, email me!)
