 EPISODE 8: song 150
PUBLIC DOMAIN: THE BEST OF LUCID NATION (2005)
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For the track list of Public Domain we asked our friends and long time listeners to tell us their favorite songs; we added our favorites, and our biggest college radio and download hits.
Jack Endino recorded and mixed one of my all time favorite CDs, Bleach by Nirvana. We’ve wanted to work together for several years now, but our schedules have never meshed. He was supposed to engineer and mix our Tacoma Ballet CD.
Jack did a wonderful job of mastering Public Domain. It’s a shame that downloadable digital files still don’t sound as good as CDs (which still don’t sound as good as vinyl) but Jack’s mastering even sounds good compressed into MP3s.
Jeff Gaither, famed for his Misfits posters and for his way with voodoo zombie rock and roll hot rod illustration, created beautiful art for Public Domain on the theme “the world the day after we run out of oil.”
FUBAR is the only song on Public Domain that wasn’t on an earlier Lucid Nation CD. I’m not a huge PETA fan, I think they pick the wrong battles, but I’m still more for them than against them, so when they asked for a track for a compilation they were putting out with Fat Wreck I said sure.
I’d been jamming with drummer Denise Saffren for a few months by then. Denise’s band Wench was the headliner Tenacious D frequently opened for. She’s a drummer you’d have heard of if you loved music in L.A. I’d been friends with bassist Jody Bleyle since she and Donna had first started talking about what would become Team Dresch. This track is the only time Denise and Jody played together, unfortunately, because I think they made a fierce rhythm section.
Fat Wreck rejected FUBAR because it was “too raw.” And much as it tickles me to say that, I have to be fair and admit they didn’t get this sweet mix by Mike Barile, best known for his work with Candiria.
Why did we call it Public Domain? We had not yet come up with the idea of the Hundred Song March. We were giving away some of our music but not all of it, and the title is an ironic comment on the way our songs were being freely traded anyway, as if they were not copyright protected.
As usual there is a double meaning, of course. Some of my summers of growing up were spent at my brother’s apartment in Venice, California. I was too shy too skate or surf or to hang out with the locals who did, but I was fascinated by the constant improvisation of those sports, and I’m convinced that helped lead me to freestyle musical experimentation. |
