I had wholly rejected the idea of religion when I was seventeen. But, in hindsight, I didn’t really know what it was I had so easily dismissed.

It was around this time of 1988-1989, I was 27 or 28 when I began to understand and appreciate how useful and how genius this invention of God, Jesus and any form of sacred submission truly was. The humbling capacity of worshipping something more powerful than yourself and the unquestioning moral structure it rewarded you with were both aspects of religion that I once pointed out as signs of weakness – I now looked at as simple human needs. The desire to believe is so instinctual and so pleasurable that for most people it’s never challenged. But I had challenged it and decided to side with science. Easy for a seventeen year old – much tougher for a twenty-seven year old… The temptation to retreat to a world of angels and demons intensifies as one experiences the meaninglessness and evil of reality. The more one understands reality the more one is consoled by this ingenious fabrication… ..However, I could not, once knowing the truth, go back to, what would have been, a more comforting lie…..So as I walked into the increasingly bleak, godless horizon – a tinge of regret would be attached to my resolve…I was resigned to believe in only “the real”…But I longed to be immersed in the “Guiding Light”….

Reapplying Yourself As Steam

Richard had just quit the band and left me & Michael to decide out fate…Somehow I got the feeling he thought we would either beg him to come back – or just break up the band…We did neither and forged ahead actually playing several shows as a two piece..?? And as luck would have it out of the blue Jonathan Donahue tracked us down at one of these two-piece shows somewhere in North Carolina…We (me and Jonathan) had been estranged for awhile after having an intense argument about Neil Young…He loved everything Neil had ever done – I only liked some of the early stuff …I don’t know why it mattered so much but we were both very opinionated and I see now it was a cost ly assertion – but he having a somewhat stronger sense of forgiveness – presented himself in North Carolina as proof of our friendship being more than just a shared appreciation of “cool” music, or lack thereof and immediately began the second part of our great adventure together.

If I’m Lost, Well I Don’t Care

Back at Michael’s parents’ house (his folks had moved and were trying to sell the house and we could use it until it was sold) we began a daily regiment of recording a song-per-day on Jonathan’s four-track. Slowly we discovered just haw talented and musical Jonathan truly was (perhaps he was discovering it even himself) and as the weeks rolled on it was apparent that Jonathan was becoming part of the band and greatly improving it along the way.

Our daily sessions proved quite productive yielding virtually every song of what would eventually end up as the “Priest Driven” album. We had still not gotten around to getting a replacement drummer and for the first couple of weeks Michael played drums on these crude but inspired demos. Of the “Mushroom Tapes” collection only “Unconsciously Screamin’” and an un-named noise “jam” have Nathan playing. Which didn’t always improve the songs but his minimal style and steadiness of BEAT was a welcome change from the chaotic sloppiness of our previous drummers. And again, along with Jonathan, Nathan joining the band would improve us even more…..

So climbing up from the shambles of, just a couple months earlier when we were at our lowest point….being a futureless-two piece….-we were now a reasonably professional four-piece freak-rock outfit that was on its way to becoming an even more powerful force upon the arrival of Dave Fridmann-…..

Standin’ On Yer Mountainside

Jonathan had known Dave for awhile and, I’m guessing, sensed he would enjoy the challenge of controlling our amateurism and volume and maybe enhancing our new musicalness and precision… So he (Jonathan) asked Dave to accompany us for several live shows (including playing with Jane’s Addiction) as our “Mad Scientist” soundman. Dave would actually play the soundboard and be a part of the show. The audience would often be watching him, instead of us, as he spastically reached for sound effects, volumes, distortions and stereo panning devices while pushing faders and punching knobs. You have to remember this was 1989 and sound engineers typically set the board at the sound-check and ate dinner while the band did their performance. Many club owners and P.A. technicians found what we were doing to be too radical and most nights would shut us down after five or six songs. And to enhance the idea of us being unstable weirdos Dave would sometimes wear only a hospital smock: meaning – no pants or underwear only a long-ish shirt, while doing all this maniacal mixing. This perverted collaboration of mad engineer, mad band and mad music…had so much inertia we quickly arranged for Dave to use us as his senior year recording project and headed up to the State University of New York in Fredonia – to start recording.

Yer Fucked If You Do, And Yer Fucked If You Don’t
The insanity and abandon that we so embraced in our live shows (around this time we would set off fireworks – big ones!! – on stage and catch stuff on fire) was not what we were trying to do on this particular recording – we had done some of this in the past but now we were looking to do something new – a reach. Could we actually make a record that expressed true emotions?? Or were we doomed to being just a freak show that was better to be experienced than something you actually enjoyed listen to…

And we didn’t want this, or should I say, we were ready to confront this dilemma and accept our fate… and looking back now, it truly was a brave moment… we feared what we may discover – that even with Jonathan, and Nathan and Dave – perhaps we really had reached beyond our grasp… and even though we were now more powerful than ever, we could, at the same time, be facing our last days – so we were strangely hopeless in one way and euphorically determined in another – were we facing the executioner at dawn?? If so… fuck it!! ---- We did not wait for the dawn.

I Was Born The Day They Shot John Lennon’s Brain
The recording environment at Fredonia was exactly as we had hoped – it was very still and technical and bland – it was a school after all – completely the opposite of most “real” recording studios – which try to be hip and comfortable… most studios are dark and moody – this was a bright fluorescent work-study atmosphere – perfect for our “mad scientist” kind of approach. We began by recording “Unconsciously Screamin’” – perhaps because we felt like it was a “not too strange” rock song – we could throw a lot of ideas onto tape and it would maybe lead to a working “blueprint” of how we could proceed with the other songs – To this day I believe “Unconciously Screamin’” is the most reworked – remixed – re-fucked with song we’ve ever done – hard to believe listening to it.

It seems quite simple by our standards of today – but this was 1989 – and even though computer technologies were beginning to be used, we had none of it, and even if it would have been available I’m sure we would have laughed at it… I believe we arrived at a mix that we didn’t despise somewhere around the two-hundredth pass… The whole summer would be spent applying, this kind of uncertainty and enthusiasm, to the demo tapes we had done back home…

God Walks Among Us Now!!

You see we were struggling to believe in ourselves and maybe you have to believe in other things besides yourself before you can believe in yourself… Maybe like playing someone else’s songs – before you can see any merit in your own songs. So you see when we sang “Waitin’ for my ride – Jesus is floating outside – shine on Sweet Jesus on me” we weren’t expressing a belief in Jesus or God, or any Higher Power – we were expressing a belief in… believing… To try to come to terms with what believing means and use it to create ourselves. And as we attempted this, we discovered that truly all meaning is subjective and, in a sense, a fabrication – that we weren’t right and they weren’t wrong – it was the same thing. And this was frightening and perplexing – science should’ve easily proved to be a more worthy master… but no… You see as we were re-exploring the idea of allowing oneself to be “guided by the light” we found it unexpectedly rejuvenating and again saw the power of religion equal to the power of the cosmos…!!!… What could this mean… ??? Not believing something has designed you, forces you to design yourself??? Fuck that, I do not say it as a matter of pride “I invented myself”… so what – everybody invents themselves – only we had to do it in a moment of despair before we disappeared inside ourselves… And in a blazing time-encapsuled instant, we chose, out of panic, to accept that we are descended from stars not build from the molecules of Christ. And if religious folks could submit to “GOD” because he’s great and powerful that perhaps we could submit to “the Universe” because it’s great and powerful – We made an exchange… (which is the only way – insanity surely awaits those desperate souls who are suspended for too long in between_ - we had lost the lord but gained the world… So instead of looking up and seeing Heaven and its endless possibilities and saying “that must be God” – we looked up and saw… the Universe and its endless possibilities and thought… the Universe has made us… Yep… But the rest is up to us…

Wayne
June 2002

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