COMEDY MINUS ONE

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Good people of the Internet,

22 years in the making, Eleventh Dream Day's "New Moodio" is out today! In other news, the Silkworm "Libertine" preorder continues until June 11!



cmo025 Eleventh Dream Day "New Moodio" Lp/Digital Download

Out now!

Comedy Minus One's first release of 2013 is an album from one of our all-time favorite bands, Chicago's Eleventh Dream Day. "New Moodio" (cmo025) was released today in a limited run of 500 LPs.

If the title "New Moodio" sounds slightly familiar, it should. "New Moodio" is Eleventh Dream Day's "lost record," a parallel world version of 1993's "El Moodio." It is also the snapshot of a band at its peak.

Recorded and mixed in just a few days with Brad Wood in the fall of 1991, there is an urgency and excitement that courses through these songs played by a band empowered by freedom and possibility.

You can order a physical copy here.

Here are links to find the record electronically via iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon.

Read on for the story behind "New Moodio"!



In the fall of 1991 Eleventh Dream Day was at the crossroads.

Not the Robert Johnson meet-the-devil crossroads (although they may have been willing to negotiate if they could have found those crossroads), but a juncture where break-it seemed more inevitable than make-it in the dichotomy.

Eleventh Dream Day had a lot going for them. The "Lived To Tell" record had built on the success of their Atlantic Records debut "Beet," making many critical top ten lists including the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. The subsequent touring season found them at a crest, even after Wink O'Bannon replaced original guitarist Baird Figi following the initial East Coast leg. The band alternated headlining spots with Yo La Tengo in Europe during the spring of 1991 with both bands reaching their largest audiences to date.



The air, however, seemed to be escaping from the balloon. Just before the release of "Lived To Tell," the entire "Alternative" branch of Atlantic, including department head Peter Koepke and Bettina Richards (who was responsible for signing them), jumped to London Records. The band was left aboard the sinking ship, no one at the label was interested in forming a search party, and interest for the record from the Phil Collins/Debbie Gibson branch of the label was virtually nil. The band had to make their own video after being told that MTV wasn't going to show videos anymore. They asked the band to remix a single with a producer who had disco hits. The real drag was how things went down in Europe, where they had built an enthusiastic and large audience dating back to their independent years. "Lived To Tell" was released without any thought (or care) on how to market it. Fans at sold out shows complained that none of the independent record shops carried the record, only the big chains. The band wasn't even able to sell the album at shows! After getting back to the States and finishing off their most popular West Coast trip ever, Eleventh Dream Day felt they had done all they could do - ripping it up live, getting great reviews, and doing whatever the label asked. But "Lived to Tell" barely outsold "Beet."

During the early days of the fall of 1991, when things had died down and Eleventh Dream Day was in the first phase of the write/record/release/tour cycle, the band realized that things weren't just quiet, they were dead quiet. Atlantic, still in flux from the departure of Richards and company, had almost no communication with the band, and most importantly had not sent the required letter that legally bound them to release their contracted third record. Management contacted the label to point out that the band no longer was tied to their contract, which the label acknowledged.

Eleventh Dream Day was free.



The material that appears on "New Moodio" was recorded on their own dime, with the intent to find a new label to put it out. Recorded at Idful Studios in Chicago with Brad Wood at the dials (Liz Phair recorded "Exile In Guyville" with Wood there just months later), these songs were being shopped around when Danny Goldberg - who now was running Atlantic - came to Chicago and made his pitch to the group over lunch. The band was impressed by what he had to say, and made the inference that if he went to this effort to get the band back, he and the label must really care. Goldberg urged Eleventh Dream Day to start over with a new producer, and the band spent the better part of 1992 working on what would become "El Moodio," their third and final major label record.

It did not work out as planned. Promotion was pulled quickly for "El Moodio" after it failed out of the gates to light up the charts. In regard to the single "Making Like a Rug" featuring lead vocals by Janet Bean, the band heard the explanation, "Women were not big that month."

Eleventh Dream Day eventually returned to the independent ranks where they continue to make records including their most recent album, 2011's superb "Riot Now" on Thrill Jockey.



The songs on "New Moodio" have stayed in the vaults for twenty years, forgotten.

A comment on Facebook sparked the memory that set the gears in motion to dig them up.

So what do we have on this LP? Three songs ("Thinking Out Loud," "Where is My Saint," "Everywhere Down Here") have never appeared anywhere previously, one ("Dakota"), found its way onto the compilation "Milk For Pussy," "Sunflower" was re-recorded as an "El Moodio" cd single extra, and the rest were re-recorded in 1992 with Jim Rondinelli in New York for the "El Moodio" cd - never released on vinyl in the U.S.

You can listen to the song "Thinking Out Loud" here.

The Chicago Reader has "Sunflower" streaming here.

Comedy Minus One still can't believe we get to play a part in the release of "New Moodio." As mentioned above, the vinyl pressing is limited to 500 copies, and each includes a digital download containing three additional songs. "New Moodio" is also available on all digital download platforms.

"New Moodio" was mastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service.

Artwork by Keith Warren Greiman.

SIDE A
Thinking Out Loud (previously unreleased song)
That's The Point
Making Like A Rug
Sunflower
Figure It Out

SIDE B
Dakota
Lose-Win
After This Time Is Gone
Where Is My Saint (previously unreleased song)
Honey Slide

DIGITAL ONLY
Rubberband
Everywhere Down Here (previously unreleased song)
Raft Song

For more on "New Moodio" please contact Joan at Riot Act Media.



cmo019 Silkworm "Libertine" 2x12" + Cd

Coming soon!

"Very few bands make even one great album. Silkworm made several, and this is the first." - Steve Albini

Comedy Minus One announces a long-overdue deluxe reissue of Silkworm's out-of-print 1994 album "Libertine" (cmo019), the third and final full-length record by the band as a quartet.

This is a double 12" pressing with a supplementary CD including "The Marco Collins Sessions" as well as two additional recordings from the band's time at Pachyderm Studio.

Includes all-new artwork throughout (the revised cover is pictured above) plus a full color insert with liner notes by Silkworm's Tim Midyett.

Mastered from the original 1/2" tapes by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service.

Photographs by Mike Hoffman, Jr.

Layout and design by David Babbitt.

Pressed on 150 gram 45 rpm vinyl at Gotta Groove Records.

Preorders are available NOW and will be available until June 11.

Details on all three preorder tiers are below.

In stores Fall 2013.



Silkworm really piss me off. For nigh 20 years now, I've tried to explain what it is they do (not "did"-this band lives), and I have failed. I have used dumb phrases like "post-punk in a world where punk never happened." Also: "music redolent of the new weird America." I have said these things to friends and strangers, and sometimes even typed them for others to read. All I've ever wanted is to figure out is how it is that this music sounds like nothing else, while somehow sounding like everything else-a rock band that has soaked up the past without resorting to pastiche, the bane of so many of their compatriots.

Now, it's possible I just did it again there, but bear with me-because in order to fully process Libertine you have to understand how strange it sounded in context. Not just odd-but out-of-place, as befits a band that crawled out of Missoula, Montana and drove the wrong direction on I-90, staking a claim in the Pacific Northwest, instead of the Lake Michigan-ic Midwest, where their music would eventually find a more hospitable environment. I mean, can you imagine what it must have been like to be these guys in '90s Seattle? You know those Charles Peterson live band photos that captured the unbridled intensity and connection between musician and audience, awash in a sea of hair and sweat? I wonder if he's got one in a drawer somewhere, Silkworm in the natty suits they sometimes wore back then, Andy Cohen placidly crowd-surfing...

But I digress.

Triple-threat songwriting, two cagey guitars circling the drain but never going under, a bassist whose axe looks like an oar and sounds like the metal cable of a suspension bridge, anchored by a drummer clad in little more than gardening gloves whose kick drum (I am told) is the oversize kind favored by marching bands-all in all, a combination as heady as it was brainy. You can hear the rooted rootlessness of the big sky country they left, the austere grandeur of the city where they eventually ended up-and, while they were stuck where they were stuck, a sublimely cerebral version of the stop-start loud-soft dynamics that inexplicably (alright, explicably) put their interregnum city on the global musical map while they were consigned to the margins.

From the dread-beat-and-blood of "There Is a Party In Warsaw Tonight" to the undertow of "Bloody Eyes," these songs dart in and out of focus, each doing what it sets out to do before yielding the floor. Cohen's "Grotto of Miracles" crawls like a king snake, with lyrics about smirking at worms and fearing credit reports. Tim Midyett's "Couldn't You Wait?" spins riff and wordplay in a way that is somehow heartbreaking. And how exactly Joel Phelps can balance such Iris-Dement-ed vocals over the bounce of "The Cigarette Lighters" is a riddle that will never be solved.

That goes for this whole album. You can't solve Libertine. That's its genius. And these guys knew it even if most of the world didn't. In the maelstrom of the last song, Tim tips this band's hand: "the dream is a lie." Too late-we're dreaming.

Why didn't he tell us earlier?

Why did he have to wait?

Greg Milner is a writer, journalist and the author of Perfecting Sound Forever.



2x12"/CD TRACKS

01 There Is A Party In Warsaw Tonight
02 Grotto Of Miracles
03 Cotton Girl

04 Yen + Janet Forever
05 Oh How We Laughed
06 The Cigarette Lighters

07 Couldn't You Wait?
08 A Tunnel
09 Written On The Wind

10 Wild In My Day
11 Bloody Eyes

CD ONLY

12 Insider
13 Grotto Of Miracles (alternate)
14. Couldn't You Wait?*
15. Scruffy Tumor*
16. Cotton Girl*
17. Raised By Tigers*

*Marco Collins Sessions

Preview the remastered "Couldn't You Wait?" here.



This project is the most expensive/expansive release Comedy Minus One has done to-date, an opportunity to present a definitive edition of one of our all-time favorite albums. The preorder will help gauge exactly how many copies of the "Libertine" reissue realistically need to be manufactured. It will also help fund this substantial undertaking.

The items offered via preorder will, with the exception of "Libertine" itself, not be available in stores.

The record is also being sold here for less than the targeted list price.

There are three preorder options.

JUST THE RECORD

"Libertine" 2x12" + CD

$20 + shipping. - ORDER HERE

RECORD + SHIRT COMBO

"Libertine" 2x12" + CD + distressed look SKWM t-shirt

$40 + shipping. - ORDER HERE

This shirt, printed by Commonwealth Press in Pittsburgh, will not be available elsewhere. It was recreated from a well-worn, much-loved garment taken off the back of a fine Canadian. Displays the classic "SKWM" band logo in red ink on a pre-shrunk heather dark grey Anvil 980 shirt.

Please make sure you indicate what size shirt you require!



RECORD, SHIRT, BONUS 12", BOOTLEG AUDIO + PHOTO PRINT

In addition to the 2x12" + CD + t-shirt you will receive a "bootleg" .zip containing nearly two hours of previously unheard high quality live renditions of "Libertine"-era songs from the quartet, a frame-able print of an image (seen below) from the same Mike Hoffman, Jr. photo session that yielded the new album art and a bonus white label 12" of tracks 12-17 listed above.

There will also be a sticker.

For a full list of all 21 of the assembled "Libertine Live" tracks click here.

Preview "Grotto of Miracles" recorded live at the Empty Bottle in 1994.

Preview "Yen + Janet Forever" recorded live at Lounge Ax in 1994.

$75 + shipping - ORDER HERE

All preorders will be sent well in advance of availability in stores.

For more on the "Libertine" reissue please contact Daniel at Force Field PR.



Comedy Minus One has a Facebook page and a Twitter handle for those of you who dig such things. More frequent bursts of news can be found there or on the Comedy Minus One blog.

Stores and distributors are welcome to contact us about stocking these titles. Comedy Minus One is distributed directly through Carrot Top, Matador Direct and Revolver.

Thank you.

Jon Solomon
Comedy Minus One
comedyminusone.com

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