Anne Gomez - bass, vocals, sax, flute Matt Kalb - guitar, vocals, electric piano Bob Wall - drums, percussion, vocals

This was our last record, which we knew while we were making it. Too bad too about it being the end of the road, as I see some interesting new directions hinted at ("Woof Woof Rex 84" and "Nuts to You" for Anne and me [Matt] respectively). Like all Hotel Motel recordings, the tracks were recorded by me on my 1/2" reel-to-reel 8-track at the Casa de Hotel Motel, with Anne's bass cabinet in the practice room closet, my amp out in the hall somewhere, and the three of us in the practice room with Bob's drums and the recording setup...movement of any kind was quite a risk. We finished all the tracks in a weekend and wrapped up whatever vocals were left by Monday (usual practice day). Because that's how you do it.

One exception to that: "Pinkytown" was recorded much earlier by Zeno Gill at Pox Studios, and originally appeared on _Compulation 2_ on the Pox World Empire label. So thanks for letting us use it (twice now!).

Mixed and mastered at Pox Studios by Zeno Gill.

All our records had a cover song and we can't upload those to Cytunes, so let me tell you about a song you won't hear. We'd recently been part of the Minutemen tribute at the 506, where we, let's face it, ruled. One of the songs we'd learned was "One Reporter's Opinion" and we redid that one here. For the recording I changed the lyrics to be about Bob Wall (he had a lot of suggestions) instead of Mike Watt. SCTV gets a nod. The last line remained the same: "He's a stop sign!", but when I sang it I was suddenly inspired to keep the last note held out for a really long time, throwing off my headphones so I could run down the hall outside the room and then back producing this (pretty dumb) siren effect--it wasn't good, but it was pretty great. Bob was manning the tape machine and it got a bemused response, though he was professional enough to hold it in until the tape stopped rolling. Mission Accomplished.

Half Assonant - short skewed poppy number. The lyrics follow a literary device, but that doesn't mean I didn't mean them.

You Must Be Hard of Reading - the would-be title track of our previous record

Woof Woof Rex 84 - The main bass line is something unlike anything I'd heard Anne do prior to this point--she's known for the impossible and this one seems almost probable. Of course that doesn't last, but then it does return.

[Minutemen cover goes here]

Nuts to You - "hamburger sandwiches" Also playing two chords on the acoustic guitar at varying lengths apart.

Pinkytown - Anne's awesome song about maybe a town that's pink. I LOVED playing this song, which is true of all our catalog but this one went more places than even we'd usually go. Bob has alternate lyrics for this song which are I'm sure great. What else, hmm... ok in the free-form(ish) middle section I'd usually quote something. On this recording it was marc faris' fanfare from "An Alternative Community". Live it was the riff from "Aqualung" a lot more than I'd like to admit. OMG I seriously just remembered that's because she plays the flute on this song!
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Anne Gomez - bass, vocals, sax, flute Matt Kalb - guitar, vocals, electric piano Bob Wall - drums, percussion, vocals

This was our last record, which we knew while we were making it. Too bad too about it being the end of the road, as I see some interesting new directions hinted at ("Woof Woof Rex 84" and "Nuts to You" for Anne and me [Matt] respectively). Like all Hotel Motel recordings, the tracks were recorded by me on my 1/2" reel-to-reel 8-track at the Casa de Hotel Motel, with Anne's ... Read More