All of the Vietnam Veterans' songs have been written and brought to life with an acoustic guitar... Even Mark's guitar style is heavily influenced by the way an acoustic guitar is usually played. All along those recordings, you will hear much more than a guy singing and strumming his instrument. You will hear vocal harmonies, several instruments and a real production work. Even solo efforts like these ones are aimed to become band recordings. Just like the late PF Sloan's pre Grassroots or Barry McGuire's work...
"ME" is the compilation of three recording sessions...
The first one was produced by Lucas Trouble at the first location of the Kaiser Studio. The project was to gather very sad songs on a record. The band's name was the SMILING DROOPIES and the album's name, JELLY ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SLICE. Music Maniac wasn't ready for it and just wanted to release Mark's songs as a 4 song EP. After Mark's refusal, the tapes remained unreleased until today. Other people play and sing on this session: Jacques Dauphin (the Strawberry Minds), Laurent Toquet, Lucas Trouble, Ric Albin and Dave Provost (the Droogs).
The second one was called the DDDinining Room Tapes because Mark's big dining room was turned into a professional digital studio, with the latest ADAT recorder and 60's tape echo machines! Mark couldn't sleep because of pills he had to take. Thanks Doc for your heavy prescription! All instruments and vocals by Mark... the THYRD TWIN eventually borrowed some songs for the Churls CD.
The third session saw Martin Joyce join in for slide guitar additions. The recording studio was now in the penthouse and the album should have been called Welcome to Oblivion. Nothing happened because Lucas called Mark to start the GITANES project. Some of the songs appear in an electric rendition on Cloudy Draw...
Many fans have heard about those recordings and asked for them. Here they are! Enjoy!
They are available as downloads only, from all the usual outlets; a link to them on iTunes is on this sites Store page, along with many other goodies. Note you can't buy them from the store even though there is a button....it was just the only way we could list them here.