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Under The Radar Vol. 1: 1984​-​1997

by The Green Pajamas

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Love Song 04:21
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Dr. Dacey 04:05
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Woman, Woman 01:51
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Cathy 02:58
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about

This is Volume One of "A Bootleg History" of The Green Pajamas

Sound quality is highly variable. Some of these tracks are direct from digital sources but many are compiled from cassette tape: dropouts, tape noise or other irregularities may occur.

Some notes on the recordings...

I wanted to start near the beginning, hence the inclusion of “My Mad Kitty,” live at Seattle U, in 1984. At the time, we fancied ourselves, Seattle’s answer to the Paisley Underground, but for some reason I can’t quite recall, we ended up playing a dance. Suffice to say we didn’t have a lot of dance tunes and had a bit of hard time winning over the majority of the crowd. That’s the late Steven Lawrence you hear at the start, quipping about reading a poem. The evening was a bit like that throughout: at one point somebody in the crowd shouted out, “Lynyrd Skynyrd!,” and Steven replied with, “We love you,” and we launched into ‘With a Flower In Her Hair” or one of those…

“Conceiving Kim” is just what it states. That’s the night Joe and I went back to his jam room after a few hours of coffee and cigarettes and the company of Kim the Waitress at Mr. Ed’s cafe in West Seattle, a place we would go regularly to and hang out with Karl and other friends. I had a thing for Kim and she was obviously on my mind when I sat down at Joe’s drum set with his Japanese SG bass and started ad-libbing with Joe fooling around on guitar. So this is the very first time I did the famous riff on the bass and you can hear the melody and lyric ideas starting to come. Joe would regularly tape these sessions on cassette and I would play them back the next morning, in the car, on the way to work to see if we had hit on any good song ideas. This is an excerpt of that recording. Evidently, I liked what I heard the next day.
Sounds like I’m saying - “Nobody can make up…” Another reference to the end of a romantic relationship I was still hurting from at that point, later refined to, “No one can save us but Kim the waitress always turns me on.” Jim Ellison of Material Issue obviously didn’t get it at all when he changed the lyric to “no on can save us FROM Kim the Waitress.” The funny thing nobody knows about that song is that the bass riff, later recorded with sitar, was totally inspired by Peter Hook playing on Joy Division’s ‘Closer’ LP, which I was listening to a lot at the time.
I was hesitant to include this track as it’s not really a song yet, but as this project evolved, Susanne convinced me that it was interesting enough to share…

We were mixing ‘Kim’ at TDS around the time ‘I Want You Back’ and Steven’s, ‘Something Always Brings You Down,’ were both recorded in my old bedroom at my parents house. ‘I Want You Back,’ had Karl playing drums while I strummed my 12-string guitar. ‘I Want You Back’ ended up on my ‘Baroquen Hearts’ cassette album released by Green Monkey and we would sometimes start our live ‘Book Of Hours’ Pajamas sets with ‘Something Always Brings You Down.’

‘Such A Lovely Daughter,’ which I originally called, ‘The Princess,’ was recorded after Joe had left the band. (Though it sounds more like “The Green Pajamas,” than the previous two recordings, it was recorded within weeks or maybe days of those two songs.) It’s just Steven, Karl and I recording guitar, drums and bass in Karl’s living room and, later, Steven and I overdubbing vocals, cello and mandolin in my bedroom. This song was previously released as well, by Unhinged magazine on a flexi disc in 1990.

Tom Dyer and I did many mixes of the songs on ‘Book of Hours.’ I’m not sure we were ever totally satisfied with any of them. I found this alternate mix of ‘Paula’ on an old cassette and thought it was interesting enough to include here. I spiffed it up a tiny bit with a little high-end that brings out the horns quite nicely. I remember I wanted horns on there, just like a Beatles record, and Tom rounded up four really good players. Maybe a superior mix? I don’t know but it sounds pretty good when you turn it up…

‘I Wish That It Was Christmas’ was just one of my many little dystopian fantasy songs, made up in about 5 minutes. I never could have guessed that it would go on to become THE most popular song in our live set.

The whole lyric of ‘Ten Thousand Words’ actually consists of very few words and somehow I manage to forget some of them here, but this live version is fun to hear for the playing. I loved being bass player and, digging through these old recordings, I am so happy to rediscover Steven’s performances on guitar. It’s something I think I took for granted at the time. It was just what he did and I don’t think we ever talked about it, but listening back now to all of these live performances, I realize he wasn’t just one of the funniest guys I ever knew, but a truly extraordinary musician.

Bruce had a beautiful Art Deco (Wurlitzer?) upright piano and no place to put it at the time so it was at my house. I wrote ‘Just Like Seeing God’ on it that we ended up recording for the ’November’ album. You can hear me playing it here, along with Bruce on acoustic guitar, rehearsing with a couple of his friends who played the woodwinds on the recording.

By the time we were recording ‘Ghosts of Love’ I was enthralled with the novels and poems of Margaret Atwood. I first read, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ and then went right through a bunch of her earlier books including, ’Surfacing,’ which inspired the first song on that album. I had also written a poem with a purposely Atwood-ian feel, ‘The Autumn Sky.’ We recorded the whole poem, translated to French and recited by Leslie Taber, with Susanne reading the “interpretation” back in English, to include on ‘Ghosts.’ This is an excerpt of that. In the end it was way too long but we ended up using a tiny bit of Leslie’s recording at the beginning of the record.

‘You’re Losing Me’ was a pretty big misstep on my part. Nothing really worked here but it’s interesting now as a curio: the only “band” song recorded at TDS that has never seen the light of day. Until now…

Before Steven quit the band for the first time, he said to someone he didn’t want to be in the “Coffee in Nepal Pajamas,” a reference to my album of acoustic oriented songs recorded at home and released by Green Monkey. He didn’t like the direction the band was heading in with ‘Ghosts of Love’ and apparently thought it was too much like a Jeff Kelly solo project. So he started recording alone, working at home and at TDS with Tom Dyer. ’Strange City Day’ is a very good remake of the song we first recorded during the ‘November’ sessions with Jack Endino. We had since performed this song live many, many times but never with the bridge section he added here, when he re-recorded it, playing all the instruments himself, around 1990.

In researching this project I found so many things I had almost forgotten about. One of the joys was hearing a few of these tracks, like ‘Emily Grace’ - recorded after Bruce left the band but before Steven did - again after so many years. I only now realize what a potent thing it was - Steve and me, both on electric guitar. Joe was back on bass, Karl on drums, both playing great here, in the line-up we started out with. There is very little record of this live dual guitar attack on tape so I’m very pleased to be able to include a few songs from this short, post-‘Ghost of Love’ time period, on this compilation. I don’t think Steve ever asked me much about what I was playing, he would just listen and make up some counter part that fit perfectly. I love, for instance, the descending line he plays in ‘Emily Grace’ after I sing, “And if someday you’re off without a trace…” His beloved Rickenbacker is to the right, my Telecaster more to the center of these live radio mixes.

The Green Pajamas performed ‘Love Song’ live a few times but it was never recorded by the band. This is another very nice find from Steven’s sessions at TDS.

‘Dr. Dacey’ was a home recording I made alone. I always thought it would have made a great Green Pajamas track. It certainly would have fit just fine on ‘Book Of Hours’ with the ‘Paula’ horn guys!

I couldn’t believe it when I saw the note indicating Dr. Dragonfly’ was first recorded in 1993, four years before ’Strung Behind The Sun’ was released! This is that original version. Steven and I were still hanging out some and he helped me out with this one. My memory is hazy as to whether he had quit the band and rejoined and quit and rejoined again or just what had happened by this point. But we were obviously still having fun working together.

‘My Elizabeth’ is a song I’ve recorded many times. I had forgotten all about this version, recorded with Joe playing drums in his basement studio, around 1996. I was happy to come across it again!

I’ve included ‘Woman, Woman’ from the same cassette ‘My Elizabeth’ was on because virtually every other song on that tape of home recordings ended up on the ’Strung Behind The Sun’ album. When Tony Dale called me from Australia and said he wanted to put out a past Green Pajamas album on his new label, Camera Obscura Records, I knew that I had a bunch of finished recordings just lying around so I said, ‘Why don’t we just make a whole new Green Pajamas album?” and he said, “Great!” So we put together ‘Strung.’ I don’t think we thought ‘Woman, Woman’ sounded appropriately Pajama-esque but in retrospect I could have replaced the goofy synth solo with some ringing electric guitar bit and it might have fit just fine…

Joe has been talking about releasing ‘Cathy’ and some other old things via his own label for decades but it hasn’t happened so I thought it might finally fit nicely on this collection. Joe had heard an earlier recording of this and suggested we redo it as a Pajamas thing. So this is us in his basement again, him playing drums while I sang and played acoustic guitar in 1997. Joe is of course known as the bass player in the live band but not many know he’s a very good drummer with a keen sense of rhythm.

-Jeff Kelly

credits

released February 4, 2022

Performers: Bruce Haedt, Jeff Kelly, Steven Lawrence, Joe Ross, Karl Wilhelm
See individual track info for detailed listing of performers and production credits. A two page jpeg of liner notes is also available as a download upon purchase of this album.

All tracks mastered by Jeff Kelly

Photography: Discovery Park, Seattle, 1987 by Urszula Bolimowski

All songs written by Jeff Kelly except, 'Something Always Brings You Down,' 'Strange City Day' and 'Love Song' by Steven Lawrence.

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The Green Pajamas Seattle, Washington

Find Jeff Kelly and Laura Weller's Goblin Market recordings here: thegoblinmarket.bandcamp.com/album/ghostland
There are many more Green Pajamas and Jeff Kelly releases available here: greenmonkeyrecords.bandcamp.com

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