“Hermetic Zeal“- the Chandler Travis Philharmonic recorded live at the Midway, sometime in February of 2002 by Tom Lawlor.
Back in the early days, around the turn of the century, we -that is, us… you know, the Philharmonic – played at the Midway incessantly for years. It was kind of our heyday, and we had a blast and a half. Some of the earlier melees were recorded for posterity, and released on various RadioBalls (the RadioBalls being the 22 self-burnt albums we released in the year 2000 as our way of celebrating the bi-centennial, many of which are still available; a particularly excellent example would be RadioBall #8, “The Dog Ate My Album“, which featured a majority of Midway recordings, really nice ones by the lovely and gracious Tom Lawlor, along with a couple of noteworthy “Let’s Have a Pancake” remixes/re-imaginings.)
“Hermetic Zeal” sports an extremely fab lyric by Scott Decay, who also wrote “Taoist Vacation With Mashenka“, from “The Chandler Travis Philharmonic Blows” -he’s wicked wit woids. We didn’t do it for long, as it always seemed more like a rock song, so I always hoped the Casuals might pick it up, but, alas… nice song, though, and a typically rockin’ Rikki Bates / John Styklunas rhythm section performance and cool horn lines from Keith Spring aka Mahavishnu John Casual, albeit all but buried by me n Dinty’s yelling…
This is occasioned by a little bundle of Philharmonic gigs we’ve got going at our old haunt, the Midway, in JP over the next few months; the first of four melees takes place this Sunday from 5 to 8, so please join us if you don’t have a life (or even if you do, but you’re just nostalgic for when you didn’t)- we’d love to see you, and if its anywhere near as much fun as it used to be, it could be very good for your mental health. We’re playing really early, 5 to 8, so all of us old codgers can get home in time to strap in for the goddamn Oscars…