Suddenly it was July, and out of the clear blue sky, Jim Santo called me and said “We’re done.”
“Great,” I said, “Can you please send me a tape now?”
But Jim had other ideas. He wanted to bring the band to my house and actually play the tape for me, with them present.
In the mail came a cassette copy of Schmeckle City Rubdown, courtesy of Bishop. It had a handmade cover that featured a cover photo that was clearly from the 70s, of a young adult with a porn mustache, afro, and a flowery shirt with wide lapels that was open just a bit too wide. Standing next to him was a young boy in a powder blue leisure suit, and I could only assume that the kid was Ralph.
The cassette had seven songs on it, and none of them were “U.S. Bebop.” That was a huge disappointment to me, as soon as I pulled the tape out of the envelope. There was also no “I Will Not Allow,” the Westerberg-esque pop song I’d heard on the rehearsal demo that Ralph had sent.
Obviously, if you read the introductory pages of this blog, search us on the internet, or look just about anywhere else for Dromedary Records, you’ll see that we ultimately shut the label down. And as you’re reading (if you’re reading), you’ll see that this story began as a funny collection of anecdotes, and got more and more serious as I slowly come unglued.
But there was an actual event that happened that triggered the end of Dromedary Mach I. It happened in June of 1996, and this is it.
I got an email.
At some point during all this, Ralph had a serious conversation with me.
It was a phone conversation, and it started like every phone conversation between Ralph and me – the Yankees, how’s Sandy, have you heard this new band. And then it got serious.
“Bishop joined AmStand,” he said.
On Friday, June 14 1996, Footstone did a Dromedary show at Love Sexy with Kid With Man Head.
It was the last Dromedary show we ever did at Love Sexy. I’d simply had enough with that club, I’d had enough of trying to make it something it wasn’t. People didn’t want to go there, the room sounded like shit, the sound guy didn’t know how to work with it, Bishop couldn’t even stand up straight on the stage because the ceiling was too low. The beer selection sucked.
Ralph called me and asked me if I could come into the studio one Saturday in mid-May of 1996, and record piano on one song for Schmeckle City Rubdown. They were finally almost finished recording, with Rob Grenoble of Water Music, along with Bill and J from American Standard.
He had asked me once or twice before if I would contribute some piano to a track, and I was flattered beyond belief, but never wanted to push it. I never really knew if he actually wanted me to play, or if he was just blowing smoke up my ass. So I never brought it up, and eventually, I thought he either forgot that he asked me, or he had been blowing smoke.
And then he called and asked me.
My first big appointment was in Indianapolis.
We had a customer there, and each year they had a vendor fair that they based around the Indy 500 time trials. They’d fly in all their vendors, put them up in a hotel, and then have a party at a suite that they owned at the Speedway. The vendors would have an opportunity to meet with the buyers and present any new products, and then they’d finish the week with a tour of the pit area.
I was going to present my product line to them.
I was assembling a line of product that required me to outsource some of the components. Cellphones have lots of different kinds of accessories – spare batteries of all shapes and sizes, chargers, leather cases, cigarette lighter adapters. We did not manufacture all those products.
Having worked in the industry for years, I knew a lot of manufacturers, and had personal relationships with a lot of them. I figured it would be easy for me to buy the highest-quality products in the industry, to complement the already high-quality products my company manufactured.
I decided to buy a helicopter.
I guess when you look back at your life and try to figure out exactly when you went insane, the day you decided to buy a helicopter is probably the most likely day.
And we waited.
Jenifer Convertible was mixing. And mixing and mixing and mixing, and Jim wouldn’t let me hear any of it til it was done. So I listened to rough mixes over and over again, but I couldn’t put together advance tapes or do any marketing whatsoever, because I didn’t have any final mixes. I wanted to send out the roughs, but Jim wouldn’t let me. And all the while, I was petrified of the record.
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