May 26, 2024
A friend recently pointed me to You Don't Know Mojack, "a podcast dedicated to exploring each release in the SST Records catalog, in order, from start to finish." Bless their hearts. I love that they are doing this, even if I don't have time or inclination to dig through it all. But I did check out the episode where they interview my buddy Steve Fisk about his 1987 album on SST, 448 Deathless Days.
My interest in this album is personal because I played on it and contributed one of the songs, so I was curious to hear him talk about it. Steve is known to spin a good yarn, and he reveals many fascinating details about the making of the album. But in the interview, Fisk refers to the song “This Vacuum” as "a Screaming Trees outtake." That is not exactly accurate. Here's the story.
After the demise of Tiny Holes, Fisk and I started a new band with Kathleen Doherty on bass and Tim Brock on drums. Tim was a relatively recent arrival in Olympia, and hadn't really been scooped up by any other bands yet. We rehearsed for maybe six months in the old Sears building downtown, above what was then a Vietnamese grocery store. We played one gig, on October 16, 1982 (opening night of the Smithfield Cafe) and then promptly broke up due to inertia and other things. But for that one and only gig we had to come up with a name, and we called ourselves Havana 3 AM.
The band name came from a 1956 album by Perez Prado, a record that was often found in thrift stores back then. As I recall, there was briefly another Olympia band using the name that never quite got off the ground; I believe Gary Allen May was involved, and so was Fisk. Or was it Tim Brock? Anyway, someone in our band had also been in that band, and when we were casting around for names that person suggested we just use it because the other band never really happened anyway. (In 1986, Paul Simonon of the Clash used it for his new band.)
I was not entirely comfortable as the "front person" of this new band. I like to sing but I'm not really much of a rock singer. Nor am I a very good songwriter, or even a very good guitar player. And yet there I was, trying to write songs and be the lead vocalist/guitarist. In retrospect, it was so obviously doomed to fail.
One song I wrote that wasn't entirely embarrassing was called “Fade to Gray,” which was pretty blatantly influenced by some of the dark/moody British bands I was listening to at the time. It was about my high school friend Joe, who went off to college, became an Art major, and subsequently had a huge influence on my musical interests. He also struggled with mental health issues, and I believe he gave up on being an artist, got a regular job, and drifted away from everyone he'd known in high school and college. I think of him often and hope he's doing well. I owe him a lot.
Fast forward to 1985. I had since moved to New York, and was on vacation in the Northwest visiting old friends, so it was probably in the summer. Fisk was living in Ellensburg, working at his friend Sam Albright's studio there, and I went out to visit him for a couple of days. At that time, he was producing a demo tape for a young local band called Screaming Trees. I believe it was their first time in a real studio, and they were quite excited about it. None of us would have guessed how big they'd become a few years later.
In the downtime between their sessions, Fisk was also working on what would become 448 Deathless Days, and he asked me to play guitar on a few tracks he had already started. In the process, we also recorded a version of “Fade to Gray” with Screaming Trees drummer Mark Pickerel, and me playing bass, guitar, and vocals. The deal was that I would get a mix of the song with my vocals on it for posterity (I still have the cassette tape) and Steve could then use the instrumental tracks however he wanted for his new album. Fisk's version replaced my vocals with backwards vocals by Trees singer Mark Lanegan lifted from one of their songs (I have no idea which one) and a bunch of smeary electronics that build up in a dramatic "Day in the Life" kind of climax. A very different approach, and arguably better than the original.
But for what it’s worth, not a Screaming Trees outtake.