Main » 2008 » May » 16 » Narc Twins - Life with the Lemons (1990) and LMNOE (1991) tapes
Narc Twins - Life with the Lemons (1990) and LMNOE (1991) tapes
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As I promised in the recently re-upped post of Lord John's "Six Days of Sound", I posted the songs that the Narc Twins had on mp3.com about 8 years ago. As it was proved by the stuff that Opa-Loka discovered and immediately shared with us, these tracks were a selection from their tapes, released from Acid Tapes, under the titles Life with the Lemons (1990) LMNOE (1991). After this I updated the post including these two tapes. Anyone enjoyed the tracks of the initial post, definitely need these.
Narc Twins were Tom Gibson and Ray (Normandy) Fracalossy, singer and guitar player respectively of Lord John. They have a myspace page where I took the following (which, as you can understand, describes their story and music way better than I could ever do)
Ray Fracalossy's (absurdist writer) words: Around the time Lord John was just beginning its death throes, I decided to spend some extra cash and get some home recording equipment. Your basic four track cassette deal. As I tinkered with home recording, it inspired me and Tom (the lead singer/song writer of Lord John) to start a side project entitled The Narc Twins (the name was a play on John and Paul's early incarnation as the Nurk Twins). The whole concept was to create the kind of psychedelic pop we were having trouble achieving with Lord John. We wanted something that would be essentially a studio project. None of the hassles of trying to create all the weird trickery live. We wanted to salute all our idols, make the world's best head music, and basically have a lot of fun doing it. No labels or gigs or producers to deal with. No one to please but ourselves. We made cassette tapes, and gave them away to our friends.
This was purely a labor of love. We even created the Rutles-esque alter egos for ourselves of Quick Parkly and Buck Quickly (I was Buck). Both names were based on a sort of 'you had to be there' style joke. We ended up making three complete tapes which were available at one time through Acid Tapes in England and Sonic Delights in the US (two do-it-yourself cassette labels that specialized in Lo-Fi homemade music).
The first tape was called "Two Lemons", a pun on John and Yoko's "Two Virgins", and was pretty experimental and sloppy. We were still feeling our way around the equipment, and trying our hand at spontaneous song writing/recording. The jacket covers were hand-colored and individually numbered (they also contained secret messages only viewable under black light! No, really!) . The second tape was entitled "Life with the Lemons" (continuing w/ the Zapple motif), and was much more song-based, with an odd little parody of the Beatles Magical Mystery tour on its sleeve (see the pics section). The final tape was entitled "LMNOE", and was our attempt to create a swan-song masterpiece. The other two tapes had their share of odd experimental noise tracks, but this one was just pure songs. No throw away tunes either. Just short psych-pop ditties. And in typical Narc Twins fashion, the tape starts with a song called "Includes the Hits" and ends with another called "And Ten More".
When you listen to these weird/psyched-out/beautiful songs, it'll be as magical as if you've found them in a painted box forgotten for so many years.
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away tunes either. Just short psych-pop ditties. And in typical Narc Twins fashion, the tape starts with a song called "Includes the Hits" and ends with another called "And Ten More".
