Sea Of Unrest

I don't remember the making of this record all that well; the Midgets probably don't either (for reasons better left unsaid). I do remember cramming Paul's amp inside of an upright piano to do some overdubs and Ricky cutting pictures out of magazines, pulling one of my doors off its hinges and consistently showing up to sing on the wrong day, at the wrong time... on the wrong planet. "Be faithful to your mother and don't tell her who you are 'cause she will tell you that you are a bad guy." At Ricky's funeral there were two little boxes side by side. Ricky and his mom. She had died the year before and I guess they just took her out for the occasion. As they got ready to put their ashes into what looked like a safety deposit box I couldn't help thinking of that line. The obligatory speaker spoke the obligatory crap and summed it all up with "... all the joy Ricky had brought to others with his voice." Of course everyone went silently hysterical when they heard that. Later I got to thinking about this but couldn't come up with a description. What had Ricky brought to the world? Love? I don't know. Compassion? Maybe. He had a way of looking at things unlike most of us. His lyrics were always incredibly insightful and at the same time hilariously funny. (O.K., so they're a bit obtuse, too.) I can't think of anyone who excelled at that combination as well as he. "And then again there might be someone else, there might be a few like me." Unfortunately, there will be no one else like you, Ricky.

For those that care about such things, this record was recorded on a half-inch eight track, no noise reduction, with two little Tapco mixing boards and six microphones. Drums mixed to stereo on two tracks, bass direct, three tracks for guitars, two for vocals. Everyone wanted to remix it for this re-release, mostly to make the guitars louder but also to sift through some of the out-take vocal tracks to see if there was anything worth using. A few lines here and there made it. You find 'em.

Finally, in 1982, after the original mixing was finished, the main vocal on "Sea of Unrest" was erased at Ricky's insistence so he could "do it better". The results of that attempt are obvious although it does make the song much scarier, considering.

I miss him.

Tom Mallon Christmas Day 1993

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