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1994, unreleased,
1994 found The Belgian Waffles! between Bloomington and Louisville. Dan and Heather were homeless & on the road, Matt was on his way out of town, and Tony wasn't far behind. TBW! had already done a couple of Bloomington shows in '94 as a quartet with Tony, Matt, Bill and Rob Stockwell.
With a lineup in flux and no place to play, TBW! gathered in Eric Rensberger's basement to record a practice. At this point, the band was more interested in destroying songs than actually playing them: see earlier versions of "Rottweiler" and "20 Minutes to a Pound" for comparison. Perhaps the most appropriate song for the session was "Private John Q / Ludwig": Tony calls the song, Matt and Bill dick around before actually starting it. A reasonable version of Roger Miller's "Private John Q" coalesces, then segues into a blistering version of "Ludwig", only to have Tony throw a wrench into the proceedings by refusing to sing the final vocal cue, preferring instead to do a rendition of the theme song to Robert Mitchum's "Thunder Road". After that, Tony would no longer have cue privileges on the song (he ceded them to Dan).
The selections range from TBW!'s version of noise rock ("Wicker Park", "Ludwig"), to songs spiralling out of control ("Ephedrine Weekend", "C & W Driveby" . . . it was a common thing for the band to play a handful of songs faster than coherence would allow), to abstracted improvs ("The Cancer Song", the droid series). Also featuring plenty of Tony's on-mic hilarity, and random musical references to John Cale, Robert Mitchum, Flipper, the Scientists, Son House, Roger Miller, and others so poorly executed as to be unrecognizable.
Most of the band had settled down in Louisville by 1996. There was a practice space, quite a few shows, and eveyone working with the band except Bill living in town. That year, Dan took three songs from these sessions and released them as a 7" on Adept Recordings. Ironically (given the shotgun approach evident on these recordings), that single remains one of the most focused and coherent of TBW!'s releases. The three songs on the single, "Jobs (5x)", "Chad's Organ Weighs a Ton", and "Baksheesh / Floating Tackle", are the first three songs on this album.
These recordings feature Heather Floyd - drums, trumpet; Matt Whitaker - bass; Chris Willems - Tenor Sax; Dan Willems - Alto Sax, drums; Tony Woollard - vocals, trumpet, shortwave; Bill Zink - guitar, drums.