So, my band's fourth full-length album, Milk Milk Lemonade, was released 27 years (that is, half my life) ago. You'd think I'd have got used to these sorts of milestones by now, but they're always weird to contemplate. Some "minor secrets" are, perhaps, in order. Ahem... I've been listening to this record in various states quite a lot recently in the process of selecting songs for the Mtx forever compilation, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of alternate versions, and trying to plan what should be done to make whatever might be selected most "presentable." This album is quite a strange beast. It was ridiculously ambitious for it's tiny budget and all the complexity and strange production ideas and experimentation left lots of loose ends dangling and a whole lot of room for a great many things to go awry. Moreover, I was still very much feeling my way blindly in the general direction of songwriting. There are flashes of, well, if not Songwriting Greatness, I suppose you'd say: songwriting competence, and there's certainly a whole lot uniqueness, for what that's worth. But as with the sonic adventurism, much of which also managed against all odds to "come off," these flashes were kindled and fired off amidst a good deal of awkwardness. For many years the things that went awry and the awkwardness were all was able to hear, and I shied away from it, mostly. Now I see it a bit differently, as a product of all its factors, from the unintentionally sublime to the mis-intentionally ridiculous, and as an artifact of a minor, rather unusual arm of punk rock history that still somehow remains impactful decades later. (Which you really can't say about all that many little records like this.) People still listen to it. For fun. Which is something I'd never have predicted. (My delusions of grandeur during recording were tremendous indeed, but they didn't stretch to imagining anyone would be paying any attention to it thirty years thence: I couldn't even im...