The
Green Pajamas
- Ten White Stones
Artist:
The Green Pajamas
Title: Ten White Stones
Catalog#: AHA!072
Format: CD
Price: $10.00 
|
Tracks
on this CD: |
| The
Cruel Night |
| Gazelle |
| Blue
Eyes To Haunt Me |
| Mrs.
Cafferty |
| If
You Love Me (You’ll Do It) |
| Holden
Caulfield |
| For
S |
| (She’s
Still) Bewitching Me |
| Lost
Girls Song |
| I
Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You) |
 |
|
With
numerous albums released over the years and a strong and
dedicated
fanbase worldwide, Seattle psychedelic pop outfit
The Green Pajamas, led by main songwriter and singer Jeff
Kelly (The
Goblin Market) with Joe Ross (Capping Day), Eric
Lichter, Laura Weller (The
Goblin Market/Capping Day), and
Scott Vanderpool, enjoys critical recognition from all corners
of music journalism,
from Entertainment
Weekly
to
Ptolemaic
Terrascope.
To celebrate
The Green Pajamas’ 20th Anniversary, Hidden Agenda will
release two CDs of new material. Kicking off is Ten White
Stones,
recorded live-in-the-studio over two nights at Studio V in
Seattle during April of 2004. Ten White Stones offers
much more than merely live renditions of Green PJ's classics.
Outside
of three tracks, "The Cruel Night" and "Lost
Girls Song" (both from Northern
Gothic), and “(She’s
Still) Bewitching Me” (showcased as a steamy lament in
this setting), the remaining seven songs are all previously
unreleased, including the closer, a slow-burn version of the
Hank Williams classic "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In
Love With You)".
Jeff Kelly comments, “We were invited
by a friend who had been wanting to record us for a while and
we decided it could be a fun experiment. It's raw and fairly
spontaneous like our live shows.”
Looking forward into
the new year The Green Pajamas will release a new album on
Hidden Agenda tentatively titled The Night Races Into Anna,
which Kelly says “will have a great variety of music
and production style, which I picture more along the lines
of Strung Behind the Sun then say Northern
Gothic and
some of our more thematic albums."
The Artist Muses: Jeff
Kelly on Ten White Stones
For
many years now, The Green Pajamas has been, to a large degree,
a studio project. Since the album “Strung Behind
The Sun” in 1997, I’ve recorded a good deal of
the music by myself. But- there has always been a Live Green
Pajamas - that essential element that goes out and does the
occasional live gig, for the love of it really... and also
maybe the beer and cigarette money.
Anyway,
it struck me recently that the current Live Green Pajamas
is a better band than ever. So when a friend of ours offered
to record us, live in his studio, we said yes. We would do
a live show and capture it for a possible record. Well, to
make a long story short, in the end I came to the conclusion-
and the band agreed- that it might be more fun- and a more
entertaining record- if we did some new songs, mixed with
a couple of favorites from our live set. So that’s
what
this is. It’s a bit eclectic and raw and very different
than the regular studio records but I think it’s good.
And it gives The Live Green Pajamas, finally, a chance to be
heard outside a bar room setting or the occasional Terrastock.
We
did this record over two nights. The session was, by necessity,
a bit spontaneous and our new drummer, Scott Vanderpool, rose
to the occasion. We all did really. We had a lot of fun doing
this and it’s unique in the Pajamas discography because
it gives each player equal billing. And as much as I like recording
alone, there is always a thrill playing music with live people,
especially good friends. Especially with a little alcohol.
Or a lot.
Here are some notes on the songs...
The Cruel Night
We
will often start our live set with this song from “Northern
Gothic.” It has a sort of supernatural pulse of its own
which always gets us warmed up nicely.
Gazelle
There
is a “studio” version of this song for the
next album. But I thought this might just be a good one for
the live band with it’s (rather ancient now) psychedelic
leanings. This is the sort of song the live band does best.
Blue Eyes To Haunt Me
I
introduced this song, at the last possible minute, in the
studio. Laura
heard it once in my kitchen a month or so before,
but that’s about it. Ever-game Scott came through with
some brilliant drumming I thought.
Mrs.
Cafferty
Eric
says this about his song: “After seeing the movie,
The Hours, the lyrics came around while walking through Columbia
City. Somehow over time though, they changed into something
a bit more personal and focused on the idea of a mother and
daughter at opposite possibilities in their lives. They are
still connected in longing for a place they can't seem to find.”
If
You Love Me (You’ll Do It)
Believe
it or not, this was, originally, a sort of techno experiment
that didn’t quite work out. But I always liked
the song and thought maybe we should go with a little different
feel. Whatever it is, it’s all true.
Holden
Caulfield
Laura
says this about her song: "At Joe's request, a song
resurrected from the Capping Day (my, and Joe's, old band)
archives that's about a literary character very close to my
heart."
For
S
Hadn’t
written a love song like this for a while. Since the ‘80s
really. It’s for the woman that keeps
me going, keeps me (sorta) sane. (Let’s put it this way,
she does the best she can do.) Some parts of this song originate
from when I was a teenager in the ‘70s and it was nice
to update and finally record some words and a melody that have
lived only in my in my mind for 30 years! (By the way- in this
song I say “I mark them with a white stone.” Admirers
of Lewis Carroll might
recognize the reference for he “marked” his diary
with “a white stone” after a particularly good
day with his muse- Alice Liddell.)
Lost
Girls Song
I
think “Northern Gothic” is my favorite Pajamas
record and this might be, just personally, my favorite song.
In fact it’s a favorite of anything I’ve ever written.
I wrote this one after reading a book called- funnily enough- “Lost
Girls.” Written by Andrew Pyper, it just stuck me in
the way some literature does and I felt compelled to write
a song about it. It’s a great modern gothic novel, no
doubt about it. So I wrote the song and late one night Karl
Wilhem and I recorded it-
and that was that. Except that later, I got an e-mail from
the author of the book! A friend of his had given him the album
and he loved the song. In my mind this is the highest compliment
I could ever be paid. Anyway, we still love playing this one
so here it is again...
I
Can’t Help It (If I’m
Still In Love With You)
Joe
is in Japan so I’ll comment on this: he’s
a big Hank Williams fan and sings many of his (Hank’s)
songs in his second band Merle Haggus, so this was a sort of
a natural for us. We had extra time at the end of the session
and thought this would be fun. We’d never played the
song before so it’s all very spontaneous (and I have
to say that I really really hope Nashville doesn’t start
calling and hounding me about wanting brilliant slide guitar
solos after they hear this).
Past praise for the work of The Green Pajamas:
“Seattle's
Green Pajamas can be seen as a more serious equivalent to XTC
side project the Dukes Of Stratosphear; both
bands deal in subtle twists of '60s psychedelia…the
Green Pajamas have a more earnest, folksy sound…” - ALL
MUSIC GUIDE
“When are the highly literate and melody-savvy Mr. Kelly
and the retro psychedelic pop band he leads, The Green
Pajamas,
going to get, at the very least, a decent cult following?” - NEW YORK TIMES
“A recommended pursuit for fans of the Go-Betweens,
Elf Power or the Soft Boys” - MAGNET MAGAZINE
“Coy, clever psychedelic pop.” - ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
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