Teejay Riedl - Theory and Escape

The world in 1992 was filled with promise. My studies of Cosmological Physics were forcing me to consider the world in ways I never had before, and working in the band Brompton’s Cocktail was providing me an outlet for playing music which made no demands on my own songwriting.

I worked at a nightclub, where nightly exposure to the (as yet) unsullied mantra of hip-hop added new and interesting “flavas” to the possibilities of music. These were the heady days, before the Superconducting Supercollider was cancelled, when I still believed we could return to the moon, and search for God, in my own lifetime. Terrorism was at least a scintillatingly “romantic” notion, not bearing the stigma it does today. Love was a wonderful thing, perhaps topped only by the process of falling into that state - for, does matter not radiate most brightly right before crossing the event horizon into a black hole? Self-help programs abounded, as did the belief that they would actually have any effect on the trainee.

The jolly folks at Fermilab, in Batavia, welcomed me among their fold, and there I was in the company of people who actually understood what I was talking about, if only for a while. We had this cat, Ludwig, who daily awaited my crooning as an invitation to dinner… Finally, my “paying gig” was no longer working in a small, stuffy darkroom reeking of C-41 Bleach to the tune of an (honestly) good guy beset by terrific anger management issues, but the rough and tumble insanity of a nightclub, where on any given evening I could be shot for pointing out a discrepancy in the number of “bones” offered as payment by the Gin & Juice swilling patrons. At the close of each working night, at about 3AM, the street outside would be filled with about a thousand kids (having been herded out by the staff: “if you aren’t sleeping with one of us, you’ve got to go!”), all of whom were vying for that last phone number, that last shy glance, that last indefinable… something, that would prove their evening, money, and sobriety had not been squandered in vain.

I recall the bulk of this material just falling together - in retrospect, there were no “battles” to get my ideas into the songs. The usual constraints certainly applied, to be sure, but in all, the process was pretty painless. I was aided by some extraordinary musicians:
• Michael “Sedge” Cantore - playing drums on “The Process of Falling” on a hot August night, with his drums crammed into my bedroom at Casa Goofy in Lanham because I didn’t have any decent isolation booth. Sedge, wherever you are, I miss you, man.
• Mike Masquith - my lifelong best friend, whose guitar work here is characterized in several songs by our normal working method: “dude, c’mon over and bring your guitar - I need a couple of solos!”
• Tim Wilhelm - whose own brand of blistering guitar solos are featured on “The Halflife of Love” and “This is Where I Work”.
• Jessy Xavier - who came over to provide the keyboards on “Ride the Ball”, foiled because we couldn’t integrate his brand new synth into my rig, so he was forced to play my ageing Poly 800.
• David Williams - Who - alone - heeded my call for backup vocals from the Quigley’s roster, and came out to honk and quack with me on “Da BOINK!” Thanks, man!

Golly, I miss those days.

I didn’t realize it then, but on the original cover my mathematics were in error - an absurdly stupid mistake (blame it on the typesetter!) which was pointed out to me some years later by a quantum physicist of my acquaintance. Most embarrassing!! The second and third releases corrected this error by omitting the equations entirely, as seen here - but my end result didn’t change: “You can’t stay, and you can’t go”.

C’est la vie.

I sold upwards of 800 of these. Big, big fun!