Liner Notes:

Nato writes:

Roomful of Fans was recorded in 1997 in Matt McCarthy's Wonderful Wife Recording Room in Burlington, Vermont. It was driven in equal parts by:

• My desire to bring to fuller life what had hitherto been songs for guitar and voice only; 
• My megalomaniacal need to personally execute as many facets of recording as possible (the triathlon of musicianship: composition, performance, and arrangement); 
• Matt's faith that the material was worthy; 
• Matt's willingness to push the boundaries of PC recording technology at the time.  

If you're really curious, drop a line, and we'll fill you in on the nuts-and-bits of our recording process.

Often my songwriting involves an attempt at evoking another performer. It's not so much nicking licks and lines (deplorable plagiarism and cliché), but more like imagining myself wearing a specific musician's Doc Martens. I should get a bracelet that says, "WWJD". You know: "What Would John (Lennon) Do?"

Here are some notes on each of the songs on the album (except the "hidden" track...Shhh!):

: Seek...and ye shall write a song. The "Under stairs" part was a direct recollection of the many fine hide & seek sessions of which I partook at Los Angeles' Area H Alternative School in the late '70s. There were these awesome short stairwells on the outside of each school building, something like four to a building with over 10 such structures on the campus. Anyway, the interior of each little stairwell was large enough to admit one or two kids, if they crawled or rolled in. I remember hiding out in them on many occasions, my chest heaving from the mad sprint to escape detection. 



: "Kids, don't try this at home." Cue rimshot. Speaking of which, Matt had a great idea for an intricate snare drag part (sort of a "rat-a-rat-a-rat-a-TAT") for the last verse, but we couldn't pull it off to our satisfaction. Every time I hear that verse now, that snare's also playing in my head.



: The song began as the growling "Monkey" line from the song's bridge. I was driving back from dropping the Ramagopals off at the airport in Montréal, and en route to Burlington the ostinato riff started its haunting. I seemed to hear Peter Gabriel, but I'm not sure that influence made it all the way to the final version. Anyway, I'm indebted to Buchi for getting me to make that 90-minute drive on a beautiful chill winter evening.


: It's usually not clear what a new song-in-progress is going to be about. In this case, it took finishing the first verse for the "a-ha!" to happen. All other things being equal, I'd rather keep my songs obscenity-free. In this case, it's merited.


: Long before I'd ever heard Ricky Martin tell me to shake my bon-bon, I'd written this zouk wanna-be. The direct influence is French Antilles' Kassav with their songs like "Zouk-La Sé Sèl Médikaman Nou Ni" ("Zouk is the only medicine we have") which keep a bouncing pedal-point bass to increase the tension. It won't be too long before there isn't a single American who finds imagining his or her mother with pipe in hand any funnier than imagining her eating yogurt.


: The vocal part that made it onto this final version of the song was actually the "guide track" I sang as we were assembling the rest of parts. There was something missing from my subsequent vocal tracks, so we agreed to stick with the Shure SM58 version. Re the lyrics, I had lonely 20-somethings in mind, people who feel so cut off from society that they might as well be operating undercover. The song is their fantasy.


: I spent the evening celebrating Mike Scully's birthday, and when I staggered home, I started writing a song "top-down", that is, with the concept fully in place. I remember having Lennon's "Revolution" in mind ("...But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow..."), but I had some ultra-grandiose scheme, an attempt simultaneously to highlight statistical mechanisms and suggest alternatives to Buddhist mindfulness practices. If you're still reading after the preceding sentence, you're braver than I thought!


: Utopia has this wonderful song, "Always Late", from their Beatle homage Deface the Music. The narrator confesses that he's "...always late, yes it's always the same / Procrastination is my middle name / But the rest of the world is ahead of the game / And that's why I'm always late." "Luiza" was my attempt at the same hyperbole, intended for my then-girlfriend (now-wife) Kit. The song began life as "Priscilla", and I got Kit to brainstorm alternate three-syllable names. She hit on "Louise", and that quickly became "Luiza". Antonio Carlos Jobim has a beautiful song of the same name, but the two compositions are as different from one another in music as they are in language.


: This one sprang from my forehead almost fully formed. Dave Matthews was definitely in mind. Uh, musically speaking.


: Here the influence was Neil Young, specifically, "Old Man". Yes, it's about O.J. I should have called esteemed songwriter and friend Dave Gravelin to do a mandolin part, but, in keeping with the DIM ethic ("do it myself"), I tuned the top 2 guitar strings to fifths and played with a capo way down the neck for that high lonesome sound.