1996

Members:
Matt Fargo: Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals

Guest Appearances:
Erick Alley: Guitar and Vocals on “Manuel Noriega And The Harmonies”
Jamie Hane Hamer: Guitar, Vocals and Keyboards on “Jamie’s Song”

I don't remember the exact year, or maybe I do? I think I was still in Lusty 36, but it was during the summer because I remember I had a huge crush on this girl that worked at the South Salem Boston Market, and I would walk over to Commercial Street just to buy lunch from her. Might have been kind of creepy, in retrospect. Anyway, my next door neighbor Dale Blanton gave the Magic Box to me. He was really into guitars and loved talking about guitars and guitarists and guitar stores and things like that.

Basically the Magic Box was a little walkman with two guitar inputs in it. The idea being that you would put your favorite Joe Satriani cassette in there and then rock along with his bodacious solos. I didn't have any Joe Satriani tapes and sucked at soloing---all I had was this huge crush on the girl at the Boston Market and shitloads of time on my hands. So what I would do was I would plug my casio keyboard into the stereo and record a nice synthy drum track on a cassette tape, then put the cassette tape in the Magic Box and plug in a guitar and rock along with it. The Magic Box, in turn, would be hooked up to the stereo, recording this blend of guitar and casio drums onto a second cassette tape. Subsequently I would take this tape with guitar and drums on it, put it in the Magic Box, plug in a mic and sing over both. Or play acoustic guitar. Or talk about how Antonio Carlos Jobim was a great composer.

Needless to say the first song I recorded ended up being about the girl at the Boston Market. I never got up the courage to ask her out, and thank god I didn't because that would have been an awkward rejection. She was really hot, as I remember it. The song was called "Too Sheik" or something really corny like that. I remember I recorded an upbeat bluegrass number, “Lenny Was An Inbred,” for my friend Matt Leonard who worked with me at Round Table Pizza. Also a song about the goth kids at our school called "The Trenchcoat Gang," which if you listen to it now it's really eerie, because it kind of presages Columbine. And makes me feel like a big asshole for making fun of goth kids and thus being somehow partially responsible for Columbine. There was a cover of a Jobim tune on there, too. “Favela,” I think. Man, I still love that tune! But now I think Chico Buarque is just as good of a composer as Jobim. I would have thought that was blasphemy, back then.

There was a really creepy tune about pedophiles called "Get In My Car," a screaming distorted version of a Dylan Thomas Poem, “Alterwise By Owl-light,” and who can forget "Jock Bitch Prom Night," the story of one girl's dream of getting knocked up by a football player on prom night. The term "Jock Bitch" was coined by Cheyenne Brindle. She was really cool, I wish I had been better friends with her back then but I was too pretentious to know what cool people were back then. Another song on there was a porno soundtrack-sounding wah-wah number called "Porno For Bryhn." It was for Bryhn Ireson. I used to live with him and he would walk around the house saying "Bow chicka wah wah"---a rough verbal approximation of a wah-wah guitar. So I made the song for him. I wonder where he is and what he is doing? I should have made more of an effort to go to our high school reunion.

The Magic Box was later used to record "Bob" with Eric in Gagged And Bound, a song about his boss at a sandwich shop, Blaow’s cassette “Thank You Sir, May I Have Another,” and various songs on the “I Think Cheyenne’s Friend Hates Me” compilation. That's about all I remember. I don't know where the Magic Box is now.

- Matt

Sly Appearances:

I Think Cheyenne’s Friend Hates Me Compilation CS (1996)

Download free from Bandcamp.

- “The Trenchcoat Gang”


The Magic Box CS (1996)

Download free from Bandcamp.

- “Intro”
- “Jock Bitch Prom Night”
- “Get In My Car”
- “Too Shiek”
- “Alterwise By Owl-light”
- “Jamie’s Song”
- “The Trenchcoat Gang”
- “Manuel Noriega And The Harmonies”
- “Lenny Was An Inbred”
- “Boston Tea Party #9”
- “Porno For Bryhn”
- “Favela” (Antonio Carlos Jobim)