A Great Lost Recording Re-SurfacesComing two years upon the heels of the highly touted debut Troubadour versus the Sea Witch release,"Neophyte", (Rolling Stone critic, Moz Macca, called it “unbelievably first-rate second-tier music”), the roots of what would become the innovative sophomore, but equally ill-fated, TvstSW release,"Royal Palimpsest", began with a lawsuit during the Dutch leg of the group’s 2010 European Hostel Tour, which was cancelled out of concern over capacity issues and advanced noise complaints; Johnny Bravo, who had relocated to the Netherlands after being refused a VISA by the Japanese cultural attaché, was suing the group over copyright infringement concerning the title of one of their many lesser known songs,"Your Variable Tuner Is out of Whack". Bravo apparently caught wind of this while staging a comeback at Mellow Yellow- Kandinsky was thought to be too rarefied and, according to one fan blog, 420 Café simply called security upon his approach- by, according to his press manager, “dropping the groovy threads, and revamping his sound, performing interpretive EDM arrangements of 70’s group The Silver Platters.” (This turned out to be another misstep, as he had confused them with the Silver Apples of the late 60’s. But this was his aesthetic morass to wallow out of.) With nothing but time on their hands, conversation aimlessly turned to robber barons, progressive early 20th century trial lawyers, notorious art thefts, and Nietzschean philosophy. Dismayed and morose, the group packed in the self-pitying shoe gazing and spent the weekend in Calais, which, to use a Bravo-ism, was as far as their bread would take them. Autumn was in full bloom. T recalls walking along the Boulevard Victor Hugo. “The sky was a gun metal grey, and I began feeling Arthurian, though I knew damn well I should be feeling CAROLINGIAN, when passing the Boulangerie Patisserie Batko a young woman shouted at, presumably, the boulanger ‘LaBeau! Porter votre gant de maille!’ I don’t know why, but that has always stuck with me.”SW said she remembered that weekend, as well. She had spent her time staring out from the Quai Lucien L’heureux, enveloped by the saucily existential, yet unseasonably sultry, fall breeze, thinking of war, and how barbarous men of mediocre talents are spit shined through history. She remembered hearing the even click of low heels on pavement and the spark of a wire from on high followed by an impassioned exchange: “Bonjour, Hal!””Ah! Bonjour David!”But confesses she understood nothing further of the conversation, except that one of the men was gesturing with his hands across the water to where a small factory was grinding equine bones into fertilizer. In the air a radio band had broken free and was adrift oscillating wildly. None of this seemed auspicious at the time. But the next evening when T, SW, and drummer Budgie Buffin chanced upon an accordion performance of"Nixon in China" outside La Grillardière, all the pieces fell into place. It was immediately decided, after one more bottle of burgundy, the time had come to return to America and, more significantly, to the studio. (It should be noted that the apocryphal story of BB’s absconding with the table’s wine bottle candle inspired"Baroque Superman", in fact, had no bearing on the composition, which had already taken shape weeks earlier while SW was, as relayed to Filter and later with embellishment to MOJO, reading Vanderbilt, waiting for a Joseph Beuys retrospective to open at the Currywurst in Berlin.)The problem now was getting the band stateside. The group’s tip jar had been depleted on that heady weekend in Calais, and rent money from their recently hocked instruments was nearly exhausted. There would be no choice but to return north where members of the group would find odd jobs in Amsterdam’s red-light district. This delay, however, was to prove fortuitous, as the additional cloud of the aforementioned pending legal issues began to clear. Keyboardist Johnny “Fingers” Rhodes had been sampling some of the more exotic sounds of the city, when he caught a snippet of none other than Bravo hand drumming on a Nord pad outside the Mellow Yellow as part of a promotional everything old is new gimmick he was hoping would launch his comeback. Rhodes, discreetly, called Bravo to the side and explained that while that was a groovy pad it was useless without a triggering brain. Embarrassed, Bravo said he would drop the lawsuit, if Rhodes could hook him up with a brain and not mention what had just occurred to anyone. (And to Rhodes credit, he never did. It only was revealed when an erstwhile documentarian, surreptitiously capturing the sights- and sounds- of Amsterdam happened upon this exchange. And she, too, never released footage of the conversation. That was done when a second random documentarian caught the entire exchange.)With the lawsuit behind them, the group had earned enough money to take their instruments out of hock and book passage by ship back to America. Though it was steerage, and some of the group’s instruments had to be jettisoned during a spate of stormy sea, T remembered settling in with ELO’s version of Grieg’s"In the Hall of the Mountain King" blaring in his Beats and thinking to his self what would become Royal Palimpsest “could finally be glimpsed like the ship’s smoke on the horizon…..”The band insists 50 different ways nothing of note happens from the time of their arrival in NYC and subsequent Greyhound ride back to Wyandotte beyond being stuck on the New Jersey turnpike, and ending up in Saginaw, having slept through their destination stop in Lincoln Park- the lights of the Motor City burning but a stone’s throw away.December 1, 2010TvstSW enters Winding Road studios for the first time in two years. The session does not go well. In fact, an argument ensues over Carol King, Neil Diamond, and the death of the love song. SW so desperate for an aesthetic inspiration has the sound engineer, SS, record her turning on and off a Hoover found in the Janitor’s closet. Uncertain of what she was trying to elicit from the Hoover sound, she turns to fiddling with a Moog Voyager in the control room and after two hours of knob twiddling coaxes an almost identical sound of the vacuum. Pleased, she insists on being called Madam Organ for the rest of the recording. The sessions are off to the races. December 15, The scratch tracks are laid for six of the eleven tracks. BB is goofing around with a military snare pattern using his recently acquired coke bottle Spaun. He is extremely delighted, and feels the record should lead off with a patriotic tone. He claimed it was out of appreciation of being back on American terra firma. T immediately disagrees and starts frothing about pandering, after some members of the group were sharply criticized for failing to rise when a returning soldier entered the Port Authority restroom. SW believes it was simply to tweak British member Rhodes, whom BB despised, for referring to smokes as fags. Rhodes shot back with an Old Glory (hole) remark after reminding BB of running into him exiting an adult bookstore on 8th Ave. A compromise was struck when it was decided the eventual track would instead close the album with a martially LGBT friendly vibe and later titled Outro (To the Gay Parade). Shortly thereafter Bravo fell into a bout of depression and severe alcoholism. One particular night in the depths, drunk again, he attempted to butterfly boys with the thin end of a wedge, shrieking “fresh fruit!” He was asked at his trial what was running through his head. His lawyer, Monsieur R. Monde, objected furiously to the line of questioning. Bravo, however, swearing nothing but the truth, claimed not to be beyond the pale of such questioning and, despite his thinning locks, he was still strong as Samson and remained the idol of many; a lamp unto the feet of the old and new. At the moment, Monde threw up his hands and recused himself.Monde was hired shortly thereafter as the group’s legal counsel and sometime tambourine player… The rest of story behind the making of Royal Palimpsest can be found on the band’s web site: