The band "Ralph's Lunch," named after a diner whose old neon sign we found in the basement of an apartment we rented in Cambridge, formed in Austin TX in 1984. I had gotten tired of auditioning drummers, and Maire Anne had gotten tired of helping me roadie my crap at 3am, so I taught her how to play the drums. We met guitarist Mike Swinchoski at the checkout of the Safeway, invited him over for dinner, hung a bass around him, and called it a band. We all relocated to Boston (home for Maire Anne and I) several months later. Sax player Peter Argyres joined us shortly after. We almost functioned as two different bands, playing originals and covers at separate shows, but most of my energy was in the originals.

Around 1986, we renamed ourselves "The Lunch" to, you know, sound serious. We played most of the rooms in Boston and Cambridge in the mid to late 1980s -- The Rat, The Channel, Nightstage, TTs, Jacks, The Tam, and cover gig rooms like The Cask and Flagon and O'Brien's.

We tried, even having management through Bob LaFee's Ironside Management for several years, but never got as far as I'd hoped as a band (I think that WBCN played one of our songs exactly once), and in hindsight, it's not surprising why. Among other reasons, our sound was all over the map. With the sax, we had a pretty good R&B sound, but most of our originals weren't R&B. It's hard to say what they were. I was trying to be funny and smart (I've spent my life trying to be funny and smart), and it never quite meshed. It works much better with me as a singer-songwriter.

The band started recording this album in 1985, but really, although certain live songs washed into the album and certain album songs were learned by the band, it was my album, backed up by the band where that worked, with me playing everything where it didn't, and a bunch in between. The title came from my sarcastic comment to someone who questioned how "socially aware" we really were. From first tracks to final mix, it took three years, by which point the band had nearly fallen apart. Vinyl was still the thing then, but there seemed little point in pressing it. There was a short-run duplication of cassettes with no artwork. A rather ignominious end to a lengthy and tangled project.

Sax player Peter Argyres left and was replaced by second guitarist Jon Grant. We renamed ourselves "Left of Center. The two-guitar sound had some appeal, but we never got any traction with it either. We broke up for good when Maire Anne was in the final months of her pregnancy with Kyle in 1990. There were other cover bands that lasted for surprisingly long considering we had kids, but original rock and roll ended with one final gig at Jumbo's in Somerville. Our next-to-last show was at The Channel, at which, having nothing to do with us, one of the speaker columns caught fire. I guess you could say we went out with a bang.

It was frustrating, glorious, by far the lowest return for the time spent of any artistic endeavor I've ever been involved in, and I'd do it all again in a New York minute.

As long as I had someone to roadie my crap at 3am.