As mentioned earlier, emiLy had an epic recording session at Miami Street in October 1994, just before Mike left for a semester in London. The second release to result was the Tinkertoy 7-inch, which was our second (and last) vinyl release. Side one began with the hyperactive blast of "King Permission," before slowing down for the first half of the title track. If I remember correctly, "Tinkertoy" was one of two songs (the other one being "Beef") that featured a strange tuning. The verses at the beginning and end of the song are among the slowest emiLy parts ever. Side two kicked off with "A Step Closer, A Step Further Away is By No Means Dancing (Pop Song 94)," slid into the Rodan-inspired "Connery," and ended with the longest-lived (and possibly most frequently recorded) emiLy song, "Air." "Air" was one of the eight songs Joe had written the first time he and I played together, and it was a regular setlist feature all the way through our last tour.
The front cover featured a picture of me from when I was four years old, playing a guitar made out of tinkertoys and singing into a vacuum cleaner handle while my dad looked on. The back cover photo was from a basement show on Hill Street. Everything was laid out over a blown up version of the "e" in a light bulb logo Lael Tyler designed for the first seven inch. As with Finer Time, the covers were printed at Punks with Presses in California. We went with single color covers to save money.
Tinkertoy was received somewhat less enthusiastically than Finer Time, as we had the strange luck to get two separate reviewers in two different zines who had decided to compare every band they reviewed to either Swiz or Avail, regardless of the actual sound. So it goes.
listen/download:
see also:
emiLy on MySpace
emiLy on last.fm
True about the tunings.
ReplyDeleteThe odd tuning is the low E down to D, and the G down to F. I can't remember where I came up with this one, but I liked it.