Hey kids, it's your old pal Uncle Soaky and have I got a tall tale for you!

The Rockin' Chair! was kind enough to yank me out of rehab, 'cause they knew only I was qualified to tell this story: The Making of Fat Slacks.

So sit back and relax, open a tall cold one and smoke 'em if ya got 'em. There has never been a sadder tale...

It seemed like such a simple thing: to record a new album.

And since we all know any fool can make the simple complicated, you can imagine what those extraordinary fools in The Rockin' Chair! accomplished.

The idea to make a new record came soon after playing a great show at the Stork Club, one that had the crowd drop their mouths in awe, the headline band nervous and dismayed about following such savage musicianship and the bartender still demanding $3.00 each for a beer. That night ended with a raucous celebration on the streets of Oakland long after the club closed.

After the cops gave back most of the band's equipment [still missing: Bill's "Get Out of Detox Free" card, Joe's mantrap and tranquilizer gun, six or seven Japanese bondage mags that Tommy had stashed in his bass cab and Ray's favorite grapefruit] and the Stork Club stopped returning their calls, the boys thought it might be wise to lay low for awhile and with all this time suddenly on their hands, they decided to embark on the good ship Recording Session, fraught with peril though it may be.

Songs were no problem - Bill and Joe had hacked out some twisted new tunes and the band had reworked some classic older numbers, so that there were eleven songs ready to print to tape or to disk, as the case may be.

The first big fight that these idiots had was over the name of the record. Several late night "discussions" among the band nearly ended in broken glass, spilled beer and helicopter fly-overs, but after thrashing through barely punny gems like "Flash In the Bedpan," and totally retarded pop junk culture slurs [CLICK FOR PICTURE] a secret ballot was held, and Bill's choice - "Fat Slacks" - won after receiving the only vote [hey, it was off-year, the choices totally bored the electorate and it rained that day - a 25% voter turnout was normal. Think of it as democracy in action].

Three months into the process, the boys realized that most of what they knew was wrong and junked all the work they did so far. And since Ray hated recording and since most of the work was his, he -shall we put it politely - lost his mind. Much to his wife's chagrin, he began to hoard grapefruit with a vengeance.

THE MYSTERY OF GRAPEFRUIT REVEALED! Ray's obsession with grapefruit began in the bleak hills of Idaho, when he had the traumatic experience of watching them swim upriver to spawn and die.

But the recording soon became a better thing and even Ray's eyes stopped twitching after awhile. It might of been the Mickey's, but he was soon back to his normal [?] self.

After all the basic tracks were laid down again in a more professional manner, the boys found out they had a shot of getting a track on a promo CD the violent video game magazine Bill worked for was compiling.

In a drunken fit, Bill wrote a techno song [?!?] about the staff of the mag and their crude japanime mascot. The song, of course, screamed for a Japanese cute-girl voice singing lead and the band knew there was only one girl for the job: Aya-chan!

After a harried series of late night phone calls, emails and rescheduled recording dates, Aya-chan finally pulled into Richmond, right off the redeye from Narita. And because her return flight left at 8 pm that same night, Bill and Joe had less than six hours to get the perfect performance from this often-finicky idoru.

The resulting pop monster speaks for itself and Aya-chan was so happy about finally meeting The Rockin' Chair! [a legend in her own mind, too], that she promised to fly back and perform with the boys whenever she could.

But good things never last long do they?

You gotta remember, these boy is old. And sometimes old bodies give way. Without sounding sappy about it, first Joe, and then Bill, were struck with weird arm ailments that made it impossible for them to play.

Guess it was time to work on vocals.

On some long lost demo tape, the band had cajoled some neighborhood kids into singing back-up schoolyard vocals on "Loser." Since it seemed to work that time, they rounded up a new bunch of kids into the studio in hopes of duplicating genius.

The first new session lived up the song's name and the enduring truth that children are best neither seen or heard, but stuffed in boxes or sacks and left in closets.

Ray somehow hypmotized his daughter Amy to convince three of her friends to come to the studio and sing. [Yeah, he hypmotized 'em alright: he promised them he'd take them to Burger King for lunch after they did a good job and then welshed on the deal.]

Those Damn Kids... Is is really so bad to lie to kids? I mean, we tell 'em about Santa Claus and democracy, don't we? I don't think the damn kids woulda sung so good if Ray didn't hypmotize 'em about going to Burger King after the studio, do you? LEFT TO RIGHT: ALEX, JAQUIE, AMY AND ANGELA

Bill proved an adept taskmaster and the girls had their tracks down perfectly in almost five hours. The perfect plaintive whiny sound you hear on the final track is the combined effort of thirst, fear and disgust at Joe's gibbering in the corner, faint from lack of oxygen and Sierra Nevada.

By this time Bill and Joe were practically living together in studio, and even if their collaboration produced a warped sort of genius [not to mention a really cool glow when the lights were out], it was a volatile mixture and it was destined to blow.

It was shortly after Joe lost his job on the charter boat "Mowog Gershwou." He was in charge of supplying sandwiches and bait to the day passengers, and for cleaning out the offal bins when the boat docked. For someone who could almost use a fork, it was a good job.

TRUE FACT : Raised By Sharks Joe's dramatic capture off the coast of Cape Cod was first detailed in the March 17, 1976 issue of the Weekly World News. President Carter posthumously presented special commendations to the scientists killed during the expedition.

Because the mayor of San Francisco was expanding his homeless shelter outreach program, it became more and more difficult for Joe to fulfill most of his contract. The skipper of the "Gershwou" had no choice but to let him go.

One night while recording a complicated keyboard part,Bill made an honest, but inopportune remark about Joe's attempt to play the part. Dizzy from lack of peanut butter and offal sandwiches, Joe snapped his teeth viciously close to Bill's hand and threw lit cigarettes at Bill's head, screaming in that self-pitying way that Bill didn't understand him or appreciate his existence.

Time for a road trip.

The Man Behind the Boards In another life, Bill tweaked code and crunched numbers for the telephone company, and was in total control of computers bigger than your house. That's why he's the one that runs the complicated machinery in the studio and he does it right, most of the time...

Since all of the boys shared a love of things that fly, shoot flames and explode and since the 4th of July was getting close and since Bill bought a new truck and since they all needed a break from the murky and maddening recesses of the Billy Club, it was agreed they would take a break: Bill and Ray would make a high speed run to Idaho for things that fly, shoot flames and explode and Tommy would take Joe to Chinatown, for braised duck feet and sea cucumber.

OK, you can wrinkle your nose in disgust, but Joe and Tommy got the better of the take a break deal. You see, excepting for actually procuring things that fly, shoot flames and explode, Bill and Ray's trip to Idaho was like stepping into a lost circle of hell.

Ever see that Hitchcock movie, "The Birds"? The one where all these birds savage up a whole town, swarming and pecking the poor townie bastards to death? Well, it was kinda like that, except instead of birds, it was black flies, millions of black flies ready to jump your ass and try to fly them selves up any open orifice in your body.

The locals said it was the weather, something about a wet spring and an Injun curse, but since Bill and Ray's ears were so clogged with flies, it was hard enough for them to realize the locals were even speaking English, let alone being able to understand abstract scientific concepts.

As quickly as they could, they loaded up enough firepower for a spectacular 4th of July showdown, climbed back in the truck and blew out of town, swatting vainly at the two or three thousand stowaway flies that wanted to go see Berkeley.

Just over the Nevada border, they saw a truck stop with a car wash and pulled in. After vacuuming their hair, clothes, noses, ears, hats and the truck, and scraping black fly remnants off the windows, they thought it was best to forget lunch, and started back home.

Our Weary Travelers Bill and Ray stumble out of the truck stop men's room, after carefully swabbing black flies out of places they refuse to discuss. Both agree that Idaho in black fly season is worthy only for the French.

The 4th was a neighborhood success. Nothing caught fire, the cops were busy with the kids eight blocks over with the AKs and star shells and there was enough left over for another dozen or so random drunken instances of midnight mortar fire whenever the boys were in the mood.

But there were better things to be dreamed of, and one of them was finishing the damned record. Bill, Tommy and Joe slogged through the summer adding final tracks. Ray came by occasionally to drink Joe's beer and brag about his grapefruit. Richmond got hotter, the work slowly progressed and the band finally began the tedious stage of final mix.

In between mixing sessions they endured days of photo shoots: for the CD cover, for John's film, for the website, and for the CD cover again. The final cover shot was snapped by Bill, with Tommy as the model, inside Ray's ’65 Falcon wagon. The back cover is not Drew Carey or Bill's dad or Joe before facial liposuction, but a clip art photo, showing that the Rockin' Chair!'s chosen esthetic philosophy is not in any way original, merely a historic continuation of excessive consumption, practiced by has-beens and losers for centuries.

In late August, the CD was finally, totally and completely done, and got shipped off to the good folks at BMMI for pressing. Hate to say it, but your dollar does go farther in Canada! Their TV sucks, and some of them speak French, but the boys got a great deal with the exchange rate and the final product was worth the wait.

While the pressing was going on, the band packed up the recording equipment and cleaned the Billy Club of the collected debris of 11 months. It was during this cleaning that Ray was reunited with his daughter, Amy, who was buried in a beer can avalanche months before. He hugged her and they've been stuck together ever since. When will the beer companies realize that beer gets sticky in its later stages? The horror!

So that's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as Bill Clinton would see it, anyway. And now you've hopefully got a copy of Fat Slacks and are ready to listen to the music that beer, flatulence and old age has made possible. Enjoy!

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