released June 25, 2018
Recorded by Brad Armstrong, Andrew Vernon and John Walker over a long, lost weekend in 2004

Gorilla drawing by Chris Garrison

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So John and Andrew arrived in New York, I was at work I think. They came by the restaurant to get a key, which I gave them and then they took off and I worked the rest of the shift jealous and pissed off that they were back at my place already getting started while I hocked drinks to the New York Upper Middle Class, which equated to the filthy rich in any other part of the country. I got home around 12 or 1, pretty lit up already on restaurant booze, and we got down to it. I think night one was mostly about figuring out the thing we wanted to record. 

Did John throw out a shitload of odd ideas? He did. I remember that. I don’t remember any of the ideas we didn’t settle on, though, but I’d be willing to bet that both aliens and Wilhelm Reich had guest roles. An EP about Koko the Gorilla. He had the motif already written. I remember a discussion about the phrasing “some tenderness got shown.” I was on the grammar trip, and John made a convincing case that the incorrect phrasing was integral to the thematic content. I couldn’t tell you what that argument was anymore, but he was passionate. I remember that.
           
So we decided on Koko and set up the gear, which was a drum machine that John brought, and sundry shit that Andrew brought, and I had a banjo and a telecaster and a Dan Electro stomp box and a keyboard. We did it on a g4 laptop. Andrew had this mobile recording digital thing, which was intended for recording corporate meetings and Notes-To-Self I think, and we went out around New York with it. Not sure how much of that made it in, but I know the A train at Fulton Street makes an appearance.

We spent three days on it, and I took time to go to work at night. I had a notebook at the bar hidden behind the gigantic decorative bottle of Belvedere that I was working my lyrics out in between making drinks and running plates of pasta.

I think my wife was in Argentina at the time, but she may have generously vacated the apartment for us, I can’t remember. We recorded in the bathroom and the living room. The control room was my 6x8 office. We didn’t sleep. We smoked a ton. It was 2004. It was rockin'.  All Ball was our muse, our mystic. We prayed to the spirit of All Ball to help us commit this story to tape. Or, to ones and zeros.

We set out to conceive, write, and record a fully self-contained piece of music about Koko in three days. I guess we did it. Listening to it now, for the first time in years and years, it feels really honest and dated and sophomoric and genuine and arrogant and heartfelt and trivial and universal. I like it, is what I’m saying. Between winces, I really like it a lot and I’m glad we did it. RIP All Ball.

Brad Armstrong
December 2012

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Sometime in the not too distant past, Subject X, Subject Y and Subject Z gathered in a closet somewhere in Brooklyn to write and record an extended play collection of songs. This group, composed of two singer-songwriters and a technician, used modern technology to make CD-quality recordings of five songs. The EP is loosely imagined to be about the interior life of a sign-language speaking gorilla, saddened by the loss of her pet kitten, All Ball.

Huddled around a computer in the smoke filled closet, the Subjects wrote music, penned lyrics and pressed buttons. Giggling and enamored with their creation, the Subjects tirelessly worked long hours, breaking for food, Subject Y's day job, and a brief foray into New York City for the collection of audio samples. A sound bed of a door closing and a train leaving the station, mixed with drum machines, guitars and keyboards, is created for the lyrical stylings of Subject X and Subject Y. Facilitated by Subject Z's button pushing, the project is roughly finished and the Subjects return to their regular lives with the intent of finalizing mixes at a later date.

Working on the Allball project is hazy for me. I remember enjoying the outcome, but had trouble shifting modes from a visit with friends to working on a project. It might have made me grumpy, but that could also just have been from sleeping on a couch. I also can't seem to put it into context with what was going on with my life at that point.

I was particularly pleased by the inner voice of the gorilla referring to the scientists in the lab as Clipboard and Whitecoat.

Like a monkey with a ray gun,
avernon
August 2012

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The plan was simply for me and Andrew to make it to Brad's place in Brooklyn, where we would spend a few days writing and recording music. Andrew came from Birmingham to Baltimore (by train? by plane? on foot?) and then we drove up to New York from my house together. I remember it snowed the morning we left, which just added to the magic feeling for me.

I was excited because these guys were people I loved to collaborate with and, more importantly, we had all agreed to record the whole time we were visiting. This was my dream arrangement. Normally the act of prioritizing recording/music above all else required some unwanted contortion of everyone's schedule, and so many variables had to be overcome. It could fall apart at any moment, and the noble cause of documenting stray, song-like ideas would have to advance another day, or not at all.

But this time we were gathering with the express purpose of generating material. We weren't sure if it would be one big song or half a song or half an album or what. We were going to be somewhat loose and improvisational in our approach. No conversations had been had about what the subject matter or form might be, and nothing was pre-written in the strictest sense—though I did have a couple things flitting around in my head, tunes and phrases I couldn't quite shake.

Once we arrived, a conversation quickly started about what, exactly, we'd be working on. Amidst other possibilities, I sang those two embryonic song fragments, and explained how they were both loosely based on something I'd read about Koko the gorilla, and her famous (to my generation, anyway) love for her pet kitten, who she named All Ball. I wanted to turn Koko into a folk hero like Paul Bunyon, and make the somewhat mundane, true story of All Ball's eventual escape (and his eventual, unrelated death) into something else: a mythical journey of the soul for our gentle and sensitive ape. Brad and Andrew seemed to like the melodies or the lyrics or something because we dwelt on it for a bit.

Soon enough Brad looked at me, almost nervously, and asked "Should we do a concept EP about Koko the gorilla?" I sensed that he was a little afraid of my answer.

Andrew may have stopped and held his breath at this moment, but more likely he continued setting up gear. But I know for a fact he didn't harrumph. (Andrew harrumphs when he thinks something is too stupid to record. And he giggles if he thinks it's just stupid enough.)

"Are you expecting me to be the voice of reason on this?," I said. "Because I'm not gonna be."

John Walker
June 2018