This is one of the longest history, if not THE longest history of edits to a track, especially one thought of FINISHED and FINAL so many times. My first band outside of the Stereolites was kinda a two-person side project. I would go jam with the dude I met in the bird room at the Pet Store I managed in Park Slope. We didn't have a name, but HE was also in a band with his cousin, MARTIN LUQUE who would always ask us what we're called. Finally Ricardo told him we were J&R's Music World like the store downtown by the Trade Center. IT's a cheap music store like CDs and DVDs and shit. Really reminds NYers of Nobody Beats the Wiz if anyone is old enough here to remember THAT.
Anyway I thought it was funny so stickers were made JUST IN TIME for me to come up with A BLACK TIE AFFAIR, a name we both liked much much more - and recruited a lying
9about his age) 16 year old on bass named "Nappy" because of his kinky Dominican Republic hair. I'm sure that sentence sounds racist out of context but he'll tell you within minutes of meeting him about how he was born in a hut on a dirt floor and no one in his family had shoes.
Clean Disease was written in 5 minutes after work (at aforementioned Petland Discounts) when in a very Cobain/Weiland-inspired mood.
It was the first (and almost last? The main riff for the king crawls is the only other that comes to mind. If you don't believe me listen to the live one-take demo on the demos for no.3 & bsides album() time I actively tried to write a catchy alternative-punk rock pop song that sounded like Nirvana
Recorded for J&R's music world (2005) by Seth Mintz ' garage in Shrub Oak, NY "Clean Disease" was originally released as our demo and reissued as our first EP for A Black Tie Affair : An Affair to Remember.
Maybe it sounded naked or empty to me before the bass and backup vocals were in place, but the song, one of our, if not THE most requested, wasn't even the lead off title track to kick off our demo strong. It was sequenced AFTER "Summer/Winter" which still rips and can be found on the first ABTA LP, a culmination of our EPs: Return to Spiderland.
Natalia made her vocal contribution in 2006 or 07 and Joe joined us on bass at the tail-end of 2010, I believe, just in time to play on our first two albums and rock out our record release shows.
This track was remastered for the JSE (originally on the Midnight Cattle EP for XMAS 2011) and re-re-re-re-remastered for this compilation now in April 2024

it feels weird for me to remaster something (and have it sound so so so so so much better now) that was originally mastered on Letternan (*CBS)'s equipment one Saturday morning at the world famous Ed Sullivan theatre. They had a custom mixing board that literally hugged a wall that WENT AROUND A CORNER. Obviously there were no diagonal faders in that spot, but still I had never seen such a large desk. Wow.

That's some history for the same basic tracks of one damn song, innit?

-J𐤃¥ ♯ ℇ§℺ 🦓 May 2nd 2ⁿᵈ 2024

PS - what a thrill to take off the masking tape (Foo Fighters were the Friday shows' guest with 'the Pretender' Seth mixed the audio for the broadcast :-) off the mixing board that read "dave - gtr" and replace it with "Jay Sharp etc etc etc" Wish I had saved the tape. Put it in a sketchbook or something.