When it was time for the follow up album for "Music To Trash", Paper Bag decided it was time for a live album. "But wait!", you may ask, "Wasn't all your music live?" Yes it was, in the sense that it was recorded as it was made, on the spot. But no records were out of us playing to an audience. We thought maybe we ought to do that.

We set up a special gig at Be-Bop Records and Fine Art. It was a small venue, but very much like home to us. Phil Newman set up a mobile 8-track recorder, and with Robert Eisenhammer doing live sound, we recorded a 2 hour gig, possibly the best show in the band's history.

Nonetheless, it was decided that we should do at least one more show, just in case.

The second show was an outdoor show at a ranch in Palmdale. We made an event out of it and had Death and Taxe$ open for us, with duets sharing members of both bands going on around and in between.

At the end of that show, we were all ready to go home, it had been a long day and there had been problems getting things right. Also with the temperature going from burning to freezing, as deserts do, wasn't helping our mood. But we hoped the gig had produced some good tracks.

When we listened back however, the unanimous opinion was negative. REALLY negative. We chose one piece, "Beany Boy's Polka", to represent the gig. More grumbling. (I believe hindsight has proven this very wrong. You will soon be able to judge for yourself.)

So it was voted that we do one more show, this time at Spinhead, where no mobile recording would be necessary. It wasn't a huge space, so the audience would be really limited. Still, it was an audience, so we went ahead with it.

Everyone enjoyed doing this show more, and it produced two pieces for the album, "Frightened Lives" and "Studio Hell".

And from those gigs came the songs for this album.

Recording was at the end of August, 1988. The record didn't come out until early '89.

The album title: M. had heard someone yell at the stage at one gig, "Improvised my ass!" They didn't believe it. M. found this hilarious and suggested it as the title. We all liked it too.

One thing that didn't happen was that we had put together a sheet of our favorite negative comments, to be included with the album. We had some good ones. My personal favorite has always been "Why don't you guys quit fucking off and learn some songs!" Another audience member, not meant as a joke: "What the fuck's a tape loop? What the fuck's a tape loop?"Then there was the doorman at...I don't remember which club but we played there pretty often. He had good ones on seperate occassions. 1. "These guys sound like somebody put a bunch of instruments in a playpen full of kids." 2. "These guys play music for Jerry's Kids." (As in the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy charity, not Deadheads.) There was the club owner, who said to M., "I see you have brought drums. Does that mean you must play them?" And so many others.

The cover: Clearly ass-themed, to work with the title. We put a waiver together, set up in the hallway of M's place (dubbed the band house as Kenny and George roomed there too). We asked everyone we knew if they would be willing to bring out the full moon to come and join us for an ass party. Many of the usual suspects, who were friends of the band or personal friends, volunteered to put their asses on the line. A picture of the waiver is included as an extra, with a couple of names redacted. Their ass photos remain ours to exploit, but I thought a couple of them may wish to keep their anonymity, judging by the current non-state of relations with band members. I will say that the complete current lineups of three bands are represented, along with what Screaming Lord Sutch might have called "Heavy Friends".

The back cover photo is the remains of a guitar I smashed out at Sepulveda Dam. I had taken to doing this with my hands onstage after George brought me a discarded acoustic to smash at a gig. It wasn't usable as an instrument and it took me a while to jimmy the bridge around until I could get some sound out of the strings. I then beat it to death rather than smash it into the stage. I didn't want to damage the stage, and that had been the way to do it since Pete Townshend invented it. Beating it to splinters thus hopefully escaped being gauche, and careened more towards the nouveau and the chic. We all stayed on the lookout for useless acoustic guitars after that. For the back cover shoot, however, this throwaway git-fiddle proved really difficult to smash with my hands, and I bled trying. I'd never had that kind of trouble before, and of course it had to happen on a photo shoot. I ended up smashing it on the ground, and even that was difficult. Included as a bonus is a shot of three pictures of the process. In one, you can see a part of the headstock has split off and is in midair just over the ground. These pictures, and the back cover shot, are by Chris Gruenwedel, my girlfriend at the time. (Interesting side note: the next day, Cold Sky, the band George and I were doing as a side project with drummer Hyam Sosnow, came out and shot our promo photos in the same place, with a different photographer.)

The album was the end of our relationship with SST. The distribution and promotion was weird. No one we called across the US had seen a copy, or heard it was out. Meanwhile, the aforementioned girlfriend Chris was on a trip back home to Tubingen, Germany, and there, in the local record shop, was a copy. I suspect this was for two reasons. One, they liked us better in Europe. Two, the way the contracts were written, SST kept the majority of income from foreign sales, they made more money. There were other problems with our relationship with the label, but as far as this album goes, it received no support in the states, and we were fed up.

Technical info: So you love vinyl, do you?

This release is remastered from vinyl, because basically, I had no other choice. I don't have access to the multi-tracks, and I don't believe I have the 1/2 track tape masters either. So you will hear some pops and crackles. I did my best to surgically remove them, but some things were impossible to get out. No protests about the existence of software to do that, please. Every noise reduction program I've ever used or heard has colored the sound, which drives me nuts and I'd rather keep the pops and crackles. It's less than ideal but that's how it is.

By the time a record gets to the listener, the sound from the original recording has been messed with a lot. With vinyl, there's a step to make the sounds playable on a record, so the needle doesn't jump out of the groove. It takes the edges off in either direction, lows and highs, and it's difficult to keep any sudden jumps in volume. So what you get isn't what came into place where they cut the metal master discs. There are some geniuses out there- or at least, there used to be- who could get around these limitations and make fantastic sounding records. But they still didn't sound like what was in the room, or even on the master stereo tape.

When it comes to remastering something off vinyl, you have to try to compensate for what's been taken out during that process, and usually the best way is to take out some more rather than boost things. In this case for example, I found a little area of frequency where taking the volume down made the bass drum and the bass much more crisp, they didn't muddy each other up. You do any changes in tiny fractions of a decibel, usually. Even so, the best you can do will never match the richness of the original recording. You just have to try to make it sound as good as you know how, which is what I did.

I took a couple of liberties with the band's otherwise strict policy of non-interference. I boosted the volume as best I could without using any programs that would color the sound. And sometimes there were just sections that needed a boost.

Also, I performed one bit of cosmetic surgery. I'd always been bothered that the last note of George's brilliant playing on "Origin" was interrupted by a loud crackle, either from a cord or a pot. I had the opportunity here to edit that out and make a beautiful whole note without the mess, which is just what he had meant to do. So I made it that way. If that makes me a traitor to the pure cause, so be it.

This is the album cleaned up from what it was, as it was released. It's a selection of what we thought were our best representations from each show, limited by what we could fit onto a 40 minute album. We thought it was good then, we still think it's good, and we hope you enjoy it.

GS, 1/19/20