A Treasury Of Song Vol. 3: The Class In General Vs. The Topic At Hand (2000-2002)

My second year at New College I shared a room with John Demartino, who I'd met early on during my first year. He'd been wearing a red Elephant 6 t-shirt, and although I'd never heard any Elephant 6 music, I had at least read a little bit about them in music magazines. John was my introduction to so much indie music, including Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records. I had discovered Lookout, K, and Kill Rock Stars by that point, but so much was new to me. I was mainly into 1960s era classic rock and punk/new wave.

Our first year we had played in a band with our friends Brian and "Tall" Hunter called the Imaginary Numbers that had no performances or recordings. Also John and I worked on an unrealistically ambitious sound collage thing that was never finished but which itself was very much an attempt to emulate the Olivia Tremor Control.




John took up the drums before owning any, assembling a kit out of whatever happened to be around: A lamp, cardboard boxes, a tambourine. This is what he played on the first release from our band together, which I'm presenting here for you to download. John named the band The Class In General Vs. The Topic At Hand, although I'm sure at least at the time he would have insisted I not use upper-case letters in the name. The photos above are of our friend Tim Cunnane recording us at New College's emusic lab, although the album I'm posting today was recorded entirely in our dorm room on my dying four-track recorder. Even the track that is sped up and manipulated by Tim was done so only by using the four-track itself.



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