BOC: Stock-Forest Group L.P.

[Laj Waldner]

A few days ago I received in the mail the Stalk-Forest Group St. Cecilia
L.P. This is the album they recorded for Elektra after Les Braunstein
left Soft White Underbelly if im not mistaken, and since this album was
never released it must be a bootleg, that and the fact that you can't
find any trace of a record company or the name of the company that
printed it anywhere. The album jacket is white with the words
"Stock-Forest" and underneath that "Group" indented into the album with
a pattern of little silver squares that reflect different colors, There
is also two Silo wets of Dragons on either side of the word Group
indented with the same silver squared pattern. On the bottom of the L.P.
is the words "St. Cecilia", and under that is "The California Album". on
the back the songs are listed as follows;

           Side A                                         Side B
           1 Gil Blanco County 3:46            1 St. Cecilia 6:55
           2 Ragamuffin' Dumplin 5:22         2 Donovan's Monkey 3:41
           3 Bonomo's Turkish Taffy 2:14    3 I'm On The Lamb, But I
Ain't No Sheep 2:50
           4 Arthur Comics 3:14                  4 A Fact About Sneakers
7:45
           5 Curse Of The Hidden Mirrors 3:22
           6 What is Quicksand 3:25


The overall sound quality of this album is very good,  except on the
second side there is a bit of a hiss, becoming more distinct on
Donovan's Monkey, having an Equalizer helps.
There's a chord progression on "A Fact About Sneakers" resembling
"Screams", funny considering Joe wasn't even in SFG. The labels on the
album, both side A and B, are white with no lettering at all. On the
back of the album jacket it has the band list, reading;

         Buck Dharma-Lead Guitar and Vocals    Jesse Python-Lead Vocals
and Guitar
La Vern-Keyboards & Guitar    Prince Omega-Drums   Andy Winters-Bass
Produced by Sandy Pearlman.

"I'm On The Lamb. . ." is different, the mix has a Piano part, there is
a cool break in the intro and again at the first "you kill you maim",
the Solo is quite a bit different, no "ride my two huskies", there is an
extra lyric between the "It's all right"'s on the second and third verse
it's very hard to distinguish but I think it's something like "my lovely
baby", but I am not sure, and it doesn't have the ending riff that
inspired "The Red And The Black". I actually like this version better,
and the Piano part sounds really cool, it's in the background, the
closest comparison would be the Piano on "Stairway to the Stars".
    This would probably be one of the coolest thing I have in my
collection, I have never heard a SFG song before I got this album, and
this album is GREAT, it should of been released 28 years ago, I think it
would fit nicely in the BOC music collection. I don't have any info
about who bootlegged it at when. I don't think it's been around for that
long because I have never heard anything about it before, there was a
small thread about this album on BOC-L and somebody said that there
might be only 500 printed, I really don't know any more than that,
later.

Laj.