Album Notes

One sunny day in, oh 2008 or so, Jason & Gary tumbled to the fact that they should do an album together, especially as each had already contributed musical efforts to the other's works, and were in the same band and all. So they said to each other, "Hmm... why not?" And so they did.

The two having variously been in a number of bands, there was always a collection of unused band names laying about, one of which was Gary's impossible-to-fit-on-any-marquee "Beef Wellington and the Mad Cows." One fateful day Jason thought that might be a nice fake band name, sort of like Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And so it was. The album name, "Masticated Bovine", was also Jason's idea. (A phrase his dad used to utter whenever he saw someone eating a hamburger.) The mutated cover art was Gary's idea, with countless contributions from Jason himself.

Each song has its own story as to its conception, writing, recording, and delivery to your very ears. Several of them were originally ideas of Jason's that he had put an a CD as MP3s as very rough demos and only sketches of lyrical ideas - Gary either said "you gotta do this, man" or actually wrote the lyrics himself and fleshed out the schematic of the song (that's not too technical, is it?). "Stargazer Lily," "Blankets," "Where Did You Go," and "Turn Up the Heat, Renaldo" roughly fall into that category. Then there are the songs that Gary had a bit of an idea floating around in his head for years, and Jason seized control and wrote the thing, "Smoke & Mirrors" being among those. "Bettter Left Unsaid" was a song that Gary had almost completely written, but had painted himself into a corner with (latex paint as we remember). Jason's ideas on that one saved the day, and a completed song emerged. The only song they actually wrote together in the same room was "Just As You Are." But even there, it was originally a musical idea of Gary's going back several decades with some silly lyrics. So J & G re-wrote the lyrics one day in Long Branch, NJ, keeping only the title. And so on...

Recording this mess was equally diverse in execution. Whoever had an idea would record it and pass it on to the other, and somewhere along the way the decision was made as to who would "own" the raw tracks and mix of each respective song. So Jason & Gary each supplied guitars, bass, various keyboards, drums, percussion, horns, and cows to the final product.

We hope you enjoy this rather strange effort. As we said, the songs are at once amusing and accessible, but always entertaining. May you have many hours of intense pleasure wrapping your ears around the contents of this little disc.