Album Notes

Morning Zephyr Empire Builder is a repackaged reissue of SquadSquad's inauspicious sophomore release "Chunky Maroon's Got My Hat" originally released on Dinsmore Records, Liverpool 1978. The trio had struggled ideologically after the ignominous failure of their acoustic jazz album "Brig's FANG!", resulting in the purchase of some halfway decent instruments and a notarized statement that Grizny Hladlek, the drummer, would begin listening to more music that didn't feature the euphonium. Unfortunately, the euphonium remained Grizny's sole inspiration; the document proved to be nothing more than the harbinger of alcoholism for all three members. It was near this juncture that SquadSquad's violinist, Swanson "Blades" McEllefson, was famously told by Isaac Stern, "Blades, you don't play THE violin, you play A violin." Blades took this criticism to heart, and purchased a one-way ticket to Brazil to seek out Hermeto Pascoal for big-picture musical guidance. His search was successful; in fact, Blades can be heard in the background of Hermeto's 1977 B-Side "Saudade Saudade Saudade" screaming at the top of his lungs "But I'm hungry NOW! Where's the crossbow?". Blades and Pascoal ended their friendship, not many months later, over an actress that both of them assumed, erroneously, to be a woman. Chastened, Blades returned to Liverpool on a cargo ship, ironically leaving himself so bored that he was forced to practice for the first time in his life. 1977 also marked the year that SquadSquad's double-bassist Buster Riesgraf came out of his three-year coma. In fact, until the week before the Chunky Maroon sessions, Buster could only whistle his bass lines into an SM58 during practice, each time promising to reacquaint himself with his axe before the following rehearsal. The album was engineered by Sir George Martin's brother's neice's locker partner's dog's previous owner, on a console built by Mr. Rupert Neve's wife's college roommate's gigolo.

Praise for "Chunky Maroon's Got My Hat":

"Stunningly inconsequential...a real...thing." -Bess LaDuke, Liverpool Guardian and Hammock

"Chunky Maroon, through its sheer emotional scope, finds its aesthetic peer in Joyce's Ulysses, or perhaps in big bowl of sugared mud." -D. Reginald Howry, Northern Ohio Academy of Early Eritrean Architecture

"Buster Riesgraf, c'est le meilleur contrabassiste du monde! Un jour, je vais fabriquer un maison avec lui, et sa soeur, Yvette." M. Denis Paul DeLoup, Paris-Telegraph

"If you ever see [Blades], tell him I want to hit him in the face." -Bertrand Russell

"Most of these songs are in time signatures I didn't even know I had." -Tova Eriksson, Jazzzzz Magazine

"Like running full tilt into a drying plaster wall to find miniature caribou bearing tea and biscuits on silver platters while teenage gnomes simultaneously place rolling pins comfortably around your ankles...a real treat...of invisible goo." -Benjamin Johann Sebastian MacLeod, Adjunct Professor, Inuit Polytechnic, Nunavut Maligaliurvia, Canada