Album Notes

O.L.P.B.

O.L.P.B. is short for “oldest living punk band.” This is a sort of inside joke among some members of the band. It’s from a line in “Stiv Bators.”
This project was begun concurrently with the more polished “My True Story.” It has been stated that it was comprised of outtakes and songs considered not good enough for that piece; but this is not really true. “My True Story” was recorded at an outside studio, in the classic way a recording was done then. None of “O.L.P.B.” was recorded that way. It was almost all done in Gary Applegate’s and Mario Cicerello’s studios. None of the songs were ever considered “MTS” material. They were done alongside the demos for “MTS”, and that may explain some of the confusion about this.
The Clams were still a working, functional band at that time; and it was fairly easy for them to record their parts at leisure. As they gigged less and saw each other less, that became more difficult. The result was that while “MTS” was a finished piece, “O.L.P.B.” was no more than a half dozen very short songs. It sat on the shelf as an unfinished joke for several years until some of the Clams began looking around for something to do.
The Band attempted to finish it as a “real” project; enlisting Damien Cordisco and moving it to his studio. But there was no consensus as to how to actually finish the project, or if it was really necessary to do so, and the Clams drifted apart once again. Eventually Gary and Richard Gelbstein finally added a few new songs and a few older unrecorded songs and called it finished.
There are some very interesting things here and some other things as well. “Steven’s Room”, “On My Blindness”, and “Jericho” are songs that could have been on “MTS”. “The Kids Don’t Care” is a very accessible rocker. Of the original six songs “I Used To Listen To The Radio” was the only one that was ever added to the Clams’ live show. The other five thump away for a minute or so and then end abruptly. They run the gamut from a reminiscence of an old childhood friend, to a tribute to a fallen punk rocker, to a rant about a rap singer turned actress, to a rave-up about tourists at the Jersey Shore.
There are several different versions of many of these songs on the web, as the different band members added and subtracted parts at will until Gary and Richie finalized the collection.
Before you decide that this is some kind of disjointed mess, listen to “Let’s Go Get Some Beer.” See if it doesn’t make you laugh. Especially if you’re expecting to hear something along the lines of “My True Story”; this record will surprise you with its schizophrenia. Its lack of direction and coherence is part of its charm. It creates a cartoon world where John Milton and Stiv Bators cross against the traffic lights in Hell to find Elvis dying at the feet of Cindy Crawford. And most of these little dramas last only a minute or so.