#eternally grateful to James Lee Stanley for making STHH a reality

[thislovintime]

Artwork by Nick Thorkelson.

"I think it was about, it might have been ’90, ’91 or something, and I said, ‘Peter, why haven’t you made a record? All these guys have made solo records, and you haven’t.’ And he was so humble, he just said, ‘Well, you know, no one has asked me.’ And I said, ‘Jesus, Peter, I have a studio, I have a record label, I have distribution.’ I said, ‘Why don’t we, at some point, make you a solo record, and we’ll shop it, you know. And the worst case scenario, if literally nobody likes it but us, we can put it out on my label, which is distributed by Capitol. So we can’t lose, you know.’ And, you know, I just, I just said, ‘Let’s just do that.’ And I, I must admit that my vision of the first album, because I had seen him perform this organic acoustic music, I wanted to present him doing those, those banjo things. I wanted to make, essentially, an acoustic record, so that I could demonstrate that there was no… no phony stuff behind him, that he was the guy doing this stuff. I wanted to present that so it would shift peoples’ conception of him. Yes, he’s a Monkee, and he was famous and he was a teen idol. He was also always this musician, he played the acoustic guitar — he really played the guitar, he really played the banjo, he really played the piano. And I wanted to do that. But he said, ‘James, you know, I’m not that guy anymore. I want to do a rock ’n’ roll — I’m a rocker, I want to do a rock ’n’ roll record. And I wanna do, I like all these synths and stuff.’ So I said, ‘Okay, well, I mean, let us… let me see what I can do to help further your vision.’" - James Lee Stanley, The Monkees Pad Show “It’s not alternative, thrash, hip-hop, acid jazz or any of that, but there’s some funky stuff and moderately heavy guitar.” - Peter Tork, The San Francisco Examiner, February 5, 1995