About (Continued)

Now you can too, with this most handy one-stop Collection covering twenty choice moments from his long and equally dense career as songwriter/arranger/ musician/vocalist/engineer/producer-par-excellence.

Crackling demos made in his daze as whiz-kid behind the powerfully popping Princes of Miami DIY known as The Wind ("recalls the Beatles and Big Star," said Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone). Sublime slices of severely alt. Lounge from the two-and-only Tan Sleeve ("the twin bastard children of the late actor James Coco," according to www.tansleeve.com). And an entire reel of auxiliary recordings from the voluminous-and-then-some Steinberg archives to boot, each and every single one making a mockery of the claim that man cannot live and create by Teac alone.

Yes, right from the initial one/two sucker-punch of Frustration and Living In A New World, two Wind-era demos remastered and sparkling anew since their initial appearance on my own Unsound, Volume One disc all those years ago, it's above obvious we are grappling with a talent of rare vision and means indeed: Like an XTC with attitude – or, more exactly, an Andy Partridge having grown a couple'a real big ones. Or, in the case of New World, that garishly Garth Hudson fairground keyboard, not to mention the amphetamined six-syllables-per-bar lyrics (typically scribbled out on napkins during an all-night diner coffee binge) conjuring no less than circa '66 "Judas" Dylan.

Then from the wilds of Manchester, England's Free Trade Hall to deepest Brazil, Your Guess is as good as Sergio Mendes packing a thesaurus, and/or the Great Lost Harry Nilsson/Antonio Carlos Jobim collaboration that, sorrowfully, never was. Followed only by two brilliantly Brill Building-esque gems, Life Must Go On and No One's Looking At The Rain which, in another life (or another decade at least) could've been birthed square beneath Don Kirshner's golden ears in some gosh-forsaken Broadway piano cubicle. Close enough: Life comes from Lane's first-ever solo experience in a pro studio – Water Music, right across the Hudson in Hoboken in fact – while the entirely fit-for-a-Carole-King No One's Looking was, in the man's own spot-on words, "my attempt at writing something that could fit on the first Buffalo Springfield album." Mission accomplished, I or even Stills would unabashedly have to say.

Meanwhile over in 1991, lodged between The Wind and Tan Sleeve, came Peyote Marching Songs Vol. 1, the initial Steinberg solo release under the nom-de-group Noel Coward's Ghost from which A Ghost In Wexford Terrace is herein extracted. Imagine Van Dyke Parks scoring your very dearest Sopranos episode by way of Angelo Badalamenti, if you dare. For this is yet another example of our hero's quite cinematic approach to record making, from the delicate vocal f/x to the overall panoramic placement of each instrument carefully across the wide stereophonic sound-screen. If you haven't already, grab the nearest quality headphones, flick off the lights, and lay completely back for the remainder of our Collection.

Comfortable? Then welcome, at long last, to the naugahyde musical universe of Tan Sleeve, wherein Lane and Wind cohort Steve Barry – Century 21's Edu Lobo e Marilia Medalha – bring the full Lumpy Unplugged Gravy treatment to one of the, um, classiest F. Zappa compositions ever, Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance. Ahhh, the many many turn-of-the-millennium nights I spent haunting T-Sleeve gigs, crying out for this and George Harrison's "Wah Wah" as Lane and Steve battled onward and even farther outward with, f'rexample, I Could Have Told You So, that Jimmy Van Huesen classic Lane always insisted sounded much more Beatles than Sinatra. And he's totally right, of course.

Girl Problems also sports a perfectly greasy early Mothers sheen, while Rocket Scientist and especially Come Back To Me are precisely the kind of Big Brit Pop that supposedly magic Paul McCartney/Elvis Costello late Eighties joint never seemed able to fully produce. Too bad they never added Lane to their misfiring mix. Elsewhere, When June Was Born was born as Lane overheard those very words spoken while eating TV lunch in front of some long-forgotten western. It sounds to me more as if Bryan Hyland had snuck onto a Something Else By The Kinks bonus track. Likewise, couldn't that Empty Boy really belong on a Who Sell Out-take?

The British also invade Give The Devil His Due ("a phrase my mother always uses," says Lane), in a Zombies vs. Cobain kinda way that is. Must be all those tracks cut through a guitar stomp-box compressor, if I am allowed to reveal any trade secrets herein, while Great Blue, title track from one of Lane's Wall Of Orchids projects, finds Pete Ham haunting an early Wilco session, I'm sure you'll agree.

What's Wrong With Who Cares, another Marching Peyote song, reckons at first glance to be the ideal Generation Why? anthem. But its roots are in fact far more domestic: "I was very run down at the time," Lane reports, "and would record very late at night when my wife and new baby daughter were sleeping. The droning ending was accidentally inspired by me falling asleep on the keyboard while recording the organ track." It makes for a perfectly majestic satanic coda nonetheless while Savior Apology, not entirely coincidentally I'd bet, pits those Electric Prunes against them Beastie Boys over a spot on the Easy Rider 2010 score, if I may be so prescient.

Taken together next, If Not Now, When? then Chance Of A Lifetime demonstrate in a mere five-minutes-forty-seven how, and why, Lane Steinberg should without any doubt be Brian Wilson's very next musical BFF. And to bring all to a close for now, who could ask for a more Hollywood-happy benediction than Fall Love to ride towards the sonic sunset atop?

In an age when the compact disc, and its very contents I'm sad to say, become more and more of a little-meaning backdrop to our increasingly lost lives, The Lane Steinberg Collection is truly that rarest of near extinct beast: The hour-plus, fully worthy listening experience that not only requires, but demands repeated listenings with (if any of us are any longer capable) complete and total attention. Such are the riches to be found deep in its digital grooves; in its words and sounds and textures and attitudes once and all.

Thank you to Transparency for bringing these new life (and there's more to come, right guys?) and thank you for reading this far.

Now stop looking and start LISTENING.