Liner notes thanks be to Tom Carter

If you're looking for something to tell you that the band in question is composed of nearly notable former members of various bands, or how many jam sessions Larry Liska sat in on with rock superstars who are now dead or disabled, or retired, forget it. Unless the names Henry Miller From New York, Herpes Media Blitz, or Fear of Roaches ring any particular bells, where the people who make up this band called the Linus Pauling Quartet came from is irrelevant to who and where they are now.

Listen to the record!

As to how the band came together, we'll let lead singer Clinton Heider tell the story: "Everyone was blazed on mushrooms, and every time we started to get Brian's wrists knotted down good and solid, Kenny would start shoving his tongue down Brian's throat. This made it very difficult for Brian to lie still while we continued our attempts to tie him to the giant crucifix. Later Kenny got thrown out of the club for pouring beer all over JR's friends' crappy paintings. Then he ripped off his clothes and stood naked in the intersection of McKinney & Live Oak and tried to fuck everyone he could get his hands on. What story was I supposed to be telling again?"

Listen to the record!

If you still need more information, try this. The LP4 is masterminded by a guitarist named Ramon Medina. A UH graduate with a masters degree in augmented ninth chords, Ramon was living a split existence at the time his concept for the LP4 began to fall together. By day, he was a junk peddler for a Dallas-based corporation specializing in roach droppings and screwed down David Allen Coe disks, helping to develop all sorts of gravity-based smoking accessories he's not supposed to talk about. By night he was a member of any one of a handful of constantly shifting bands chronically getting booted from the Axiom. Considering the sneak thievery required by his day gig, mastering the 6-track cassette recorder he 'liberated' from the Mike Gunn rehearsal hole posed no great problem. With these extraordinary homemade demo tapes, the band was soon better known to record company executives in Nürnberg than it was to the alleged music "press" in its own hometown.

Listen to the record!

If you insist on having it further spelled out for you, consider this, in the words of reedman Charlie Horshach: "I started off wanting to explore the much-needed void between the James Gang, Hawkwind, and the Party Owls. Now I just want to throw up". Also consider the use of technology as an instrument. Of the tendency for technology to take over in the hands of lesser practitioners, Steve Finley says, "The songs are too short and there aren't enough guitar solos. Can you hand me another gun?" Those who question how the precise technology of the group's record will translate to a live environment will discover that it won't. The LP4 concert will easily dash all vain hopes of sonic clarity via extreme drunkenness, jacked riffs, blown heads, bad mixes, and Clinton singing (in full-on League City redneck warble) a dozen odes to carcinogenic malt liquors not sold anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line (but wait- that's on the record too)! That's a lot to look forward to, but you know where to start.

Listen to the record!

Tom Carter
Oakland, August 2007