“Shaking hands on a bachelor couch” afflicted the singer on one sunny Sunday afternoon in May 1997 after settling into a new bachelor pad in Red Bank. An ode to morning, sobriety, exes and diner waitresses with boyfriends in anger management classes. Also, guitarist Matt Krajewski dared me to use the word “flapjacks” in a song and I obliged.

What made the new recordings great were the guest musicians, especially guitarists Andre Thompson on “Breakfast”, “88 Jeep” and “Where the Body Goes” and Martin McGowan on “Never Lied Before.”

“Never Lied Before” . . . Like most Bob Dylan-worshippers I aspire to the brilliance of Blonde on Blonde. In this case I built an entire lyric around the word “chambermaid” as wheezed by my hero in “I Want You.” Musically I combined favorite elements of the songs in 6/8 from that album -- “4th Time Around,” “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and "Just Like A Woman.” This was our most ambitious production ever, with cello, viola and six or seven intertwined acoustic guitar lines by the talented Martin McGowan. Producer Steve Evetts banished me from the studio during mixing for pacing the control room and asking too many questions.

I wrote “88 Jeep” for Crash Chorus Mach One bassist (and brother) Evan Harrison on his 25th birthday. For years I had wanted to capture the experience of cruising in his flimsy Jeep Wrangler down LBI Boulevard with the top down, wind in our hair, heat on our feet and a love letter to some mall chick from Marlboro percolating in my pathetic head. This is as close as I've come to writing a Springsteen song.

"Satan's Calling" was written and recorded by the Crash Chorus Mach One in Mike and Matt's basement in 1986. It was a theme song of sorts for our fictitious heavy metal band "Satan's Boys" from a variety show act in high school. With Judas Priest in our hearts and socks in our trousers we performed a 20 minute massacre of "Livin' After Midnight." Six months later we collaborated on this lo-fi disaster, exhibiting Evan and Matt's Circle Jerks fixation with the final hardcore explosion. In the interests of professionalism we probably should have left this one on the cutting
room floor . . . but if just one kid out there hears the
song and dons a roach clip and spandex then our efforts will have been worthwhile.