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BEING A SHORT DIGRESSION ON THE DUBIOUS ORIGIN OF THE NAME “The Inevitable MERSEYSIDE Transition”
Once upon a time there were several sundry musical types, being of names you either already know or won’t remember anyway. Getting together because that’s what musical types do, they procured guitars and various such like, and proceeded to produce variations on the noise they had luffed all their lives. Their friends at least liked it, or maybe pretended to because that’s what friends are 4. Other musical types may have been lucking about with pottery, you’d have to check the Permanent Record, but they our particular them liked the noise they made and so they kept on making it, with even bigger guitars and more various such like, some of it even electrified and computerized and what all I don’t know. There was some thrumm thrumm thrumming about drums and something of an identity crisis concerning the definitions of folk and rock and neither the Twain shall Mark, but eventually they decided it was all in good fun and furthermore they didn’t want to be them anymore. So we became Us instead, and after all that was a much better way of handling these things.
But somewhere in Oakland a little dog barked, most likely because Richard Rice was riding through the neighborhood on a flaming bicycle. “Richard,” we asked, “why is your bicycle aflame?” and he said , “That is so you will listen to what I have to say and take heed: from this day forth you must be the East Bay Merseyside All-Stars. With the word ‘Stars’ spelled out, not shorted-handed like this ‘*’. “Why, Richard, why?” we cried out. Some of us sort of liked the idea of short-handing it: *. “Because then you would be the East Bay Merseyside All-Asterisks!” he proclaimed, and we knew he was right.
And just because you asked so nicely, we are: Karen Imperial, Doug Jones, Paul Lynch, Jeannine Menger, Juli Moscovitz, and Bryan Uhlenbrock. We have several friends and if you like, you can be one too.
