Finally, a newly recorded pet clam song, the first in half a decade.
This song has an interesting history. While going through tapes for this website, Gary found a damaged version of a home recording of a song he had forgotten. Written in the mid 80's (sometime between "songs from purgatory" and "the story of my life") it was a Dylanish continuation of "Highway 61". He e-mailed it to Gelbstein who didn't remember it at all. ("Who's that singing?" he asked.) It had been recorded on Applegate's little cassette 4-track around 85-86, with Gary on guitars and organ and harmonica, and Rich on vocal. This was seemingly the only existing copy and it was badly garbled. Applegate wanted to do a new version for history's sake (they try to keep copies of all their songs as you may have noticed) and he eventually got the rest of the Clams involved.
As Gary worked on it he began to remember the significance of the song. It was originally the title song of what became "the story of my life". Somehow it had been forgotten by the time the Damian sessions were started. Gary can't remember why, there had been plenty of time to record more material for the project, this seems to just have been forgotten. This memory was confirmed when the demo home-recorded version of "the story of my life" was found, containing a pristine, ungarbled, version of the tune.
By then, Applegate, Mario, and Gelb had finished their parts on a new version. A couple of weeks later Dave and Brian added their parts. So to set the mood... it's a day after they've promoted the third world war out on Highway 61...Meanwhile...