Power is what brought Motorsoft to Harlem to record this album-the power hidden in a six-story building at Broadway and 133rd Street that was one of the quiet freaks of the Quarantine. Taken from the outside, it was just one of many unassuming ruins lining the collapsed tracks of the 1/9 subway line. Inside, however, it had a secret: Electricity. In the wires that ran through the walls and into every socket, there was juice. Unlike buildings downtown that'd light up for an hour or a day and then go dark for months, 3280 Broadway had a steady surge. It powered Motorsoft's amps, lit the 24-track console, and spun the 2-inch tape reels of the Otari MTR-9011. Producer Walter Martin, also of the Walkmen, made the discovery one spring afternoon. He recalls the find in his memoirs, "A Life of Compromise": "Before the Quarantine some dearly departed friends of mine had built a recording studio in the building. I was out of 2-inch tape, so I went up there looking for it ... As soon I entered the lobby, I felt something was different about the building. The elevator door was open; the carriage was rattling. My first thought was that the city was under some fresh attack. My second thought (after a minute crouched in the corner praying to my own personal god for deliverance) was "POWER!" The elevator didn't work, but it was electricity that was making it rattleü To this day I don't know why the building still had it-I was too thankful to explore, and I figured I'd lose the current if I got too curious." "Current" was all Martin needed to sell Motorsoft on the idea of making the trip uptown. Recording downtown meant a small fortune in gasoline for generators that often didn't make it through a take. Electricity would allow Motorsoft to wait for the right performance, the freedom to toil over the final mix. Of course, it also meant a trek underground crossing Lenape Territory, which was anywhere from a one- to four-hour commute, depending on whether the Length Train was running well or not. This also forced the band members to spend nights in the studio when their sessions ran late; they were repeatedly terrorized by a far-flung pack of Squatters who took issue with their presence. That Motorsoft could even make the trip is a luxury of the past. These days, going above 23rd Street is an adventure. Thanks to the Repatriation Massacre, we've been stranded with a bad case of nerves; and where once there were 100,000 Squatters, now there are 50,000, all packed into the Stuyvesant Town brick-boxes that are passed off as suitable shelter from the storm. It's a common complaint, I know, but I used to have a 10,000 square foot loft in the Puck Building, with high windows and a clear view of the Empire State. Now I write these words in a studio apartment as two ill-tempered Squatters fight loudly over rations in the studio next door. Still, I'm thankful to be in the city at all-and, for that matter, alive. It's a better hand than was dealt two of the five members of Motorsoft. Bassist Gibb Slife was last seen being pushed into an armored transport on the Queens side of the river. And front-man Rockwell Coady's blue, bloated corpse washed up on the banks of the East River-a victim of the stampedes on Roosevelt Island, once the continental thugs began closing in on us for a happy afternoon of repatriating Strays. There's talk of exhuming Rockwell for a proper funeral, but no one even knows where the thugs planted his body. The romance of the city, the happy epoch-hunt of which Motorsoft was such a big part, has gone sour. That would make it easy for these liner notes to become a eulogy, a sermon, or a soul-searching waste of paper. Let's stick to the tracks instead. The tracks are the real survivors. I'm splitting the album into two sides. I'm not sure how the material will be released, whether it will be in dubbed cassette tape format or played live off the 2-inch tape; but there are clearly two sides to the work. The first side has been so often bootlegged from Motorsoft concerts, it's basically a collection of singles. The second side is a cycle of songs, a mini-rock opera. And so now, Strays and Squatters alike, allow me to introduce to you This was the first song Motorsoft worked on and, according to pages in Rockwell's diary, it's the song the band members clicked on: "I was nervous. I felt they might cast a weary eye on my Premonitions days and think me too much Soft, not enough Motor. But today we were working up a new song ("Hexodus"), and Danny and Gibb pulled a great fill after I hit the open chord. From just that single, little moment, I can tell that it's going to fly. The only question now is, ÇFor who and what are we working up these songs?'" Rockwell often denied it, but this one is rumored to be an ode to his long-lost friendship with master engineer Rafael Allenhandre. Indeed, they had a publicized falling out after their mutual pursuit of cabaret singer Vash Langly. But if you become too immersed in speculation and subtext, you lose sight of the performances. Slife's bass is inspired, Leo's drums are driving, and Rockwell's voice is steadily unsteady-genuine in some moments, cheeky in others. Back in our innocent days, we thought the Dancing Bears were units of reformed Drabbits that scoured the abandoned supermarkets of Lower Long Island to bring back niceties to the Quarantine. Now we know they were just an invention of the same rogue journalist who has left us stuffed in the Stuyvesant boxes. Now we know that their fearless leader Piotr Paval was actually a fearless sham-a fact that would be hopelessly dated were it not for the realization tucked into the song's climax. Quite an effective theme song for the band: haughty, fist-pumping, dark, comic, prophetic, and lumbering. The guitar track features a Morley Phaser effect pedal, an item rare enough that a complete collection of Bauhaus vinyls were handed over just to rent it for a few days. Marike Daimaus plays the classical guitar line on the middle. An interesting piece of trivia about the song: The lyric "we're getting rations/above our station" prompted the Rations Commission to investigate the band. This is the only pre-Motorsoft, pre-Quarantined Rockwell Coady track on the album. It was the first cut of his Premonitions CD and was much helped by a video featuring Rockwell dancing in New York City traffic (back when New York had traffic). The speech at the end certainly dates the track as pre-Quarantine-"Motorsoft" was dubbed over "Rockwell." Naturally, any question of copyright has long ceased to be a player in our reality. This song is unquestionably about Rafael Allehandre, and Rockwell's animus towards him is laid bare. Whereas journalists and playwrights lionized Allehandre in the wake of his transcontinental flop, Rockwell took him to task: "Do you remember mighty Rafael/who flew over so low he never fell/and unleashed upon us a fiery hell." Still, you must have some affection for such a beautiful loser. Rafael is actually the ideal Motorsoft anti-hero-a dark talent seeking an adrenaline-fueled personal apocalypse at any cost-which makes "Transcontinental" the perfect song to turn us over to the second side. Rockwell became fascinated with the Great Lull in the last few months of his life. Though it's been eclipsed by subsequent events, the Great Lull was a ten-month span when nothing, but nothing, happened in the Quarantine. It was, in other words, the Age of Boredom. It's barely a footnote now, but it was the full-blown crisis of its time. Our city (pop. 107,363, according to the first and only count) began to lose listless Squatters as they trickled into the Hudson Tunnel bound for the Repatriation Center in Newark. I myself had doubts, and can recall many afternoons whiled away in coffeehouse conversations about imminent continental invasion, working myself into a froth of dark visions. I wouldn't have been so hot for action had I known what was to come. According to Danny Leo, Rockwell was most fascinated by the Squatters' insatiable appetite for the shit storm. As is apparent by his lyrics, he felt this left us vulnerable to manipulation. Let's not even get into how prophetic that was. Again, let's stick to the songs. , penned by the Damhaius/Slife, sets the mood for a near-empty city that's fully empty of action. The title is either a reference to Manhattan's original inhabitants, the Lenape Tribe; or our more recent neighbors, the Lenape Real Estate Holding Company and its German mercenaries populating midtown. The song's strength is that it works for either, and captures the kind of quiet (read: ennui) that's longing to be broken. is that break, or at least the first cracks growing in the fa¬ade. Here comes the angry realization that perhaps all is not right with the world, that the life of a Squatter is not such a hot lot anymore. "Scream, I dare you, but we've heard that one before," declares the poet Neverest-who, having experienced a famously extended case of writer's block, must know how it feels to have all the inspiration at hand but none of the spark. summons the spark. This is the heart of the song cycle and captures the vulnerability of idle hands: "Lust for Strife/brandished knife/let me get there straight/you're all dressed up and ready for fate-go ahead, push the gate!" Rockwell's vocal tone is both pandering and mocking. Here he's playing the huckster, conjuring a riot that from which he will immediately distance himself-and subsequently judge harshly. You can almost hear the flicker in his eyes during the chorus; this is the sound of a rogue scientist who can't resist the results of his laboratory, no matter how sinister. ushers in those sinister results. Now the crowd is making news, not waiting for it. While Motorsoft's musical literalism is used for cheeky effect in "Dancing Bears," here it's wielded like a weapon-and not just in the climax, brilliantly accented by Stern's tapping, but also in the song's lulls. Some news, some tragedy, is to be expected (as "Lust for Strife" explains, "Because we need the tragedy like the Eskimos need the ice"). And since no news is frightening, it's better to make your own-never mind that there's nothing at the heart of it besides the beating heart itself. Enter, my friends, the Deliverance. is the fast crash following the adrenaline high. The frenzy remains, but it goes into slow motion. The consequences are felt. There's still rage, the lust for strife, but now comes remorse, too. Worse yet, there's an addiction to heightened circumstances: "I will find you where you breathe/where you are brave and free/I will find you we will leave. You will not wake for long/for the curtain to be drawn/for the show must go down." Rockwell claimed to have been the target of multiple abductions by an oblong spaceship with a blue whale-like underbelly. He spoke-mostly when drunk-of an alien who lived in his (sizable enough to accommodate) stomach and dictated his lyrics to him. Confronted in sober hours with this claim, Rockwell's response was typical: "These days I half-believe everything, with a vengeance." And so a case could also be made that "Light A Candle" is an abduction ode. "It is and it's not," Rockwell might say, "depending on whether you've been abducted or not, and how many times, and whether there's any difference, anyway." is a posthumously included track (as is clear from the title's reference to the Repatriation Massacre). The organ piece is from an intro to a song Rockwell was working on at the time of his death. No doubt many critics will say that it undermines the cohesion of the opera; I believe it works as a dark fanfare leading to the eulogy is the funeral for the frenzy. Feel the unalloyed remorse-the adrenaline has been drained out of the public body. Daimhaus' breathy, ghostly tone is all the more compelling when you take into account that her husband Slife has been missing since the Repatriation Massacre: "I once had a man, but my man, didn't go as planned." It must be noted that there are gaps in the song cycle. There are rumors of a lost 2-inch reel with four songs, including the love song "Don't Give Up the Ship" and a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Like A Bird on the Wire." Maybe that reel will resurface someday. There is also video footage shot by the band that will be pieced together if/when sufficient resources can be scraped together. So we're left with an unfinished work. There's no way to resurrect Rockwell, no way to free Slife from the continent. Leo, Stern and Daimhaus have regrouped as a trio under the name "The Motorsofties." There have been Rockwell sightings, both in spirit and corporal form, around town; but the truth is, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Motorsoft is no more and it Çtwas ever thus. I'd like to end these notes with something I read the other day. As I'm sure you're aware, the confessions of Conrad McGowan, former governor of Downtown, are on display in the lobbies of Buildings Three and Nine of Stuyvesant Town. I encourage you to visit them. We are, after all, his jury, and he has a compelling story to tell. One passage, in particular, struck me. It reads as follows: I suppose a life on the continental was bearable if it was all you knew. Maybe it was all right if you were born there, or if you'd exited the city before the Quarantine was raised; but we Squatters had experienced something sweeter. It was a life that was sometimes so cold in the winter that we were forced into communal sleeping rooms (sounds sexy, sure, until you get a case of the fleas); a life that kept us up at night when the rats of Broome Street got numerous and bold, or when the Puglies of Lower Orchard grew curious about what riches might be hidden in the floorboards of our lofts. But it was a free life. There were forks in the road, decisions to be made, good fortune to be gloated over and bad paths to be followed. And yes, having gone down such a bad path, you might even end up as I am, disgraced-but free to explain. That's how I think of this album-minus the disgrace, of course. This album is the survivor. Motorsoft is gone, but the tracks hint at what the band once was, what it hoped for, what dark visions kept its members turning their volume knobs to the right. The songs are a record of five Squatters attempting to register with posterity. Long let them reign. -Robert E. Odlum Copyright © 2003 Siege Six