About Me
In early 2006, Silver Ant Records decided to finally start reissuing some of the harder-to-come-by, way-out-of-print local Minnesota garage rock that they have in their personal vinyl collections, but didnt seem to be available to (or known by) anybody else--records by bands who put out maybe one album, but more often a 45 or two and then melted away. Great idea, right? Right.So, the execs at Silver Ant started voraciously re-tasting and sometimes completely devouring records from the late-60s thru mid-70s that were made by garage bands from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St.Paul) and the surrounding communities. This, as you may suspect, was and continues to be great fun. It also presented some real obstacles when at long last the label decided on some flagship reissues for their spanking new Silver Ant Reissues series.See, the problem is that a lot of these records were made in quantities of far fewer than a thousand, by upstart tiny labels with little or no distribution other than carrying the albums physically to the local shops and consigning them. To make matters more complicated, virtually all of these labels are long, long gone, leaving no clues how to track them down, really.Which brings us to the saga of Thee Vanilla Shoelace. The album, a release from (as far as anyone can tell) 1974, is endearing on so many levels, from its silly title "My Mother Says to Pick the Very Best One, And You Are Not It" emblazoned across its trippy hand-painted cover, to the squeeks and skronks and burbles of its cleverly slapdash and slipshod song arrangements, to the weird made up names of its members. But just beyond that blatantly psychedelic veneer is a wealth of very inventive poetry and consistently inescapable hooks.Since the address for the "Flour Power Records" label listed on the jacket brought researchers to what is now the Falafel King Restaurant at Lake Street & Lyndale Ave in Minneapolis, the hunt became ever more intriguing.
One of the Silver Ant guys had nicked this album from his older sister's collection way back in his gradeschool days, so the album was taken to her-- hoping to jog her memory. After the initial "you little shit, how many of my other records did you steal?!?", the sister in question was able to shed some light on the origins of the album:"Remember my friend Cassie? Her sister Brooke used to play the keyboards or something with them. This was back in the days when they used to have rock concerts on the 8th floor of Daytons department store downtown. And one night I went to one of those shows with Cassie to watch her sister play and, you know, make the scene. I remember there being a fairly elaborate light show and that it was the loudest music Id ever heard up until that point. Other than that, I dont recall a whole lot, other than seeing the guys hanging out at Cassies house now and then with her sister. Cassie and I were kind of in awe of them because they were musicians and stuff, and it was really cool that her sister was a part of that whole scene."It was concluded then that Cassies sister Brooke had to be the "Babbling Brook" credited with Farfisa on the album's back jacket. After a few weeks, Brooke was tracked down (after first having to discern Cassies current location) and confirmed that she had indeed been an on-again/off-again member of the band, played on much of the recorded material, and "kind of dated" a couple of the guys in the band:"Mom wouldn't let me go on the out-of-town trips, though," lamented Brooke, "with a van full of boys and everything, so I had to miss out on some of the fun."Brooke turned the fact-collectors' attention toward Patrick Stijlstaad, who, according to Brooke, carried one of the leadership roles in Thee Vanilla Shoelace. Stijlstaad was eventually traced to Van Nuys, California where today he works in a shop welding together mountain bike frames. When reached by telephone and asked if he knew anybody named Tricky Steed, there was a long pause, a longer fit of laughing, and an enthusiastic "You're talkin at him!"After getting over the shock and disbelief that somebody wanted to put out his band's 30+ year old album, he was very helpful and willing to participate.
As it turns out, Flour Power Records was run by one of Stijlstaad's many roommates at the time, a guy known simply as Pickle:
"Actually, as far as I know, our record is the only one he ever put out. He paid for it with money he made selling grass and acid to our friends. In fact," he says chuckling, "we probably paid for most of it ourselves, considering the amount of shit we were buying from him at the time!"So who is Pickle?
"I dont have a clue what his real name was. I asked somebody about that one time, and they told me that even his mother called him Pickle."
And the Lake and Lyndale address?
"Yeah, that was our address, our apartment was on the second floor of that building. We used to rehearse up there and stuff at night--I say 'apartment,' but what we had was a big room that was supposed to be a storage area...and we convinced the owner of the building that we were renting the space for one of the local mills to store equipment or something. Sent one of our straight-looking friends to sign a lease and shake hands and that jazz. There were about 8 or 10 of us permanently living there, with mattresses on the floor, eating a lot of black beans and brown rice and tripping our brains out. There was a water spigot and a large--what we used to call the slop sink--where we could wash up to some degree. There were always kids coming and going and crashing and whatnot. So, yeah, the name Flour Power came out of the fact that we were living somewhere under the guise of being employees of a General Mills or Pillsbury or something--I dont remember which lie we told--probably both!!"
Where was this album recorded?
"A recording studio!! (laughs) Thats about all I remember about it really. I remember yellow and orange striped carpet. And that we played most of it all live at the same time. And by the end, there were some fairly--um--heated arguments. We were under pressure to do it pretty fast. We didn't really have a shitpile of money to spend."
Can we reissue your album?
"Oh, fuck yes!! As long as you send me a copy!!"
