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EPILOGUE the long and winding roadIn the fall of 1999, I was in the process of cleaning out my basement, and wondered long and hard about dumping the many boxes of cassettes: old demos, 4-track masters, alternate mixes and alternate takes, etc. I'm probably the only person on the planet who could fully appreciate what most of that stuff was. Okay, maybe Derek Burch could, but I digress. Maybe if I'd become Paul McCartney, or at least, Rod Temperton— maybe then these dusty old boxes of tapes would have a greater meaning. Be a man! my pride demanded, and into the trash they went. More than a hundred cassettes, little pieces of me that no longer fit or, somehow, no longer mattered. Then I found the Ampex 456 seven-inch reels of mixes from Stop! Nita Marshal's demo, and Pandora's Box, the last Hollis Stone demo. There were also rehearsal tapes, crudely "restored," of New Witness II with Dinky Bingham and Qabid Hakim. In they went. Enough already. Why hold onto this stuff. Then, on my way to the curb with the garbage, out of the corner of my eye I glanced at the audio rack, where I remembered I had a CD burner and a DAT machine. For long moments, I glanced back and forth between the garbage, and the digital recorders. The garbage, the digital recorders. And, I thought, maybe, before I destroyed these tapes, I'd transfer them to a medium that would preserve them forever. Create the Hollis Stone Box Set, essentially for an audience of about twelve, and send them out as Christmas gifts to the old gang (or, as many of them as I could find). The tapes gained a brief reprieve, and a new obsession began.
This was a project I thought I'd devote a few days, maybe a week to. When I was finally done, I had devoted more than a month to combing through various takes and various recordings, looking for the best ones to commit to digital eternity. I did, however, resist the temptation to drag the old 8 and 24-track masters out and head to Denver to remix things from scratch. I may do that, ultimately, in the coming year as March, 2002, marks the 20th (yikes) anniversary of The Story of Us, so a reissue is likely at hand. Also, I am, ultimately, not pleased with the brutal EQ settings I used on the box set; my studio monitors were out and I moronically mastered everything using headphones.
But, ratty EQ notwithstanding, the final product, a four-CD set of songs spanning 13 years, was quite satisfying. And what a relief to no longer have to scramble around the house looking for tapes of this and that. It was all there, the good, the bad, and the worse. Everything but Preacher Man which, as I said, really was just that bad. I wasn't quite ready for the incalculable nostalgic emotional punch of the work. I've spent a lot of time listening and remembering people and places. What the room smelled like when we recorded certain things. Inner City Sound, in Brooklyn, had a ratty elevator that many of us were certain we'd die in some day. Meeting The Ramones at Planet Studios. Mike Theodore playing Lester's snare hits over and over and over and over and over. The grimly serious John Parker hunched over the Fender Rhodes working out precision solo licks on the opening bars of Sorry To Say. Some Guy I didn't know (there was always Some Guy hanging around) giving me The Stupid Face (that's him in the too-tight chinos standing behind singer Pearl Bates, below). I love how people with no money and no talent love to show up at your sessions that you are paying for and where you are hard at work and give you The Stupid Face.
I remember the day Yanick walked into the studio. Busy with details, I said hello or something in passing while being totally struck by her beauty but pretending not to notice because my best friend, James, was struggling to capture her attention. I came out of the control room to discover the girl had, within seconds, effected a complete change of clothing. It was one of those magical moments where I actually stopped obsessing about the session and wondered, aloud, how she managed that. Which, of course, was when I was introduced to her twin, Florence. Two people who became friends and then family, in a sense, and then family for real— this grace and miracle of irreducible proportions, some small piece of my otherwise tortured adolescence, the secret high school crush came to be sleeping by my side and planning her life with mine. Which, sadly, eventually led to the two friends eventually becoming just one friend and now no friends at all. But, wait as I blow the dust off this box of cassettes— there they are again, both of them, my friends. My secret crush, still here, and now with me always. The band down at the shore. The twins at the cookie shop. Dexter's pre-Fonzie cool. Waking up Danil, our engineer, to start a session. Karen playfully distracting everyone to the point where I wanted to send her home. Tyrone (seated, above) who, for all we know, beamed up to the mothership. And, everything else going on in my life over those years. Suddenly, this trash had become a precious set of memories. A visceral reflection of a life's journey from childhood to whatever I am now. At 19 (above), I had no idea at all that this gang of high schoolers in that tiny studio would come to represent (gasps audibly) the best years of my life. I am beginning my journey through my 40's, now. A great many friends tell me the 40's are actually the best years because you still have some of the vigor of your youth while also possessing a greater sense of clarity and perspective. 19 year-olds have precious little perspective on anything, but now, at 40, I can look back and see opportunities missed, mistakes made, and all the many choices, good and bad. I'm a smarter man now. A more patient man. A saner man, ruled less by his passion and more by his intellect. I've given myself permission to be me, which is an Oprah-ism for self-acceptance. As kids, as adolescents, we are constantly striving to become something, often without realizing or embracing the idea of who we already are. I've made peace with the man I already are. I've stopped raging at myself and blaming myself for not being "normal," because "normal" is, by and large, a lie. A horrible thing to inflict on people. This is music I could never make today and could never make again because I'm not nearly as twisted about things. My rage has become a quiet amusement. I have acquired, somehow, the spirit of acceptance where I accept people more at wherever they are, rather than argue endlessly to convert someone to my way of thinking. Maybe all the anger, all the angst of youth, in my case played out on four CD's here, was an inextricable part of that process. The songs here are not the best songs, not the best recorded or even best mastered music anyone's ever heard. But it's us. It's our lives, in an open book. One I am now grateful beyond measure to hold onto.
By the fall of 1993, I’d begun the legal process for changing my last name and, in so doing, burying Hollis Stone for good. Christopher Priest’s name appeared on the concert program for Minister Darryl Cherry & The Covenant Mass Choir Live! but no one in the choir knew who he was. Priest is a different guy from Hollis Stone. I'm not certain he's a nicer guy, but Priest is certainly more aware of who he is. I've taken a lot of heat and a lot of ribbing over the years about the name change, which I find curious. The name change in and of itself became a ministering tool too me, showing me that, by and large, most people are horribly immature, have poor impulse control, and are frightened by change. Women change their names all the time, but for a man to convert to Islam and change his name is to invite ridicule. Most every significant person in the bible who accomplished anything at all for God experienced a conversion and an attendant name change. Moses became Israel. Saul became Paul. Emmanuel is also called Jesus. Jettisoning a name I never embraced and one that was never truly my own to begin with seemed a reasonable thing to do, a hallmark of the change in life represented by the end of my marriage. The material I've included beyond the canonical four discs are projects that would have had Priest's name on them. The New Witness III guide tracks are here more or less because it was the only body of musical work not represented in the set. My contribution to the Covenant recording was more technical than creative, but the many sacrifices and dedication I showed to the choir and the project earns me some small pride of authorship that gets the disc included here. Covenant was also the last thing I have, to date, recorded. Now I use the 1204 board primarily for my radio show here in the Springs. I play keyboards (which I hate) at a couple of churches. The last time I tried a New Witness-like group was a community choir named Riverside, which I disbanded because the young people involved just weren’t very spiritual, had no anointing, and weren’t dedicated. This is a chronic problem out here in Shangri-La, life is so slow and easy here that it’s extremely difficult to get anyone to commit to anything. There’s nobody here at all who is anything like those dedicated boys from New Witness. There’s no Derek Burch here, who’d come over with his latest contraption and just start playing. There’s no John Parker, who just lived to play music. There’s no Qabid Hakim here, who can swing through the thickest funk and immediately play bluegrass or Chopin. There certainly is no William Wallace here, a guy who just loved music so much, he infected everyone around him. And, with the writing of these words, there is no Hollis Stone. Hollis Stone will not be appearing anywhere ever again. Frankly, I no longer need him. Hopefully, this compilation will achieve a kind of closure. These days I’m more of a solo act, content to occasionally hire sidemen and go do my solo thing. It’s certainly possible someday I’ll get back to the recording thing— my vision of a self-contained music industry with independent publishing and local distribution— remains. I just need to find the time to do it, and find enough people to actually care about it and want to participate. Like Streetwise, this compilation is being released to an audience of about twelve. Oh, I have lots of friends who want copies so they can kind of skip through the discs and giggle at me, but in terms of people who will cherish this compilation? Yeah, maybe a dozen. To those dozen folks, this was our story. And we had the time of our lives. Christopher J. Priest
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