BEAUTIFUL LOSERS (2001)

Musician Line-up:

Lora Bloom - Vocals
Caleb Cliff - Bass
Steve Murtaugh - Guitars
Matt Stevenson - keyboards, electronics
Sean Wholey - Drums

Recorded and mixed by Steve Murtaugh with Matt Stevenson
Cover Art by Linda Baris -

Track Listings:

1: Dead Hands
2: Revol
3: Philadelphia Kiss-Off
4: Julie
5: Gutterstars
6: Coffee
7: Television
8: Experiments + Clown Girl

Getting a little head of ourselves here…

So Steve Murtaugh re-appeared. Steve is a highly talented guitarist who'd played with a number of bands, doing punk with Corrupt Justin (their "Eyes Have Sunk To The Back Of My Head" is a favorite of mine), prog rock with Plastic Ash, and psychedelic rock with Steve Zimmerman in The Great Glass Elevator.

Steve and Steve Z had decided to start a label, and were looking for material to release via the newfound Orange Entropy Records. Steve had heard the four track efforts (and contributed a to a few) and "signed" us. I regretfully committed myself to mixdowns of SEAN'S and LORALAII (having to re-record a few damaged parts on the latter, incorporating samples of some major artists who could sue the pants off me if they knew…maybe), Steve mixed & mastered them and then informed us we were booked as part of an Orange Entropy showcase at the reknowned (in the '80s and '90s) New Jersey venue City Gardens. It was at this very venue that I saw Sonic Youth for the first time. Jane's Addiction and Iggy Pop both played this stage…and it was the home for the debut of Radio Eris.

In rehearsals for the show, Steve in essence joined the band and we came up with a handful of replicable riffs and songs. Steve's sense of melody and structure were invaluable in the formation of the band. We recruited a drummer for the one gig and had a great time. A small coterie of underage Jersey punk girls were stunned by Lora's raw emotion and the surging noise underneath. Our drummer was hit on by a much older woman sitting at the bar. We were off.

We lost Derek the drummer right away, but added Caleb Cliff on bass, and Lora recruited her neighbor, painter Sean Wholey, as a drummer. We rehearsed, wrote, and gigged around Philly and Jersey for a year. Eventually, things jelled to the point that Steve set up his basement as an ad-hoc studio and we recorded BEAUTIFUL LOSERS sometime in 2000.

LOSERS got its title from Leonard Cohen's novel. It refers to the admixture of ugly and beautiful, signal and noise, melody and skronk, sacred and profane that makes up the band's thematic and aesthetic core.

We played out on the LOSERS material for years. "Experiments -> Clown Girl" was notorious for ending nights; we rarely got to the "Clown Girl" part without the lights coming up on our set (Sorry, Khyber Pass!).

However - trouble came. We lost Caleb to the West Coast, and Sean to painting. Steve quit, rejoined, quit again…possibly rejoined & quit again, my memory fades. I had to get the master tracks from Steve and finish the mix, which now makes me wince. The album was finalized in 2001. -Matt