Vacate

Phil Bonnet (our guitarist for the entirety of the '90s) and I are talking at Solid Sound (the studio where he'd become quite beloved, engineering a multitude of bands), as Cheer-Accident take a break from recording the basic tracks for "Salad Days". Phil is very excited to have recently gotten his hands on the Burt Bacharach box set, and we are listening to it in the control room. As we sit there together, blissing out, he looks over at me and says, "I never use this word, but he's a...  (pause)...  (sheepishly)... genius." But Phil was not merely "our guitarist" or "our engineer" - he was also a dear, dear friend. How perfect was it that Phil and I were in a dissonant / abrasive / aggressive rock band together, and yet our strongest convergence was in the area of "easy listening"? Indeed all four members of this '90s incarnation of Cheer-Accident shared a deep passion for this music, and there were murmurs of dedicating an entire album to this genre.