True Facts (the liner notes to Something Quick – updated a bit with Revenge info at the end)

Something Quick was originally released by GMR on cassette in 1986. This edition is remastered and restored to full glory, with 6 bonus tracks added. Why put out this old pre-grunge Seattle stuff now? Easy. It rocks like the devil himself.

James and Kip have been friends since they were wee lads growing up together in Bellevue, Washington, a Seattle ‘burb (some of the Queen Annes gear still bears the proud insignia of Bellevue School District, where all Q.A. members past and present are alums). A lifelong friendship based on appreciation of great music began. Young James devised a crude drum kit from a wastebasket and a stout cardboard box and practiced along to his favorite records by the Stones, Who and Zeppelin. Meanwhile, Kip had started taking up the guitar. They played together casually for the next several years while playing in other bands. James had become an impressively smashing drummer and cut his teeth gigging with The Cheaters, masterminded by Kurt and Al Bloch. Yes, Kurt of the Fastbacks and Fellows. Yes, Al of Concrete Blonde and Wool. No, James did not play on The Cheaters single. Kip played in bands with Paul Hood (Meyce/Toiling Midgets) and Greg Ragen.

Kip and James decided it was time at last to form The Queen Annes. They got Toby to play bass and a guy named Lance Taft to play guitar. Their first recording effort was the marvelous cassette single included here, “Secret Agent Kid” b/w “Mary” which they recorded with Doug Rayburn of Pavlov’s Dog somewhere or the other in West Seattle. Not many people heard it. They shared a rehearsal space with NW punk legends the Fartz, which was as unpleasant as one might imagine. The original line-up performed to a packed house at the Bellevue Community College Student Union, thus beginning a long reign of good luck with all-ages concert settings. It was time for a singer.

TO’C: Kip and I met in a class called instrumental workshop at Bellevue High School. James played in all the school bands and was already playing shows with various bands including the Cheaters. He was already sort of a rock star to me. He wore leather and drove a Cutlass convertible. If someone streaked on campus he was the first one called into the principal’s office even if he was innocent. The first time I saw The Queen Annes, they played as a trio at a pool party before hiring my buddy Lance Taft as a guitarist. The second time I saw them was at Bellevue Community College at the Strawberry Jam Festival with Mr. Epp and the Calculations. Mr. Epp were awful (as intended! – td) but the Queen Annes were awesome until James fell through the plate glass window behind his drum kit. I had just got back from England where I witnessed punk rockers for the first time and the Queen Annes embraced a lot of that same energy. I was smitten. When Lance learned that the boys were considering hiring a singer he suggested I should audition which was fun, but I didn’t hear back from anyone until I was at the 1980 Rolling Stones concert at the Kingdome. I ran into Kip who informed me I got the job. I was thrilled to see the Stones and get into a cool band all in the same day. Kip and James wrote songs both collaboratively and separately and they were absolutely sure how they wanted the songs sung. They were taskmasters and I quickly grew to appreciate their perfectionism.

After two months of grueling rehearsals, the new line-up emerged good friends and a tight, energy-packed unit.

Around that time Kip and James were evicted from their duplex for throwing television sets off the second story balcony. On that same day, Tom spotted a big old pink house in an alley on Capitol Hill with a “For Rent” sign in the window. He called James, who rushed over, took one look at the dilapidated mansion and called the number in the window. Everyone agrees Earl T. Ball must regret the day he picked up the phone and rented his house to The Queen Annes and their entourage of punks, hippies, girlfriends, groupies, bums, strangers, hanger-ons and ne’er do wells who inhabited it for most of the 1980s. The party never stopped. After a few months, the conventional living room was scrapped to make way for a bar that was built for easy keg access. When they were done with their set they would bring most of the audience home for a keg, leaving the headliners to fend for themselves without an audience. Every room at the pink house had a turntable; here is a cross section of what  would be spinning; The Jam, The Clash, Bowie, Stiff Little Fingers, The Pretenders, Prince, Bebop Deluxe, Blondie, The Replacements, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, The Stones, The Beach Boys, Big Star, and tons more.

Through the pink house door (when it was on its hinges), piled throngs eager to party with The Queen Annes, including members of Seattle’s culty Love Family (a.k.a. Church of Jesus Christ at Armageddon), Duran Duran, Guns’n’Roses, and local punks the Bopo Boys, who were all sent home crying to mama with wicked hangovers (Bopo Boys? read about ’em in Stephan Tow’s “The Strangest Tribe: How A Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge”).

The lads secured shows with NW spawn like The Heats, Moberleys, Fastbacks, Silly Killers, Refuzors, Miracle Workers and touring dudes like the Three O’Clock. Venturing into the great Northwest, The Queen Annes had heavy pockets of fans in both Bellingham and Portland. They would often show up half an hour before they were scheduled to play at Lake Hills Skate Center battle of the bands. This would infuriate the roadies of quasi-metal bands including Rail, Kidskin, TKO, Myth and Hellion who had been at the venue all day loading in trucks of Marshall amps and quadruple bass drum sets. The boys would set up their gear in fifteen minutes, and at first their small amps and Ringo style drum kit seemed dwarfed by the stacks around them, but when they started to play, they were just as damn loud and powerful as the metal dudes.

Playing in bars was where it was at for the band. Although performances were arranged at all the clubs and taverns in the area, the band opted to concentrate its efforts on playing shows where the fans under 21 could attend. This led the group to produce twenty shows at the U.C.T. Hall in Seattle during the mid-eighties. This venue proved to be valuable to the band because they assumed complete control over every aspect of the productions, served beer to minors, turned them on to punk rock, and then could watch them destroy the place. The hall would always be secured for two days so the band could repair the evening’s damages.

KP: Craziest show number one might be the night we opened for Myth at the Showbox.  Myth would later become Queensryche.  The show was poorly attended, but after we played someone approached us and asked us if we would play at a party nearby. It turned out that the party was for a bunch of high-end escort girls, one of whom was a girl named Mary, coincidentally the girl who inspired the song Mary. I had met her some years earlier at a party – it was the first song I ever wrote. TO’C: The craziest -Polish Hall with the Fastbacks and the Fartz. There was a lot of blood everywhere.

GMR Prez Tom Dyer became interested in the group and started recording them in 1983. From the earliest of these sessions comes the single the single “I Thought of You/This Is That” which was named #65 on the NW All-Time Top 100 in The Rocket magazine in 1988 or so. (“I Thought of You” in included here, “This is That” is a bonus download track – why? We like the 4 track version better and used it!). The single was recorded at then-trendy Triangle Studios with The Enemy’s Peter Barnes engineering. The band felt much more comfortable when they started recording in the cozy confines of Tom’s basement studio where the Something Quick sessions were produced, with Dyer engineering. The first sessions were recorded on 4-track reel-to-reel – “I Could Tell You” was included on the first ever Green Monkey release a cassette comp called “Local Product.” The studio was upgraded to 8-tracks for the rest of the tunes featured here.  

Between the two sessions, Toby Keil left the band to move to LA and join the Moberlys with Jim Basnight. John Carey(who is the brains behind Roslyn geniuses and current GMR artists, The OF) was brought on board to replace him and has been there ever since. KP: When Toby quit to join the Moberlys we were slowed down for a while.  Pete Dempsey was our temporary bass player but we found a better fit with John who was playing with The World Outside.  We had played a gig with them outside Swenson’s ice cream in Bellevue.  We saw him at a party we were playing and asked him to join the band. TO’C: I would see John walking around Bellevue with an acoustic guitar and I saw one of his bands at a party. Over a couple of beers in a park I convinced John we needed him as our permanent guy and he agreed.

It should also be noted that the harp player on these recordings is their longtime pal Lightning Joe. KP: We played at a party at Joe’s house in Bellevue for his birthday, when his parents were out of town, and we did a blazing rendition of Jimi Hendrix’ Red House,  the only blues number in our repertoire,  and Joe being a big blues fan started playing with us.  The harp was a nice addition in a band that was essentially a power trio with a singer. TO’C: Joe would do a lot for our band including play harp. He was always making whatever makeshift stage we had look good with lights, sirens and smoke.

Since the 80’s the Queen Annes have been an off and on proposition. In 1994 they to recorded tracks for what would become “The Mire” album in 1997 (available from Vagrant Records) in John Carey’s barn in Roslyn. Also in ‘97 they recorded a new album Revenge with Erik 4-A, which still awaits a proper release.

After a hiatus, in 2009 they “got the band back together” to play the record release party for The Green Monkey Records Anthology: It Crawled From The Basement. They were great. They still play occasionally, both as themselves and as their alter ego blues band, Last of the Steam Powered Trains. TO’C: The Steams are a blues band in the tradition of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated. I think it is an effort to keep the blues alive – Kip can actually sing these songs. KP: Last of the Steam Powered Trains started as my pet project – always wanted to start a blues, blues rock band.  This type of music is a sort of obsession of mine.  We are having a blast. 

In 2013 they recorded a version of Roy Wood’s I Wish It Was Christmas Every Day for Green Monkey’s annual Christmas album. They are considering finally releasing Revenge in the not distant future.

Update! Revenge was retitled Released and released in 2016.