“Gentlemen”

“Reviewing Gentlemen in March 1994 for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau applauded the raw recording quality and wrote:

Those conflicted guitars are a direct function of the singer-writer-producer-guitarist’s agonized self-exposure/-examination. If the album wears down into covers and instrumentals, that’s only to signify its spiritual exhaustion. No reason to trust him–just his brain selling his ass at a higher convolution. But anyone susceptible to simpler lines, as fisherman or prey, can learn plenty. And the jaded can appreciate the clean, snakelike trajectory of the cast.

The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2010)“

Right before I went into Basic Training, I bought this and Alice In Chains’ “Jar Of Flies” on cassette sound unheard. I just went into Plan 9 on Cary Street and paid for two that looked promising.

I had a Walkman type cassette player and listened to the music on the ride to the airport in Richmond, then on the flight to Atlanta, then during the layover while we waited for our bus to arrive to take us to Fort Benning.

Upon arrival there they line you up and yell at you and tell you to turn over all “contraband,” including cigarettes, drugs, gum, lighters, cassette tape players and recorded music. Then they warned you about what happened if they

I really didn’t feel like turning my tunes in so I kept them and hoped for the best. When we finally got to the barracks where we’d train and live for three months, I found an old metal and fake wood sock drawer and shoved them way back in the space between where the drawer stopped and where the back of the piece of furniture began. And there they stayed for three months, until the week we were to graduate we were told we could retrieve our personal belongings in preparation for moving out of the barracks.

My bed was the very last one in the barracks bay and was near the showers. I used that to my advantage many a time when a Drill Sergeant would burst into the bay and demand we do pushups. He usually stayed near the front of the barracks bay and really couldn’t see me all the way down at the far end.

So while everyone else was doing actual pushups, me and the recruit across from me would get on our hands and knees and pretend to do full pushups while making exaggerated groaning noises and grimacing faces. Occasionally, when the Drill Sergeant’s back was turned, we’d throw each other a wink and begin cracking up.

That final week, I’d hide near my wall locker and sit down against the wall, before putting on the black foam headphones to my cassette player and I’d listen to my two cassettes over and over, enjoying the music of which I had been so long deprived.