Tad and I had moved to San Francisco after college graduation at Antioch in June and July 1973, the goal to "make it" there with our music. We auditioned all over the city in coffee shops and bars, including one then-folk-music drinkery called Holy City Zoo in the Richmond District, where Robin Williams would later hone his stand-up skills.

Never quite achieving superstardom, we abandoned the duo-acoustic guitars lineup that autumn for a rock-jazz-salsa format, rehearsing in an artists and musicians conclave called Project One, located south of Market, and performing several times in a bar called Demon Rum.

By the Spring of 1974, Tad and his girlfriend decided to leave SF and head back East. Before they left, he and I returned to our acoustic-guitar roots and spent a few days in May recording both finished and unfinished songs in a Project One bedroom resided by a fellow named Steve Thiel. For reasons long forgotten, we called his room "Jack's Studio."

"La La Song" was one of the unfinished tunes. All Tad's, there was one section he had composed in the Winter of '73 that then later that September had been incorporated into a kitchen-sink composition called "Set These Broken Eyes." By May '74, it had finally found its rightful place here.

What the song lacked at the time was lyrics, so "La la" served as placeholders.

Steve Thiel owned a Revox reel-to-reel tape recorder, which had a "sound-on-sound" feature: One could record onto one track, then transfer that track to another while overdubbing new content. Then transfer that second track back to the first with another overdub, and on and on. The challenge was maintaining the sonic quality as the recordings passed from one generation to another.

That's how "La La Song" was captured on tape. After recording "Army of Ants" that same day,* we first taped our guitars and vocals onto Track 1. Then added second vocals on Track 2, and then, finally, a third set of vocals back to Track 1.

Tad left the city a few weeks later, and there the recording sat for the next 49 years, the lyrics never written. Digitized and processed in 2002.

Enjoy.

Note: The music snippet during the closing credits comes from one of the September '73 home recording takes of "Set These Broken Eyes."

*"Army of Ants" is uploaded here:    • Tad Lathrop & Don Giller, "Army of Ants"