Collecting studio and live recordings, hit singles that never were, and enticing stray oddities all conceived in the span of one fecund year, 1983 chronicles the life and sonic adventure of the Torn Boys, a Stockton, California band comprising future members of Shiva Burlesque, Gary Young’s Hospital and Grant Lee Buffalo. It is, in fact, the first ever release from a group made for cultdom. Formed in late ‘82 by Jeffrey Clark and Kelly Foley, the Torn Boys soon welcomed Duncan Atkinson and then nineteen-year-old Grant-Lee Phillips into their ranks. At once urgent and literate, their recordings fend off basic categorization, conjuring the darker corners of neo-psychedelic California, infusing New Wave-era sensibilities with the moodier angle of home-grown, art-punk-surrealism.
Formed in 1982 by Jeffrey Clark (vocals, electric guitar) and Kelly Foley (vocals, acoustic guitar) and disbanded by late 1983, the Torn Boys lived out their one and a half summers fusing dreamscape lyricism with ultra-’80’s synth rhythms and “Fripp meets Carl Perkins” electric guitar textures, leaving behind a scant recorded legacy before dissolving like the afternoon fog of their Stockton, CA home.
Now emerging from that mythical mist for the first time is 1983, a comprehensive selection of studio and live recordings, hit singles that never were and enticing stray oddities.
Clark and Foley had been doing various projects together since they were teenagers, recording Dada-esque radio plays on cassette tape, making stoney Super-8 films and generally trying to stay out of trouble. In ’82, while Foley was also playing in a local avant-garage group called CRLLL, he and Clark began gigging at parties, small clubs and cafes, performing acoustic versions of songs by Television and the Velvet Underground, along with a handful of originals and an oddball cover of Mack the Knife.
Friend and local musician Duncan Atkinson volunteered to record a few demos for the duo, as well as act as sound engineer, but was soon programming his Pro One synthesizer and drum machine for their live performances. By now this included weekend stints at Stockton’s Blackwater Cafe, where the duo-turned-trio was now officially booked as the Torn Boys, and an avid following began to gather.
Honing his songwriting skills, Clark forged a primitive, three-stringed descending riff with acidy, stream of consciousness lyrics to create See Through My Eyes. A dog-eared thrift store copy of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, overlayed with some Everly Brothers-style harmonies by Clark and Foley were given a motorik beat by Atkinson to bring forth Fountain of Blood.
With each live performances the Torn Boys drifted further (and louder) from their acoustic cafe origins. A stint by CRLLL guitarist Paul “Klaus” Ghidossi (notorious around town for performing in a shabby clown suit) lasted only a shambolic gig or two, but in the Spring of ’83 nineteen year old Grant-Lee Phillips (lately of local group Bloody Holly) was recruited on lead guitar, where his “Chet Atkins-plays-Scary Monsters”-influenced sound added an indelible and unique ingredient to the band’s alchemy.
Phillips describes his encounter with Clark and Foley as pivotal: “…what Jeff and Kelly were doing, you just didn’t see that kind of thing happening in Stockton… so we connected right away over a mutual obsession with the alluring fringes of music, art and film”.
An in-studio college radio performance at UC Davis that May captured this final version of the Torn Boys at their most hypnotic and dynamic (as two of this release’s tracks, Mystery and Mack the Knife perfectly prove).
In the Fall of ’83 Phillips relocated to Los Angeles, joined soon after by Clark, where the two went on to form Shiva Burlesque. Atkinson carried on locally as a guitarist and sound engineer, and Foley, a visual artist as well as a nexus of an unusually fertile music scene in Stockton, continued to perform with a number of other groups, including Broken Toys, Toadstool Theatre and Gary Young’s Hospital.
This numbered special edition CD is packaged in IPR's unique oversized die cut CD jacket printed in full color by offset lithography with an additional letterpress run in metallic ink and includes a full-color 24-page booklet with song lyrics and photos, plus a bonus DVD containing four song videos including one live video of the Torn Boys performing the song Lady Luck.
Track List: 1983
1. See Through My Eyes
2. Radio Intro
3. Mystery Live, KDVS
4. Fountain of Blood
5. New Drums
6. May Day
7. Mack the Knife (Live, KDVS)
8. Torn
9. And Now (Live, Blackwater Café)
10. Lady Luck
Track List: Bonus DVD
1. See Through My Eyes
2. Lady Luck
3. May Day
4. Fountain of Blood
TORN BOYS - 1983 Compact Disc + bonus DVD
"Something that IPR is great at, besides the special packaging, is unearthing forgotten gems, and offering them up with a fresh format to a new audience. Torn Boys emerged from Stockton, CA in '82 and, by '83, they had split up. This really was a case of 'blink and you miss them.' And yet the music that the group made needs to be revisited... Torn Boys created dreamy and intense post-punk, captured perfectly here. The sleeve art is glorious -- not the brown card approach that IPR often employs -- this is colorful and disturbingly hypnotic. Four new videos were created for some of the old songs, and they're here on DVD. It all makes for a sweet treat, and one that we didn't even know that we wanted."
—Brett Callwood, Music Connection
"The music is great, and there are moments of real inspiration and ingenuity, such as 'Fountain Of Blood' which has a brilliant opening and goes into a fantastic song... The music is full of melody and promise. One can only imagine if the band had stayed together to create more music and explore and expand. In some ways 1983 is 'what could have been,' but at the same time is full of interesting and great music. Torn Boys show great potential and their ability to combine 1980s synth sound with pop and guitar rock is astounding."
—Spill Magazine
"It shimmers and floats in that jagged-but-dreamlike way that a certain segment of the early '80s California underground plied so well... The songs featuring Phillips, such as lead off track 'See Through My Eyes' and final song 'Lady Luck,' sound the most realized, with chiming, jangling guitars and layered vocals playing off the electronic rhythms... Everything is quite literally wrapped up in IPR's typically beautiful packaging. Even the CD/DVD release, which includes a postcard and a booklet of lyrics and notes, is a work of art. If you're a fan of this branch of the underground or IPR itself (and, really, the overlap is substantial) then here's another item to add to the shopping list."
—John Mulhouse, Ugly Things
"For those desirous of a deep dive into the most obscure end of California's 1980s Paisley Underground psychedelic revival, Bruce Licher's Independent Project Records brings us a career-summating collection by Torn Boys. This was the band that Grant Lee Phillips and Jeffrey Clark started with before going on to form Shiva Burlesque (to slightly more success), then Phillips achieved proper fame, for a while, with Grant Lee Buffalo. Entitled 1983, it's more experimental than what came later, spooked LSD vibes akin to Robin Hitchcock's' edgier surrealism. Arrives in Independent Project's typically lavish packaging with a DVD containing four videos."
—Thomas H. Green, The Arts Desk