Radical History Tour
1994
A long time ago (1992-94), in a duplex far, far away (the fabled Hotel Lelia), ApologetiX cranked out a series of self-produced cassettes, with increasing measures of quality and quantity. The final studio production in this series was "Radical History Tour," released in August 1994. It was our most popular cassette to date, but when we ran out of 'em, we moved on to bigger and better things ? or so we thought.
These days, however, ApologetiX has a lot of listeners who weren't yet "hip" to the band when the "Radical History Tour" cassette was still available. Consequently people were asking us for years to re-release it on CD, and we finally gave in to popular demand in March 1999, four months after releasing "Jesus Christ Morningstar." That's why the product code on "Radical History Tour" comes third in succession after "Ticked" and "Morningstar," even though those projects came out much later than the original "Radical History Tour" cassette.
Problem is, that cassette was over 90 minutes long, and you can only fit about 76 minutes of music on a CD ? and that's pushing it! So we had to cut four tracks out of the mix. That doesn't mean the remaining 20 are all polished gems (diamonds in the rough, perhaps?), but we're pleased and honored that so many of you wanted to hear them. Listening to "Radical History Tour" makes us appreciate how far God has brought us since then in terms of musicianship and production. Over a decade later, it's still a lot of fun to listen to, and, most importantly, the stories it tells are timeless.
We were tempted to go back and re-record 'em 1999-style, but quite frankly, we had so many new parodies waiting to be recorded, we figured, "Why re-invent the wheel?" We did eventually rewrite and re-record the opening track, "Bethlehemian Rhapsody," in 2001 on our "Keep the Change" CD. There is also a new "live" version (recorded in 2004) of "Jacob's Name is Israel" available on the "New & Used Hits: Best of ApologetiX Vol. 1 & 2" CD. Furthermore, the song "Enter Samson," which appeared on "Biblical Graffiti" CD in 1999, appeared in an earlier form with different lyrics and instrumentation on the "Radical History Tour" cassette, but it was one of the four tracks excluded from the CD.
Special thanks to ApologetiX alumni bass player Andy Sparks and drummer Rick Servocky, who made the original "tour" with us, and to Mark Gulden who played keyboards on "Bethlehemian Rhapsody" and "I Know a Riddle." |