New archive album idea 6/13/20
Recorded 1984 through 1993
Master finished 6/20/20

Gigantes del Rock
Vintage Jams by Nick Bensen and friends
(BE20014A)

Reissue of 2001 Free City Authorized Bootleg Collector's CD-R #1, selections from old psychedelic jams with friends Burrie Jenkins, Ian Mader, Matt McDermott, Heidi Reischuck (we're more than friends!), Billy Ryder, and Dave Stevens, at my family home in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, in our own 13 Green Street home studio high above beautiful downtown Brattleboro, VT, and in the A-Frame by the Quabbin in New Salem, MA. Good, good times with great people. Originally limited to 200 hand-decorated copies.

It was always a nice, mellow, meditative time playing in Burrie's rustic place in the forest, always with pleasing results. I made several highlights albums from the pile of tapes we recorded over a couple of years. Many more exist on cassette only. I may tackle digitizing them at some point with the rest of my surviving 1975 through 1995 cassette recordings. One soundscape called "The Acid Trip" got me sent to the office in seventh grade for being too accurate - I was just going by the sounds of psychedelic music.

The three Croton sessions with old bandmates and friends while I was home from college yielded extremely long yet intense and dramatic jams like deconstructed Velvet Underground symphonies. Their quality is largely due to the uncanny visionary talents of Ian Mader and the telepathic interaction between all the fine players. We chopped out the best parts from more than five hours of really out there improvs, heavy on the Lou Reed and a recurring hint of "Love Is All Around" in our aggressive linear acid ragas. I remade "Frobisher Awakening" as a bonus track on the No Resistance album in 2001.

Tracks 3 to 6 are side one of The Green Album. The reverse sound collage from side two is on Tales From The Vermont Years. Dave got caught in traffic coming up from Brooklyn for the session and the three-version classic "Where's Mr. Dave?" was born on a dulcimer.

1. Heavy Fog (excerpt) 3:02
2. Pine City Jam 10:13
3. Haunted Hoidelworks 5:43
4. New River Train 1:00
(Traditional, Derailed by the Green Album Collective)
5. Dredging The River 2:45
6. Bass Odyssey 3:12
7. Frobisher Awakening (excerpt) 4:57
8. Impressionistic Panhandle 5:38
9. Whitehorse Charge 22:41
10. Lost In My Garden 1:09
11. Satan's Picnic 6:16
= 65:36

All tracks were improvised by the players during recording unless otherwise noted (though we have to admit that some popular themes cropped up in the stream of consciousness here and there).

Please note that the Free City website on the original CD-R art is no longer a thing.

(c) 2001, 2020 everyone involved; (p) 1984, 1992, 1993