Instant band

Undaunted by the tepid response Vince Mariani’s drum solo single received, and determined to put together a band around Vince, the Joseys’ search for guitar and bass players to surround Vince led to fifteen-year-old Eric Johnson, who Vince had met a year earlier. At Vince’s request, Eric dropped by the Sonobeat studio in northwest Austin to audition and blew the Joseys away with his ear-popping guitar pyrotechnics. Shortly thereafter, bassist Bob Trenchard, a solid Austin musician, rounded out the band, at least for the moment.

In November ’69, the newly formed unit began rehearsing. At the same time, the Joseys and Vince began looking for a name for the band and laid out early plans for an album. Prior to committing to the album, though, Bill Sr. required the band to record demo material, so Vince, Eric, and Bob worked up two instrumentals. Shortly after recording the demo tracks, Bob left to co-found Pall Rabbit. Jay Podolnick, son of Josey family friend Earl Podolnick (in 1968 Earl and Bill Sr. co-produced the Ray Campi Establishment’s Sonobeat single), repaced Bob on bass and assumed the role of lead vocalist. Because the band had been built around Vince, and finding no other band name that he liked, Bill Sr. decided to simply call the trio Mariani.

Satisfied with the demo material, Bill Sr. asked the group to record a single – which turned out to be Sonobeat’s only 45 RPM release in 1970, and as a double-rarity, one of only two Sonobeat singles issued in monaural rather than stereo – as a sort of trial balloon before making a final commitment to a full album. Re-Birth Day, with music composed by Vince and Eric and lyrics by Sonosong tunesmith Herman Nelson, featured a double-tracked vocal by Jay and was selected as the “A” side of the single. The recording also featured a solo break that outright flaunted Eric’s lightning fast lead guitar. The “B” side was a Mariani-Johnson-Podolnick composition, Memories Lost and Found, again sung by Jay and again featuring a spectacular guitar break on which Eric shined. The single was a good first draft by the fledgling group, but it didn’t have enough of the magic the Joseys had hoped for and didn’t attract much attention from reviewers or radio stations. Believing the trio needed something “more” to succeed, the Joseys recruited a new bass player, Jimmy Bullock, retaining Jay on vocals, but added two additional vocalists to build a modular unit that would better support the Vince-Eric core. The Joseys recruited folk-blues songwriter-singer Bill Wilson, an airman stationed at Austin’s Bergstrom Air Force Base, who in 1969 had recorded song demo albums for Sonobeat’s sister company, Sonosong Music. Vince brought in St. Edwards University junior Darrell Peal. The group worked up two new vocals and two long instrumental jams and, with new versions of Re-Birth Day and Memories Lost and Found, the band was finally prepared to go into the studio to cut the album.

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The trials and tribulations of Perpetuum Mobile

After several practice sessions, Bill Sr. realized Sonobeat’s tiny Western Hills Drive studio – occupying a suite on the lower level of the Josey family home in a quiet northwest Austin neighborhood – was too inhibiting for the group, so he rented a 100 acre ranch near McDade, Texas, about 30 miles east of Austin on US 290 for the months of March and Aoril 1970. There, following a massive spring rainstorm that left the dirt and gravel road into the ranch as treacherous as quicksand, the Joseys trucked in an entire studio of equipment – including Sonobeat’s half-inch 4-track Scully 280 tape deck and new 16-channel custom mixing console – getting stuck in the muddy access road for hours and enlisting everyone, including Vince, Eric, and Jimmy to free the truck. Eventually, the console, tape deck, and monitor speakers were set up inside the vacant ranch house, in front of a picture window that faced an open field where Vince, Eric, and Jimmy set up their amps and speaker boxes. Microphone and power cables were carefully run over a 50 to 80 yard stretch into the field. Sonobeat burned through half a dozen 10-1/2 inch reels of half-inch tape to complete the basic instrumental tracks at the ranch. The Joseys expected that recording in an open field would yield completely clean tracks, but, surprisingly, and notwithstanding that the band performed at arena volume, the microphones picked up a slight delay echo bouncing off the ranch house and the thick stands of trees surrounding the clearing where the trio performed. The Mariani sessions were filled with these kinds of surprises.

Returning to the Western Hills Drive studio, Vince and the Joseys selected the best takes, began the vocal overdubs, and worked out song sequencing for the album. Bill Sr.’s original sequencing used First Song (later titled Last Milestone), Second Song (a re-recording of Re-Birth Day), Third Song (a re-recording of Memories Lost and Found), and Fourth Song (later titled I Can’t Hurt Myself) as the track titles for side I. All four songs on side I were vocals, so Bill Sr. pitched the idea of adding short jazz instrumentals between each of them, and the trio recorded those alongside their vocal overdub sessions. The album, with additional instrumentation, vocal overdubs, special effects, and the jazz interludes, was completed over the month following the ranch sessions. One of the more interesting sonic treats on many of the tracks was Eric’s use of an Echoplex tape delay machine on his lead guitar; the Echoplex added discrete, delayed repeats of the notes he played. The album became a tour-de-force of every musical trick in the band’s repertoire and every recording trick in Sonobeat’s arsenal.

Bill Wilson sang lead on First Song (a/k/a Last Milestone) and Fourth Song (a/k/a I Can’t Hurt Myself). Darrell Peal sang lead on the remake of Re-Birth Day (Second Song). Jay repeated lead vocal duties on the remake of Memories Lost and Found (Third Song), but there are two quite different mixes in the Sonobeat archives: the first features Jay’s solo vocal; the second begins with a frenetic performance by Bill Kolb on his one-of-a-kind synthesizer (no, not a Moog but, instead, a custom synth built by Austin electronics engineer Barry Brooks) and that featured wild harmony vocals provided by members of other Austin bands and in which Jay’s lead vocal was pushed to the back of the mix. Using additional vocalists throughout the album who were not regular members of the group was an innovation at the time, something that other studio-based groups, notably The Alan Parsons Project and Mike + the Mechanics, would adopt years later because of the creative flexibility it offered.

The Sonobeat archives also hold an alternate version of the album that Rim remixed and assembled with significantly different sequencing: his version of side I consisted of Ray of Hope (the eventual re-titling of the alternate version of Memories Lost and Found with Kolb’s synth intro and the wild harmony vocals), a jazz intercut, Last Milestone, a second jazz intercut, and a nine-minute combined alternate take of Mendor-Breaker, and side II featured Re-Birth Day, a third jazz intercut, I Can’t Hurt Myself, and a 16 minute instrumental jam entitled Tribute to Jimi that featured, among multiple effects, backward recordings and bizarre bubbling sounds created by suspending a Slinky toy from the ceiling, stapling a piece of cardboard to the Slinky’s end nearest the floor, taping a microphone to the cardboard, and then strumming the stretched-out coils. Rim’s alternate version was never released, even as a non-commercial advance pressing, but Bill Sr. also sent a dub of this version to his contacts at Liberty/United Artists Records.

The album was a recording and mixing challenge – and occasionally a nightmare – but the Joseys and the band ultimately were pleased with the results. When the final mixes were completed and the tracks sequenced according to Bill Sr.’s original plan, he ordered an advance pressing of 100 copies packaged in a plain white pressboard jacket for non-commercial distribution to national record companies, reviewers, radio station program directors, and the band members and their families. Vince, Eric, and Jimmy signed dozens of copies that were given away. A rare surviving copy offered on popsike.com in 2008 sold for $2,850 and included Vince’s handwritten note, “This is one of only 100 copies ever made. It has become a great collector item in certain galaxies.” The title Perpetuum Mobile was chosen as an acknowledgement of Eric’s breakneck guitar solos and Vince’s complex and nonstop drum patterns. In this context “perpetuum mobile” only obliquely referred to “perpetual motion”, the hypothetical physics concept, but primarily was intended to refer to the musical term “moto perpetuo”, meaning notes played very fast and continuously.

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On tour but no cigar

While Bill Sr. was trying to sell the album master for national release, Vince, Eric, Jimmy, and Jay began touring throughout Texas. They were joined on some gigs by synth player Bill Kolb. At one of those gigs, Mariani performed with a then-obscure Houston band of longhair hippies better known today as ZZ Top.

No national record labels bid for the Mariani masters, a disappointment to both the band and the Joseys, and Sonobeat never released the album commercially. Eventually, dubs of the master tapes leaked out, and specialty label Akarma Records issued an unsanctioned version of the album in 2001, with the the “B” side of Vince’s drum solo single and Sonobeat”s Mariani single (the original versions of Re-Birth Day and Memories Lost and Found) added as bonus tracks. Akarma’s release was made from a dub, not from the original master tapes, and misstated (perhaps purposefully) song titles. Oddly, even though Sonobeat didn”t license any rights in the album to and never received any royalty payments from Akarma, Akarma gave Sonobeat copyright ownership credit on the back of the album jacket. Bootleg versions, also made from dubs (and most likely from dubs of dubs) appeared following the Akarma release, some on CD and some on vinyl (including one that used a forged Sonobeat album label overprinted with the bootleg label’s information). Over the years, even before the unsanctioned and bootleg releases, Perpetuum Mobile has generated both critical acclaim and occasional disdain, but it remains a testament to the strength of a manufactured but friendly and close collaboration of diverse talents.

After Mariani finally disbanded, Eric joined Austin’s The Electromagnets. Eric made guest appearances on many other artists’ albums and singles, including Christopher Cross’ eponymous album, and issued many solo albums including the acclaimed Ah Via Musicom (1990). Cliffs of Dover from Ah Via Musicom took home a 1992 Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Eric, inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 1983, holds the record for the most artist awards (33 in all) given at the Austin Music Awards. Eric continues to record and release new albums periodically. For years after Mariani broke up, Eric and Vince collaborated, Vince contributing songs and song titles to Eric and playing on many of Eric’s recordings.

Singer Bill Wilson died suddenly on November 25, 1993, victim of massive heart failure. Singer Darrell Peal passed away on July 21, 2020, at age 73, after a 12 year battle with cancer. Following a prolonged illness, Vince Mariani passed away on April 20, 2022.

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