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Edge of Night

by Darke County

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Double-spine, extra-fine wallet includes 20-song disc, full credits and historical liner notes, plus 6-panel lyric/photo insert.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Edge of Night via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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    Escape perdition! Enjoy lasting and eternal listening pleasure! Commit your entire being to the full LP download, then (and only then) revel in the bonus digital booklet. So, so delicious...
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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 7 Darke County releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of (These are) The Ones I Love, Edge of Night (Carnival of Desires), Milky Way Baby Reprise, Super-Natural, International Dateline, Edge of Night, and Kiss Me Friday. , and , .

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1.
Diablo Q 01:24
(instrumental)
2.
Runaway Locomotive Balanced on the edge of night Having murderous dreams You suffer Hanging on the edge of night All alone with your dreams Of sadist masters with cherub’s wings You say the nightmares don’t scare you Anymore You turned your back on conventional life Through the ring of fire Abducted from your peaceful life Through the ring of fire I’m a locomotive A locomotive A locomotive A worn away premonition And this humdrum day Has led me to your house My love is strange My love is strange Falling from the edge of night Suffering sexual dreams Of sadist masters dancing in circus rings But the clowns won’t scare me Anymore I walked into the underground A cripple by all rights And all the way to your house Through the ring of fire I’m a locomotive A locomotive A locomotive Love is a stranger Love is a stranger Love is a stranger
3.
See the dreams above the clouds Fold them into pocket You're the dream above my clouds Slip you into pocket Number on the napkin is mine Seize the dream above the clouds Before you change your mind Milky Way baby, milky white star Mr. Moonglow's back in town to catch you When you fall In his universal arms I sense a queer triangle In the shadows of your speech A side for each promise We will never keep Number on the room key is mine Milky Way baby, milky white star Does the pale on your face mean a stain On your heart? Tell me, baby Are we doomed from the start? Ooo, baby Sparkle, baby Milky Way baby, Milky Way star Does the angst on your face match a stain On your heart? Milky Way baby, Milky Way star Reflection in the motel says Number on the matchbook is mine
4.
(instrumental)
5.
International dateline International dateline Far out over the Pacific Out over the nebulous sea On the other side of the globe You'll arrive In some other tomorrow Tuesday came You did not Your parents said you made a call You quit your job You caught a plane Set your aim on better stock In the jet stream floats a dream Far out over the dateline In yet another Tuesday You'll arrive For some other lover For some other lover For some other lover Some other lover Some other lover In a calmer world if the wind blows Stretching your tether Compressing your heart In a calmer world if the wind blows Then it blows International dateline International dateline International dateline
6.
The sign outside hung me up Please come in Come in or walk away It said ESP & Palmistry ESP & Palmistry ESP & Palmistry Come in or walk away I should walk away... Madam, you see I've got these wicked ideas inside of me I've been landlocked for 29 years The bashful child a good mother reared But now all I have are these wild ideas Burning a hole inside of me Is it natural, or super-natural? Is it natural, or super-natural? Super-natural Super-natural Super-natural I should walk away Walk away Walk away Walk away! Master the pain of my education Respectable career, I had real-life occupation But now all I have are these wild, wild ideas Burning a hole inside of me Is it natural, or super-natural? Is it natural, or super-natural? Super-natural Super-natural Super-natural I should walk away… I can't walk away I can't walk away I can't walk away
7.
(instrumental)
8.
There are those who Become desperate and doomed Those who haunt themselves and who Become shadows Those who live in dreams of times gone by Of times to come And often fail at love But who can hold the wind? Some are driven mad These are the beautiful These are the sad These are the ones I love Deep inside the storm Where all burdens will be borne In the thrashing of the waves Through the thunder and the rain “I think I’m gonna drown” Was all she said Good-bye But who can hold the wind? When life slips into a dream Some are driven mad These are the beautiful These are the sad These are the ones I love
9.
Now is the time, now is the time The apple is ripe; assassins in line Now is the time It was one of those; you know what I mean Doomed from the start, fall down the stairs You know what I mean There I was reading Tropic of Cancer Flush with caffeine, teeming inside Converging at last on an answer Down the steps of decline We dance from lucid to blind From lucid to blind, kiss me Friday night You said no one would ever really mind And for that I could love you And for that I will love you And love you I will And love you I will Oh, love you I will And love you I will Now is the time, and now is the time And now is the time, now is the time Now is the time / kiss me Friday night Now is the time / kiss me Friday night Now is the time / kiss me Friday night Now is the time / kiss me Friday night
10.
From the cradle to the grave Plays a song I will remember Tapping at the window One long, cold December On clean sheets Where lonely hearts beat A lover’s tattoo Detailed in sweet surrender Some things you can’t forget But best not remembered In dreams we dream What happiness will not allow From the cradle to the grave Plays a song I will remember A lover’s tattoo Detailed in sweet surrender In dreams it comes To steal away your sleep In dreams we dream What happiness will not allow What happiness will not allow
11.
Asad Market 02:04
(instrumental)
12.
Etched in stone. etched in glass An unforgiving dashboard knows Your name In a speeding America What's in the moment Before you die? What's in the moment When your life up and Passes you by? A windshield cracked Poor child with a broken back Your screams forever lost in the westerlies Your dreams now blood brown stains on the floor of a '52 Mercury I hear the radio singing I hear the radio sing I hear the radio singing Singing your sad song On a creaking hinge laid life and limb In a ditch outside St Paul And now you're just a door ajar To a world too suddenly gone From bread and water to caviar Look now what I've done
13.
Sing me a midnight lullaby Fill my head with stars Sing me a midnight lullaby And I promise Sing me a midnight lullaby Fill my head with stars Still my fears with moonbeams And I promise I promise Hum a song so soft and low Nightmares run and hide Hang it over my pillow And I promise I promise Tonight I'll sleep only with you Tonight I'll dream Tonight I'll dream only of you And only with you With you If I should begin to wake To start or suddenly shudder Whisper soft and whisper sweet Your midnight lullaby Your midnight lullaby And tonight I'll sleep only with you Tonight I'll dream Tonight I'll dream only of you And only with you With you Dreaming with you, with you Dreaming with you, with you I'll dream I'll dream I'll dream and dream And dream
14.
(instrumental)
15.
See the dreams above the clouds Fold them into pocket You're the dream above my clouds Slip you into pocket Number on the napkin is mine Seize the dream above the clouds Before you change your mind Milky Way baby, milky white star Mr. Moonglow's back in town to catch you When you fall In his universal arms I sense a queer triangle In the shadows of your speech A side for each promise We will never keep Number on the room key is mine Milky Way baby, milky white star Does the pale on your face mean a stain On your heart? Tell me, baby Are we doomed from the start? Ooo, baby Sparkle, baby Milky Way baby, Milky Way star Does the angst on your face match a stain On your heart? Milky Way baby, Milky Way star Reflection in the motel says Number on the matchbook is mine
16.
One last announcement As a final precaution Please extinguish all smoking And fasten your seat belts Low and tight across your hips Into the cloud bank And plucked from the air Was it random chance Was it circumstance The air coach never landed? And the crew I never knew Became eternal confessors It was just as I suspected Just as I might have thought I really did love you I really did care Taste the tips of granite We are the snow floating through branches We are blessed by the evergreen fir And the pure, pure, purest atmosphere The purest atmosphere In the dead of night No siren cries She's the upper hand At all times
17.
(instrumental)
18.
You wear straw by daylight The day is made of straw Crushed velvet for twilight It helps to break your fall You shun the sun at noon Because the heat could make you thaw Fractured by moonlight You say the crutches make you tall The night is made of nothing There is nothing to fear Not the Thief, the Clown nor Cupid But the fear of velvet The night is made of nothing But the fear of velvet
19.
When the steam starts to rise from Market Street That’ll be me, that’ll be me When the promise of night haunts your every dream That’ll be me, that’ll be me What it was used to be so unusual Now an empty face in a broken bus window Wheels go round without saying so Foghorns wail without asking why Cover your heart Cover your eyes When the steam starts to rise, that’ll be me And I’ll look for you, if you look for me Behind the shadows When the steam starts to rise from Market Street That’ll be me, yeah, that’ll be me When the tears that fall taste rare and bittersweet That’ll be me, and that’ll be me Hey, pretty pretty one Do not fear, your life has just begun And hey, hey, clever pretty one Will you trade the night for staring into the sun? Cover your heart Cover your eyes When the steam starts to rise, that’ll be me Open your heart Open your eyes When the steam starts to rise from Market Street I’ll look for you… If you look for me Behind the shadows Behind the shadows Behind the shadows
20.
Hey, tell me why you think It all went wrong Why the world will not be saved With just a song When the morning comes There's a cruel surprise With a clever wink And a careless smile You enter the room With a knowing look And a careless smile They say the world will end It’ll end at dawn Hey, tell me why you think It all went wrong

about

In late 1987, popular Dayton indie group The Pleasures Pale disbanded. Fronted by singer/lyricist Jeffrey Bright, The Pale left an indelible mark on the burgeoning southwest Ohio scene, releasing one LP post breakup then evaporating into the ether of pop ephemera. In the aftermath, during a show at the now-defunct Canal Street Tavern, a young guitarist and composer approached Bright. Above the din, Eric Schulz introduced himself with a direct imperative: “I wanna be in your band.” What ensued was a songwriting partnership that would last into the mid-90s, spanning three different band names, even more genres, and a catalog of distinctive material.

Bright and Schulz were joined in Dayton by bassist Chris “Troy” Green (previously appearing with avant-garde acts Dementia Precox and Mom). The three transplanted to San Francisco later in 1988. After spending the better part of a year acquainting themselves with their new home, developing a sound and auditioning drummers, the three began playing the city’s small club circuit, debuting as Darke County on September 9, 1989 at the deliciously funky Chi Chi Theater Club on Broadway in SF’s bawdy strip club corridor. San Pedro native David Rojas handled drumming for the band’s first half dozen dates. Finally, in March of 1990, Oakland native Christopher Fisher (teen skateboard sensation and one-third of 80’s punk outfit Impatient Youth) was added as permanent drummer. Thus began a musical relationship that would endure through the quartet’s various future incarnations.

Darke County’s music was a landscape of tall tales and mysteries of the heart, a ghost-town brew of haunted longing and ironic nostalgia populated by tormented characters from the creases and folds of so many darkening American dreams. Fronted by Bright’s crooning and noir-tinged lyrics and Schulz’s eclectic arrangements, the band’s sound was an amalgam of mid-century American styles, sharing more DNA with cool jazz, old-time country, exotica, TV detective themes and Mancini film scores than with rock, but never straying too far from pop idioms of the day.

Schulz’s composing chops were formidable, often outpacing the band’s ability to fully realize his fevered ideas. From 1988 to 1991, E-Bone, a nickname bestowed by flat mate Green, utilized all at his disposal — the band’s SOMA district rehearsal room filled with a menagerie of acoustic and electric instruments, and a 4-track recorder — to capture on cassette a cache of wildly imaginative compositional sketches, many of which were never fully developed — but thankfully survived the intervening years in their ferrous oxide tombs.

Eventually, the band’s ever-evolving vision outgrew the initial, theatrical Darke County persona. Veering toward harder-edged, more lyrically pointed, surrealistic alt-rock, the outfit renamed itself Myself a Living Torch in August 1991 — a move not universally accepted among the band’s followers. As the decade ensued, the quartet’s individual paths diverged. In the 00s, Bright, Green and Fisher would, in varying degrees and ways, fade from the music stage. After leaving San Francisco in the mid-90s, Schulz would eventually resurface and flourish in Memphis, and later France, as Harlan T Bobo, whose impressive output can today be found on the Goner Records label.

Much of the work from early days of the Bright-Schulz collaboration languished in obscurity for over 30 years. Now, as a project of the Jeffrey Alan Bright Music Archive, this uniquely rich material is being exhumed from cassette, restored using current digital techniques, in some cases complimented with further recording, and now presented here — at last receiving the exposure it justly deserves. Time has only rendered this mash-up of styles and forms more fascinating, poignant, and oddly brilliant — a trove of artifacts from the waning years of San Francisco’s once vital bohemia.

As a collection, Edge of Night is fashioned around four full-band demos, recorded to 4-track cassette, featuring the Bright-Schulz-Green-Fisher ensemble: “Milky Way Baby” in two versions, “Super-Natural,” and the title track. Around these recordings — what were foundational pieces of the 1990-91 DarCo sound — is assembled a diverse constellation of aural intrigue and emotional titillation. Brief instrumental encounters and interludes occur as narrative twists between fully developed episodes, some completed only recently, in a tableau of restless intent — as if delineating a trial both aesthetic and psychological. The projected result is, as much as sound can be, cinematic in scope and effect.

Taken as a whole, Edge of Night is at once a poetic odyssey “through the ring of fire” to a place where “the nightmares don’t scare you anymore,” and a voyeuristic peek inside the young adult psyche of late 20th Century America. As Bright, Schulz and Green journeyed from the relative white comfort of suburban Ohio across the country and across cultural divides to the recession-worn, multi-cultural, pre-internet California of the late 1980s, so too did their sensibilities. Accordingly, Edge of Night is a construct of multi-faceted desires, dread, fantasy, paranoia, and romantic fatalism — and eventually a perpendicular, if bleary-eyed, reckoning with life’s most consequential ultimatum. “Are we doomed from the start?” Perhaps the knowing, Edge of Night suggests, is the essential oil infusing art with force and meaning; the subconscious knowing that gives existence its value; the keys to resilience and survival when the darkest hours mount the clock.

credits

released July 23, 2020

jeffrey bright – voice, guitar
e-bone schulz – acoustic & electric guitars, electric bass, electric 6-string bass, mandolin, accordion, marimba, drums & percussion
chris troy green – acoustic double bass, electric 6-string bass
christopher fisher – drums

initial recordings:
minna mansion
san francisco, california
1989-1991

additional recordings:
san francisco, california
2019–2020

cover design - jeffrey bright

c) 1991 Darke County
p) 2020 JABMA
Fugitive Music Publishing / BMI

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Darke County San Francisco, California

An actual place in rural Ohio, Darke County is also the shadowy dream state of American gothic & noir created by the late 1980s / early 1990s songwriting partnership of ex-Pleasures Pale vocalist Jeffrey Bright and the artist now known as Harlan T Bobo. DarCo performed regularly in the San Francisco underground before reincarnation in late 1991 as surrealist indie act Myself a Living Torch. ... more

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