Feet Wet is the pop-rock doppleganger-changeling-entity that masked the myriad solo projects of songwriter Philip Price (now of Winterpills, formerly of the Maggies) in the early 1990s. After the death of the Bobbins and Memorial Garage in the late '80s, Price found himself without a band and weirdly glad of it. A small inheritance allowed him to purchase some better recording equipment and while he worked steadily at record stores, bookstores, a book printing company, a bagel shop, for a nationally known psychic, and heartfelt unemployment in general, he wrote and recorded these 7 album-length cassette-only releases. The Feet Wet tapes were recorded almost entirely in whatever living room Price had, and were released into the kitchen, with a particularly good response from the foyer. Anyone in earshot seemed to like them, which included people in the bedrooms and bathrooms of his various homes. One of those people, Max Germer, bassist for The Maggies, liked them enough to propose a band for Philip. The rest of that particular history can be gleaned on the Maggies website. LIke almost all of his output, the Feet Wet stuff remains utterly obscure, unreleased and unknown. The Maggies ended up playing about 1/3 of the Feet Wet material but the rest remains its own unique thing.
eh?
It would be safe to say the outpouring of painfully odd noisily sentimental pop music that is Feet Wet was a response to the somewhat stifling, angular, dissonant and emotionally aloof art of Memorial Garage. It would also be safe to say that it was all due to a personal crisis in Mr. Feet Wet's life, but that would be putting the bull before its horns.
anybody else?
Yes. Other musicians began trickling into the mix around 1991, on Tender Skelter, when a spritely opera singer codenamed Smoki Thoreau provided some rich harmonizing and bass clarinet (that's her standing next to Price on the cover of Tender Skelter) . She popped up again later on Show & Tell and then dissappeared into Canada. On Roped, Patrick McCormick played some guitar and bass and someone named Owl Morrison played electric viola on two songs.
critical assessment
You're asking the wrong firm, but we'll give it a try. General consensus is that Tender Skelter was the apex of the Feet Wet oeuvre, followed closely by Show & Tell and Roped. But there's a perpetual soft spot in our hearts for the rock-opera-like Goodbye Bambi Manor, and E kicks some serious butt.
mythology
Well, one febrile day in 1994, Feet Wet dared himself to write 10 songs in a day. While working at the record shop in the afternoon, he came up with song titles and lyrics. When he came from from work at 9:30 p.m., he started on the music. There actually were 10 songs done by midnight. The album was to be called Angus Lost, and rough tapes still exist but in truth it was never really fully assembled. We don't know why. It's called the lost album. It's a myth. It's the only one we have, so be gentle.
can i get hold of this music somehow?
You can download some tracks over there on the left. Also, Philip late has been killing time by remixing these songs, which were recorded kind of badly on 4-track and then mixed onto cassettes and dubbed from those to other cassettes, and they sound awful. The slow steady project of getting them onto the computer for remixes is underway. Some of the vocal takes are so bad he's considering re-recording them but the moral implications are kind of daunting so he may not. Or at least offer both versions.
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