I mentioned a few weeks back on my Twitter feed that I’d finally found a song that had been eluding me for nigh on THIRTY years. This is by far the oldest and most elusive song I’ve been looking for to add to my collection, and now it has pride of place in my mp3 library.

What is this song, you ask? Well, after the band’s self-titled second album that dropped in the summer of 1989 (which featured the great underrated single “Accidentally 4th Street (Gloria)” and a fun cover of BTO’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”), they recorded a track that sounded quite different from their usual poppier style: darker, moodier and heavier.

“Evil” seems to be about An American Werewolf in London from the werewolf’s point of view, though it’s never quite made clear, other than passing references and a “waah-hoooo yeah” near the end hinting at the ubiquitous Warren Zevon song. It also samples a few lines of dialogue from Hitchcock’s The Birds which, per vocalist Anthony Kaczynski in a brief email chat I had with him back in the mid 90s (!!) was the reason it was never commercially released as they could not get the clearance.

I’d only heard this song on WFNX, its demo delivered personally by the band to the Boston area alternative rock station, and I never had the chance to tape it when it came on. I’d also heard it once live when they played for free at the Hatch Shell in the summer of 1991 as a double bill with The JudyBats. (Kaczynski was shocked that I remembered that show when I mentioned it to him.) Other than that, it showed up once as a track on a cassette-only “unsigned bands” promo. I distinctly remember seeing it once at Nuggets in Kenmore Square and stupidly never picked it up.

…and for thirty years, I looked everywhere for it. On Discogs, where that promo tape was for sale at a ridiculous price. On YouTube, where no one had posted it. On questionable mp3 download sites, none of which had it. Every now and again I’d do a passive sweep, never expecting to hear it again.

Until a few weeks ago, when I found that someone named Dave Stawecki had ‘remastered’ it with the band’s permission back in 2021. I played the video, and the memories came flooding back: listening to it in early 1991 while at Emerson, living in the Charlesgate dorm and trying in vain to record it and missing it every single time. Sitting on the grass on the Charles River Esplanade, handheld cassette recorder in hand in an attempt to get a live recording. Going to a few record conventions and none of the vendors knowing anything about it.

And now, thanks to a quick visit to a site that rips audio from video into mp3, I now have it in my music library, where I can hear it any time I want.

I still have a list of songs and albums that have eluded me over the years, but I have to say this one was high on that list and I still can’t believe it took me three decades to locate it. That’s one song to finally cross off my bucket list!