Tom Nehls :: “I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light”
Whereas esoteric epics like Zappa’s The Mothers’ “Absolutely Free” and Soft Machine’s diabolical self-titled debut rest within the well-kept trophy cases of harmonious history for all to hear, an entirely different, yet familiar, world of organized sound was beginning to take sonic shape in the years to follow. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Tom Nehls first came to light with a rather poetically peculiar body of work entitled “I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light,” which was confidently conceived over three months at just the age of seventeen with several friends such as Peter Krieger, Jim Tollefsrud, Jim Bergquist, Pete Masters, Stephanie Marlin, Craig Gudmundson, Richard Baillargeon, and many others, who all attended Marshall High School in late 1972. A conceptual collection of gloriously gleaming gems of progressive perfection and prophetic psychedelia. Nehls pulled iconic influences from the rich and magical world of J.R.R Tolkien, Frank Zappa, and The Beatles while setting his sonic sights on various levels of cosmic collaging, shadowy situations, and the resurrected rhythms of the decade’s youthful fallout. Engineered by Paul Stark on what would be his debut project, “I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light,” resides in this lysergic location in a Midwestern memory so distant and dissolved in galactic gas, listeners will think this was all just some dream determined by a fabricated future riddled with subconscious soundscapes. As most private press tales go, a thousand copies were made, and only a hundred or so survived a terrible basement flood that happened in Nehls’ basement, leaving the album’s alchemical allure to grow even more in legend and cult status.
“It is a total blast from my past because that particular album is one of the only ten in the original lot I sold to my school friends in 1973. I haven’t seen one of those since 1973! (I couldn’t afford any more spray paint!)”
Assembled in pre-punk and post-hippie acid ascetic, Nehls spray-painted the first batch in a neon green sludge while pasting/tapping the cover and other contents of the album together to sell to the locals around his school. Conceptually complex and openly observant, Nehls and Co. decorate the critical ceilings of a cosmic frontier both romantic and fundamentally filled with experimental excellence. With tracks such as “Why - Your Death,” “Goober And The Garter Snake - You Don't Need A Compass Or A Watch To Know Where You Are,” the album’s epic ender “Every Day Night” and the subliminal hit “Clean Air,” the album breathes from the liberated lungs of anti-war, revolutionary rage and an unpredictable nature as a new decade emerged from the annihilated ashes of the 1960s. Recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota at P. David Productions, Nehls, and his lone masterpiece have lingered in the Dionysian darkness for decades until its formal discovery in the 1990s by legendary head Rich Haupt, who said, “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and true genius never comes in a slick package. If these words are true, I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light is the proof” and has since been released in all its compelling glory by the folks over at Now-Again.
https://www.nowagainrecords.com/tom-nehls-lp-13-in-now-again-reserve/
