super groovy delicious bite: it's a shame about ray

The Lemonheads struck gold with the laid back powerpop perfection of this charming melodic gem. Front man Evan Dando calls 'It's a Shame about Ray' "the best album about Australia recorded in LA and partially written in Cambridge...The album's all about Sydney." After the departure of founding members Ben Deily and Jesse Peretz, Dando went to Australia with friends Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan to write songs for a new album. He recalls: "I wrote it in Australia. I went down there in August of 1991. This was before the whole alternative-rock explosion had really happened. Then I went back in October, and, wow, it was all going on. I stayed there for six weeks and met these people that would become a big part of my life: Nic Dalton, Tom Morgan and Allison Galloway. The songs are about people down there, like all of the songs, pretty much... It was a truthful time in my life. I was twenty-three or twenty-four and writing a lot."

'It's a Shame About Ray' was recorded at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood with the Robb brothers Bruce, Dee, and Joe producing for Atlantic Records. Dando sang and played guitar and David Ryan played drums. Because Australian bassist Dalton could not make it back to the US for the sessions, Juliana Hatfield filled in on bass and backing vocals, returning the favor for when Dando sat in on bass for the Blake Babies album 'Earwig'. Her harmonies provide a nice emotional counterpoint.

'It's a Shame About Ray' charted at number sixty-eight in the US, thirty-three in the UK, thirty-one in Canada, and twenty-three in Australia, going gold in Australia, the UK, and the US. Dando remembers: "It was a niche in time when things weren't so bad, it was historically a mellow time. We had the good songs; people just liked our music, it was great. It's fun to play the songs as an album. It is a good album, it's a coherent album, it doesn't give me any negative feelings. It makes a lot of people happy."

http://www.thelemonheads.net/

Tom Morgan from Australian band Smudge co-wrote the lyrics to "It's a Shame About Ray". Dando says: "It was from a newspaper. It was this cool-sounding phrase at the end of a newspaper article. It ended with, 'It's a shame about Ray'...It's about this kid who was getting kicked out of all these schools, and it was pretty scandalous. He was just a real fuckup. He was homeless and had a lot of problems with drugs. Ironic. We latched onto the phrase and started saying it all the time. Finally, I had to get the music ready, and we wrote it in about twenty minutes, like the way all good songs are written."
The single went to number thirty-one in the UK and number five on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart.

A cover of Paul Simon's "Mrs. Robinson" was added to later pressings of the album. It went to number nineteen in the UK, sixteen in Australia, and number eight on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart. Dando says when the band performs it live, "it's in as a karaoke number. Every night we get someone who actually wants to sing it."