THICK THREAD • DISCOGRAPHY & HISTORY

1971 was the year THICK THREAD came to life in a Scotch-Irish/Chickasaw “suburb” of Tennessee, USA, and the band jumped right into fame with their instant hit 'Innocent Eyes' from their debut album entitled 'Garden of Fuzz.' The power trio of Roger Talbott, Jimmy Jaune, and Roger Cornfield exploded by destroying all prog-rock conventions through the blending of gravelly baritone vocals with catchy and pretty pop-like nuances, dirty riffs, and, quite frankly, a total unbelievable reinvention of the use of the triangle. With their sudden huge success, they went on to tour for two years, playing over 600 shows. They received countless offers of all kinds, but the one thing they fell more for was adding new members who would sell their souls and royalties only to be part of the group. The two Rogers and Jimmy were happy to get this free talent on board, while keeping most of the money. While in full creative control, they did let the new energized members contribute a lot to their next album, if only for the original guys to recuperate from the extensive touring months they had gone through.

This is what led to their second album entitled 'Nest of Gnomes', now featuring eight members, which, as it turns out, and by pure coincidence, added three more guys named Roger to the group. One of the new musicians was a Finnish flute and violin player who took the opportunity to push his influence by steering the band into a Nordic semi-folkloric direction. Jimmy and the Rogers were too tired to argue but maintained a certain level of acknowledged veto notoriety, as long as there was still a strong dose of novel triangle work, since it had already unequivocally proven to be part of their signature themes. However, the recording of the album was rather chaotic; the songs went all over the place with little prog-rock cohesion, and no one could agree on a final proper mix. Blending the usual alcohol and drugs became a perfect recipe for a 'too many cooks in the kitchen' situation. The distributor was getting anxious about losing momentum and randomly picked a mix during a very heated, overly complex, and rather violent version of the game 'Miss Mary Mack.' The album's release and reception were a total disaster, with fans wondering why there was such a different shift in music, despite having one very good Billboard chartbuster called 'Sharpening Your Hypotenuse' (ed. featuring the most insane triangle solo ever), which saved them from being dropped by the label. The tour lasted only four months as three members overdosed during a 'wild party' at the Coconut Club in some remote area of Indonesia.

It was already time for the members of Thick Thread to get the sober treatment and realign their goals. Founding member Jimmy Jaune had ironically caught himself during the tour in a love triangle (no joke), impregnating 2 of his conquests, and both giving birth to triplets... With this extreme pressure of becoming a super-dad, Jimmy attempted to kill himself. Talbott and Cornfield were in shock and realized they couldn't go on with him anymore. But they did give him a decent payout to cover the multi-family “adventure” he had come to accept dealing with, allegedly. While it was not enough to survive very long, it was nonetheless a substantial start. But Jimmy was ultimately still in a deep depression and decided to go to Las Vegas and bet it all on red in a game of roulette. Once the players at the table were flabbergasted at the crazy amount of money he had put on the color (rumored to be half a million), he reportedly said to them, "It's either red or “schlick”," mimicking the sound and movement of a blade slicing his throat. He went on to win... 7 times in a row! This happened to be his lucky number (like too many people, apparently), and then he made the wise decision to stop and finish as a winner.

Meanwhile, the original Rogers decided to return to the old formula, which consisted of the power trio structure, but this time, in order to replace Jimmy, chose to add one of the remaining and coolest guys, namely Roger "Creampuff" Brownburn. As a result, named their new musical endeavor 'Three Rogers.' Pretty stripped-down, half-acoustic, and boldly unafraid to add 3 epic 9-minute pieces consisting of strictly 3 triangle tracks. The songs were quite spacey and had enough sound filters that they became 'something else,' enough to be highly applauded as extremely innovative, which won them more than a few prog-rock awards. But it's the 2-part song entitled 'Cookie Dough: The Ecstasy' and 'Cookie Dough: The Autopsy' that kept them on the charts for a few much-needed weeks and gave them a modest and respectable comeback.

Having learned the hardships of fame on their first album, anonymity had quickly become a must for the band. But without social media and only minimal press coverage at the time, casual fans and uninformed people had never noticed that the men depicted on the album covers were not actually them. While overall very similar in their looks, the members always hired look-alikes in order to avoid eventually getting spotted in public. Early and soon-to-be-a-trend fan mail containing pounds of hair and pubes freaked out a bit Roger Cornfield, as opposed to Talbott, who found it quite exciting and made the former question if this was yet another sign of his bizarre fetishes he had noticed himself 'acting out' in dirty motel rooms during their first tour. But this was one of the reasons why Cornfield insisted on not being recognized. He adored his own personal pilosity, apparently often bragging about it, but surprisingly couldn’t really stand others', and somehow this was one of the reasons he preferred staying in the shadows. But the jig was up, and fans were getting serious about finding out who they really were, especially as another rumor came to life (apparently through the label’s clever marketing team) claiming that the band had always worn intricate latex masks during their performances. Instead of denying their desire not to be recognized, they playfully named their fourth album 'Jungle Prey' as if to say they were being hunted like wild and rabid animals by the feral paparazzi and for which it would also align with their desire to branch out in a new style.

Following a good touring cycle, the band was now trying to write 'Jungle Prey', their first concept album and doing so by attempting to introduce world music into their catalog. So, they decided to focus on “embracing” African sounds. Their first single 'Boogie Voodoo Guru Taboos' was a smash hit, fusing ferocious funk, boogie, and of course prog-rock, and “mindboggling triangle acrobatics,” as stated by Sick Sigs Magazine. But the rest of the album was light on African sounds, trading their discarded ethnic musical attempts for cheap field recordings of jungle noises, and literally inventing the term “Aboriginal Stereophonics” for marketing reasons, as famously tagged on their album cover. The new LP was still a very good success, with such songs as 'Baring the Black Mamba' and 'Fertility Soup' gaining additional popularity after having been featured on the movie soundtrack of the box office mastodon called 'The Salacious Imbroglios of Tony Prescot'.

A new world tour ensued, with various degrees of success, but enough to sustain them financially to take a much-needed and elongated break. One of the reasons was because of Talbott, who decided to take the helm of the drum duties on the last tour (which had previously been played by Brownburn) only to realize towards the end of the final gig that he had damaged a lot of his knee and elbow tendons. He was not used to playing on such extended runs, and it quickly translated into a physical shock for his rather untrained body.

Then a whole year passed with Talbott rarely returning phone calls. The story says his interest in music had significantly diminished and that his newfound love with Susan Daisyroad had an impact on the decision, let alone that a child of theirs was on the way. She allegedly was pressuring him to be a stay-at-home dad, as she seriously wanted to not only transform her hobby of competitive macramé into a full career but also become a conceptual macramé experimentalist on top of that. Apparently, the latter was the last wish and deathbed words of her grandmother, pushing the aforementioned to be her “truest destiny”.

Cornfield and Brownburn, now living only blocks away from each other in their respective luxurious mansions, were jamming together seven days a week, hours on end, to create new musical soundscapes, but also taking “jacuzzi breaks for inspiration”, as once told by a fired-butler named Jerry Diet. They were truly and seriously dedicated to their auditory craftsmanship, such as exploring new “triangle designs and tempo strategies”. Their bond was strong as ever and solidified to a new kinky-kindred-like degree, spawning many rumors in the process. After composing a firm batch of about 20 songs, still with nature as the central theme, they managed to reach out to Talbott to express their readiness to record their next gem of an album, but not without having him contribute to it. They didn’t want to break the three Rogers concept and cause too much questioning and turmoil with their fanbase. After a few attempts, Talbott accepted, but only if he could record his tracks from home and without their input. Cornfield and Brownburn begrudgingly accepted, but only if Talbott would commit to touring for at least six months, which could then be renegotiated depending on the tour’s results.

He was sent the tapes and soon after added various elements to the songs, and while never using his ego to rearrange their structure, he pretty much didn’t really add any of his previously clever writing skills either. The anxious duo was disappointed by his lazy-dud attitude but was kind of happy at the same time that about 98% of their creation had remained intact. Plus, while Talbott used to be the main lyricist, he had no inspiration for texts this time around, leading Brownburn to take on those reins and write the majority of them. Once the album came out, fans and critics had issues with its dubious content, as it was often suspiciously filled with scatological metaphors like in 'Boots Full of Mud' or confusing double-meaning titles such as 'Meat Tube Jugglers', 'Silky Tapestries', and the title track 'Forest Friend' which was “told” to have nothing to do with nature but rather weird innuendos about “hiding and playing in beefy bushes.” But what cemented this shifty concern was clearly exposed on the album cover itself. An obscure Cincinnati prog-rock fanzine named “Elevated Licks” had a brief interview with Cornfield over a glitchy long-distance phone call, seemingly explaining that the cover was ultimately made for shock value and to cater to a new potential market, as well as adding some “inside-bashing”, exposing why Talbott was reduced to a small image in the corner, getting but a “subtle criticizing wink” for not being more engaged in the writing process of the album.

The Japanese distributor had surprisingly no real issue with the gay-inclined imagery on the artwork and was more concerned that there were not three Rogers combined together on it. So they requested a different take from the artist to at least include three of them. To keep in line with the official design, the image in the left corner was changed to one of Roger Biceps, honoring the memory of one of the previous members who accidentally died during their second album tour. The album was not well received, and it seemed that the lack of Talbott’s talent was intuitively felt.

And while Cornfield and Brownburn had wanted to avoid talking about his minimal involvement and let the album be judged as if it were an effort concocted by the full trio, they decided to double down on the gay visuals by releasing a new 7” for the track 'Rearview Review', thinking this would be more of a topic-changer than talking about the internal struggle they had with Talbott. But theorizing critics were now putting their money on the fact that it seemed Brownburn was trying to slowly expose his strong love for Cornfield, who, as it eventually became known, was actually bi. Something that Brownburn was not too fond of, fearing a woman could be getting back in the picture eventually.

When Talbott saw the album cover at his local store, he was pretty pissed for not having been consulted. He had not signed on for this homoerotic artwork. But he was nonetheless still contractually obliged to tour at least for half of the upcoming year. Regular fans were somewhat confused and/or disgusted by the LP’s painted picture, and some just abandoned the band just because. But in turn, and as partly expected, the band gained a totally new crowd and the album became strongly beloved by its new alternate community. And even if Talbott had initially hated the new branding the band had been put in, he decided to bring his now-wife on tour to at least prove that there was at least one of them “playing on the original side of the fence”. Susan endlessly complained she didn’t have the best conditions to do her macramé “masterpieces” and often reprimanded anyone who would hear it, that a tour bus “was too small to fully express her creativity”, but of course knew that if she wanted to pursue her craziest macramé ideas, the money would have to come in larger amounts than she was making by selling them. But even with this kind of turmoil constantly omnipresent, the three Rogers got along better and better and the animosity was left behind as Talbott eventually admitted that the songs on his less-involved album were “truly kick-ass” and that its hidden brilliancy had really grown on him. Talbott eventually went on to accept touring for an additional year.

Then it was followed by another 11 months of break time before Cornfield and Brownburn started knocking on Talbott’s door to tell him they were really juiced about composing a new opus. Talbott was enthusiastic, but only if he would regain most control. And the first thing that was discussed was how they’d handle the album cover this time around. So, a compromise was negotiated: In order to still feed off their newfound gay fanbase, the album would still need to have some level of homoeroticism, and as a bargaining chip, Talbott imposed wife-made macramé costumes to be featured on the three fake Rogers. Plus, he would be solely responsible for writing all the lyrics and deciding on the album concept. Going back to the success of 'Jungle Prey', Talbott hinted at an unofficial sequel by bringing genuine world music influences and doing so by introducing foreign musical instruments in the process, hence the final title of their latest output, 'Bongorillas'. Tracks included the epic 5-part odyssey 'Babylon’s Baboons', the super syncopated up-tempo and minimalistic track 'Banana Quest' (which reached the 5th position on the charts and stayed around that number for 14 weeks in a row). Other tracks worth mentioning were the surprisingly emotional 11/8 microtonal ballad 'Sunset Safari & Serious Kisses'', a short but mandatory triangle tune which would push back the instrument’s limits for a couple of decades no less, and the fuzzy super-slow trance-doomy dirge and nihilistically-infused lyrics of the album closer, 'Extinction of the Fur'.

Now reaching the mid-80s, the band got back on tour and its sales went amazingly well and even broke their own record. Cornfield and Brownburn had finally come out of the closet, celebrating their love to the joy of their community and indifference of their staying fanbase who both had long ago connected the dots. Talbott didn’t mind that the spotlight was on them as he was trying to keep his marriage alive and focusing on teaching his son Roger VII (who followed them on tour) every instrument that he could think of (and yes, including the much-adored and venerated triangle).

Whether the last song’s lyrics on their last entry were a prophetical peek into their unexpected future, what was so high of a triumph had to eventually come down… And that realization came in a brutal way. All the orgies that the gay duo had participated in came with a price… Both members of the musician couple had contracted AIDS. For which everything in their world became a total tragedy… They not only died rapidly but only one day apart from each other. Talbott, the gay community, their longtime fanbase, and even the industry were in absolute shock at this gigantic all-too-sudden loss…

Talbott had lived through the deaths of other members in the past, but now turning out to be so rapidly all alone was too devastating for him. He went into hiding, trying to purge his own depression. His wife eventually got a divorce and left with their child, who was not too torn about it, as the stress of becoming a prog-rock musician was pressure he was glad to put to rest.

But after three years of mourning and constant reminders from his entourage telling him that making more music would heal his spiritual wounds by acting as therapy, Talbott started to write again. Not wanting to get involved with any new musicians, if anything for the fear of them somehow yet again dying during the process, he decided to compose and play all the instruments. Not wanting to go under the name Thick Thread, to possibly avoid continuing the death curse, Talbott decided to go under the name Roger X, the letter symbolizing all the Rogers that had filled the life of his musical career. 'Solo but Solid' was chosen for the album’s title, but unfortunately it was nothing short of that… The songs were uninspired and bland homages to previous hits and had a somber melancholia that even goth kids of today would call “too realistically suicidal”… The prog aspects were botched and even obvious mistakes were left in. It’s really sad that Roger couldn’t even see through this and still had the balls to call his album as such… And make no mistake, there was the now obligatory triangle track slipped in, but it didn’t feel like a prog musician playing it and more like a sick joke as if a retarded toddler with no rhythm at all had played a single 2-minute track upon first discovering the instrument… Some critics were sympathetic to his cause, but most were severe enough that Roger was not backed by enough support to go on a real tour. He played 2 half-empty dive bars in Nashville and didn’t have the courage to do the last 2 in Ohio, thinking that since he didn’t get a good crowd reaction from the song 'Yeehaws in Ohio', it would just finally fully destroy his morale and will to live… For what it’s worth, songs like 'Burn the Urns', 'Whiskey Morning Breath', and 'Balls Full of Regrets' had interesting lyrics, if anything.

Time went by and Thick Thread fell into oblivion. Roger Talbott was found dead next to a train track with his head severed. Some detractors have said that he had a new song idea and wanted to analyze the rhythms of an upcoming train by putting his ear on the track but fell asleep doing so, while others were clearly calling this an 'obvious death wish'.

His son Roger VII (who had changed his name to Slippy Girdle, having had a brief stint in the porn industry), cleaned up his act and thought he’d honor the memory of his dad after hearing about his death… 7 years after he had passed away. Maybe wishing for a quick buck, he was just okay with using a one-man band to compose the instrumental material and only write and sing the songs, as his musical skills had still not improved since his childhood. The album was released in 1999, and weirdly enough felt more like a late entry of the grunge era than any semblance to a prog-rock piece. Not that he had promised for it to be such a thing, but of course, any hope from old fans had just been given a final ground-stomp. The LP was entitled 'Hay Fever' and was a metaphor about him being also “allergic” to his relationship with his mother, along with the macrame nightmare that sunk her into deep debts. Titles like 'The Ties That Bind, the Knots That Blind', 'Hemp Rope of Sorrow', and 'Ditch the Half-Hitch Bitch' had so many references to her mother’s expensive hobby and dark upbringings that critics were quite disappointed having Roger’s life being partly demystified in such a way.

The album somehow featured a techno cover of 'Nostril Extensions' from Thick Thread’s first album. But they had hired a 3rd grade DJ called Tito Pompei who knew nothing about the band and had accepted to make the track for supposedly a “heavy bag of crack”. People speculated that Slippy had chosen this song as the closer track only to sort of try to cause a scandal in order to boost the chatter around the release. It was a complete failed attempt, and the album barely sold 200 copies… Quite a sad end for the Talbott family…

But in the last few years, and with the growth of prog-rock communities seeking to promote old lesser-known classics (cause despite their currently regarded success, there were much bigger prog-rock acts in their prime days), a group of fans has supposedly convinced a good amount of virtuosos to reinterpret a selection of Thick Thread’s catalog in order to give the band back their letters of nobility, accompanied by 2 more LPs for which the second would be music inspired by their unique sound, technical skills, and creative prowess. It has yet to be determined if they seek to specifically find musicians that are actual Rogers, but plan B would have the participating musicians replace their first name while keeping their last as a testament to their conceptual legacy. But one thing “for sure” is that the 3rd LP will strictly consist of an already unanimously agreed-upon 25-minute triangle track that will be 'so extremely demented “it’ll make one’s jaw drop down to infinity”. And all I can say is, count me in.