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I Fell Hard [#1]

from Love & Music: Play! Play! Play! by Mr. Happy

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about

This is the first recording of "I Fell Hard", done at Fort Apache South on 1/2" 8-track tape. A second version was recorded with 500 TV just over a year later.

Joe: "I was working at Joy of Movement, a dance center that was turning into a fitness center, a job I took out of desperation the fall after I graduated Harvard. I had gone to meet my soon-to-be-ex, Eve, among whose many talents was that she was a terrific jazz-style dancer, she had taken classes at Alvin Ailey back home in NYC, and she was taking classes at JOM while studying at Harvard. I ended up bracing them for a job when I heard the very sweet manager complain about some giant trash pile in the backyard -- which I was half-way through cleaning up before the manager realized she's hired me. The job outlasted our relationship by a few years, in fact we were about to break up."

"I worked at JOM for a few years, during the early Fort Apache days, too. I dated the feature dancer with Impulse Dance Company, the immensely talented Kathleen Chapin, helped with a few shows, went to NYC with the Company to do FIT, even got to write a song for Kathy's solo one show. Through her I became friends with a few of the dancers; one in particular I wished I could spend more time with was a beautiful North Dakotan named Adrienne, who was uncharacteristically both tall and well-adjusted for a professional dancer. One of the last times I saw her, at a party after a performance, we both had had a few and I knew I wasn't going to see her again in all probability so I chicken-shitedly chose that moment to confess that I had nursed a crush on her from even before I had hooked up with her friend -- which was true -- but when that relationship took off flying right past the exit for casual, I'd had to accept that the ladies' friendship naturally short-circuited any opportunity for future action on that front, attraction or no. She replied 'I know what you mean ... the first time I saw you I fell hard, too'. It sounded like a NoDak expression, something big, blonde women with fearless smiles say in Bowbells or Beulah or Bismarck ... and a song title was born."

"Often I write a song from real life, about one person or a specific event, but just as often I write composite characters into the songs, mash up stories to say what I need to say, and this is a case of the latter. So it's not a song about my NoDak friend Adrienne, but she was an upbeat, energetic woman, and in honor of one of life's bittersweet 'might-have-beens' I tried to write a song that referenced that vibe."

credits

from Love & Music: Play! Play! Play!, released August 8, 1986

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Joe Harvard Asbury Park, New Jersey

"VU & Nico" author, producer-artist-musician
LP creds: Dinosaur, Jr, Pernice Brothers, Throwing Muses etc; spiritual midwife to tons more as co-founder/owner of Fort Apache '85-'93.
An East Bostonian based [One Banned Man, Dub Proof, Doctor Danger, Cockwalkers] in NJ & MOTH NYC Storyslam Champ '01; loves cats. Asbury Music Awards: Top Americana '09/Top Multi-Instrumentalist & Top Avant-Garde '10.
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