Another Perfect Woman is the third release of the Bearded Dwarves Reunion sessions, which started in 2022. More info on who we are and why we are doing this can be found on our soundcloud. But, short story, we wrote a bunch of songs in the early 80’s, some recorded poorly, some never recorded at all. And we are having a great time forty years later making amends, determined to give the material a decent treatment. Or decent burial, depending on how you look at it.
We don’t have access to professional facilities, and are thus engineering and producing the recordings ourselves, learning as we go, working two thousand miles apart, exchanging files remotely. Not surprisingly, as we get better at this, each recording tends to be a little more polished than the last.
I wrote Another Perfect Woman during my senior year in college, a few years before The Causal Attraction of Two (which we recorded and released late in 2022 – also available here). I recorded a poppier version of APW myself in 1985, which mostly missed the mark (much like everything else from those sessions – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?). I quite literally recorded an album by myself, start to finish. And by “start” I mean using the first $10,000 that I earned as an aerospace engineer to buy a bunch of semi-professional multi-track recording equipment. Ah, the Tascam 38 – I still own it. So I had to learn how to use and maintain the equipment first, figure out how to arrange songs, not to mention mix the final recordings, develop cover art, and coordinate the manufacturing. I did enlist a little help here and there – a guitar lead here, a sax part there, etc. And my older brother provided a lot of moral support and input. But it was basically me and what little money and talent I could muster.
It was a great learning experience, to be sure, if only for a long list of “don’t ever do that again” lessons. Digital drums were new back then, and programming them required experience, taste and a sensibility that I lacked. It is remarkable that I was able to produce ten legitimate, if deeply flawed, recordings. Now, to be fair, the person who mastered it at the pressing facility did a horrendous job, which didn’t help. But it wouldn’t have mattered. In the end, it was a vanity project before vanity projects were cool. And it wasn’t very good.
But the album had a few songs on it that had some merit as songs, and Another Perfect Woman is one of them. It’s basically “blue-eyed soul”, as they used to refer to The Righteous Brothers and early Hall & Oates. Sadly, I can’t sing like those guys, and I don’t have the skills or aspiration to write mass market songs like they did. And, well, I have brown eyes.
This version of Another Perfect Woman is more of what I think the song wants to be – a soulful, reflective lament of a broken heart. To add a layer of complexity to the story, I decided to add a bridge and an extended ending, both new in 2023. The mood changes completely in the bridge, with the protagonist entertaining a playful dream of what might have been. As the dream ends to a foreboding timpani roll, the song returns to the bluesy riff, now accompanied by a Nietzsche-inspired lyric of despair in the third verse, leading to a “big” final chorus orchestration to underline the theme of the song. The song ends with an extended instrumental over the bridge, returning to a dream state until finally fading away after one final roll of the timpani. Except it’s not a timpani now. Interpret as you wish.
My dear friend and partner in musical crime Peter Curtiss plays the electric and acoustic pianos, plays the synthesizer solo, and helped with the arrangement. I wrote the song, play the other instruments, sing the vocal parts and engineered and mixed the recording.
Thanks for listening. Enjoy.
Another Perfect Woman