Track: 11
Title: THE HANGED MAN V [scratch-vocal version, previously unreleased]
Authorship: Medford/Immergluck/vonBlankers/Benton/Dion/Armour
Publishing: BrowBeat Music, BMI
Recording date: December 1988
Recording place: Dancing Dog Studios, Emeryville, CA
Recording engineers: David Bryson & David Immerglück – 16 track
Remastered by Carl Salbacka & Leslie Medford
Running Time: 07:01
First appeared on: Out of Thy Star, Bandcamp
Released 23 November 2020 [streaming only]

Leslie Medford : vocals, acoustic guitar
David Immerglück : electric guitar
Terry von Blankers : bass guitar
Edward Benton : drums

Particulars: Says Medford: “For those of you who have been paying attention, well, this is where we have ended up: going through the door! The reason this is The Hanged Man the Fifth, or The Hanged Man 5, version five, whichever, is because five recordings of the song were deemed (by me) to be superior to the others. Goodness knows what I’ll think the next time I make the trek through all the versions. I have 23 (that number again) in my cassette archive. So this scratch vocal version could have been titled The Hanged Man XXIII, because it’s the last of the bunch. Thank cog we have it! Because this cassette mix was made during the very last minutes of The Big O recording sessions, when I realized we didn’t have a cassette of our multi-tracked version as it then stood, and David Bryson quickly put on the one-inch, 16-track master reel, and quickly mixed this version onto cassette for us. All of Davy’s guitar work – meant to be mega-sculpted into stereo gorgeousness in a proper mix – is left unsculpted here, and my scratch vox is less-than-perfectly-satisfying. We just ran out of time and money and had put this one aside while we finished up other closer-to-completion songs for The Big O. It was madness! At least (we thought) we’ve got a good head start on the next album! But there was no next album. So although it remains “incomplete” this Hanged Man has sounded more and more acceptable over the years. (I have the 1” master reel, however. Hmmm...)

“Scratch vocal” is what a singer sings during a studio recording which is not intended as the final vocal, but only to keep the band together as, for instance, the drums and bass are trying for *their* final takes. At this point the full band is playing live in the recording studio with each mic’d instrument isolated as much as possible from all the others (by walls, screens or other baffling) and everyone hearing the others only through headphones. The final vocals are usually overdubbed long after the bass and drums go down, and other instruments like guitar have been layered on via their own overdub sessions, but the scratch vocal is part of the scaffolding that holds a song together during “construction” and it isn't erased until it is replaced with a perfectly recorded and performed (in theory) final vocal. This is generally done last, singer alone, with engineer in sound booth, and with the already completed band performance playing through the singer’s headphones. We never got to the final-vocal stage on The Hanged Man, so the scratch vocal remained on tape, and that’s what we have here. On the one hand there’s no pressure for an ultimate performance, knowing it will be re-done. Resisting the temptation to sing silly stuff which cracks up those who are trying to concentrate on performances they are going to have to live with ‘til the end of time, is closer to the truth in my case. Since the history of this song is ad-lib extempore improvisation I’m not convinced I had finalized the lyric. The words during the first section had become “finished” I guess, but not those of part three. Still, by this point I wasn’t singing complete gibberish and had some idea of where it was going. The serious Ophelias listener will have noticed more and more lines getting repeated down the versions as the song grew to be a shoulder to the man. Regardless, the vocals were not considered by me to be in any way “complete”, lyrics or performance, either one. But I’ve been living with these – and not in complete despair – for nigh on thirty-five years now. I’m happy enough with these.”

A review of the five 21st century Ophelias albums will show that The Hanged Mans I through V have now all been published.