Psycho Sisters
Timberline b/w This Painting
SOL (Singles Only Label) SOL-354 (1994)
Info...
According to a September Goldmine article Vicki found a soulmate in Susan Cowsill, the one-time "cute little kid sister" of the singing Cowsill family. They started writing songs together. Vicki played guitar during a Cowsills reunion tour – "It was like being onstage with the Beatles" – and she and Susan performed a string of acoustic dates in their nightgowns. They billed themselves as the Psycho Sisters. The Psycho Sisters soon gravitated towards a group of old friends who regularly jammed on the stage of an old rehearsal hall.
Vicki and Susan penned their single "Timberline", while Vicki alone wrote the flip side "This Painting". The pair also preforms together as part of the band Continental Drifters.
In an interview in 2000, Vicki and Susan talked of the Psycho Sisters:
COWSILL: It's kind of a strange crossbreeding of our musical identities. What we do as Psychos is very different from our Continental Drifters songs.
PETERSON: A couple of Psycho Sisters songs ended up on Vermilion: "Rain Song," and "Who We Are, Where We Live."
COWSILL: Sometimes when we're writing a song, we're not sure if it will go Drifter or Psycho. Sometimes we'll be practicing our Psycho stuff and the guys will go "What's that?" At sound check, the songs start creeping in. That's how "Way of the World" went from a Psycho song to a Drifter song. As Psychos, we walk the line of disaster at all times because we intentionally create a situation where our strengths are strongly challenged by our weaknesses.
PETERSON: Our strengths are songwriting and singing together and we balance that with what we are not comfy doing: playing loud electric guitar. It's a challenge because in the Drifters, Susan and I are so warmly surrounded by amazing musicians.
Psycho Sisters lineup includes Vicki and Susan, along with dbs veteran Peter Holsapple, Continental Drifters guitarist Gary Eaton holding down the bottom end, and drummer John Convertino, who went on to become a founding member of Calexico.
Vicki married Susan's brother, musician John Cowsill on 25 October 2003.
Lineage...
Turntable - A vintage VIP Boyscout circa 1966 recently upgraded with a custom plinth hand made of Nubian Dragon wood illegally harvested from Djibouti at great personal risk but used for it's exceptionally nubian tonal response.
Tonearm - SMEK series 1984 modded with X-1R Crawler Track Lubricant from the Space Shuttle to give an out of this world character.
Cartridge - Koetsuzuki Ivory Platinum, a very limited production run of fifty three units, each one hand carved from a white key removed from the Blüthner Grand Piano that was used by The Beatles during the "Let it Be" sessions. The resulting musicality and magical aura is thought to be obvious to all.
Phono stage - Womanley Labs Marlin all tube stage with Russian Svetlanovski tubes that have had a few hundred months burn in time as used in the system of Sergei Rachmaninov as he listened to RCA Victor Program Transcription pressings of Beethoven symphonies for inspiration.
A/D converter - Apologee Schmenke 192 converter with firewire and vintage ESDI interfaces.
Cables - Galemark exclusively uses and endorses Lardas cables. They give him his signature fat sound. (Actually, Galemark would like you to know that he never uses any product as pedestrian as Lardas, but since they are paying him big bucks for the endorsement deal, that is what he is telling people.)
Software - Audacious for Vistakon OS with proprietary dither program written for me by Peter Gotcher because we're boys.
Cleaning - VIP Monsoon machine with a top secret fluid. This special enzymatic fluid is made with several proprietary agents, including pure bile removed from Steve Hoffman's gall bladder during his recent back surgery. The Hoffman magic shines through on every one of my drops.
Ugh...okay...I made all of that up...here is the actual "mid-fi" system that was used...
JVC QL-A7 direct drive turntable (with mods).
Audio-Technica AT440MLa Cartridge.
Marantz Model 2230 Receiver (Phono Pre).
Vinyl meticulously hand cleaned.
E-Mu 1212m soundcard capturing at 32 bit float, 192 khz.
Lightly polished with ClickRepair (unless completely manually declicked - see description)
Stray pops missed by CR manually removed with Audition single click tool (never batch processed).
Resampled and dithered with iZotope RX.
No other signal processing is used (unless noted in the description).
Another quality GALEMARK needledrop
"When you care enough to send the very best"
Always traded, never sold
Always trade lossless