"I'm gonna play a musical competition for you, it's called over the hills and through the grass and up your ass!"

At the very core of the machine known as LIVER is the mastermind, the CPU, the heart,.... Claudio.

It was Claudio, who at the time was in a band called Metal Heart with Jeff "The Wolf" Hickman who started it all. Claudio and Jeff were room mates and between band practice and working, would record "Stupid Songs" ona cheesy old 4-Track cassette machine. Originally they called themselves the Ghetto Bastards and then The Festering Cowboys, the songs and the style were the foundation of what would become LIVER.

"We'd record with the 4-Track slowed down so when played back at normal speed it would sound like psychotic demonic anti-social chipmonks. Just that alone was enough to crack us up. Add to that an out of tune guitar, or off meter drumbeat and it was MAGIC!"

Metal Heart was actually a vert talented band. Jeff and his brother Ron Hickman were very accomplished musicians as was Claudio on bass and were in a way competition at the time for Max and the band he was in Minx as both bands were from the same area and all were friends or new each other. Metal Heart was actually a far more talented band, and the musicianship far superior than Minx. But the same vibe applied. When Metal Heart started to feel more like a "job" to Claudio and Jeff their outlet was to do their 4-Track recordings, usually about the band, people in the band or in their building or just whatever annoyed the piss out of them that day. Instead of complaining about it, they'd do a "Stupid Song" instead.

 

"Oh - no,... NONE of the early stuff was ever written down. The music, the changes, the missing of the changes and all the lyrics were off the top of our heads. We'd lay down a couple tracks and then just bust out into what you could loosely call Poetry,...Vulgar Poetry and do just one take, then move on. There are close to 300 some odd songs or more like that. Random, luantic thought set to music."

Claudio and his girlfriend at the time had a son and moved in together and Jeff ended up moving in with Max, which is where and when it all ended up coming together and LIVER was born.

"We did sort of like a greatest hits, and Max called the album: PIPING HOT LIVER. He worked in a music store and played the music for a bunch of surfer kids,.. they'd leave and get their friends and come back saying HEY, PLAY THAT LIVER ALBUM and the name stuck. We figured nobody likes liver and shit, no one will like us too. It was very fitting."