The title of this little record is actually an acronym for "help other people everyday".
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"This is some mysteriously warm sound they got goin' on here. I feel like I'm sitting across the hall from where the recording is happening - eavesdropping on the proceedings.
It always seemed to me like a single performance captured. Something about the vibe brings to mind Fred Neil's Sessions to me. In reality, I guess that wasn't really the case since the liner notes say it was recorded both in Chicago and London. But somehow it's seamless. Some alchemy at work there. And Oldham's vocals on this recording: soft, head-voice, back of the throat, like the tone of someone that's been crying.
I remember I dubbed the 12" EP onto cassette (can't remember what I put on the other side to fill it out) and it accompanied me on drives in a 1985 Delta 88 around upstate, NY. Quiet tree-lined two-lane roads.
It makes such sense in hindsight - you need to travel down those back roads at dusk in order to get to arrive at Viva Last Blues, where the landscape and his voice opens up."
- Pat Gubler, 2011
