 would it be another maybe box sets in the works for the the later album was following these ones don't know you know there's contractual problems going on with some of that older stuff because universal music went in when when Napster happened you know after the the turn of the millennia the whole music industry fell apart and so capital records EMI records as we know it a lot of those major labels went under and they sold off you know the their remaining product to two other companies like Sony and universal music or two of the biggest now that are there I mean there their catalog is is unbelievable of the things that they own now and a lot of the the later records that we did it is under their umbrella so being able to work with a company that's a behemoth like that is sometimes a little challenging to say the least what about Steve Riley who's played on yes last command headless children and the live album what do I mean now that he's passed I mean do you have any comments or about his contributions well I wrote a thing I wrote a thing for him you know the day that it happened because I came as a big shock to all of us because none of us saw that coming and you know when something like that is it's so sudden it catches your flat footed there's no other way to describe it and you know I lost my dad four years ago this month and the one thing I and in an an 18 month period I lost 11 people oh and not a one of them to COVID you know I was I mentioned Frankie just second going Bob you know Frankie was cancer you know so none of them were COVID related it was just you know one thing after another and 11 people in that short a period of time I start thinking to myself what's going on here I mean this is a wave that personally I'd never seen before and to be honest to write obituaries over and over or excuse me eulogies you know over and over and over again it gets it's draining because one of the conclusions I came to and I don't mean for this to sound insensitive death sucks there's no other way to describe it because I learned and as a writer I learned there's no words that we have that we can say that we can we can assemble together to make sense out of those losses you know it's it's it's like love they say love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because there's there's not words to describe what it really is death is the same way you know there are no words that we can we can assemble or group together that really is going to change what it is but what do you say to someone to comfort them yeah there's nothing you know you know as a writer you know I grasped for that and like I said you know there was a number of those that I wrote I got a friend of mine he's pretty high up in the pentagon you know he's part of the joint chiefs of staff he was submarine commander for many years and he had to write a number of letters to parents for soldiers that died and I asked him I said uh said how is it he goes I've written more than I can remember he says and I struggle with every one of them that I write you know so it's there's there's no easy way to do it you know so like I said and in Steve's case that that took us all we caught us all flat footed you know we did not see that coming yeah well in a way this this box that is a testament to a steve right he plays on a lot of it yeah so that's good you know and I wrote that in that in that eulogy that I wrote for him because you know one of the things that I said in there is that those songs that he played on a wild child blind in texas I don't need no doctor those songs cemented our legacy and he's a big part of that the band appeared on the first album as a band as was but as it slowly progressed to the second and third album it's only you on the cover do you think that was a mistake and that created animosity within the people you're playing with no because that was a conscious decision because what happened and tony richards was forcibly removed from the band and I I kind of you know I don't really like to use those terms but it was against all of our will I mean tony had an alleged drug problem that EMI felt very strongly about they we signed the largest deal in history for any previously unsigned band it was for two and a half million dollars we won the lottery overnight but they had such a huge investment in us they were nervous and they did not feel comfortable and they they literally forced our hand to remove him and replace him and that's where Steve Riley came in and but the problem with us was and chris and I fought it tooth and nail because we understood how valuable tony was to us because when tony was there we were a real band and we promoted ourselves as such but when tony was gone we felt like we were mortally wounded and we were no longer the band that we once were so as a band we made a decision to put me on the next two covers but even that didn't feel right and if you've noticed ever since the band has never been on the cover from that time forward you know and that all those were conscious decisions because it all stems back to happen what happened with tony you know so when tony was gone the next two records was us trying to find ourselves we didn't feel like that worked either so then we went to you know headlice was an animated cover so so was the idol you know and so from that time forward like I said you don't see any photos of anyone in the band ever again what about the prmc do you think that we're living through another age of the prmc the uh sort of the cancelling of the cancelling of freedom of speech sure absolutely you know when we first went through that we didn't have enough experience to to know what that was all about but frank zappa did you know he had been through it in the early 60s and but we didn't know that you know and so frank kind of ran interference for us you know to allow us to to say and do the things that we thought were necessary and uh i got to know him a little bit you know because of that and he was he was a really smart guy and um you know but looking at it compared then compared to now i don't see any difference because you know the whole i think it's i think it's worse today isn't it worse today yeah i don't know you know it's anytime you know the whole concept of freedom of speech is not designed to protect popular speech it's designed to protect unpopular speech so if you've got some mad dictator somewhere i think he should be free to say anything he wants to say you know but at the same time i should have the ability to disagree and here's the difference i've got confidence in my fellow man that if enough of him here a load of crap coming out of somebody they're going to have the intelligence to look at it to see through it and go this guy's nuts he needs to be done away with i have confidence that people have enough common sense to to be able to to look through things like that but when you have other people trying to make those decisions for you the age will question and becomes okay they're playing umpire today you know and they're saying these people need to be canceled who gets canceled tomorrow and who's the umpire then you know that's where it becomes dangerous nobody can sit up and make those decisions so the concept of freedom of speech must be total freedom of speech i don't care what you say the concept of of hate speech that's all crap because who draws the line i'm not saying i agree with it but what i don't want to see happen is that what's considered hate speech today because something even worse tomorrow and every time we do that you know it's been said that every day that congress meets we lose a little bit of our freedom every day and it's the same with with limiting or restricting any kind of freedom of speech you know i'm against any of it and we're in canada blackie and i mean we're we're probably leaders when it comes to that would think what goes on up there and i shudder yeah because that is that's absolute that's a police state when it starts to do that so do you think the democracy has failed well you know i go back to benjamin franklin when the continental congress in the united states was trying to form this this government and a woman you know there's a very famous quote that he made a woman came up to him after they they met and she says well sir what what kind of government did you give us and he says a republic man if you can keep it and that's where it becomes really interesting because you know a blink and a government of the people by the people for the people we are the government or at least it was it was when people participated in it but when it gets to the point where it's run by money and bureaucracy then you see quantum shifts start to happen where it is really only a phantom image of what it once was and we are not far behind what you guys are experiencing right now here in the united states yeah sounds like a good good subject for your next album there there's a number of subjects that i'm looking at right now that uh are knocking on the door of what we're talking about new album all right alan mentioned it are you writing do you have anything recorded we're we're pretty far into it right now you know but when this thing happened on the tour and then you know i blew a gasket you know then all that got put on the back burner but uh we're pretty far into the writing process right now so and you know we're excited about it but it's just it looks like we won't be able to get back to it until after the first of the year i mean i i agree i agree tribute to you and the guys because i mean this the the latest albums are just as interesting and and uh that then you know going back 40 years i mean it seems like each album is uh just as strong as the last one it's it hats off to you guys because that's that's hard to achieve you know you try with every record we do now you know i mean nobody makes money making records anymore so if you're going to make records now you're doing because of your legacy and if you're going to do that then you really have to make sure that it's as strong as it can be because you don't want to do anything and have because it's always going to be measured against what you did to begin with you know all bands they make their bones the first five years they're together you know the first five or six records they make you know the their whole legacy legacy is cemented there it doesn't mean you can't make good records later on down the line but everything is going to be constantly compared to that in other words think of whatever new record you do now as you're opening up you know it's always going to be compared to that early stuff and so for it to get you know an honest review or a fair shake so to speak that record that new record has to maybe be even better than the original stuff was because people have had so many years to romance those older songs in their heads right and when you go up against people that have been doing that for a long time it's hard to erase erase those memories and you don't want to do that anyway but you just want the new stuff to have a chance to compete and the only way that new stuff can do that is they have to be solid records