:: The Story So Far... according to Bob Long ::

Virgin Insanity was actually a Dallas band that flourished for a few short months in the year of our Lord 1971. Unlike most bands of that era that performed live and then made a record, Virgin Insanity, in true keeping with its obtuse reality, did just the opposite. They, you might say, were a project band, grouped together to make a record. Once that had been done, they were faced with the reality that, hey crap, guess we're gonna have to go out and play some gigs to sell the silly thing. But before going any further, let's digress a moment.

Our story begins in late November 1970 when bob got a job as Santa Clause in a major department store in the North Park shopping mall in Dallas. 1970 had pretty well been a bust for him, a few months living on Laurel Canyon Blvd. in Studio City, CA trying to peddle songs to anyone who would let him in the front door and give him a listen. Tail between the legs return to Texas in the summer and an autumn spent living in a flop house in east Texas playing music for who ever would listen. By the time late fall rolled around, the money had run dry (he always kept a $5 bill taped on the inside hood of his green 1962 Volkswagen, enough to buy gas to get him back home. Well, he ended up spending that $5 on gas getting back home.

Anyway, here he was, a 20 year old wise cracking Santa Clause entertaining children and adults alike 6 days a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yes, back then, the Christmas season started after Thanksgiving, not after Halloween. While pretending to be a jolly old man from the north pole, Santa fell lustily in love with one of his attractive young helpers named Eve. Santa and Eve spent many long hours talking about all kinds of stuff, especially making music and a record. Christmas came and went and at the dawn the new year of 1971 bob and Eve were a number.

Marriage accidentally happened before the end of January and they moved into a studio apartment in the then distant northern suburb of Dallas called Plano. Yep, it was a Plano place. With nothing else to occupy their time, they build a recording room out of pallets, crates, blankets and egg cartons. By that time they had persuaded 2 of bob's buddies, Wayne and Jud to come on board to make a record. Both of these guys were in college at this particular moment Jud was a senior at SMU in Dallas and Wayne was a junior at NTSU in Denton. So. They both signed on to make a record that would consist of original music written by bob, sung by all and recorded one track at a time in a technique as bouncing from one track to another.

It was truly recording in the Dark Ages compared to today. We worked on the first album through the spring and early summer and finally had what we thought was a pretty good set of tunes. In the true Virgin Insanity spirit we had our record pressed on our own and ended up with a minimum order of 200 albums. All of this was financed by bob's job at the Richardson Water and Wastewater Department. Everyday he would subject himself to an immersion in red-neckness fixing water leaks, digging ditches and the crowning glory, shoveling dried sewerage from evaporation beds onto the back of flatbed trucks to be hauled off to the city dump. You might say, "Illusions of the Maintenance Man" was made literally shoveling shit.

For a couple of weeks the group marveled at itself, we had done it, made a record. Each of us hustled every friend we had offering the disk for the amazing price of $3. Some folks even bought more than one, wow! The four of us decided to follow up on our obvious success with a 2nd record. This set would be called "Toad Frog and Fish Friends." We finished the 12 songs on it by the end of the summer and decided to hold off pressing copies of it because the 1st record was only selling in the dozens. Our friends really liked it, at least that is what they said, but it was a hard sell on its merits as a record album to those who were not family or friend.

We did hit the road during this time and did a few drop in interview/unveilings of the album on small radio markets in Texas. These were the areas more accustomed to Hank and Tennessee and what you might call traditional country music. Virgin Insanity might as well have been music from Mars. It's amazing we made it out of some of the studios alive.

As late September arrived, Wayne was back in school for his last year of college, Jud was a graduate and got a job and bob and Eve decided that Nashville was the place they really need to be. So, I guess it was at this point that Virgin Insanity ceased to exist. The move to Nashville lasted 3 or 4 days and bob and Eve ended up back in another Plano apartment for six or so months before they migrated to the foreign land of Austin. That is a whole 'nuther story.