Evening of the Harvest
As professional as their studio releases were, the four musicians always felt that they were at their best playing together, not layering their parts one by one in a studio. "We really wanted to do a live album," says bassist Larry Dekker. And with Evening of the Harvest, the band would get close to that goal. Only subtle additions were made to the live-in-the-studio recordings. Between-song ambient sounds and a few other embellishments are among the few ingredients that separate the album from an audio verité recording.
Drummer Dave Scheff says that going into the project, the band knew their fourth album would be their last for Columbia. The 415 Records vibe had become somewhat lost in the complexities of the major label, and Scheff observes that label head Howie Klein "was on his way to other stuff. And so were we, I guess. So it was a conscious decision: 'We're gonna go for it. Let's show them what we got. Let's go out in a blaze of glory.'"
(excerpted from the book Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave by Bill Kopp)