(taken from the liner notes of the Ride The Tiger CD, written by Ira Kaplan)

At the begining of 1984, Georgia was working on an animated movie with her sister. I was mixing bands at Maxwell's. We'd play cover songs in our basement, emerging at the occasional party at which we'd get anybody we could coerce to play bass and, especially, to sing. We were also half of Jon Klage's backup band, but as Jon has just had a dream in which it was revealed to him that he would be kicking us out - commemorated in the title cut of his solo EP "In a Dream" - our days were numbered. Somewhere along the line we started writing a few songs.

The coercion route was growing increasingly tedious, as was the compulsion to generate a new repertoire for each party. We started sounding out our friends about forming a band.
Meanwhile, in the back pages of the Village Voice Dave Rick (gtr) and Jerry Smith (bs) were also looking to start a group. They placed the following ad:

John Klage, meanwhile, switched Dave Schramm from bass guitar to guitar, replaced Georgia with our mutual friend Doug Wygal (see Luxury Condos...) (who had contacted Dave and Jerry but drew a blank when quizzed on Roger Miller's pre-Burma Red Ants). He too tried his luck with the Voice:

When our friends all failed to recognize the latent genius in our work, Georgia and I also enlisted the aid of the Village Voice classifieds:

an event that failed to escape the attention of the eagle eyes of Messrs. Rick and Smith. Attracted by our name-dropping of their beloved Mission of Burma, they phoned us. When Dave correctly identified the Grassroots as Love's first name, we set up an audition.

The audition process may not be the most awkward thing known to man, but you'd never know that by any of the try-outs we ever held. Most fall blissfully out of your head - until years later when somebody feels the need to remind you of their audition - but we've never forgotten meeting Dave and Jerry. They took our timid little folk-rock songs and ran them through their into-Void/Sonic Youth/Burma and the result was easily the most "musical" thing we'd hear in our songs for months to come, but also too much for our timid folk-rock souls. Dave, sensitive fellow he, grasped the situation immediately and told us confidentially that he thought he could play the bass in the manner we were looking for. We said we'd keep him in mind.
And we did. Unfortunately, though we remembered what he wore the night we played with him - a Haagen-Dazs rum raisin T-shirt - we forgot his name and lost his phone number. But a short time later we saw him at Maxwell's and we pounced. We started practicing late summer or early fall, something like that. Our first show was at Maxwell's' - a party, of course - with Antietam, their second date. We had never meant to be a trio, but with Dave's I'm-really-a-guitarist bass stylings, we were able to pull it off, sort of. To be frank, we weren't excellent.

But we kept plugging away. Dave warned us he and Jerry had not abandoned their search for a drummer. But things were proceeding slowly on that front, there being stiff competition for drummers, as evidenced by another ad of that era:

(This has to be Jesse Malin and Hope, a band I had the pleasure of mixing at Maxwell's one peace-loving evening.)

By the spring we figured we were ready to record. We figured we'd be even readier if we brought in a ringer. We asked Dave Schramm to help us out, and remembered in a flash why we hadn't wanted to be a trio. We invited him to continue playing with us and he said OK. Almost simultaneously Dave Rick met Jon Coats and formed Phantom Tollbooth. He quit Yo La Tengo a few months later.
Mike Lewis formerly of DMZ and the Lyres, had moved to our block. Apparently it had always been his dream to play in a band that lived (and practiced) across the street, even a band of timid folk-rockers. We added a couple of '60s garage covers to keep him company.

Things went fairly swimmingly until Mike learned the dark side of playing in a band that lives (and practices) across the street. While preparing a repast of hummus, I neglected to heed the recipe's instruction to remove the spoon from the blender before starting it up. No sooner had I swept up all the broken glass and wiped the chick peas off the wall, then I was bounding over to Mike's to borrow his blender. Mike was not at home but his heretofore secret girlfriend was. Thus exposed, Mike felt he had no choice but to quit the group.

Around this time, Coyote greenlighted the recording of an album. We had the bright idea jto invite Clint Conley out of retirement to produce us. Mike - who loved a good trip to Boston - most kindly consented to record. Clint signed on, then remembered he had no idea what we sounded like. But he never confessed to regretting it, although he might have come close when we implored him to front us some money for the studio bill. He came to one rehearsal, where he chose "Big Sky" over out other proposed Kinks cover "God's Children" (and corrected my version of the introduction). We asked him to play on a few songs, and he said sure, warning us he hadn't picked up a bass since Mission of Burma's breakup in '83. We were willing to risk it. Clint boiled his bass strings - I forget why, it might have been for good luck - and let it rip. (We even conned him inot playing a whole set with us one night at CBGB's between recording and release of Ride the Tiger, following which he resumed his retirement.)

As for the finished product, to me it sounds like a Dave Schramm album (although he might disagree). Dave's guitar playing is unarguably the best thing about the record, and his songwriting shows direction, in stark contrast to my mush-mouthed confusion. Since he left the band in the August of '86, we've hardly played any of these songs.

The live songs were recorded at Mike Lewis's last two shows. "Closing Time" was the first song Dave sang with us. "Crispy Duck" was played at our first ever performance, in a different version from the one here. We came up with a new arrangement of it in '89 and recorded it for That is Yo La Tengo. We've since revised it yet again.

Dave quit to form his own band, originally Walking Wounded, now the Schramms (with, as I write, two records on the Okra label). Eschewing the time honored Village Voice route, he was able to find friends and acquaintances to join him. As Dave lived in another part of town from us, and had never been known to place a spoon in a blender or even a knife in a toaster for that matter, Mike Lewis was only too happy to fill the bass chair. I stepped on a fuzzbox. We practiced as a trio, played live with our old pal Dave Rick, Chris Stamey, and even once with Dave Schramm on guitar until I had appropriated enough of their moves to continue as a trio.

- Ira