Tom Nehls I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light

Gatefold jacket with OBI. Hand taped front and back covers, an homage to Nehls’ hand assembled original. Contains a 16 page booklet with Nehls story told in great detail, with never before published photos. Download card for WAV files of the album and unreleased music.
A rock concept album, as progressive as it is psychedelic, recorded by a 17-year-old Tom Nehls and his high school friends in Minneapolis over a three-month period in late 1972. Nehls original notes describe his influences: The Beatles, Zappa, Tolkien. But that amalgamation cannot prepare you for the depths that this wunderkind explored with first-time engineer Paul Stark, who would later co-found Twin/Tone Records and sign and develop punk legends The Replacements and dozens of other bands. Stark privately-pressed 1000 copies of I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light and gave them to Nehls, who hand glued photo copied artwork on the front and back cover of the album and tried to sell copies to his high school friends. Shortly thereafter, 900 copies were destroyed when his parents’ basement flooded, Nehls went off to college, and his masterpiece was left, undiscovered and unappreciated, until fringe vinyl collectors in the early 1990s found and shared a handful of copies. Nehls’ album has gone on to be a welcome addition to the genre Paul Major called “Real People Music;” a wonderful and sincere exploration of the human predicament that reveals more of itself with each listen. Mastered from a flat transfer of Stark’s original master tapes, this is the best that this album has ever sounded. The Now-Again Reserve Edition of I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light possesses a fidelity that Nehls’ rare original didn’t.