First off before I say anything else about The Purdins, just let me say this: next Friday, the 28th of August 2026, The Purdins are doing a record release show at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard for “Second Greatest Hits”, their new LP/CD and first release on Green Monkey Records since 1989’s “Let’s Be Friends” EP. You fucking want to be there. It will be massive.
So how did this happen? Well let’s hit the Wayback Machine with Professor Peabody and see what we can see.
Way back in 1987 or so I was recording The Green Pajamas. We put out the “Kim the Waitress” single, which got a great response, followed by the Book of Hours album, which also got a great response. I thought we would soon be conquering the world. We didn’t. We made a small dent and God knows it was a brilliant album and it did get re-released in Germany, Australia and Greece. A glorious dent. Some young fellas heard this record and thought it was the shit. They were The Purdins. They came to see me and said, “We want to make records.” I said, “Great!”
The Purdins were originally made up of two brothers, Zach and Peter Lansdowne, plus a fella named Kurt Elsner and bass player Erik Robbins. They released a cassette, Wail Sounds, which I still own. It smelled like patchouli oil when I got it. By the time they came to see me, thespian Tony Driscoll was their singer. (Note of little importance: Tony shares the same birthday as Joe Ross of The Green Pajamas! When Tony recently reminded me it was Joe Ross’s birthday, I simply said, “Happy birthday, Tony.”)
We recorded the glorious Let’s Be Friends EP, which we released as a 7-inch vinyl record. I loved that record then and still do. In theory, this was the warm-up for The Purdins’ debut album. That album never happened because The Purdins did as The Purdins do. They wandered off to another planet. Not that Mormon planet where you live and get special underwear. No, they went to Purdins’ Planet.
They wandered off and recorded a single called “A Dazzling Bag of Paint Chips.” They also did a video for it, which was weirdly cool for 1988. It was also pretty unusual for Seattle bands at the time.
Zach started a recording studio down in not-yet-trendy Georgetown called The Electric Eel, doing a lot of local band recording in a funky 8-track studio, more or less like what I had down in my basement for Green Monkey. I never went to Electric Eel but I believe, besides being the studio, it was kind of the band house where people could hang and party. I know Richard Peterson was sort of connected to them, so much so that they would put Richard bits on their upcoming Greatest Hits Volume 1 album. (In case you’ve forgotten, I picked up the Richard Peterson catalogue when PopLlama Records closed their doors and have been Richard’s record label ever since. That’s a whole ‘nother story )
At some point Kurt left the band (check out his solo Brain Wizard stuff) and has been replaced ever since by a series of guitar players. Kurt always remained in the band’s inner circle - he’s done record covers for them, he’s done videos for them, including the brand-newest AI bot video for “Falling Down” that’s out right now.
Over the years I have remained a casually dedicated Purdins fan and friend. I’ve kept in touch with them and expressed my interest in their work.
In 1995 the Purdins released their Greatest Hits (Volume 1) album on the Bands We Like label, who released a bunch of other groovy bands from that era in Seattle, including Peter’s band Huge Space Bird. The album is an eclectic grab bag of goodness, with 25 tracks, 20 of which are songs. The other five are, what should we call them? How about incidentals? So much beauty, so much greatness in this record. When I started talking with the Purdins about releasing their new Second Greatest Hits album, I suggested that it might be worthwhile to re-release The Purdins’ Greatest Hits Volume 1 album. For the curious minds, you can find a few tracks from it on Youtube and nowhere else. If you own the CD, you’ve got the real goods.
Well, I ran into the reality of what The Purdins are now and always have been: a noble democracy in the purest sense. To move forward on stuff, they’ve got to all be in agreement and that’s not necessarily easy. Or quick. The band proceeded to have internal discussions about how Greatest Hits should be re-released - what should be on it, what should no longer be on it, song order, all those kinds of things. The end result? We have shelved until some unnamed future date when a more perfect Greatest Hits Volume 1 can be revised and agreed upon. I am perfectly fine with that - after all, it is the band’s choice. I will say however. it is the universe’s loss - this glorious (and historic) material should be heard.
To an extent this is completely on par with my discussions with the band over the last forty years. I have been confidentially told at times there was a secret stash of master tapes hidden away somewhere, possibly in the possession of a well-armed Colombian drug dealer or God knows what. Some incredulous thing that would make them very difficult to obtain. I never knew if that was true or just a bunch of silliness but I always told them if and when they wanted to release some stuff, I would be happy to do it. I would be more than happy to do it. I would love to do it.
So here we are, Second Greatest Hits, out this Friday. Besides that, I finally have a giant grocery sack full of quarter-inch reel-to-reel master tapes by The Purdins that I’m going to bake and render into the digital realm. I’m pretty sure one of them is the master tape for the Let’s Be Friends EP that I recorded in 1986, even though they’re not really labeled very well. So fucking cool.
See you Friday at the Tractor!
PS. I forgot to mention that Fred Speakman is their current guitar shredder.