Unpacking Kevin Gilbert's "The Shaming of the True"
A posthumous masterpiece by America's most tragically unknown singer/songwriter is set for a vinyl release.
Thanks for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. This issue of the newsletter discusses a brilliant album by a musical genius that came out four years after his death. To get some background and perspective on Kevin Gilbert’s 2000 album The Shaming of the True, I spoke with Wayne Perez, a friend of Gilbert’s and archivist for the Estate of Kevin Gilbert, who also hosts the officially sanctioned You Are Here: A Kevin Gilbert Podcast on YouTube.
Wayne was generous with his time in telling me about the work that the Estate of Kevin Gilbert is doing to get releases out to fans and we discussed in detail the work that went into The Shaming of the True and Kevin’s life and career. There was much more detailed and interesting information than I could include in this newsletter, and you can see the video of our full conversation embedded below the main story.
My aim here is to discuss the album, provide some detail, and entice those who are unfamiliar with Gilbert’s work to discover its brilliance.
So, let’s get to that story.
Singer/songwriter Kevin Gilbert departed this world on May 18, 1996, leaving his fans devastated, and perhaps preventing the general public from ever truly discovering his gargantuan talent and making him a household name. He passed away before the release of his seminal work, the conceptual The Shaming of the True, was finished. It’s an album worthy of praise, acclaim, and sales by the millions. Yet relatively few people know about it. The release should have propelled Gilbert into the kind of stardom that had just eluded him throughout his career to that point. Ironically, Shaming tells the cautionary tale of that very type of stardom.
Shaming is about to be released as a 2-LP vinyl set in two versions, so this is the perfect time to talk about the album. There will be a standard edition and a limited edition collector’s version. Both will include two 180-gram LPs, housed inside a six-panel gatefold sleeve, featuring complete song lyrics, as well as illustrations by John Seabury. There will be 600 copies of the standard edition available and the collector’s version, which will be individually numbered and include more goodies, will be limited to just 100 copies.
“It's one of the most anticipated releases from Kevin Gilbert since since his passing, so we've really taken the care and time and effort to do it (right),” said Wayne Perez, archivist for the Estate of Kevin Gilbert and host of the officially sanctioned You Are Here: A Kevin Gilbert Podcast on YouTube.
“It comes with a hologram sticker on the front that says ‘limited edition.’ It’s really nice,” Perez said of the special collector’s version package. “When you open it up, in one of the photos, there's a nice little stamp and each one is individually numbered. And a beautiful print comes with it — a print-pressed print, and these are pretty cool. Each one has its own stamp of of ink on there, and a certificate of authenticity, and they come in a beautiful envelope that's individually numbered. And also inside is an exclusive Shaming of the True beanie. So, you can't get it anywhere else. It's a really cool package.”
The prints accompanying the collector’s version were stamped on an old manual press, giving each one its own unique fingerprint and adding a personal touch.
Gilbert, a Sacramento, California native, had seemingly been just on the verge of breaking through to stardom on multiple occasions, including his 1990 Toy Matinee collaboration with keyboardist/composer/producer Patrick Leonard and by co-writing much of Sheryl Crow’s breakthrough album, Tuesday Night Music Club.
My name is Johnny Virgil and I’m gonna be a star
Gonna get my share of fame
Everybody’s gonna love me, everybody’s gonna care
Everyone will know my name. — “Parade” by Kevin Gilbert
Gilbert was still a teenager when he and Jason Hubbard released the album No Reasons Given, which was a self-titled album, though the band name was abbreviated and stylized as “N.R.G.” on the cover of the release. The multi-talented Gilbert sang lead vocals and played piano, keyboards, six- and 12-string guitars, and recorders, and added programming. A prolific songwriter and composer, Gilbert crafted four self-produced solo albums for friends and family from 1985 to 1987 under the name “Kai” Gilbert. Those have since been collected and released in a 4-CD box set titled Call Me Kai, available from the Kevin Gilbert online shop.
In his very early 20s, Gilbert fronted the modestly successful progressive/pop band Giraffe, which won the 1988 Yamaha Soundcheck International Rock Music Competition. Giraffe released two studio albums — The Power of Suggestion (1988) and The View from Here (1988). Gilbert’s performance with Giraffe at the 1988 competition caught the eye (and ear) of Leonard, who invited him to work with him, and ultimately led to the creation of Toy Matinee. But Gilbert also worked on projects by stars like Madonna (on her I’m Breathless soundtrack album for the film Dick Tracy), Michael Jackson (speed sequencer on hit “Black or White” from the Dangerous album), and former ELP keyboardist Keith Emerson during that time. Gilbert has writing, bass, drum, guitar, and even tuba credits on Emerson’s Changing States album, in addition to being the producer, engineer, and mixer for that release.
The brilliant Toy Matinee album came out in 1990 but didn’t get the record company backing it deserved and, sadly, an album that should be enjoyed regularly by millions ended up as simply a wonderful niche record championed by its fans, but which remains obscure by objective standards.
Gilbert was part of a songwriting collective in the Los Angeles area known as the Tuesday Night Music Club. They met in Pasadena at producer Bill Bottrell’s studio, and the group included Gilbert’s then-girlfriend Crow (who had also performed live with Toy Matinee). This time period led to much of the material that ended up on Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club album, and Gilbert co-wrote the song “All I Wanna Do,” which won the Record of the Year Grammy Award in 1995. Gilbert had writing credits on seven of the 11 songs on Crow’s debut album and contributed keyboards and guitar throughout the record, as well as drums on two songs and bass on “All I Wanna Do.” And yet, by many accounts from Gilbert’s former friends and colleagues, he wasn’t happy with the way the 7x platinum album came out.
The musician, producer, and composer threw himself heavily into his solo career and set about recording, rewriting, rethinking, and re-recording many songs that went at least as far back as his Giraffe songs and wrote and recorded a lot of new ones too. He released the brilliant Thud album in 1995 and famously reformed Giraffe for a live performance of the iconic Genesis progressive rock classic The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway at Progfest ’94.
Manager Jon Rubin sent a recording of Giraffe’s Lamb performance to Genesis, which was looking to replace Phil Collins at the time. Gilbert and his band Thud were performing live shows in 1995 and Kevin was working on more solo material into the spring of 1996. That all came to a tragic halt in May when Gilbert was found dead at age 29 at his home after accidentally asphyxiating himself.
Gilbert left behind an incredible trove of recorded material, as well as multiple track lists for what would become his posthumous masterpiece album, The Shaming of the True (2000). His estate also released the posthumous compilation albums Nuts and Bolts (both in 2009).
Following the shock and grief of Gilbert’s sudden passing, those who knew and worked with him had the task of dealing with all of the material that the musician had left behind. Rubin asked Thud drummer Nick D’Virgilio and producer/engineer John Cuniberti to go through Gilbert’s recordings for his estate. Everything needed to be reviewed, archived, and cataloged. Perez lent his talents to the archiving process as well.
It was a huge undertaking, but things eventually began to take shape. A live release, Welcome to Joytown — Thud: Live at the Troubadour, was released in 1999 and Shaming started to come together. Gilbert’s work was sometimes missing detailed notes and track sheets and D’Virgilio and Cuniberti had to sift through everything to see what made the most sense and which takes of songs may have been the most recent. In many cases, instruments and vocals needed to be recorded to complete songs.
“They had a big task because Kevin wasn't good with notations. He wasn't good with leaving notes, with doing a lot of organized cataloging himself,” Perez said. “So, even when I jumped into the archives, you will find some Giraffe music, and at the end of that DAT (digital audio tape) is all of a sudden something from The Shaming of the True from ‘96. And it's just because Kevin used as much tape as possible. He flew things in from one tape or one console or one format into another.
“They had to go through and see what was usable what wasn't. They weren’t able to even listen to some of these songs for a year after (Gilbert’s death), because they couldn't even get it ready to that point. They had to take them to an actual audio facility and have them reconstructed. Some of these mixes that we have, they’re the only mixes in existence. Some were on cassette tape, some were on DAT, some were two-track tape, but they had to do a lot.”
D'Virgilio and Cuniberti used the rough mixes and the last known track list as the basis for constructing the album, which ended up just over an hour in length. Perez said that when they’d finally figured out what they had, they then had to figure out what was missing and would appropriately complete the songs, whether a drum part, guitar solo, backing vocals, or other sounds.
The record tells the story of Johnny Virgil, a wide-eyed musician who arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a star. It’s a familiar tale and perhaps cliché. Johnny is used up and spit out by the industry over the course of the album’s 14 tracks as his life and career play out. Gilbert’s cynicism about the music industry is understandable given his career path to the time of his death, and although the tale is a familiar one, the listener gets the sense that Gilbert had a lot of firsthand experience with it through the lyrics in songs “Suit Fugue (Dance of the A&R Men)” and “Imagemaker.”
The album kicks off with “Parade,” the optimistic moment of the album. Protagonist Johnny Virgil exudes confidence in his ability to become a huge star in this short, acoustic guitar-driven piece. He arrives on the scene in “City of the Sun,” which immediately shifts the energy of the music. Johnny meets a has-been musician at a Texaco gas station, who tries to relate his own tale, but the protagonist goes out of his way to avoid engaging. Johnny is excited and dizzy with excitement. Record company execs make promises they’ll never keep. And before the second song even ends, we know things are going in the wrong direction.
Oh Johnny, you got a seed in your head
It is the seed of your demise
Ambition's gonna lure you away
Into the land of compromise
You stand before us like a brash over-ripened nectarine
And someone better pick you soon
Advice for the dying from the dead
Silence the voices in your head
Wouldn't you rather eat instead?
D’Virgilio sang a bridge section for “City of the Sun” that pops and takes the song to the next level, showing an uncanny knack for understanding exactly what the song needed.
“That was another one of those executive decisions that (the producers) made,” Perez said of the D’Virgilio vocal in the song. “Kevin did have a vocal in it. Was it a usable, multi-track vocal that they could go in there and mess with? Were they able to go in there and and grab it, and then it just didn't work with the other vocals that he had recorded over? I don't know. But it works, and that's the main thing.”
“Suit Fugue (Dance of the A&R Men)” is a brilliant but horrifying two-and-a-half-minute track filled with Gentle Giant-esque vocals woven together. There are layers of “suits” wooing Johnny to their record labels — companies with disparaging names like Meglaphone and Groan-o-phone — and they’re getting his name wrong, illustrating he means nothing to them. He’s not even a person, just a product. The voices in “Suit Fugue” shape that product, getting Johnny to dump the band, create a scandal, and change his look. They let him know his album is being pushed to the following year.
Woven into this song are lyric lines from “Parade,” with Johnny initially sticking to the positive “Parade” narrative, but by the end of “Suit Fugue” he has given in and accepted that “this is how it’s done.” And his label is already making him more pliable and easily manipulated by starting him down a path of substance abuse. As dark as that all sounds, there’s also plenty of Gilbert’s humor included in lines like “You sound like Air Supply meets GWAR in a good way.”
“Imagemaker” continues Johnny’s willingness to do what it takes to be a rock star but he’s already becoming isolated.
On the way toward the light
Blind ambition blurs my sight
The hand which guides me through the night
Has left me alone
“Water Under the Bridge” is a lovely song with some Genesis influence that illustrates how easy it is to continue to sacrifice integrity and self and to go along to get along.
So what's a drop of water
In an ocean of compromise
One more shake of my tail
And it falls away and dies
Gilbert’s Genesis influence is especially strong in the instrumental end section. The song fades into the beginning of “The Best Laid Plans,” which is perhaps the album’s most accessible song and one that may have emerged as a single had things not gone so tragically wrong for Gilbert.
Everyone's responsible, empty words and purses full
Making such a circus of the best laid plans
For my money, “The Best Laid Plans” is one of the album’s highlights, as is the following track, “Certifiable #1 Smash.” The latter song had no lead vocal in the can, so Cuniberti and D’Virgilio used his excellent live vocal performance from Welcome to Joytown — Thud: Live at the Troubadour. The live vocal couldn’t have worked out better, with audible crowd cheers adding to the atmosphere of the song, which consists of (in my interpretation, at least), Johnny —or, given the inflection of voice used by Gilbert, a record executive — describing Virgil’s next big hit and the video that will accompany it, which is itself a blistering satire of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video. The song described within “Smash” promises a little bit of everything, including many things that conflict with each other,” but the entire thing is lyrical genius packaged within a musically outstanding song.
“The last Troubadour show he did — I think it was October of 1995 — I just went as a fan,” said Perez, who had known Gilbert for a few years by then and had been photographing Kevin’s shows. “Backstage after, we started talking about ‘Smash,’ because he played it that night. And so I said, ‘You described Madonna's video.’ And Kevin's just going on and on, so excited that I realized that it was Madonna's video and he goes, ‘She's probably gonna hate that.’ I don’t know if she’s ever heard that description (from the song) but it’s pretty funny.”
“Staring into Nothing” is the beginning of Johnny’s end as a star. He’s gotten everything he ever wanted but all he feels is emptiness.
I'm not what I seem ‘cause I am not real
Pretending to care, pretending to feel
Here I am again with everything that I could want and I am empty
With the blanket of approval and the slaps upon my back and I am empty
Someone said "Hey Johnny, do you feel happy?"
And I said "I don't need anybody's ten cent therapy. Can't you see I'm on top of the world."
By the end of the song, a news announcer’s voice indicates that Johnny is quitting the business due to exhaustion.
Gilbert takes the piss out of “All I Wanna Do,” the Grammy Award-winning song that he co-wrote, in “Fun,” as Johnny Virgil bottoms out while partying with friends and engaging in various types of self-destructive behavior and substance abuse. The distortion on the vocals echoes the effects that the haze of narcotics are having on Johnny. He goes on, perhaps in a more sober moment, to contemplate building a robot to replace himself as the rock star in “From Here to There.” The album’s protagonist is looking for a way out, with lines that foreshadow the song “The Way Back Home,” the penultimate song on Shaming.
Johnny’s anger rises to the forefront in the aggressive and abrasive industrial punk of “Ghetto of Beautiful Things.”
I just wanted to work with my hands
See something go from A to B
And somehow I ended up in the Ghetto of Beautiful Things
“A Long Day’s Life” is the album’s longest track. Johnny is doing some soul searching. He’s having dreams of drowning and is finding the prospect of death more peaceful than scary. At the end of this track and through “The Way Back Home,” Johnny comes to realize the importance of finding a way back to himself.
“Johnny’s Last Song” closes the proceedings. A much older Johnny Virgil is hearing his songs on the oldies station. Recordings of actual rain and a train whistle that Gilbert made himself set the tone for this short, acoustic finale. Johnny has had perhaps a brighter moment in the sun than the musician at the Texaco station at the start of the album, but now he is the has-been. He is, however, self-aware enough now to know what advice to give the next rising star.
People sometimes ask me
For the secret of success
I tell them what I know
Believe in what you're doing
Remember who you are
And who knows where you'll go
It’s important to note that Johnny isn’t telling people they’ll be successful. He’s simply telling them to stay true to themselves, because he’s learned the hard way that it’s the most important thing.
The fact that Shaming was a posthumous release adds even more darkness to the work. One can only imagine how much of the contents were autobiographical. Gilbert never became a big star like Johnny Virgil, but he no doubt experienced some of the hopes and dreams expressed in “Parade” as a young musician and he likely heard in his own experiences with record labels some of the same words he used in “City of the Sun” and “Suit Fugue.” And, ultimately, Johnny survived his tale, whereas Kevin died at a young age. It’s tragic beyond words.
Lyrically brilliant and always musically interesting, Gilbert’s final masterpiece is a sad one because its creator didn’t live long enough to see its completion. Cunuberti, D’Virgilio, and all of the musicians who worked on it accomplished something that Gilbert would have (or should have) been proud of. Under different circumstances, it might even have launched his career into the spotlight the album’s protagonist experienced, although it’s difficult to imagine Gilbert selling so much of his soul to get there.
Shaming is an album that everyone should hear at least once and it reveals more and more upon repeat listens — particularly in headphones. It’s a worthy title to add to any music collection.
To find out more about Kevin Gilbert’s work and upcoming releases, including the 2-LP vinyl release of Shaming, follow the official Kevin Gilbert Facebook page and regularly check KevinGilbert.com. And be sure to subscribe to You Are Here: A Kevin Gilbert Podcast on the official Kevin Gilbert YouTube channel.
For my full conversation with Wayne Perez about The Shaming of the True, a future multi-CD expanded version of the album that’s in the works, the You Are Here podcast, the work of the Kevin Gilbert Estate and how it makes certain decisions, and much more, check out the following video. Because the album isn’t on the streaming sites, you can check out short clips embedded in the podcast version of this week’s MRC.
Thanks again for your time today. I hope you will share this issue and MRC as a whole, with the music lovers in your life.