"The Greatest Passion Play." recorded in 1986 by Elephant 6 founding members Robert Schneider and Bill Doss from the yet to be released album - "Warm Milk & Chocolate". 

Robert Schneider writes:

JETHRO CRIMSON (My first song "The Greatest Passion Play"): Exactly 30 years ago, in the summer of 1986, I was 15 and had gotten my mind blown by the anti-society sentiments of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” LP (my existential conversion would peak later that year with XTC’s “Dear God”). Heavy listening to post-Syd Pink Floyd and other 1970s prog heroes and summer reading of King Arthur, plus the existence of girls, pushed me to the creative brink, I just couldn’t hold in the rock and roll any more! My family was on summer vacation at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico--still a regular camping spot for our fam--and I walked off into the desert with my nylon-string guitar and sat on a sunny, snake-free rock and, in the most sincere and cosmic way you can imagine, wrapped all my young prog-rock ambitions and naïve socio-political and mystical thoughts into this eight-minute manifesto of (actually decently catchy) folk-pop. 
 
Upon returning to Ruston, I rented a Fostex X-15 cassette four-track for the weekend from Haymaker’s Guitar Store, the most magical place in town, where I spent every day of my childhood and teenage years when I wasn’t playing video games or recording. Super-cool owner Eddie Haymaker put up with me and encouraged me since I was a little kid, and didn’t mind too much letting me kick around and pick up playing tips and experiment on the synthesizers after school. My guitar teacher there, Gene Williams (most rad dude in Ruston btw, that all of my friends idolized--he was just a little older than us and a genius hippie metal-head who turned us all on to the most obscure aspects of classic rock), had given me the heads-up that the $5/day four-track rental was most cost-effectively utilized if you rented the machine from Haymaker’s when they opened on Saturday morning—the store was closed Sunday, so you didn’t have to turn the four-track in until Monday before closing time, almost three days of recording for five dollars (my weekly allowance)! 
 
My pretty-recently-new best friend and musical partner Bill Doss (we met at Haymaker’s Guitar Store that summer) volunteered to help me engineer—he had used a four-track before, and owned a microphone—and we needed a private place far from the uncool ears of parents and little sisters to set up and start tracking. I had noted that the bus stop area at Ruston High School, which was partially covered and sort of a huge echoing concrete space, had an unused electric outlet (I used to fantasize about setting up and blowing the eardrums out of the kids during lunch hour with some crazy loud power chords). It was the weekend with no kids around so we set up there, in a corner huddled behind a row of vending machines so nobody would hassle us, and recorded the acoustic guitar and lead vocal tracks, with Bill smiling and engineering, telling me he couldn’t believe I had written this whole long song (he always gave me so much confidence, I miss that). 
    
By the time I returned the four-track to Haymaker’s on Monday after school, the piece had evolved into a cascade of harmonized guitar solos, somber piano chords, dramatic analog delay harmonies, and a lifelong addiction to recording and writing songs… I’m not claiming that it's great, but it was my first.

The Greatest Passion Play (1986).Marbles

SLEEPY BOY Marbles 1988

Robert Schneider guitar and vocals 
Will Hart on drums
Tom Goetz on bass

Dord Music Group

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