The Swimming Pool Q's - Jeff Calder's 50th Birthday Memoirs

Royal Academy of Reality

Royal Academy of Reality is an ambitious and successful summer blockbuster of a release...a sexy tour de force...glorious odes to the solar system. It's an anthem of the sun that would bust out in blows against the empire if anyone had the energy to launch a wooden ship, much less a rocket.

--VILLAGE VOICE

Possibly the most progressive American rock record of the new century. It sets an artistic standard few bands will be able to match.

--THE STATE

Overflowing with musical and intellectual ideas...flat-out astonishing.

--WIRE U.K.

Pocket symphonies of silvery guitar and warm-water singing: Abbey Road wrapped in kudzu.
--ROLLING STONE

A lavish record that's as cryptic as R.E.M. and as expansive as The Flaming Lips...warm and humane rather than aridly cerebral...their time may have come. 4 STARS.
--Q MAGAZINE U.K.

A gorgeous disc from a unique band that has been out of action too long.
--WASHINGTON POST

GRADE: A: Repeat listenings of Reality yield countless new pleasures.
--ATLANTA JOURNAL

A sprawling 70-minute voyage into deep space.
--CREATIVE LOAFING

The striking scale and superb craft of this album are impressive by any standard.

--ALL MUSIC GUIDE

This is one terrific album...a spectacular sound, one that overflows with sheer exuberance and invention...a strikingly original piece of work, and proof positive that in the grand tradition of Sgt. Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon, imagination and ambition are still vital ingredients when it comes to making music that really matters.
--SOUTH FLORIDA'S ENTERTAINMENT

NEWS & VIEWS

A rock and roll Gravity's Rainbow.
--AMPLIFIER

Exquisitely crafted songs [that] burst on the ear with the sudden force and electric sizzle of an August thunderstorm. Others open like furled flower buds, petal by petal, with imagery that's both winsome and passionate.
--TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT

Administration

Jeff Calder's 50th Birthday Memoirs > Don Pickard (1) > Draft Card Burning

On Concerning The Jeff; Three Points in Time:

1. "The Total Loss", that's what Jeff's mother's car was known as after driving it from Lakeland to Plant City on the railroad tracks, or should I say on the cross ties. Mrs. Calder never understood why her car was constantly falling apart.

2. Jeff's burning of the draft card at LHS. The girl's were crying and begging him not to do it. They said he go to prison and wanted to save him.

3. "I'll meet you under the Golden Arches," Jeff said to the brutish Stuart Guthrie. Guthrie was about to kill Jeff when he challenged him to an after school main event at McDonalds. The crowd gathered, and Guthrie was shirtless and ready to whip the dandy Calder. As the car screeched around the corner, Jeff was hanging out of the window yelling something like, "Anytime, sucker!"
--Don Pickard