Way, way back in the 1980's a couple of friends and I had a vision for a new band. We were all passionate about Hendrix, about the rougher side of 70s funk like Funkadelic and Sly Stone, about Zeppelin and about modern jazz, particularly the great 1960's combos John Coltrane and Miles Davis. What would it sound like if a band brought together a rhythm section that was heavy as Zeppelin, but funky as Funkadelic with a daring harmonic sensibility informed by the ideas our heroes like Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner? What if we were to wed the sounds of Jimi Hendrix in full flight to the 'outside' soloing of John Coltrane and Freddie Hubbard? The idea fascinated us, and the band we formed, called The Watchmen after the iconic graphic novel, was a labor of love that eventually burned up in the heat of rivalry, short-sightedness and the closing window of opportunity we were trying to work within.

I remain pretty proud of some of the songs I wrote for that project, and have wanted to bring them back to life for a long time. To complement the musical ideas we had, I embraced a lyrical approach that I thought was a potent mixture of righteous anger, sarcasm, humor and wordplay. My biggest lyrical influences at the time were, believe it or not, Frank Zappa and Dr. Seuss.

Zeitgeist is a bitch. We thought we'd invented the wheel, but within a year, Living Colour and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers had hit big. Our mix of funk and rock, which Zeppelin and P-Funk had admittedly already gotten pretty well figured out 15 years earlier, no longer seemed so groundbreaking. By the time we broke up, grunge was hitting and the moment for our music was past. In retrospect, we were kind of like a bunch of dudes standing in a rain storm who think they've invented water.

But one of the things you learn as the decades fly by is that the topical music you wrote as an angry young man (and I was a very angry young man then) is likely to remain just as painfully relevant no matter how many times history shows us the error of our ways.

The new record combines reimaginings of some of my favorite old songs alongside several new ones, which I hope paints a suitably bleak, funny and funky picture of the modern history of America's decay, corruption and failure. Trust me, it's more fun than it sounds.