Lync!     (+ Love as Laughter)

Olympia Underground -

Lync! (+ Love as Laughter)


Above: Lync loose on the street, 1994: Dave, Sam, James; photog by Jeff Smith


With the recent death of Sam Jayne the calls for access to the recordings of Lync have been redoubled, nay tripled! Sam planned to issue the Lync recordings on his own Tracks of Quality records label. K relinquished the master tapes to him about a decade ago for this purpose, but people, these things take time! It was only after Sam's death we learned he had issued the two Lync albums These Are Not Fall Colors and Remembering the Fireballs (Pt. 8) via the Tracks of Quality Bandcamp site. One can also access multiple Love as Laughter releases including #1 USA, which was originally released as KLP076. Yay! This vital music can be heard by all.

James Bertram and Dave Schneider, the surviving members of Lync, are still planning to release the two albums on LP and cassette via Tracks of Quality at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. Patience, people, that's all we ask.

Lync broke up very soon (too soon!) after the release of These Are not Fall Colors. Even before the split Sam had begun recording his own material under the name Love as Laughter utilizing a cassette 8-track deck, a gift from his cousin Layne Staley. Sam never spoke of this but one had the impression it was given more in the spirit of "I never use this thing" than "here, let your freak flag fly!" Not that Sam needed any encouragement in that department. He produced at least two cassette-only releases wrapped in delicate color photo copied covers. Pure music pop scrabbley goobers. Perfect Sam Jayne music. Soon after he began recording with Pat Maley at Yo-Yo Studio, what became the album The Greks Bring Gifts [KLP051]. Wow! More Sam on a musical bender. The music just did not stop.

Members of Lync could often be found hanging at Dub Narcotic Studio (located in the basement of my house at the time). They played on several Beck sessions. James and Dave joined Built to Spill when Brett Nelson and Andy Capps left to play in their own combos and they used Dub Narcotic Studio for a rehearsal space. James Bertram's new combo The Red Stars Theory recorded some sessions. Dave Schneider and I had a band with local man on the scene Ryan Suther called Walk the Plank that played a series of house shows and toured the NW with The Crabs and Softies.



Sam Jayne recorded many Love as Laughter sessions at Dub Narcotic in 1995-96, perhaps more than any other artists during that period. He would show up by himself or with some pals and it was like what are we gonna do today? and then he laid it down and he was done for a while, came back a few days later with some new songs or just an idea and did it again. The music of Love as Laughter had changed from the effortless, off kilter flights found on the paper-wrapped cassette recordings. At Dub Narcotic Sam expressed a much more gritty and out-of-phase existence, broken sunglasses and distorted lenses. This resulted in several Love as Laughter 45rpm singles on our International Pop Underground series, but most of this material has remained unreleased.



Sam moved to Seattle, transformed Love as Laughter into a band (with Dave Schneider on drums!), recorded #1 USA, toured the country, recorded more albums, moved to New York, gosh did a bunch more stuff and created so ver much art and music.

I really admired Sam Jayne and miss him terribly.

Calvin Johnson


Love as Laughter
, rock'n'roll combo.