
Shortly after the unsettling triumph of Condemned Ecstasy, The Apostrophes recorded a separate 45 rpm single—a project that was never meant to define them, but somehow did. No one remembers exactly when it started- The Apostrophes weren’t supposed to be recording. Not that night. The session began unannounced, unplanned—just a tangle of cables, half-wired amps, melted candles, and the unmistakable sound of something about to happen. The tapes call it March 13, 1967. The band all remembers it differently. Some say it was a Thursday. Others say it didn’t happen at all. What is agreed upon: there was an abundance of illegal substances, everything from lsd-laced espresso to orange flavored tootsie rolls packed with hash resin inside. The desert air was thick with chlorine and cinnamon, as if God Himself had left something rotting in the sun. Karen Bishop showed up late—silent, unreadable, barefoot, and bruised in a way no one dared ask about. When she stepped to the mic, Beauty was born—not written, not arranged, just... revealed. Renny was in the control booth, fiddling with levels and “telepathically mixing through the carpet,” as he later put it. Toby played drums without realizing his sticks were paintbrushes. Moth—wide-eyed, unspeaking—had plugged his keyboard in and begin playing with no breaks, nonstop for 7 hours. And Lionel? Lionel Kratz was already halfway gone. Heartbroken from a betrayal no one understood. Some said he saw Karen kiss Luis DeMatris in the Grind's back room. Others claim he simply heard her sing, and realized the band had outgrown him. What’s known is that something inside him cracked, and the raw fury that followed didn’t ruin the take—it elevated it. What should have been a throwaway session became a masterpiece fueled by jealousy, transcendence, and chemical combustion. When the playback ended, no one said a word. The A-side, retitled “Temptation” (originally known as “Mystic Metamorphosis”), was a dazzling display of studio wizardry—an acid-drenched, feedback-laced odyssey that left tape reels bleeding with phantasmagoria. But it was the B-side, “Beauty”, that contained lightning in a bottle.