You can trace the history of “Wild Palm City” through unreleased secret songs, early releases, and The Beatles.

Track: “Wild Palm City”
Album: Ghana (1999)

In the liner notes of Ghana, the compilation that includes “Wild Palm City,” John Darnielle said the song was “early, very early, unlistenably early.” In fact, it comes from the 1991 Shrimper release Back to the Egg, Asshole, a so-called “anti-tribute” to The Beatles. The tape includes other Mountain Goats adjacent artists Franklin Bruno, Wckr Spgt, and Refrigerator and appears to be a joke wherein everyone submitted a song that was then re-titled to appear to be a Beatles track. I can’t find recordings of anything else and the only info online about Back to the Egg, Asshole seems to be one person who bought it because they like Lou Barlow, who contributed the “tribute” to “Revolution 9.”

If that seems complicated, it’s to explain that “Wild Palm City” is one of the absolute first Mountain Goats songs and only exists in this format because Dennis Callaci asked John Darnielle if he could re-title one of his songs “Within You, Without You,” the George Harrison track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The liner notes for Back to the Egg, Asshole further the joke and say the song “plays with George Harrison’s oh so deep transcendentalness.” It doesn’t, of course, but that’s also part of the joke.

There’s also another unreleased Goats song from the early days called “Escape to Wild Palm City” that has publicly available lyrics but otherwise seems shrouded in mystery. They seem potentially connected, but both are also lyrically reminiscent of a lot of the songs John Darnielle was writing then.

The song is one of the better ones from the earliest days. None of these crazy details about how it came to be matter, but it’s fascinating to consider the history of this two-and-a-half minutes of music as part of the larger catalog.