They were too weird for punk, too raw for art rock, too theatrical for pop, too melodic for noise. Balloons for the Dog emerged from the humid chaos of suburban Maryland in the late 1970s—part band, part brotherhood, part Dada experiment in the shell of a rock group.

No one quite knew what to do with them. Least of all themselves.

The songs were brilliant, biting, often absurd—sometimes operatic, sometimes just plain unhinged. Fronted by two shapeshifting vocalists—Georgy Jett, who had literally just walked across Africa, and his foil Mr. Leo, Bill’s brother and spiritual instigator—they conjured a world filled with talking dogs, gray-car girls, metaphysical porters, insects at war, and “the dick.” It was half satire, half sacred incantation, and all of it was real.

I know because I played with them.

One night, I saw Balloons open for some ridiculous prog-punk band whose entire vibe collapsed the moment Leo tore off his shirt and the band launched into a song that sounded like Bowie covering Beefheart in a broken church. I interviewed them soon after. They joked, they pontificated, they argued. I loved them immediately.

Bill Longhorse, the composer and guitarist, was the band’s gravitational center—reluctantly, hilariously, masterfully. He was into Mahavishnu, Stravinsky, and Sun Ra, but also found space for fart jokes and musique concrète. The band practiced obsessively. Their gigs were chaotic. Their amps sometimes caught fire. They once played three nights in a row for an audience that never outnumbered the band.

But none of that mattered. Because what they were making—loud, brave, unsellable—was alive. Even now, decades later, you can hear it: the wild sincerity, the harmonic mischief, the deep yearning underneath the noise. As Georgy recently wrote, the greatest gift was the chance to transform, to become someone else, to be free. The music let him do that.

In time, Balloons became Baltek, then Leather Balloons, then myth. Some of us moved to New York. Others stayed behind. We got jobs, got older, kept going. But these songs—these glorious, vicious, deeply strange songs—never stopped haunting us.

This release isn’t a resurrection. It’s a recognition. A way of saying: yes, this happened. This mattered. And maybe, still does.

— Marc Farre, reporting from Northern California, 2025

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I saw Balloons a good number of times during their three year heyday. They fascinated me as they were a very strange and great concoction of new wave song + Mahavishnu shred [or as my friend George, who adored them, said, "The Tubes meet Mahavishnu Orchestra"].

Until I was contacted by Bill, out of the blue, after not hearing from him in over 40 years, I had no idea that there WERE any studio recordings besides the 1980 single that I was involved with that came out on Random Radar, but here are all the songs I remember and more, finally made available for anyone to hear, for the very first time.

To say that I am delighted that this happened is an understatement.
- Steve Feigenbaum

Wicked Forms of Old Snow press release