+ First-ever reissue of this rare collector's item, featuring fully remastered audio and restored artwork + Licensed from, and produced in collaboration with, songwriter and head Ripper Ed Bankston + A share of the proceeds will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project + Available on virgin vinyl in a deluxe limited edition of 1500, as well as on CD and digital formats + Vinyl edition housed in a thick 24 pt matte jacket, including a digital download coupon; CD housed in a matte gatefold wallet + Package includes archival photos of Bankston and his family, a reproduction of the 1983 Soldier of Fortune ad for the album, and extensive notes, featuring an introductory essay, a 4500-word oral history with Bankston, and complete transcribed lyrics (lyrics available in vinyl edition only) Paradise of Bachelors presents the first-ever reissue of the previously obscure 1983 LP by the Red Rippers. Written and recorded by Navy pilot Edwin Bankston, the album's nine battle-scarred country-boogie dispatches chronicle the experiences of Bankston and his fellow vets in Vietnam and back home. Scarce and seemingly inscrutable, the sole recording credited to the Red Rippers has long captivated and mystified record collectors. When we first encountered Over There . and Over Here, we were fascinated by the prescient, genre-dredging synthe- sis of Waylonesque honky-stomp with early '80s new wave production values and eerie, out-of-time psychedelic guitar leads, weirdly reminiscent of the Blue Öyster Cult and the Meat Puppets at their most desert-drunk. We were intrigued by the record's ambiguous provenance (Oracle Records?) and moved by its complex, apparently deeply personal articulation of an enlisted man's efforts to break on through his fear, anger, and disillusionment during and after the Vietnam War. Once we finally tracked down songwriter, singer, and guitarist Edwin Bankston in Phoenix, Arizona, he told us that he wrote these nine potent blues during the decade following his return in 1972 from serving on the Navy aircraft carrier Kittyhawk in Vietnam. He recorded them while stationed in Pensacola, Florida and sold the resulting 1983 album through an advertisement in Soldier of Fortune magazine, largely to other veterans. The songs concern his own and other vets' harrowing experiences both in country and back home, and are utterly unlike most popular music commentaries on the Vietnam War. You've heard the strident protest songs blasted forth from that myth-shrouded era; many retain a visceral power and poetic outrage, but few, beyond a professed empathy for flimsy, victimized stock characters, accurately represent the actual lived experience and agency of soldiers. Assuming the role of folklorist or documentarian, Bankston composed up to forty songs based on real-life wartime stories recounted by fellow vets who attended his concerts, many of whom were united by their marginalization and alienation from both the military and the antiwar movement alike. They felt disgust for warmongers as well as wartime atrocities, for the popular as well as the underground press. Ed's evocative, ambivalent lyrics are at once highly critical of the U.S. government's engagement in Southeast Asia and thoroughly patriotic. The album reflects this sense of dislocation, describing scenes of chaos, death, disembodiment and absolute burnout. It feels as relevant as ever given our ongoing foreign military engagements and the daunting challenges our veterans continue to face. In accordance with Ed's wishes, we're donating a share of the proceeds to the Wounded Warrior Project. The record releases a week after Inauguration Day.