1977: A Breath For Nothing, poems, Anhinga Press

1980: Persian Gulf formed in Tallahassee, FL. The new music band plays its first show at Tommy's Music Hall with the Psychedelic Furs.

1982: Beertown and Others, the first studio work of Persian Gulf, recorded by Robert Anthony in the basement of the Florida State University Radio Station. "Beertown" becomes a local anthem and a staple of the original Freefall radio show on WFSU.

1982: Hal Shows receives the State of Florida Individual Artists Award, and a grant, for his work in poetry.

1983: Persian Gulf plays its Farewell Show in Tallahassee at the Art School Warehouses in Railroad Square. Eventually the police show up.

1983: Persian Gulf leaves T-Town and moves en masse into a row-house in South Philadelphia, during one of the hottest summers on record.

1983: Work on Changing the Weather begins, with Pete Humphreys, in Philadelphia.

1984: Changing the Weather released

1984-85: Changing the Weather named one of the top five alternative records of 1984 by High Times Magazine; chosen as a pick-hit in August of '84, the first (and only?) EP ever so honored, and  named Best EP Recording of 1984 by Robert Christgau in The Village Voice. The band's music is lauded in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. Changing the Weather enters The alternative radio charts in the fall of 1984.

1985: In ten days in December, between legs of an extensive tour, Persian Gulf: The Movie is recorded and mixed at Flamingo Studios in Tallahassee.

1985: Persian Gulf moves to New York, taking up residence in Brooklyn, near Prospect Park.

1986: Persian Gulf: The Movie released. The record is a Jackpot Pick-of the-Month in the influential CMJ College Music Journal, and achieves for Persian Gulf its largest national airplay ever, with particular popularity in California, New England, and New York.

1987: Trailer released in the United Kingdom and Europe by Abstract Records of London.

1988: Persian Gulf disbands

1988: Work begins in and around New York on Birthday Suit, an album of roots-rock tunes with international flavorings.

1990:Birthday Suit released. The LP is a feature pick in the "Futures" section of CMJ, and gets a lot of airplay in touchy, iconoclastic college towns in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The New York Daily News praises the record for its " sweetness and light, which is exceedingly rare in these parts."

1990: Work begins on Lifeboat, in New York, then Florida.

1990-92: Hal travels in Europe, Africa and the Middle-East; work on Lifeboat continues, especially in Rome.

1993: Hal returns to live in Tallahassee; forms the short-lived Eden House, an ensemble of shifting faces.

1994: Poems appear in Isle of Flowers, an anthology of Florida poets; final mixdown and mastering of Lifeboat accomplished in Tallahassee and in Athens, GA.

1995: Lifeboat released. The eleven-song CD is named one of the Top-Ten Recordings Nationwide for 1995 in the Tallahassee Democrat.

1995: "On a Mission," a re-mix from the Birthday Suit LP, is included on the songwriter anthology The Cascades Collection; translation and articles appear in International Quarterly and Q Magazine.

1996: Hal performs and records with the rock band Kangaroo Court; the band releases "Grandaddy Yule," a Christmas carol for grown-up kids, on A Cascades Christmas, then breaks up out of inability to learn its own songs. 

1997: Work on project in progress, tentatively titled Amnesia 2000, begins.

1999: Whitman's Sampler, a collection of solo work from the '90's.

2000: Cave Art Collective, a compilation of Persian Gulf's prescient post-punk power pop from the 1980's. Also in this year, Bush steals election . . .

2001: Kitty's Collection, a benefit CD for the late great Kitty Gretsch, features various strong Tallahassee talents, and an otherwise-impossible-entirely-over-the-world-wide-web production method. Kudos to all who contributed . . .

2001: Psychedelics, a selection of mindbenders, moodswingers, and shapeshifters, some sound collages, some surreal narratives, some generous feedback, and surely some sun and fun.

2002: Hal is married to the former Mara Reid, nee Landsman, on April 13, in Tallahassee, among family and friends. It is his first venture into matrimony.

2003:Native Dancer, progressing over some years under several working titles, is finally in the can on 19 March 2003. The next day the country is at war. You may expect the album sometime in April . . . as for the end of the war, well . . . news at eleven!