Do You Know The Way To The Spendrick Hogsbottom Experience?

So, I went home (or, rather, Rochester, NY, which is as much my home as anywhere, since my parents moved there as I was moving to Florida) at Christmas. Seeing as how I had a week to waste without the regular use of a car, I relied upon my cousin to drive me around a bit, and to keep me entertained. And you all know what that means? No? I'll give you a hint:

"THE SPENDRICK HOGSBOTTOM EXPERIENCE REDUX!"

That's right, the only musical group to utilize my atonal caterwauling to its full potential is back, or was back, during the week that I spent over the Yuletide. Our first piece of business was to record the Spendrick Hogsbottom Christmas 7": one original Christmas song ("It's a Black, Black Christmas (Without You)"), backed by a reggae-tastic version of "Auld Lang Syne", the latter of which I've already posted. The former -- well, the world will have to wait until next Christmas for the brilliance that is that song. Count yourselves fortunate.

Anywho, for some reason, my cousin and I were particularly prolific this holiday. We also recorded an eight minute dance version of David Bowie's "Heroes", which admittedly was mostly my cousin's production work. It's nice enough, but my favorite was our version of "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" that I pressed upon him to record.

I admit it: I love Burt Bacharach. I even have the 3-disc box set that Rhino released in the 1990s. More to the point, I love Bacharach and David songs: they are beautiful and well-written, sophisticated and elegant. And so dynamic, with the rhythm changes and whatnot. "San Jose" is one of my favorites, just because, unlike a lot of pop music, it is not at all about love -- at least not love for another person. It's about the end of self-delusion, the acceptance of one's limitations and the resignation that your life will never be extraordinary.

L.A. is a great big freeway.
Put a hundred down and buy a car.
In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years. How quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas.

I don't know about you, but I can relate.

That's some heady stuff for pop, which seems to thrive on delusion, channeling youthful enthusiasm into a willful ignorance of how life works. It turns out we aren't all beautiful, we aren't all happy, we can't all be famous. At least the narrator in "San Jose" finally sees that, accepts that, and decides to follow her heart:

Fame and fortune is a magnet.
It can pull you far away from home
With a dream in your heart you're never alone.
Dreams turn into dust and blow away
And there you are without a friend
You pack your car and ride away.

Hopefully there is a rearranging of priorities here, not simply resignation to lead a life of quiet desperation. At any rate, there's such wonderful melodrama packed into less than three minutes. Fabulous.

The way we recorded this was that my cousin actually recorded the original Dionne Warwick song onto one of the tracks on the eight-track, because the rhythmic changes in the song threw him off. Also, quite frankly, he hates the song, so I think he wasn't particularly interested in coming up with a new arrangement. Which is fine: I was desperate to keep this track under three minutes, since, before now, we've routinely gone over 4:30 minutes. And the way the recordings broke down, "Heroes" was basically the song we recorded for him, and this one was mine. This is my The Love Below to his Speakerboxxx.

(Eventually I'll get around to posting "Heroes". Not that anybody else is particularly interested, but whatever.)

I had a specific production idea in mind. I told my cousin something to the effect of: "Mo Tucker playing drums with a post-Ian Curtis, pre-New Order Joy Division, doing an Antonio Carlos Jobim song in the style of 'Warm Leatherette', Bryan Ferry singing and Billy Bragg playing acoustic guitar, with Brian Eno producing in a one-take, live recording." Some of the nuance of this description fell to the wayside as the recording went forward, but the essential electronic SKWONK! that I envisioned remained through it all. I wanted it to feel as artificial as the original felt organic, with the exception of the acoustic guitar. Indeed, the only regret my cousin and I have is that the acoustic guitar tends to get lost in the mix, but then, since neither of us actually IS Bryan Ferry, we don't regret it enough to try doing it again.

Also, as hard as we tried, the two of us could not convincingly sing the "whoo-whoo-whoo"'s at the beginning of the song in a decent falsetto, owing to the descending notes. Ultimately, we just faked it with the keyboard, ala Frankie Goes To Hollywood's version, and left it at that. Legend has it (or so we imagined) that there are no back-up vocals on this song because Spendrick got mad at his regular back-up vocalists (Bev & Terry) for making fun of his weight. They, of course, were angry because he routinely underpaid them for recording sessions, because, basically, Sir Spendrick is an asshole. He fired them, and recorded an album without them, while they recorded an album of their own: the much-sought (on e-Bay) Bev & Terry... UNBOUND! Both albums tanked, so, ever-keen to financial realities, the three eventually reconciled, vowing their loyalty to each other vociferously in various press statements. Or so I hear.

The vocals are double-tracked because, as I told my cousin, if I'm singing twice it doubles my chances of actually hitting the right note. I sang the song along with the Dionne track that was playing on the headphones. As such, when the music comes to a stop after the bridge, you can actually hear Dionne THROUGH my headphones, singing out like a beautiful, beautiful bird. Let's just call it analogue sampling, and leave it at that.

Now, for your enjoyment, I present:

The Spendrick Hogsbottom Experience: Do You Know the Way to San Jose?.mp3

Enjoy!

The Virgin Gary

Rightwing students at the University of Texas have created a novel Nativity scene, with a gay couple called Gary and Joseph standing in for the Holy Family.

The group chose Lenin, Marx and Stalin as the Three Wise Men. The festive scene is completed by two angels, one of whom is Democratic Speaker of the House-elect Nancy Pelosi, the other a terrorist.

Via.

It's so adorable when conservatives turn to arts and crafts to try to make their points. The object of their derision in this case is the ACLU. But what's the obsession with the U.S.S.R.? Are we living in 1988? Why not Castro, or Kim Jong-Il, or Hugo Chavez? What, no cross-burning KKK members or neo-Nazis? The ACLU has defended them before. Larry Flynt? Salman Rushdie, just for shits and giggles? You could make this into a regular Sgt.-Pepper's-Lonely-Hearts-Club- Band-album-cover extravaganza, with just a little more work, and a little more creativity. Because, seriously, the whole "Communism" bugaboo is just soooo played out.

I like this response:

"I think it's fairly festive," said ACLU executive director Will Harrell. "...But keep in mind, nothing in the First Amendment requires that you be accurate about the information. The First Amendment protects parody as well."

Oh Crap Hound, My Crap Hound

I just found out (via Boing Boing) that Crap Hound, a clip art zine that was originally published by Sean Tejaratchi in the 1990s, has reprinted its magnificent 6th issue: Death, Telephones, and Scissors! Crap Hound was one of the few zines from the time that didn't make me recoil in terror, mostly because Sean had a wonderful eye for design, a keen sense of humor, a refreshing lack of pretension, and a love (that I happen to share) for clip art. Not only that, but I was a contributor to Issue 6: the original printing thanked me, noting that I was "venerable". (I remember hanging out at the Wayne State Library, making copies of illustrations from dusty books, of pages of graveyard rubbings. Sometimes I miss being in college.) But don't misunderstand: the zine was always Sean's show -- the rest of us just provided the raw material, the turds that he would buff into diamonds. I recommend that anyone with a sense of humor and a love for old school clip art books (as opposed to the soulless Microsoft Clip Art that kills me a little bit every time I see it being used on a promotional flyer for public school functions) purchase both Issue 6, and Issue 5 (Hands, Hearts & Eyes), which I also contributed a bit to. Even though I still have my contributor's copies in a box at my parents' house, I bought both the new printings from Reading Frenzy in Oregon. You can never have enough Crap Hound around the house! (And it looks like the earlier issues will eventually be reprinted as well, probably after Sean corrects what he always saw as their early design flaws.)

Extra special bonus: The "Church & State" issue -- Issue 7, for those keeping score at home, and which I actually have some preliminary pages from (dating from about 2002 or 2003) -- finally appears to be nearing completion in the Spring of 2007. Now if only Sean would finish the legendary "Unhappy People" book that he said was going to happen all those years ago, I could die a happy man. Well, maybe not quite, but you don't understand: I thought this zine was dead and buried. To find out that the zine is living and (hopefully) thriving again just makes my day!