Sir Spendrick Hogsbottom presents "Night and Day"

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File Under "'Outsider' 'Art'"

On January 30, after an exciting day of libraries, comic book stores, and sub-zero wedding rehearsals, my cousin Ryan and I descended into the depths of his basement in Pittsford, NY, to record a song in his home studio. We were unsure what we were going to record for a while: the leading contender was Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead", which we envisioned recording as a Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto/Astrud Gilberto type bossanova. My cousin was a big fan of Bauhaus in high school, so he was very familiar with the song, which is good, since I play no music. If you listen to the original, it is basically a psychedelic samba with goofy goth lyrics. Not having a suitably angelic Astrud Gilberto type voice to sing it, however, we quickly decided that that might not be right for us. So he brought out a big book of sheet music, and I started flipping through it while he was setting up his bass guitar.

Flashback: on Christmas Day, my cousin had brought his guitar to our house, and his wife had brought her violin. All my cousins on that branch of the family came over that day with their various significant others and children. They initially intended to play Christmas songs, but my cousin has a short attention span, and he started playing the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim -- "Black Orpheus", "The Girl from Ipanema", and whatnot. The last song of the evening was a bossanova version of Cole Porter's "Night and Day", which was the best song they played all night. So when I found the sheet music for that song -- a song that, thanks to Ella Fitzgerald and U2, I knew fairly well -- I knew that that was the song we should record.

Recording the song was long and arduous. We recorded the drum machine first, and then gradually layered the tracks over it on an eight-track recorder. Originally it wasn't going to be quite so long, but after the drums stopped, there was the quote: "That ridiculous donkey must be dismissed from the choir." It is from a Christmas record that my cousin transferred to CD for his mother-in-law, and it was the perfect way to end the song, so suddenly we had five minutes and forty seconds to fill.

We decided the first time I would "sing" straight, the second time would be a series of solos, the third time would be partially sung, and the last would be me meowing the tune. This is a tribute to my father, who asserts that any song can be sung by substituting the words for meowing. He was very pleased when he heard it.

The first time singing was rough: I hate my voice, and kept giggling, especially when I got to the part where I had to sing "Until you let me spend my life making love to you." That was just too much. But eventually we got my vocals down, such as they were, and we started doing the solos. The solos actually turned out to be the most fun part of the whole bit, because I kept asking, can we do this? And we kept trying. I might have gotten more out of it if I could play music.

When we finished, my cousin was very pleased with what he had; this was evidently exactly what he wanted when he suggested this project. For a long time I couldn't get over the fact that I was listening to myself singing, but for some reason I have gotten over it slightly, at least enough to post it online for other people to hear. So this we have:

The Spendrick Hogsbottom Experience -- "Night and Day: The Full Horror"

The name of the band came from me: I was picturing some washed out old hippy with a knighthood trying his hand at interpreting the classics, ala Rod "Suckassmutha" Stewart. I was originally going to come up with a backstory for him, but really, that's too much effort.

My cousin wants to continue recording with me whenever we can. Well, honestly, so do I: it was a lot of fun. Problem is, Cole Porter wrote "Night and Day" very simply for Fred Astaire to be able to sing while dancing; anything else we decide to do will probably require me to demonstrate something that in a certain light could pass for "range". But I'm willing to try.

I think the Bauhaus thing still demands to be done.