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!