I'm Too Sexy For This Blog

One of the benefits of being a fan of Saint Etienne is that they are music fans themselves, and they leave a vast wealth of b-sides, compilation tracks, and remixes in their wake. You always seem to stumble over, say, a cover of a Gary Numan song that they've done, or one of the many Christmas songs that they've recorded over the years. And that, as a fan, is a feeling of pure joy, especially when you consider the consistent quality that the band seem to maintain, even on tracks that you figure must have been recorded during an afternoon.

I actually bought the 7" single that this track is from off of an auction on eBay, from a seller in the U.K. That was back when I had plenty of disposable income. What is particularly befuddling about the purchase is that to this day I do not have a record player. I think my feeling was that if I ever did get a record player, I would like the opportunity to hear what this sounds like.

The Fred EP is a single from 1992, and features three bands off the Heavenly record label doing covers of Right Said Fred songs. The other two tracks could be absolutely brilliant -- I have no idea, since I still have never heard them. The Saint Etienne track was the one that I was willing to pay international shipping to hear. When I was home over the holidays, my cousin was gracious enough to burn this, along with some other vinyl tracks (including a 15 minute version of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime... moi non plus" recorded by Donna Summer for the Thank God It's Friday soundtrack -- in case you haven't gathered as much, I like cover versions, no matter how lousy they are) onto CD. The quality is not great: Sarah Cracknell's vocals tend to get distorted a bit, and there's all the crackle and pop that you would expect from a 15 year old vinyl single. But it is still pretty interesting, and oddly pretty. I wonder how the band would record it if they were to do it now.

I was going to post this on Valentine's Day, but then I kept forgetting about it. Oh well, at least you get to hear it now. Enjoy!

Saint Etienne: I'm Too Sexy (edit).mp3

Twenty Epics

I just finished the book Twenty Epics, and I have to say that it was the most enjoyable reading experience that I've had in a long time. It was published by All-Star Stories, who also published the equally enjoyable All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories.

David Moles and Susan Marie Groppi, the editors, posed a challenge to the contributing authors: write a story that evokes everything that is best about multi-volume epic fantasy, but do so in less than 10,000 words. This could devolve into something well-nigh unreadable, but for the discretion the editors have used in selecting the stories to include. As with the previous book, the choices they make are intelligent, compelling, and wholly readable.

The authors themselves take various tacts in accomplishing this goal. Some provide an incident, which in itself is not particularly epic. But the reader is led to believe that this is like seeing a detail of a painting: there is a great deal of the picture you aren't allowed to see. Others simply tell short stories about epic themes or events. This is certainly true for one of my favorite stories in the book, Tim Pratt's "Cup and Table". This story synthesizes the structure of Arthurian literature with the lurid vivacity of comic books. It also includes one of my favorite characters in the book, a jet-black creature named Carlsbad, who is actually composed of all the evil that is in men's hearts. When the main character asks why Carlsbad isn't doing evil himself, the creature shrugs it off, pointing out that "There's more to both of us than our raw materials." And the final line of the story is one of the most perfect and poignant things I've read in recent memory. It has stuck with me.

Hell, there is even one story in the manner of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were popular when I was but a wee lad!

The book includes stories by Christophers Rowe & Barzak, Alan Deniro (whose book of short stories, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, I'm currently finishing up, and which I highly recommend as well), and Benjamin Rosenbaum. Well, it includes stories by 20 authors, but these are the one's I've encountered before (and the ones I have links to post to); nevertheless, almost all the stories are splendid. Even if a story isn't your cup of tea, you know that it's just a few more pages until you are deposited into an entirely different milieu. Apparently, two of the stories from the book (Mr. Pratt's and Mr. Rosenbaum's stories) have even been selected for inclusion in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2007: Twentieth Annual Collection by editors Gavin Grant and Kelly Link.

I always suck at reviews, because if I like it (and usually that is the only reason I would feel the need to post a review), I rarely have much explanation other than saying: "I like it." But I like this book, and if you are interested in well-written stories that fall into the general category of "weird fantasy", then you may like it too. 'Nuff said.

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!

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!