2. Bearded Cats At The Blue Mango - The End Times Orchestra featuring Renaldo M I first heard
Renaldo and the Loaf through a good friend. I was scouring the racks at
the local crappy big box retailer for stuff like Michael Nesmith and Wizzard
when he approached me with a grin and shoved RATL's 'Songs for Swinging Larvae'
in my face. It looked strange, had a big breasted bug woman on the cover,
and I thought to myself that it could be no good. He bought it and once we
were home, as I had dreaded it, the disc made its way into the CD player.
I told him I hated it, it was weird and totally uncool, the guys sang like
ladies. After he left I ran back to the store and bought all the RATL I
could find, in this case the aforementioned disc plus 'Arabic Yodeling',
and I drove to a different friend's house and excitedly played him the
music- I wanted all the credit in our little circle for coming across this
wonderful, wonderful music that has kept me inspired and excited ever since it
found its way to me.
Now, ten years later, I head up a 30 member,
insane, and completely DIY work of monthly musical theatre I call 'Super Happy
Funtime Burlesque'. Although I prefer to write and arrange entirely
original works of music for the show I get many requests for cover versions of
popular tunes by our very sexy dancers and ok looking company men; and in the
case of one Vivacious Miss Audacious came the request for 'Bearded Cats' by my
all time favorite band- what a treat!
The recording here is taken from a
July 2007 performance of SHFTB in the beautiful and fully restored Vaudeville
house, The Wealthy Theatre, in Grand Rapids Michigan. The music is
performed by our fabulous 12 piece house band, The End Times Orchestra, and is
an ode to the fantastic RATL melodies that I have never been able to get out of
my head since hearing them a decade ago. Many thanks to Brian and Ted for
so kindly accepting that original video I sent to them of our performance and
many gushing gurgling fanboy squeals of joy at their contributions to the
recording!!!! Corey Eno Ruffin, bandleader, The End Times Orchestra and
Super Happy Funtime Burlesque
Ted and I both thought the End Times instinctively nailed the anarchic looseness and abandon of the Bearded Cats, we were very excited by what we heard....and saw. For my part I almost instantly sang along to it and wanted to record the result - it needed a second verse so one was penned especially for this project. The new verse brings the Cats to the infamous Blue Mango.....the track imagines them playing live there. Renaldo M
Video of live version of Bearded Cats by The End Time Orchestra here
3. Absence - Otalgia 4. JPWBC - Lightness Ascending The original JPWBC was composed 'on the fly' during the mixing of Arabic Yodelling from a backing piece and a slowed down version of the violin part to Bearded Cats. Here the violin part was edited and treated and the whole thing assembled using Kristal.
8. A Street Called Straight (short cut mix) - Andrew Liles Both Renaldo M and Ted the Loaf contributed to Andrew's Vortex Vault project, here Andrew returns the favour.
9. Dying Inside - Logan 5 One of the oldest cover versions, this version of Dying Inside dates from 2000.
11. Seven Interludes from Struve & Sneff - The Darkening Scale Struve & Sneff has been a fruitful source of inspiration for this project with two versions of Absence, and versions of The Bathroom Song, Dying Inside and The Kimbolton Gnome Song. I thought it would be interesting to take the 'glue' that connected the songs together and piece them together into one piece. Most of the interludes are taken from the original version of S&S, with one additional interlude taken from the 1984 version. The extracts were manipulated and mixed using FL Studio 8.
