The Smush Newsletter, August 8th, 2001 Contact: oskillator@hotmail.com Home: http://www.mindspring.com/~pfister_/smush/ "Spatula, I have two words for you: Be Have!" Table of Contents: Classics ................... line 21 Tales From Under The Hood .. line 50 R.F. Update ................ line 108 Don't Read This Part ....... line 136 This Is The End ............ line 157 If You Want More ........... line 163 CLASSICS -------- Since we haven't put out any new music this week, you ought to check out these old smush classics: PBS: I got a Paul McCartney impersonator to play the bass and acoustic guitar in this analogue-synth/drum-machine extravaganza. The Desperate Monkey played the lead guitar part I wrote for him at the end. I played the 303. pka: Punk Ska with a country twist. Rubbahead has a very distinctive method of playing Ska -- he uses heavy-metal style guitar, drums and double bass, and gets rid of the way-overdone syncopated chord hits on 2 and 4. In this song he throws in some country-style elements. Finding them is an exercise for the listener. rvs: This 14 minute epic is separated into four parts: Ornery, Arpeggiation, Concilliatory, Affiliation. Fourteen minutes of sheer bliss. It used to be over 20 minutes, but we cut out the underside of the muffin, and all that's left is the delicious top. Which brings us to... Bal: I wrote these basslines especially for the Seinfeld show, back when it was still on NBC. I sent this to them before they set up their "all submissions become the property of Seinfeld International" policy, so I kept the rights to them when they rejected the basslines. They were really rude about it, too. They dubbed someone laughing over the tapes I sent them, and they were my only copies. But they're good basslines, so check em out! TALES FROM UNDER THE HOOD ------------------------- Rubbahead and I are composing an epic song about gang warfare. We've separated the two main factions into the Police and the Crackheads, but we feel that it would be a good idea to subdivide the Crackheads further. We're discussing the division and the roles of the main players. I've been reading up. Watch as I try to apply the Socratic method of debate on an unsuspecting Rubbahead. Rubba: They don't want to destroy the city, they want to destroy the other neighborhoods. Lemon: But why would they destroy neighborhoods? Rubba: Each group wants to run the entire city. The neighborhoods have to fight it out, with the police fighting all of them. Lemon: But that takes away the singular goal. The gangs will have to somehow come up with several nuclear warheads instead of just one. Rubba: Not if there are only two rival neighborhoods. Like in Compton: the Crenshaw and the Du Bois. Lemon: Is that french for "bloods" and "crips"? Rubba: No, they're named after famous colored people. Lemon: But in any case, setting off a warhead in other neighborhoods doesn't make sense! There might be friends and family living there. Rubba: Haven't you ever seen ghetto movies? Friends and family don't live in rival neighborhoods -- hence the rivalry. Lemon: But what about Romeo and Juliet? Rubba: That wasn't in the ghetto! Lemon: It was in the remake, West Side Story! Rubba: This isn't a damn love story. And remember, as you were saying, they're crackheads! Lemon: And being crackheads, why not blow up the rest of the city while they're at it? Rubba: They don't want to eliminate themselves and their customer base! Lemon: They're crackheads! Rubba: And the ghetto is all about killing other rival gangs. Lemon: They'd kill all the rival gangs at once! Rubba: It's pointless to argue with you, did you know that? Lemon: Only when my ideas are better! Rubba: They're not! It doesn't make sense to blow up the city! Lemon: But they're crackheads!! Rubbahead stormed out of the room at that point. After a few minutes of mulling over the situation: Lemon: That idea of yours of having two competing neighborhoods is a good one. But why would anyone become a police officer? The rival gangs have the satisfaction of blowing up the enemy gang, but the police really can't win. Rubba: That's why they're so mad. They go around roughing people up because they know that they can't win. Lemon: If we gave the police the chance to totally destroy a gang... like if in addition to the Crenshaw and Du Bois schools there were other high schools that they got the chance to totally destroy, that would work. Rubba: That's a good idea. But we have to keep focus. Maybe there should be smaller factions within each school that the police would get a chance to crush. Lemon: Fantastic. R.F. UPDATE ----------- After we decided to take a break from our tape-based recording, we set Robert Froese to writing background music for our new song about AK-47s, since he seems to be the expert on drums, and everyone knows that the secret behind a good rap track is good drums (we were gonna bring in a bass expert later). He had written this fantastic drum line in Scream Tracker 3 (the only music composition software he's willing to use -- we put up with him because he's so good) for MS-DOS. I walked by his machine and told him that that was an awesome drum line, and he should be sure to save it in case the computer crashed.. He just waved me away. It was clear he was concentrating, so I left him alone. A few hours later, he came over and asked us to check out his backing track. We went over to his machine, and he played it for us. Damn, it was awesome! In fact, it was the best song we'd ever heard! We told him so, and slapped him on the back. I think our praise was too much for him, because I think his weakened heart failed. His head fell, his chin landed on the Ctrl button, his tongue fell out and hit Alt, and then his ear hit delete... and the song was lost. He hadn't saved it at all. We went and buried him in the grave we dug him out of a week ago. It's too bad, about him. And that song. Let this be a lesson to you: when you revive a friend from near death, don't just trust him to save his work, no matter how talented he is. DON'T READ THIS PART -------------------- Rubba: I need more AK-47s. Lemon: you could always cook your dick Rubba: And eat it, I suppose? Lemon: You could put it on display if you'd like. I wouldn't mind, as long as you took it down whilst I was around. Rubba: Around where? What? Lemon: Wherever it was put on display! Rubba: What the fuck are you talking about? Lemon: You were talking about how you were going to cook your dick and put it on display, because you didn't want to eat it. Rubba: You're a freak. Lemon: I'm not the one planning on cooking my own phallus! Rubba: I'm not cooking my dick, you freak! Lemon: Well why not? Rubba: I need it for later! Lemon: It would probably be tasty in a nice bouillabaisse. Rubba: You're a sick bastard. Lemon: All your bouillabaisse are belong to us!! Rubba: I feel filthy. I'm going to take a shower. THIS IS THE END --------------- We haven't been able to get the new smush album out because we've been in mourning over the death of our good friend R.F. But we'll definitely try to get it out next week!