Shower Power!

Skap was in town for our 25th High School Reunion, so he stopped by today. Jon took the day off of work and he came by as well. We began work on Shower Power, recording the scratch guitar track, some keyboard tracks, and horn tracks. These are virtual horns, though there's chatter out there about using some real horns. We will see.

It is turning out very nicely and we hope to have a demo for people to listen to really soon.

Power Up!

Today the Chuxx (or rather 75% of the band) will gather to record. The new album is taking shape, and promises to be even stupider than we could have wished.

Today's goal: Shower Power!

There will also be a session tomorrow, so scrub your junk, and get ready for some hygiene!

Shower Power!

I got this idea for a song that I envisioned as being from a series of “hip” commercial spots that ran during the “ABC After School Special” aimed at promoting teen cleanliness in the 1970s.

Musically, I took inspiration from this British band called The Go! Team, and in particular this tune: http://youtube.com/watch?v=p_LoSqyNmeo

Overmodulated drums and horn parts. Teen chanting. Very bombastic and aggressive.

So I ran the idea by Steve, and we concocted these lyrics. (The music is composed as well.):

Shower Power!
By Bobby Wendalo and Schwa

Shower power
Shower power
Everybody in the shower. Right now!

So you've spent a hot day with friends at the arcade
And you've biked to the dime store for a lemonade
Then you wrestled that kid who's in the seventh grade
You're probably sweaty
Don't try to figh it

You reapplied deodorant by spraying 'neath your shirt
Washed your face with Phisoderm to get off all the dirt
Tried Dad's Aqua Velva, applied in one long squirt
Still you don't smell ready
You need to right it

You've graduated from a bath
Get on the adult path

Shower power
Shower power
Everybody in the shower. Let's go!

Put on your birthday suit and step under the spout
Grab a bar of Lifebuoy and rip that sucker out
Lather up your goodies without a whine or pout

You've graduated from a bath
Don't suffer your parents' wrath

Shower power
Shower power
Everybody in the shower. On the count of three!

Water, water everywhere to cover up your stink.

Shower power
You're an adult now, kid
Shower power
Wet is cool
Shower power
etc.

Googling Chuxx

Sure, I have a job and all. But it is still important to spend quality time Googling "Chuxx."

I was saddened to find that the German band ChuxX appears to have taken down there MySpace page. Did they go out of biz? Who knows?

Also, in case any of our fans was hoping to get chuxx@yahoo.com for their e-maiul address, it is taken.

But in the spirit of international cooperation among Bobby and the Chuxx fans, can anyone help Engr.Chibuzo find out who the current senators from Akwa Ibon state are?

Here is the request in full.

Author: Engr.Chibuzo Email: chuxx@yahoo.com Date: 8/20/2007 Comment: can you give me the names of the current 2007 Senators from Akwa Ibom state.

Someone Should Write It

It might be me, but then again, it might not be.

That is: a new song called, "Secret Bra."

Update on "(Catch) The Spirit (of 17)"

This song was conceived as part of "What You're Watching," a sketch comedy show we put together back in 2000. There are a couple of funny promotional parodies on there for a fictional station, KSUP, Super17. My idea was to parody those silly songs TV stations used to do with the anchors walking around town and pretending that they hang out with each other all the time. I envisioned a male voice doing the vocals, kind of like the guy who does those Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" commercials. Soon after I wrote the lyrics (here's an earlier post on the song), I found out my friend Richard Malmos was coming to town for his bi-annual float trip. He's a big-time L.A. voiceover guy. While he is away from L.A., he still does his sessions in a studio and they patch him through to his stations with a fancy phone line.

So I sent him the a scratch version of the song with sample vocals (a hilarious performance by Skap). So Rick has his daily session down at Wheeler Audio, a really nice post-production audio facility here in the Crossroads district of Kansas City.

So I go down there, and Janet Jameson is engineering the session. Janet is a very talented engineer and musician, so it was quite an honor to have her helping us out. Rick finished up his session (there was a lot of "Tomorrow night at 8!" type of a thing, and some fun movie stuff) and then he went in the booth and we got going.

The performance is absolutely hilarious. As he's doing his thing, Janet says, "He's channeling Neil Diamond!"

It turned out funnier than I imagined. Rick did an outstanding job and I'm anxious to get the rest of the music done.

Postscript: Skap and I had tossed around some ideas for what the vocalist should do at the end of the song, and we came up with some riffs on "he's infected, we're infected, she's infected." It has a couple of meanings, mainly that the song itself is obnoxiously infectious. And it really gives the song an ominous tone when you say something like "Now YOU'RE infected, baby!"

On This Day, A Cheese Jesus Is Born

Steve and I got together today to record the basic tracks for "Cheese Jesus", another song that had its genesis on the emails. A quick recap here:

• April 23: Steve sends me a 5-point email, the fifth point of which is just the phrase, "I like cheese." It is a reference to an odd sketch we once shot for our cable access comedy show, in which a weird old man (played by Skap, if memory serves) bugs a nice gentleman (played by our friend Stu) in a train station (I think) by simply asking him, "You like cheese, boy? I like cheese." This is my recollection of it, inaccurate as it may be.

• April 24: I answer Steve's 5-point email with a 7-point email, addressing each of his questions or statements in order. In response to "I like cheese," I write, "Of course you like cheese. Jesus!" Point 6 is then "Of course you like Cheese Jesus." And Point 7: "Please write Cheese Jesus. The lyrics cannot exceed 75 words."
• April 25: Steve sends along the lyrics to "Cheese Jesus", totaling 67 words.
• May 6: I tell Steve that I woke up with the music to "Cheese Jesus" in my head. I also write (while in the shower) an additional stanza, to give the song a nice two-stanzas-then-chorus-then-two-stanzas-then-chorus structure. My additional stanza jacks the word count to 86, but, as I say in the email, "if you only count Cheese Jesus once, the word count is 74."

So Steve and I got together for a quick three-hour session to lay down the song's basics: a simple drum track, a simple keyboard track and about five vocal tracks. When I came up with the music (on May 6), I had imagined the song as an a capella tune. But in the intervening days, I moved away from that idea, wisely I think. We might end up calling the song "Cheesus," if we find that funnier.

It was at the end of this session that Steve tallied up the Mustardy songs in the works on his computer, informing me that we now have 14 songs in various stages of disrepair. If we are organized about it, I feel confident we can have another album by this time next year. Maybe even sooner. But probably not sooner. We're lazy like that.

UPDATE: (re: word count) I forgot that I added two words to the lyrics. And upon recounting, it appears that the lyrics hit the target of 75 exactly, provided you only count the chorus once and the phrase "cheese Jesus" once.