Mooseboy Alfonzo and
His Prairie Troubadours proudly present
Mike and the
Moosecanics
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In the 80's I was
roommates with a guy who was a VW mechanic named Mike.
Mike was a great guy, really, and he was really
interested in the fact I could play music and write
songs. We shared a house, and I took over the living
room as my studio. Eventually, Mike started buying
equipment for me, like an electric guitar and keyboards.
I said, great, you should go take lessons like I did and
learn how to play. He didn't really want to do that, he
said, he just wanted me to be able to use the stuff to
record my tunes, and could I find a way to let him
participate?
Why, sure I could, and thus you have Mike and the
Moosecanics, named after Mike
and the Mechanics.
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Glorious, No-Fi Recording Fidelity
I didn't have a four-track
or anything fancy like that to work with. What I had
was two cassette
decks, a Radio Shack two-channel mixer, a Radio Shack
reverb unit, my darling solid
Maple
American-made Fender Precision Bass,
an amp, my Casio
SK-1, a microphone, and Mike's electric guitar
and Casio keyboard (with PCM drums). And a lot of
patience. This was the same time period where I
recorded my Primitive
Moose material, and as I note there, basically
you had to do a take from start to finish. No
punch-in, get it right or do it over. Still, it worked
and I found ways to let Mike contribute to these
recordings.
All Right, Everybody,
All Right!
One time, Mike had some
friends of his (or friends of friends, I don't
remember) come over to the house for a jam session. It
was nothing very memorable, except the drummer was
this wild man. He asked to sing at one point, and we
got a mic hooked up to him. He just started yelling,
in a high-pitched voice, All Right! Everybody! ALL RIGHT!
over and over. It was bizarre. After they left, Mike
and I were laughing about the guy and started
imitating him. So his inspiration makes it into these
recordings.
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G*d-Da**ed-Ti**y-S*cking-Blue-Ball-B*tch (so many *'s you know
it's NSFW)
For my first collaboration with Mike, I had a
Ramones-esque rocker in mind. I asked Mike if he
could come up with song lyrics. He said he didn't
think so, but I said "just come up with some rhymes".
He recalled this dirty poem from when he was a kid, so
we started with that. I wrote the lyrics to the
bridge, did my best Johnny
Ramone impersonation, and we were off. I taught
Mike how to play the bass part on keyboard, so you'll
hear him there and performing the vocals.
The intro is Ted
Nugent, whom Mike dearly loved. I felt it was a
perfect example of what we were trying to accomplish,
so I dubbed it "The Master's Touch" and made it part
of the whole song. It is literally 2:37 of ending a
song. Our effort follows right after.
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GDTSBBB <--Click here to
listen
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It's Alright
(Everybody)
Mike really liked doing GDTSBBB. He would go into the
studio and play the bass part on keyboard by himself,
he would go around saying "All right! Everybody!" I
don't think he realized he had kinda turned into the
drummer we were making fun of. Still, he was having
fun, I was able to pursue my other songs, and he could
be really cool about finances which was a great help
to me as I made very little in those days working for
ACB (see Primitive
Moose's "A Small Sample").
For our next collaboration, Mike asked if I could
find a way for him to play guitar. Keep in mind Mike
didn't know how to play and had no interest in taking
formal lessons. I said, sure I can, go pick us up a
12-pack and I'll get started. So I wrote this as a
sort of Sam
and Dave number, with us both doing singing
duties. I recorded all the parts except the lead
guitar part. When it came time for that, I had Mike
take the guitar and I instructed him to "just wail".
He asked if I was sure, and I said I was. While he
flailed around the fretboard, I ran him through the
Radio Shack reverb unit and wiggled the faders all
around to fudge his sound and make it more akin to the
mind-numbing feedback that is Mr. Ted Nugent. This was
the pinacle of the "alright, everybody, alright"
scene. Thankfully.
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It's Alright (Everybody)
<--Click here to listen
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http://www.the-mooseboy.com
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