Outtakes of the Gods: Kowabunga!!!

Okay, here's a tune that started life as a Flo Mos rehearsal jam version of The Byrds' "Eight Miles High," i.e. a self-consciously tongue in cheek take on the whole raga-rock thing, until one day we realized it was actually...a surf instrumental.

We ultimately called it "Barb Wire Beach."




The version in the clip above was recorded by a later incarnation of the band, after Andy (who co-wrote it with Gerry, if memory serves) had departed, around the same time and under the same circumstances as "Spin Cycle" (see the previous Outtakes of the Gods for more info). We used to play it live from time to time, on those rare occasions we were entreated to do an encore.

It's pretty cool, I think, in a Raybeats kind of way, although if you were wondering why my deliberately chintzy fake Farfisa organ work sounds a little, uh, atonal or Chinese, it's because whatever keyboard preset I was using on the primitive synth we employed for the session had some kind of weird harmonic overtone that nobody noticed until long after the whole thing was in the can. All these years later I still haven't decided whether it sounds kind of interesting or really annoying,