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,

Songs I Wish We'd Covered (An Occasional Series)

Buffalo Springfield. "Baby Don't Scold Me." In stereo, as nature intended.




This was on the original pressing of the Springfield's 1966 debut LP; when "For What It's Worth" went Top 10, ATCO hurriedly re-pressed the album with the hit in its place. The mp3 is from a vinyl transfer; the stereo mix, alas, has never been on CD (the version that finally surfaced on the Springfield box set a few years ago is the mono). I think the stereo is a lot more vivid, but on the other hand, having it in two-channel means you can really hear how sloppy the production is.

I'd loved the song (one of Stephen Stills' best, and kind of proto-power pop, I think) since forever, and I actually tried to interest the guys in working it up fairly early on. Unfortunately, the only copy I had of it was a wobbly old cassette a friend had taped for me in the early 70s, the woeful sound quality of which may have been why I was ultimately unsuccessful in pitching the tune. In any case, we wound up covering "Go and Say Goodbye" instead, which was okay by me, obviously.

Je Dois Etre Dans L'Amour

Things have been slow around here due to my dealing with an ailing mom, but the Flo Mos CD project is continuing apace. Basically, the track listing is all but complete and I await only the recovery of one rare tape before finalizing it.

In the meantime, Andy mocked up this fabulous cover for the live album we never made and I thought I'd share. I love the import logo.




The mp3 is us at the Other End in October of '82; the sound is just okay, but how many bands can you think of that were doing Rutles covers back then?

Outtakes of The Gods

Ah, here's one that got away. It's "Spin Cycle" -- on balance, pretty much my favorite song of Gerry's ever.





We did this in the Floor Models for the longest time, but for some reason we never demoed it and if there's a live tape of it, it hasn't surfaced. In any case, it has a sort of Buddy Holly by way of Nick Lowe or John Hiatt feel that I find irresistible.

The version above, however, was done by a later incarnation of the band, after Andy's departure; the basic instrumental was done 8-track at some rehearsal studio we were using in the late 80s, and the final overdubs and mixing were done on 16-track at Target Studios in Delaware, with our pal Marc Moss engineering, in what became the sessions for our 1995 indie album as Gerry Devine and the Hi-Beams. I'm including it here because 3/4 of the Floor Models are actually playing on it, Gerry's doing a very nice approximation of Andy's 12-string stuff from the old days and, as I said, I just dig the song the most.

That's me doing the hopefully effective organ stuff; I was trying my best to sound like Bob Andrews of Brinsley Schwarz.

I should add that the track got left off the aforementioned indie album because Gerry, for reasons inexplicable to me to this day, felt it was somehow too lyrically...I dunno, diffuse or something, for the concept of the record. I disagreed vehemently, as you might imagine, but in the interests of intra-group harmony I conceded the point. I still think it should have been on the record, in case you're wondering.

I should also add that I was even more irked about the omission when I heard Replacements' guitarist Slim Dunlap's 1996 album Times Like This, specifically the song "Girlfriend."



Which sounds to me like a punkier and slightly shorter version of "Spin Cycle." But I'm over it now.

Video Gave the Radio Star a Wedgie

Part two of our award-winning concert film Floor X Four.



Filmed at a low dive on Manhattan's Upper East Side on a night when we were, if not the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world, then at least the one most likely to be mistaken for a slightly shady accounting firm.

Seriously, this is a very nice document of a better than average Flo Mos show, and as I've said before, I thank -- on an almost daily basis -- whatever gods there may be that the VHS master survived into the YouTube era.

I should also add that the song I'm singing -- Andy's "She'll Make Up Her Mind" -- not only sounds as if it had been written about me personally (it wasn't) but is heard here in an arrangement lifted rather shamelessly from "Second Choice" by Any Trouble.

All songs copyrighted by The Floor Models 2011©, 'natch

How I Met Your Mother

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him." -- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

That's pretty much what happened when I first laid eyes on my future Floor Models colleague Andy Pasternack.



Seriously. I walked into some dive -- possibly Folk City, although it might have been another joint on Bleecker Street whose name now escapes me -- sometime in 1979 and there was Andy, on a cramped stage, playing acoustic 12-string the way I'd always dreamed of it being played and singing a song of his called "Welcome to the Popular Culture," which struck me then (as now) as one of the funniest and most brilliant things I'd ever heard.

And instantly I knew -- I had to find a way to weasel myself into a band with this guy.

Here's Andy doing the song on WBAI-FM a few weeks later.



When the Floor Models finally got together, this was one of the first songs we worked up; our live version sounded something like Talking Heads having a philosophical discussion with Devo. We dropped it from our stage repertoire very quickly, alas; stylistically it didn't quite fit the Brit Invasion/Folk-Rock template we'd established for ourselves.

But What Will the Goyim Think?

Okay, herewith an mp3 of a live performance featuring my all time favorite Flo Mos inside joke.

The song, incidentally, is Andy's "What's Wrong With This Picture," which can be heard in a far better recorded version in the YouTube video in the post below.




In any case, as you can hear in both versions, there's a little instrumental section after the bridge in which the band basically goes "Da-dah! Da-dah!" and then the bass and twelve-string guitar play the riff from Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Kicks" before the last verse and the outro.

On this particular night -- at the Other End in 1982 -- Andy was moved to add a little instrumental snippet over the section in question, and I must confess I'd forgotten how hard I'd laughed at the time until Andy sent me the clip late last year.

As you'll note, the tune he's playing is "Hatikvah." I have no idea if Glen and Gerry caught it, but I suspect a few of our Jewish friends in attendance at the time did.