Anchovies - The Party

We start with pre-song chatter. You can hear the audience. Yes, that's right, I said audience.

This is a nice, fast version of our theme song. It sounds much more powerful than the one from the first practice.

Jon was playing the announcer. He was good at it, because he was funny and responsive. I tended to be more introverted and oblivious when there were so many people around.

This was the Anchovies' second reggae song. Jon and I wrote and recorded the initial version as IPECAC (on Extras). The Anchovies version omits the difficult intro and outro sections.

The original instructions for the song were for Anand to play drums, so he probably played them at the party. What was Allen doing? No clue.

More between-song chatter.

This was the Anchovies version of IPECAC's "How Ya Is'n". The main changes are the rhythmic chords during the chorus and the omission of Jon's rap.

You can barely hear the vocals during the chorus. In fact, I doubt I even sang them during the last two choruses. I think I had my hands full with the keyboard part; it was hard to sing and play at the same time.

My keyboard solo is horrid. Sorry!

This introduces "All Blues".

This was written by Miles Davis. Jon transcribed it for us. It was years before I heard the original (on Kind of Blue).

I think Allen played bari sax, which means Anand was on drums. I was on mellophone, which is definitely not my most comfortable instrument. I also played a painful keyboard solo.

Jon was introducing "Canon".

This was by Klaus Doldinger. I don't think I ever heard the original; Jon transcribed this for us.

I really didn't like this song. I hated the harpsichord sound. The rhythms were awkward. You couldn't dance to it. You couldn't even tap your finger to it.

The only good thing about it was that it sounded sophisticated and made us sound like a "serious" band... Well, we had the school band for that, so why subject ourselves to this weird classical stuff for fun? Why not rock our in our free time?

My banging around through different sounds shows my frustration. My keyboard was way too loud. It obliterated Jon's solo and all the other music. You can barely hear anything other than my bang-bang-bang chords and clunky melody. So much for ending the party on a positive note.

I was eager to wash the memory of "Canon" from our heads and ears. So I got us to jump immediately into our "encore" song, "Christmas in Cancun".

This was probably my favorite song for the Anchovies. I wrote and recorded the demo one evening after a practice, layering at least 3 parts on top of each other. You can hear the original version on Trex's A Caustic Gutter.

The song was named after one of my family vacations (to Mexico). For Tripecac I later wrote a completely different song called "Christmas in Cancun 2". Both songs were great (IMO).

The Anchovies liked it too, although this particular performance was sluggish and lifeless. The audience seemed bored. I think they'd had enough of our racket for one day.

We asked if they wanted to hear more. They said no.

Thus ended the concert.

And our dreams.

Well, it wasn't that bad. We kept practicing, and kept recording. In fact, the vast majority of our tapes are from after this gig. Interesting, huh? Not really.