I try to find a way to make all our little joys relate

Another week, another show.  At least that’s what one might expect I feel.

I spent eight hours on a train today on the way to DC.  I came prepared with my laptop, a  magazine and snacks.  Thank goodness.

Not only did I do my digital duty to last night’s episode of Bubbles in the Think Tank EAST, but I also spent time cleaning this here machine.  The detritus that can gather in download directories, email folders and the like can really get out of control if you let it, but can also create fodder for a simple blog post.

I crossed not one…not two…not three…but four emails that referenced our theme song, Trouble at the Henhouse.  We’ve been using that tune since April of 1990 upon the departure of Bill Brinkmoeller and Unsanitary Outhouse.  He used Noises for the Leg by Think Tank favorites the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.  His intro was more than the tune, though, with a preproduced open to it and then the live talk-over during the heavy theramin portion of the tune.  I’ll repeat that.  When I took to hosting the show on a more regular basis without Bill (before the advent of BITTT), I even produced a few opens of my own to front Noises.

Upon the official transition, I started using Trouble at the Henhouse, but fully intended to do something else.  Be like Bill and produce around it, chop it up, switch it out…I didn’t know what.  In no time, I felt like there was no other tune in the world that could convey the spirit I wanted the show to have the way it did, and still does.  One email I saw again today was from KTUF.  H had just met Terry Adams of NRBQ who asked if we were bored with the song yet 18 years later.

Not a week goes by that I am not excited to hear the song, not only when it opens the show live but also when I do my digital duties with the show later.  We could debate if I am merely having a Pavlovian experience at this point, but I don’t care.  Such a simple song brings me a simple joy that I wouldn’t fancy having removed from my regular rotation.

5 replies on “I try to find a way to make all our little joys relate”

  1. I totally forgot about that one!
    It must have been by Mortar – “The Manhattan Project” from Sacred Geometry [2009|09|df7c26573b4924ea67d48a0d83b305ed]

  2. Not Todd on

    It was the one where the chorus was singing about the Bomb.

  3. I felt really good about it, too! That Bickersons like made me laugh out loud when I was listening on the train yesterday.
    Were the BtPotA sound in Al Pine “Weather” from fr:om harmed weather to stark, micro, climates ? Otherwise I’m not sure…
    I love you, detail boy!

  4. Not Todd on

    Wow, what a great show!
    1) I’ve been thinking about Jim Stafford myself ever since John Quade died
    2) “Is this the Bickersons?” cracked me up
    3) The clamato bit makes me want to hear Ruben Clamzo (either Smothers Brothers or Arlo Guthrie, can’t remember who did that)
    4) What in the world was that song using samples from “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”?

    Hope you’re having fun in DC (yeah, that’s gonna happen)

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