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Bermuda Snohawk 2008

by Bermuda Mohawk Productions

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about

THE "SITCOM" SNOHAWK (hold on, I'll explain my favorite Snohawk story from the whole run...)

But First, why the 2008 comp almost didn't happen:
For Snohawk 3 being one of the most bloated, there was a moment that this one was the first to cheat the untimely death of the series. Ryan "Gyuri" Tarrant was instrumental in recording much of the first 2 Snohawks and, while he did 2 or 3 tracks here, he was fairly busy/transitioning out of trying to keep a fully operational basement studio in one piece. With that, Otis decided to pick up the slack by recording a number of tracks on his laptop. At some point during this, he contracted some sort of ridiculous computer virus and had to do a full sys-restore, which involved re-recording many of the tracks he worked on, from scratch. Unbeknownst to me, however, Tommy had been working double-time, knocking out tracks I didn't even know about. The end result is a super long comp with some of the best (and highest concept) Snohawk tracks ever conceived...and the most sophomoric shit and dick jokes, but we packed those toward the end. Included in the download is the original, shitty Clip-art note that I included in each copy giving background on this.

The Sitcom Part (and why this tracklist differs from the original PDF foldover included w/ the download):
As you can probably gauge from a gander at the tracklist, I was getting submissions from a lot of directions this year. It was probably a record year for tracks recorded at the Owl House, alone. Very early on in this process, Clint Hoagland (The Fullerenes, Bachelor Machines, etc.) submitted an excellent track he recorded with Ryan Horky (The Cartridge Family, Frank and Earnest, etc. on drums), called "684 Shopping Days 'til Christmas" under the moniker, The False Positives. If you're familiar with either of these guys, you know that they're super talented dudes and this song, in no way, will convince you otherwise. In fact, it's one of the best Snohawk tracks ever submitted...like, my-own-opinion-wise, and non-subjectively. There's no real argument against it. All of this makes it all the more embarrassing that...

...I never put it on the comp.

Yeah. Back then, I was getting the discs duped, with art, at a shop in Ypsi, so when I got the 100 copies baked up, Craig Horky gave a preliminary listen and said, "Didn't my brother do a song with Clint? Which one is that?"...and I went white as a ghost, knowing immediately that I'd overlooked it. I got lost sifting through all of the other submissions that came in closer to the date I had to send all of this over for processing. This is just where the story gets interesting, however...

We were playing with Ryan Horky (henceforth, referred to as "Horky" because he's Horky...nobody calls Craig Horky, "Horky") in the Cartridge Family pretty frequently at this point and that band was always a 20-member house of cards that required a delicate balance (though we were shockingly successful at this for a long time). Long story short, with the amount of time we were spending together at this point, I knew I'd never hear the end of it from Horky for accidentally freezing out this track that I believe he was (rightfully so) pretty proud of. To avoid this, Craig posited a potential solution...doing a color-printed version of the artwork, edited, and about 5 - 10 discs done with this track on it that we could get together in time for the release party. These dummies would be given to Ryan, Clint, and/or anyone they would potentially listen with. Dishonest? Sure. But you know what, we love 80's/90's sitcoms and that seemed like the sitcom solution. At any rate...I felt bad because it was such a great track and I hoped to make up for it at one point. I guess that point is now, because this track now, rightfully, takes its place in the meatiest part of one of the better comps.

[Note from Tommy: "Anyway, this was the first year that GTG was really involved, and some of the things we put together were definitely unnecessary but, hey, gotta start somewhere (the immediately-dated "Pudvanye" track is still one of my favorite moronic, nonsense things I've done though, and the fact that Loren didn't know that I named the track after him until copies were printed was a fun aside). This was the first year I recorded Cavalcade, which is always something I look forward to, as well as tCF... that's Otis and I on the "ooh yeah, let's celebrate" backing vocals. Why we had "let love shine" be a huge gang vocal has never made any sense but for some reason always makes me laugh. Johnny Unicorn's track this year is awesome - but the next year was when he raised the bar and recorded one of the greatest Christmas songs of all time. I've also always totally loved the CrookedSound track (another Snohawk debut) and wished it was a Plurals song, ha. I also think this comp is the only released recording of Really Cinematic, for all of the early-2009 GTG House show attending people that may still be around. On that note, we had a "release party" for the 2008 Snohawk at the GTG House that The Plurals and the Cartridge Family both played, one of the first "rock" house shows (I think it was the second overall) we ever had after doing acoustic-only house shows for a year. I remember waking up the morning after this party and feeling like I'd gotten the shit beat out of me the night before, which, considering it was 2008-era tCF in a confined space, I probably had. Now that's history!"
editors note:
You're spot on about that tCF show...that was brutal. I remember being smashed up into a corner with my keyboard, strobe lights or some kind of flashing lights going nuts, indiscriminate bodies slamming against me, and looking up at one point to see like, 2 or 3 dudes in full spandex either green man or Power Ranger suits, along with Ozzie, crawling around on the wall and/or beams up by the ceiling. This was par for the course during this era of tCF, of course, but rarely was this in such a confined space with so much climbing-appropriate area that the show almost takes place on two levels]

So onto the notes/observations:

1. The first portion of this comp is packed with pretty signature Snohawk fodder. If people wanted an example of the type of crap we were up to here, I don't think you could provide a better example from a comedy standpoint than Ben doing his Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music) impression, talking to himself, duet-ing, "Baby it's Cold Outside" (which was probably a better idea than the time he did his Chuck Ragan impression while puking in front of a dumpster in Gainesville, FL, to a cop that had pulled up to question him, repeating, "Ohhhh, Chuck Ragan shouldn't be doing this in his own hometown...no, Chuck Ragan shouldn't be doing this at all..." in full character...to the cop)

2. I can't think of a better example of how GOOD songs can get on these than the following, epic/bi-polar Break-Ups track or the False Positives track that I now have in its rightful place at Track 3.

3. Any other year, the intro to the Hard-Hearted Harbingers... track, ("Welcome to Lansing...") would have kicked this comp off. Tough competition this year. BTW, this is also a really good song that somehow was still stuck in my head even though I hadn't listened to it in probably 5+ years before working on this. I can't even remember who all was involved in this(?). At any rate, if it was you, nice work! Catchy song! Bonus points for the signature Lansing shout out. I'll probably sample that part. Maybe cover this...has it been long enough that Snohawk can get self-referential and cover previous Snohawk tracks? The tCF song this year referenced "Frosty the Freemason" from the original 2006 Snohawk. Time is, indeed, a flat circle in the Snohawk universe. McConaughey out.
[Note from Tommy: "Hard Hearted Harbingers of Haggis is Jessi (Spreitzer), James (Spreitzer), and Loren (Pudvay), I don't think I play anything on it."]

4. Another Frank and Earnest song (sidenote: listed here as "Frank & Earnest," because I ASKED Otis and he wanted the ampersand then, regardless of what anyone says now) predating Frank and Earnest being a real band, with Otis, fittingly, adopting the self-explanatory moniker for his pretty soul-crushing/tear-jerking acoustic track. BTW, where he "put (his) fist through the wall," is a true story. The hole still exists in Scott Bell's current room at The Owl House (covered by a poster). This can be seen on the annual, autobiographical Snohawk lyrics tour I'll be leading in the near future (note: not in any way a real thing that will happen).

5. The Cartridge Family covering Madonna's "Holiday," was intentionally, the most literal interpretation of "Holiday Comp," since Bill Morton's Labor Day song the year before. Unrelated, that was as fun to record as it is to listen to, lol.

6. Lol, "Pudvayne" (sorry Loren Pudvay, this is still funny...even though John McCain and whatever Days of the New/Tantric-parody-ing sound Tommy was going for here are probably about the most dated things on this comp)

7. The Anthony Adani Experience is not Anthony Adani (who most here would know from Matadors of Shame or Protected Left) at all...it's actually Mohnish, from The Most Dangerous Animal (or maybe ex-TMDA? themostdangerousanimal.bandcamp.com ) on some inside joke 'ish.

8. I don't think the two dick joke tracks are in any way related, nor did they know either existed prior to the comp. Not sure why everyone was on some dicks in 2008.
[Note from Tommy: "I forgot how this comp has some of the best and worst Snohawk songs on it simultaneously. I still need to put out a Sleeve of Dicks record for GTG losing the softball game the next year."
editors note:
...Ahh, yes, that was the stakes for the GTG vs. BMP softball game that year...other fun aside from that game: With the lines getting more blurred with regard to who was, technically, a GTG or BMP "artist," the tie-breaker was you were asked to choose either Billy Joel or Elton John. If you said Elton, you were GTG, if you said Billy, you were BMP. The tie-breaker used to be whether you had long (GTG) or short hair (BMP), but I believe either Brad growing his hair out or Nich cutting his screwed up our standing qualifier there]

9. Pretty sure Otis did 100% of the music for the Dan Fox track that year.

10. "The Dartz" ...we were still making fun of this local band who said a lot of uninformed, inflammatory shit on the Internet about us. They had a final show, played to the zero locals that enjoyed them, and Ben Hassenger sat on the stage doing crossword puzzles the whole time (this beef is immortalized on his verse in tCF's "How Cannibalistic Spider Sex Will Make You a Genius"). I think one of the members is still around and one moved to Chicago? For what it's worth, they seemed like nice enough folks aside from all of that noise. No idea what possessed them to shit on us. Oh well...no hard feelings fellas!

11. No idea why Skotty and Sean Elowski thought we might need to make this comp longer with a hidden track (nor what they're rambling on about), but it existed after the Dan Fox track, originally, so here it is for posterity.

Merry Dicksmas 2008,
Cale

credits

released December 1, 2008

A Tommy & Cale Joint, Featuring Art by Craig Horky. ©2008 Bermuda Mohawk Productions/Good Time Gang

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