21. "The Legendary Morris Windsor" by Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3

Strategy #2 for when The Machine assigns me to cover stage patter: make it into a song. I had this funny little riff thing I made up while troubleshooting the Twin yesterday, and, fortunately, some entertaining verbal riffing by Hitchcock and Scott McCaughey (from a Venus 3 gig at Maxwell's in November of 2006) with which to work, so it could've been worse.

I'm... not entirely sure I really have a Strategy #3 worked out.

Personnel:

Rex Broome ~ Everything

"The Legendary Morris Windsor" performed by Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3

"The Legendary Morris Windsor" performed by Rex Broome

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POSTGAME ANALYSIS:

Wow, that's a short writeup, considering that I basically wrote an entirely new song for this track! Not much of a song, but it does sound plausible as one of the more lighthearted early Soft Boys tunes... sort of...

I count this as a pretty solid success. The music part didn't take too long to construct... I had the riff and that little intro thing which served as the "Maxwell's" refrain, and I think I pretty much made up the two bridges on the spot (I don't think they're even the same as each other), then played the bass to match and edited the drums accordingly.

I guess it's a trifle in a way, but what else is to be done with a randomly selected track like this one once you've already had female Indian robots in the middle of the ocean recreate stage patter? Well, there are a few more strategies left, but this one is about as good as it would get. I kinda wish there had been more tracks like this, but after I stopped using the randomizer halfway through the project, it became unlikely that this kind of non-musical and for all intents and purposes not-intended-as-art track would become source material.

My favorite part, really, is the strained and seemingly impassioned backing vocals on the bits that are clearly just someone thinking out loud... "It might've been '86!"

EASTER EGGS:

The text is almost verbatim what Robyn and Scott (and Morris) say on the original with only very occasional alterations to fit the meter or make transitions.

"Oh no no no" is a lift from The Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville".

"Tell me, Morris" on the fadeout is from Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians' "Tell Me About Your Drugs". Morris is the band's drummer, but the band have all swapped instruments on that track and Morris is on guitar. Robyn yells, "Tell me, Morris!" right before the guitar solo.