Crest Ketchup! // December 2018

Over the winter of last year, I started noticing how politically charged Stereolab's lyrics were.  All of this time, Latesia's vocal melodies and the amazing layers of sound distracted me from the message.  I flat out missed the boat and I'm grateful I did.  Discovering these words at a time when things feel politically upside down feels really appropriate.  For fun, I decided to record a few Stereolab cover songs that felt good together and made the cover art above, changing "Cliff" into Trump's likeness.

Torpedo! is the name I have used for years to label anything I've recorded that is inspired by krautrock and the like.  The name came from the opening track of the Emperor Tomato Ketchup album called Metronomic Underground, "crazy, sturdy, a torpedo" with an exclamation point dropped on the end to nod at the German group Neu! that influenced Stereolab.  Anyways, Mike Young and I played a short improv set at an art gallery on Main Street in Ann Arbor under the name Torpedo! circa 2006/2007.  It was the first time I used a reel-to-reel tape machine at a show and we used it as the percussive backdrop.  I played bass and mike played synthesizers. Everyone cheered.  It was magical.

Crest is a Stereolab song found on the album Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements, reissued on vinyl this year.   I turned the song into a medley adding a bit from the song Emperor Tomato Ketchup to the end. My french is terrible, like the worst, but I sang some here for the first and hopefully only time in my life.  The vocoder hides this fact with somewhat good effect.  Casey helped me out with some background vocals too.  Stereolab played both songs live at the Wonder Ballroom on October 13th and it was nothing short of magic.


Words:
If there's been a way to build it, 
There'll be a way to destroy it, 
Things are not all that out of control.