Journey with us now, ladies and gentlemen, down Memory Lane, as we endeavor to answer the following musical question"...What was that Horsefeathers band about?
During the Seventies San Diego's Horsefeathers was a progressive rock band with a wild sense of humor and a super-sized imagination. Our name was inspired by the title of a favorite Marx Brothers movie, and this album, Symphony for a Million Mice, is powerful evidence of our unique brand of musical creativity. In a single live show (sometimes within a single song!) we might segue from heavily-orchestrated faux classical arrangements to surreal "film soundtracks" for non-existent movies, to silly parodies of whatever genre of music we had decided to lampoon.
We played many shows in our seven years as a band, but we didn't release much music. Not that we didn't record. Our new CD is a selection of our best demos, reimagined by keyboardist/composer/producer Bill Birney. We've updated our Seventies recordings with new vocal and instrumental overdubs, and Bill used contemporary studio technology to enhance the overall audio quality. The result is a cool "new/old" historical document that we think does better justice to our vision than the original demos. It will be a satisfying treat for the bands' fans and may even gain us some new ones.
Especially notable is the one live cut, a 20-minute performance of "Satan's Creation," written to accompany Don McLeod, a fantastic mime. Using only his body, Don told the story of the Dark Lord's grip on humankind. It's a shame that no video exists. On a whim, our sound-man for the evening, Doug Sclar, stuck in a cassette and recorded directly from the mixing board, resulting in a surprisingly high-quality audio capture of the band at its peak, and the only existing full-length performance of "Satan's Creation." We were entirely unaware it had been recorded until Doug got back in touch with us a couple of years ago!
It's hard to sum up a band like Horsefeathers. We played sophisticated/artsy music, we had a ton of fun, and our fans loved us; but in the long run, music is meant to be listened to, not described.