Homegrown Radio 6/25/10

June is drawing toward its end, & that means this will be the last Homegrown Radio segment featuring Earl Butter—thanks so much, Earl, for the fine material & thanks for all the support, dear readers; & a big thanks to the Bay Area folks who made last week’s Homegrown Radio segment one of the most popular posts here in some time; & thanks to Ray & Scotty who helped facilitate that!

Even tho our time with Earl Butter is drawing to a close, don’t be too sad—next month you’ll get to enjoy Homegrown Radio with Sister Exister, who readers also know as poet L.E. Leone!

So let’s see what Earl has to say about today’s songs:

Step Aerobics is the song that started this whole thing. I was working with this guy Sonny Smith and we were cleaning out some the gutters on this pretty high house. There was a big ladder. Sonny writes songs. A lot of songs, all the time, it's songs with this guy. Songs and his obsession with Paul Simon. So I thought maybe I'd write him one and came up with Step Aerobics for him. A gift! An Earl Butter song! A gem! He didn't seem very impressed and never did anything with it. Never even, really, accepted it as a gift. So, I figured, wow, finally I've written a song again after all these years. And such a great one. Perhaps the greatest song ever written! I should at least record it. I think this one has brushes on a cardboard box and me and the mac and the pinmike.

After I recorded it and heard the greatness, I was able to keep going. The rest is history, or something a lot like it.

Timecrimes? Well, I was watching a movie called Timecrimes and I noticed I kept singing this song, over and over to myself and cracking up, so I paused the movie and went over to the macbook and recorded it. It is all a capella. It is, simply, the greatest song ever written (unless Step Aerobics is). Although, like Van Gogh, it will probably not be properly recognized until after my death.

Enjoy!

Timecrimes



Step Aerobics