A Young Person's Guide to "More? Why Not!"
by TH€ $OUND OF MON€¥
An anagramm of
“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”
(Pink Floyd)
1. Tiger T – Death Happens to a Few
Opener of the album, and voilà, a nice example of how this anagram songwriting technique works: The second after the letters of Pink Floyd’s “The Piper At the Gates of Dawn” had re-grouped to that grandiose, yet rather illogical new song title, the next line entered just by itself and with great authority: “Tiger T – death happens to a few / But not necessarily you”. We still don’t know why – we just know! Anagram = Corkscrew of the Subconscious.
An anagramm of
“The Young Mods’ Forgotten Story” (The Impressions)
2. You Got the Song From Rotten Syd
This one contains a famous anecdote about Syd Barrett: How the tragically transcendent hero of the early Pink Floyd went shopping for trousers, tried on three pairs of very different sizes - and found that they all fit perfectly well! (He ended up buying none of them, though.)
An anagram of
“The Delta Sweete” (Bobbie Gentry)
3. Let’s Eat the Weed
Well, yeah, the title challenged us to do a bit of a drug song, so please note Claudia’s vocal reference to Grace Slick’s performance on Jefferson Airplane’s seminal 60s LSD operetta “White Rabbit” - laughably pompuous yet indubitably from those times “when the music mattered”
an anagramm of
“Something Else” (The Kinks)
4. The Smile’s Gone
Another track featuring the fantastically fructiferous skills of Carsten “Erobique” Meyer – and please listen closely to the verse where he’s a bringing back a delicioius style very rarely appreciated nowadays (despite all the Rufus Wainwrights and Chilly Gonzales’ with their 70s soft rock references): What we call Christopher-Cross-Hospital-Soap-Opera-Theme-Song piano!
an anagramm of
"Pet Sounds" (Beach Boys)
5. Nude Spots
This one, of all the songs on the album, has maybe the closest relationship to its anagram mother, the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds”. It’s about sexual liberation and the awakening of Californian body culture at the beach – the place Pet Sounds’ main creator Brian Wilson was so afraid of he never dared to go to. So the refrain line “I’m scared” is also a whimpering curtsy to him.
an anagram of
“There’s a Riot Going On”
(Sly & the Family Stone)
6. O Sing It Orange to Her
Space Age Bossa Nova! Opens and closes with one of the signature instruments of the “bourgeois” 60s, the eternal cocktail hour of the swinging whiskey–swigging cigarette-smoking executive squares: A bass flute à la Henry Mancini. As Donald Fagen of Steely Dan puts it in his surprisingly excellent pop education memoir “Eminent Hipsters”: “By 1961 […] Hank […] had exposed himself as a bit of a moldy fig.” So: Never Mind the Moldy Peaches – Here Come the Moldy Figs!
an anagramm of
“Highway 61 Revisited” (Bob Dylan)
7. I Had 1680 Wives
We have a penchant for song titles with big numbers: “The Land of 1000 Dances”, “A 100 Pounds of Clay”, “In the Year 2525” – yet, alas, the songs that come with it rarely live up to the promise (as does the band “10.000 Maniacs”, by the way). But this one is different!
an anagram of
“Odessey and Oracle” (The Zombies)
8. No – So Easy Declared
This was our very first anagram: It so happened during a bicycle ride, as we recall, that we began playing around with the title of The Zombies “Odessey & Oracle”, and the letters just fell into place – as if by divine machination. However, our thanks go not only to the heavenly powers that be but also to the cover artist Terry Quirk for his double mis-spelling of the word “odyssee” – but in a way that the two mistakes canceled each other out (and thereby left our anagram intact).
an anagram of
“The Velvet Underground and Nico”
9. Neverending Love Chant Tour Dud
Here’s the introduction of “Magic bus” driver Neal Cassady (also Jack Keroac’s travel companion “Sal Paradise” in “On the Road”) in Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”: “Off to one side is a guy about 40 with a lot of muscles, as you can see because he has no shirt on — just a pair of khakis and some red leather boots on and his hell of a build — and he seems to be in a kinetic trance, flipping a small sledge hammer up in the air over and over, always managing to catch the handle on the way down with his arms and legs kicking the whole time and his shoulders rolling and his head bobbing.”
an anagramm of
“More Than a New Discovery”
(Laura Nyro)
10. Rave On Meaty Orchids (New!)
One of our favorite lines in this one (all the lines here, as you may already know, being anagrams of the Laura Nyro album title “More than a New Discovery”) – for it is just such a nice accidental answer to American poet William Carlos Williams’ famous last line of his poem “To Elsie” (the one opening with the smashing “The pure American products go crazy”): “No one / To Witness and adjust / No one to drive the car”) -: “O, ye snowman drive the car?”
An Anagramm of
“Housing Project” (John Hartford)
11. Just Chirp On Ego
We stole the idea for the “Chirp Chirp” choir from Jules Blattner’s incredible Rock’n Roll half-instrumental “500 Pound Canary”. Additional trivia: That 500 pound canary was voiced by Danny Dark, one of the great legends of American advertising!
an anagram of
“Rubber Soul” (The Beatles)
12. Suburb Role
Why, you ask, does a badger meet a mole here? Well, concerning the “Badger”, watch “Breaking Bad” again. (Always a good idea, anyway!) And the “Mole” is a special thing with our cover artist Dandy Shakeera and his veeery specialized theories on Bob Dylan – his “Stuck Insude of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” might be the go-to reference here…
Find the Album: http://smarturl.it/TSOMLP
FURTHER LISTENING: The 12 Original 60s albums in the mix
by Albert Pöschl (B.R: Ölspachtel) / by Claudia Kaiser (Silke Aura Acid) / by Martin Lickleder (Altkleider INC)
About the album ARTWORK...
You may have noticed that some of above pictures probably remind you of something you've seen before. Well, they are all excerpts from the original "More? Why Not!" cover. Those little tableaus are just visual anagrams of the original 60s record covers. Moreover the "More? Why Not!" design is a tribute to one of the seminal 60’s record artworks, Robert Crumb’s “Cheap Thrills” (Big Brother & the Holding Company).
...and its creator:
DANDY SHAKEERA made his name as the tattoo artist who had needle access to the rich&famous’ most unspeakable places. Celebrated (yet never to be spotted) works of his, among many others, are the Empire State Building on Cher’s labia minora and the three winking dwarves under George Clooney’s scrotum. In 2002, Forbes magazine ranked him at #8 on its worldwide “V.I.P.s of the V.I.Ps” list. Yet, after getting bored with the endless prospect of canvasses consisting of upscaled private parts, SHAKEERA jumped at the invitation of his old friend SAKRA DEL FIRENZE to anagrammatically re-design himself, maybe a bit over-ambitiously, for the artwork of “More? Why not!” as ANDREAS HYKADE, creator, director and animator of numerous children TV series (“TOM & das Erdbeermarmeladebrot mit Honig”/”TOM & the Slice of Bread with Strawberry Jam and Honey”), music videos (“10 Kleine Jägermeister” by DIE TOTEN HOSEN, “The Riddle” by GIGI D’AGOSTINO) and short films (“Ring of fire”, “Love & Theft”, “Nuggets”), with over 50 awards worldwide and retrospectives at, e.g., MOMA N.Y. or the Animpact in South Korea. He was also the only German artist to be presented at Banksy’s adventure park Dismalland. He has taught animation at places like Harvard University and the Royal College of Art in London, and is today director of the Institute of Animation at the Filmakademie Ludwigsburg.
About the ADDITIONAL PLAYERS on the album
You've learned about the core band: Albert Pöschl, Claudia Kaiser, Martin Lickleder and Franziska Erdle.
Naturally, an elaborated production like this should list some musical guests, so here you are:
Werner Aldinger, trombone,
owner of Munich’s prestigious jazz label enja&yellowbird records and musician with Munichs No. 1 ska band BLUEKILLA
Rochus Boulanger, trumpet,
marvellous epigrammist and musician for every occasion, specializing in postcards, pop concerts (with acts like SUZIE TRIO, TELA REPORT), and funerals
Dr. Gertrud Huber, zither,
not only a brilliant player of but also one of the foremost musicological authorities on this very challenging Alpine instrument
Carsten “Erobique” Meyer, piano,
German Discoteer and Entertainer No. 1 from Hamburg – collaborations with TOCOTRONIC, ANDREAS DORAU, DJ KOZE (in their band INTERNATIONAL PONY) et al.
Kiki Lorrig-Wossagk, back vocals,
fabulous drummer and singer in the fields of Punk, Low-Fi, and Bossa Nova with legendary Munich bands DIE MOULINETTES and LAND OF SEX &GLORY
Enno Pallucca, bongos,
drummer with bands like the German punk legends DIE GOLDENEN ZITRONEN or DISKA and secret rockstar in Germany’s most petite big city Fürth
Wolfi Schlick, sax,
passionate funk, fusion & jazz activist (EMBRYO, POETS OF RHYTHM) and spiritual head of Munich’s widely traveled and ever busy EXPRESS BRASS BAND
Final word about the album TITLE
“More? Why Not“, of course, is also an anagram, namely of the title of TH€ $OUND OF MON€¥’s 1st album “Throw Money!” (What’s So Funny About/Echokammer, 2003). From the year twothousandthree? Yes, it's been a long way. As the band put it in an Interview (for German Junge Welt): "...Time is our money. In this regard we've long been billionaires..." Back then TH€ $OUND OF MON€¥ were just the duo of Claudia Kaiser and Albert Pöschl. The first album is quite different in sound and concept, but it's beautiful as well, so if you have some time (you seemingly have, if you made it until here), we highly recommend you check this too.