***Updated, with new links, and more words! *** June 16 2008 ***



A graduating senior left me a gift, a CD with several songs on it she didn’t think I had, and that I’d like. Well – she was right about the “not having” part, which is difficult (I have over 7,000 songs on my iPod alone, not including large patches of my CD collection).
 
I am listening to them delicately, one-by-one.

And I like the first one, Terry S. Taylor’s Battle of Robot Bill.

I like it on its own merits – an odd little “anthem” that will surely find airtime at next year's basketball games, if they let me DJ again. Danny is spot on in her liner notes when she says the song will resonate with me, especially "when the kazoos come in." And she didn't even mention the saxes and recorders, the James Brown "Ooww!" sample, nor the octave-doubled BGVs. It has obvious parallels to the briefly-famous and more-longly-productive Squirrel Nut Zippers, one of my all-time favorite groups of the post-50's era (if you click on that link, though, be prepared to mute the music, as all MySpace pages are required, by law I think, to play loud music upon downloading).

Even more intriguing, to me, is that Terry S. Taylor's work has serious parallels to the work of a fellow I’ve listened to for years, Terry Scott Taylor, the man behind the bands Daniel Amos (AKA DA) and The Swirling Eddies. Terry Scott Taylor’s work tends to be lush and deep, and – in the late 70’s through early 90’s – deeply and obviously (to me) influenced by the Beatles’ more imaginative productions.

Try, for example, DA’s albums, Motorcycle [The Banquet at the World's End], !Alarma! [Props], the complete second side (back when records were records) of Shotgun Angel [The Whistler], and the Swirling Eddies’ Zoom Daddy [I Had a Bad Experience With the CIA and Now I'm Going to Show You My Feminine Side] or Outdoor Elvis [Knee Jerk]. Then there is his solo work: A Briefing for the Ascent [The title track].

I also have to point out, from a strictly personal standpoint, that on the 'Motorcycle', 'Zoom Daddy' and 'Outdoor Elvis' links above, one can clearly hear the astonishing bass playing of Tim Chandler, a personal favorite as he careens around the fretboard, simultaneously avoiding and establishing the chord progressions. No; I don't know how he does it, but I am working on it for my own bass-playing.

So now I have to figure the odds on liking two quirky musician/producers named Terry S. Taylor and Terry Scott Taylor.

Thanks, Danny! You’re one-for-one!

Tonight – I listen to Track Two! ;o/