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April 13, 2005
Call on into work quick
This is the first FF song I ever heard, and it still may be my absolute favorite. I remember the exact moment when I decided that I loved 'Inca Rag': when Eleanor sings, "or are we in Cadiiiiiiiiiiiiz yeah?". The Fiery Furnaces are one of the group of bands (Animal Collective, Excepter, Wolf Parade, Liars) that makes me excited about music- I get such a feeling of elation when I listen to their work.
Yesterday, my band (or, I should say, the band that I'm in), the Cuddlesluts (long story), played a short show at a local elementary school for 16 first graders. This came about in a semi-convoluted manner, but basically it boils down to the fact that one of my employees is also a student teacher at this school, and needed some musical entertainment. Playing as the more G-rated 'Cuddlebuddies' (a name which the other bandmembers and I realized in retrospect has sort of an unfortunate creepy flavor), we accompanied the kids on four different economics-themed songs (the school is very progressive, obviously)- imagine 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' with lyrics like, "goods, goods, goods are things/that we buy and sell"- and ended with a brief, sloppy, almost improvised original medley. We took the title of the Fiery Furnaces' (Pancake Mountain debuted) 'Mouse House, Moose Hoose' song as lyrics and set it to different chords, gave it an alternate (slower, less imaginative) melody, and then used it to segue into a short, calming instrumental that other Cuddleslut/buddy, Chris, had written. The kids loved it (especially the dance that went along with the song), and I personally have never seen a group of people more excited by music than that little class of first graders was (it's more empirical support for Matt Fluxblog's theory that the Furnaces would go over huge with the grade school set in general).
Anyway- I know many of you have probably heard 'Inca Rag' already- so if you're interested in hearing some more of the current Furnaces output, stop by Fluxblog, which has this post about a brand new song (the fantastic 'Police Sweater Blood Vow'), and this post about a recent live show (along with a great mp3 of a live medley they did this past September). And you can buy the ridiculously good mini-LP, "EP", over at Insound.
Posted by matt at April 13, 2005 10:04 PM
Comments
Maybe we should combine our bands, Captain Sassy and the Cuddlebuddy brigade eh? Not bad.
Posted by: Brody at April 14, 2005 01:00 PM
Or the Sassy Buddies, or the Sassysluts, maybe? for the latter I think we would actually have to be a group drag queens from Spain or something to really deserve the name, you know...
Posted by: Kevin at April 14, 2005 05:06 PM