BIG DON AND THE CONDIMENTS
recorded at Darrin's Basement Studios May 2001-January 2002
live! with almost no overdubs!
1. COUNTRY COOKIES (music - the Condiments/lyrics - Gourley)
MP32. SALAD BAR OF WHORES (music - the Condiments/lyrics - Stewart)
MP33. FUCKPUPPET BUFFET (music - Bill/lyrics - Gourley)
MP34. SUPERSIZE DAISYCUTTER (music - the Condiments/lyrics - Gourley)
MP35. TONIGHT I'M SERVING SAUSAGE (music - Stewart/lyrics - Gourley)
MP36. DRIVE THRU SONG (music - the Condiments/lyrics - Gourley)
MP37. WHIPPED CREAM DELIGHTS (music - Stewart/lyrics - Gourley)
MP38. SUPERSIZE (music - Stewart, Million/lyrics - Gourley)
MP39. SKANK SANDWICH (music - Stewart, Million/lyrics - Stewart)
MP310. SHE MAKES GOOD COOKIES (music - Million/lyrics - Gourley)
MP3SHE MAKES GOOD COOKIESHer name was Betty
She lived next door
Everybody used to say
she was a whore
That's all right
she's okay
she's all right
anyway
Betty
oh Betty
She makes good cookies
I could eat them all night
She makes good cookies
my tummy feels right
SUPERSIZEYou say you want my love
and I'm the one you're dreaming of
the things I'll do to you
I can't believe
Let's get it on
Let's rock and roll
you'll see things
you never saw before
you're in for a surprise
now feast your eyes
on my supersize
show me your thighs
you won't believe your eyes
Rain and fire
I'm going to penetrate
Your caves of fire
Once you see it
you won't believe your eyes
Here's my supersize daisycutter
WHIPPED CREAM DELIGHTSThank you very much
for joining me for lunch
go ahead and have a seat
I'll fix you something to eat
Let me ask you this
Let me ask you this
but before can I have a kiss
Something to drink
You like it hot
Or would you like some ice
You say macaroni would be nice
Let me know when you're done
Because the best is yet to come
You say you can't eat anymore
I hope you saved room
I'm about to give you
What you came here for
I envy you for what you're about to receive
I envy you because you're in for a treat
Open up - close your eyes
for a whipped cream delight
come with me to the neverland
let me show you
I am the man
SKANK SANDWICHIt's like a salad bar of whores
in my hotel room
The eat me
while I eat a mushroom
How many tonight
three or four
hard to choose
between all the whores
whores for breakfast or a late dessert
cook 'em in their own sauce
ball 'em all till deez nuts hurt
wash off the family jewels
with a handfull of Pert
TONIGHT I'M SERVING SAUSAGEYou say you don't eat meat
but I know you'll suck it
I know you're a vegetarian
that's fine
but when you see the meat
you'll change your mind
I'm not serving salad
I'm not serving rabbit food
Here, eat a 'lude
When you're ready I'll be out with the real food
once you try it I think you'll like it
but please don't bite it
FUCKPUPPET BUFFETLady how could you be so uncool
Baby how could you be so damn cruel
Fuckpuppet I thought I was your man
I can't believe what you did
Damn
You don't even know what you did
You don't even seem to care
I thought that we would always be together
and it would be me and you forever
but you had to do it
but you had to be that cruel
You went to the buffet without telling me
and what you did is unforgettable
I'm leaving today
I thought we'd be together forever
I thought it would always be me and you
but not now
it's over
credits:
Mike "Big Don" Gourley on the mic - vocals, harmonica on 1
The Condiments:
Daring Nails: guitar 1-3, 5, 7, bass 6, 8-10, keyboards 7
I.P. Frehley: drums 1-4, guitar 5-6, drum machine overdub 7
Kid Chill: silence 1, guitar 4, 8-10, keyboards 7, drums 5-6, harmonica 3
Kill Bill Fuckface Durango MacDougal: bass 1-2, 5, 7, guitar 3, keyboards 7, shit-talking 4 & 6, silence 5
HERE'S WHAT WE ALL REMEMBER.........................
Ian's commentary:
BIG DON AND THE CONDIMENTS CD
aka disc one of the 6 disc Devilcake box set "I Can't Believe it's not Devilcake" in 2002.
The idea du jour was to make albums within albums for the "I Can't Believe It's Not Devilcake" 6- CD box set. The band lineup consisted of Darrin, Todd, Mike Bill, me and Gourley. We all had our own 4-track recorders at home (except Gourley) and we all wrote & recorded our own music in addition to Devilcake. I think Mike Bill loaned Gourley a 4-track and a keyboard so he could go away & make a solo album on his own, as the rest of us were doing for the upcoming box set release.
Weeks passed and everyone made progress on their own albums, except for Gourley. I knew we'd have to take a different approach. & since most of us could be considered multi instrumentalists, why not take the opportunity to mix up the line-up & have Darrin on bass, Todd on drums, Mike Bill shouting insults through a megaphone, etc.
I wanted the minimum of fuss for the sessions - the idea was to just throw a few mics into the air, keep the whole thing raw, but have a good time with it.
Unfortunately, the first session we did for Gourley's solo album was not the unmitigated ease-of-operations I was hoping for. The song was a synth pop moper that I came up with. The concept was simple, everyone plays a keyboard while I played live drums. Gourley had the lyrics already written, I think. The song came out okay, I guess. But the session really only came alive once we went back to overdub handclaps.
So the next time we got together to work on Gourley's solo album, we made sure the vibe was much looser. No one knew what to expect beyond having a good time. And even then it was going to be a gamble.
Raw punk rock was the order of the day. So I stayed on drums and to make us sound like a teenage punk rock band, I gave Todd and Darrin the tricky bits to play on guitar. Hah. Todd can play guitar, no problem, but this shit was kind of tricky to play anyway. Same with Darrin, he could make the riffs happen but it wasn't easy. Mike Bill playing bass for possibly the first time ever. So in all it sounded like a slightly shambolic punk rock band. Fuck yeah!
I revived a few beasts from my Uncultured/Domestik Quarrel!?!/XYCHQ days & taught them to the other guys as best I could. I wrote new lyrics, so "Skank Bitch" (whose lyrics were about an annoying girl at school) became "Skank Sandwich" (about doubling up with some whores in a hotel room).
But that's only half of the story of this ridiculous album! We jammed out a few acoustic ballads, a blues and even a country track. Gourley wrote lyrics on the spot and came up with some of his best shit ever!
DC was never this spontaneous before or after Gourley's solo album!
I should just explain that the name 'big don' comes from the pizza place Donato's, it's their large submarine sandwich. And Mike Gourley's alias is Don, which is how many people know him, all of his coworkers from the Virgin Megastore call him Don. So, there ya go. Big Don. 'and the condiments' might've been a nod to a band we played many gigs with, Tom Foolery & the Mistakes. Or not, I don't remember.
The majority of the recording for this album took place on one day in January 2002 at Darrin's house. We set up a bunch of amps & mics & everyone took turns on every instrument. Ideas were pursued & abandoned very quickly if they sucked or if they just weren't going to work. I remember trying to teach everyone the riffs from my old Uncultured song "Silent War" but it was too much, so we tried something else.
The vibe was extremely loose & we all busted out laughing at the end of every single song. The entire thing was just too damn funny. There was magic in the room that day & I'm not sure if the mics captured it all, but the CD does still crack us all up.
I See Stew, aka I.P. Freely
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Todd, aka Kid Chill:
Ah..memory, clearly my drug of choice. I honestly don't remember this being in 2 different sessions (or 12 or whatever it was). I DO remember the syth-pop-moper-shoulda been a Cars song. And I still really like it. Actually I still dig all of the songs on the album. Each one was a capsule of something so completely different from anything Devilcake had done up to that point.
You went to a buffet without telling me....
Fuckpuppet Buffet is the jam.
I wish I could come up with some amusing anectdotes about these sessions. All that really sticks out to me is
* My cave-man drumming on the drive-thru song (seriously, I can't believe you guys let me on drums)
* The synth track...I loved it!
* Not feeling skilled enough for the guitar part (I didn't feel as comfortable then with just picking shit up..although I guess it came out ok in hindsight)
Not much to go on, but i guess it says something that I still laugh everytime I listen to the CD.
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Michael Bill, aka Kill Bill Fuckface Durango MacDougal
I remember it as one day, but I could be wrong. Here is some nostalgia in bullet form:
* At one point we needed a ballad, so I sat down with the acoustic and came up with the changes for the "fuckpuppet I" song. I remember saying the guitar sounded like "Queensryche's Silent Lucidity meets Total Stupidity."
* The megaphone was indeed my best friend that day. The drive thru song made me piss my pants, even though the recording didn't really come out the best. I'm so stupid, I'm like a retard playing with a pen.
* I remember we we're all trying to come up with some riffs, ideas, chord changes etc... And Gourley kept pacing with a notebook in super-secret form writing down lyrics. At one point he was sitting against the far wall in Darrin's basement and out of nowhere asked "Hey, what's that thing the military shoots into caves to clear them out?" or some shit like that. I mean, huh?
* Gourley was definitely on his game that day or days or whatever. I wasn't aware of anything he had written (I'm not sure if anyone knew) and because we were recording live, unrehearsed (at least the vocals weren't too rehearsed) just about everything that came out of his mouth had me laughing. The best however was the "Dammmmmnnnnnn!!!!"
* That was the first time I really had to play bass and I remember at the time feeling like what my dad always described as "a monkey fucking a football."
All in all, it was a great experience and the album came out better than I thought it would. In many ways, Gourley's solo album was the highlight of that box set. Not only listenening to it now, but the whole process.
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Darrin, aka Daring Nails:
Here's what I remember about the Gourley sessions:
* For the synth pop thing, I think the original concept was to do an entire new wave / disco thing. We were thinking we could crank off 8 songs in like 4 hours. It took forever to get all the synths set up. I believe that Gourley showed up and said 'um, yeah, I have to leave at 1pm' and it was already 11am. So we only got the one song.
* The clapping session for the synth song was amusing since there were 4 musicians there and we couldn't even keep and even beat.
* I think I came up with the doo-dee-doo-doo doo-dee-doo-doo-dah thing in the synth song. I think I was told to 'come up with something' so, um, that was it.
* Once it was clear that we were only getting one synth song, we called it a day. The process of setting up all the synths and the fact that no one in the group really felt comfortable on keys made us globally decide that maybe an album of varied music types was more in order.
* For the 'punk' session, we recorded the remaining 9 or 10 songs or whatever it was.
* The first part of the session was the 'punk part'. Todd and I were on guitar, both plugged into the same piece of shit amp. We were slightly out of tune and when I asked if we should get more in tune the answer was 'no... it'll make it sound more punk.'
* Everyone was having trouble keeping time with the 'makes good cookies' tune. None of them was particularly good, so I think we may have kept them all since it was a 45 second song. I don't exactly recall where the idea to do a Pink Floyd ending came from. I have the entire session for that song, however you can't really hear the background conversations, but the decision was made quickly.
* Remember my forearms cramping up big time after playing bar chords for the 1/2 hour or however long we spent recording the punk parts.
* For the Pink Floyd break down of She Makes Good Cookies, at some point in my infinite wisdom I started going into I Want A Big Mac (around the 10:10 mark) which met with a 'um... no' look from Ian. You can literally hear the moment when I looked at Ian and I immediately change what I'm playing. Ha!
* The Country Cookies song was based on a chord progression I had written as part of my 'homework' for the solo album. I figured that everyone would think it sucked, but everyone rolled with it since the whole point was to have a bunch of different styles.
* In the box set, it lists me as playing guitar on Fuckpuppet Buffet and I think on Tonight I'm Serving Sausage (MCB was on the bullhorn yet again). I think I played bass on those. Some of my favorite bass work I've ever done. I played bass on #4 as well.
* I remember 'coming up' with the drive thru song. I think we were about the hang it up or we were in a slight lull or something, but I felt like playing, so I started playing the bass riff. Then Todd joined in. And the rest is history. Even if you can't hear the 'intercom' stuff MCB was doing, it's still a damn funny song. The whole vibe of it is awesome. I believe the tape ran out which is why we had to do the echo'd ending. My favorite part of the entire album is when Gourley says "Let me speak to a manager. I don't like your tone."
* Unrelated to the Gourley album, but something that was not common knowledge: The 'kermit and piano songs' at the end of my solo album were supposed to be known as the 'Barry Manilow Demo Songs'. I was going to have this letter from Devilcake asking Barry if he would consider singing a few of the songs we had written. There would have also been another letter on Barry Manilow letterhead with a reply of one word: No.
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a few more icystew recollections:
COUNTRY COOKIES
I think Darrin played guitar on this. The lyrics for "She Makes Good Cookies" date back to the late 80s & were recycled in a couple of Gourley's bands, as were (if I recall correctly) "I Want a Big Mac" and "Hands Off My Oreos". Gourley's awesome band the Virgin Dingleberry Dispensers might've played this song, along with his other lost classic, "Stung By a Bee." That's right, while my band the Uncultured was singing about politics & religion, Gourley's band had "Constipated".
SALAD BAR OF WHORES
It's like a salad bar of whores in my hotel room. My lyric. I don't remember who else did what.
FUCKPUPPET BUFFET
Clearly the greatest moment ever achieved by Devilcake in any format or context.
SUPERSIZE DAISYCUTTER
TONIGHT I'M SERVING SAUSAGE
Those are my failed attempt at big-boy Berklee chords (swing and a miss) being put to no use whatsoever. I wrote the main riff in the year 1802, thinking it sounded like a cross between Dokken and the Cure. Which it does. Todd's drumming rocks, it's like Stewart Copeland inverted... over a flaming gong. Is that Darrin on bass? How's that for a Second Floor rhythm section. Shit yeah.
DRIVE THRU SONG
Best song ever.
WHIPPED CREAM DELIGHTS
Best all keyboard song by us ever.
SUPERSIZE
SKANK SANDWICH
This is the old Domestik Quarrel!!? music from "Cod, Not God" but with new lyrics, which were so good we used them twice.
SHE MAKES GOOD COOKIES
The riff was from a long-forgotten song by my band XYCHQ in late 1988 or early 1989. Michael Million has no recollection of writing this, which makes it even better. When XYCHQ played this riff it was called "Destruction of the Earth Party". Mis-handled by the Condiments, it takes on a life of its own. We tried so many times to nail it that I just kept all the takes for the CD, including the 'pink floyd freakout' one at the end. What the hell, why not.
