My mind was just blown

As you may know, I like the band House of Freaks. About 10 years ago they led me to the excellent September 67 album Lucky Shoe, on which Bryan Harvey played on a few tracks. September 67’s principal member was Shannon Worrell, and I tracked down her (at the time) two solo albums, Three Wishes and The Moviegoer.* They’re both quality recordings, and strongly evoke that period of my life whenever I listen to them.

The girl who introduced me to House of Freaks in ninth grade also introduced me to They Might Be Giants at the same time, and I quickly became a huge fan. I lost interest with the release of the mediocre Mink Car album in 2001 (released on September 11th, actually), though I owned every album up till that point and listened to them religiously. For some reason or other, I checked up on them recently, and picked up 2007’s The Else a few weeks ago. It’s an amazingly terrific album. Here are two of my favorite songs.

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Anyway, some late night browsing led me to their Wiki site, which revealed that John Linnell’s wife, Karen Brown, produced Shannon Worrell’s The Moviegoer, and John actually played accordion on it! I had no idea; I had never bothered reading the liner notes to the album since they were handwritten and small. So I just checked it, and there he is. More amazingly, Bryan Harvey and Johnny Hott (of HoF) of also play on the album. So: Harvey, Hott, and Linnell, all on the same obscure, out of print CD that I’ve owned for 10 years and never knew. Dang.

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* Impressively, when I view the album on Amazon, it’s out of print and only available for digital download, but Amazon reminds me: “Instant Order Update for AJ Shankar. You purchased this item on May 9, 2000.” That’s a good memory, Amazon! So “about 10 years ago” is pretty accurate. Amazon also lets me view the entire order, which also included Martin Sexton’s Black Sheep (excellent), Magnet’s Don’t Be a Penguin (nowhere near as good as their other album, Shark Bait), and Luna’s Bewitched (also excellent). All in all, a high-quality order.

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