I’ve blogged about the Dead Pigs before, and our epochal performance at the faculty show of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, where I taught math from 1980 to 1982..
And now Andy Warren has put two Dead Pigs clips on YouTube, the opener and the encore In the encore clip above—thich I think is the better of the two—we’re doing a version of “Duke of Earl,” perhaps better called “Duke of Pigs.”
Daddy sent me to Randy-Mac.
He bought me a horse and a Cadillac.
I sold the car and bought me a brain.
Now I’m half grown up and I’m goin’ insane.
Duke duke duke, Duke of Earl
duke duke, Duke of Earl,
duke duke, Duke of Earl.
I was still a mathematics professor there at that time (although I knew I wouldn’t be back the next fall) and I went to meet my Calculus section the next morning. I’ve never had so attentive a class! But then I started talking about Calculus, as usual, and the glamor wore off.
In the opener clip shown above, we’re first doing an (improvised) warm-up called “Dead Pigs” — and I kept trying to get the band to start in on the second song, which is something like “Louie Louie.”
Apparently a guy who was interviewing to replace me as math professor was in the audience with the math department chairman at the show. I remember laughing about this with Mike Gambone, our saxaphonist and my best freind at RMWC. He was imagining the chair saying, like, “And, um, here’s Dr. Rucker, whom you’ll be stepping in for…”
We had a few other songs, that we played in rehearsals and in our one other live show—such as the original “Year after Year,“—but I don’t think we ever thought to record those. I still can hear them, though…
On another front, Charlie Jane Anders put a nice write-up about my novel Postsingular on io9, the vibby new SF blog.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
The now totally obscure “URGH!! A Music War!!” video from 1981 is a reference to the new wave “farce-style” punk rock bands of the 70’s, complete with an elaborate 3 day festival in Frejus, France…. the best act is the British comedian John Otway…. this is essential viewing….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Otway
March 1st, 2008 at 9:39 am
I have that Ughh A Music War on video tape, Athletico Spizz 80 is really good along with the Cramps, but another tid bit of info there was an obscure Hardcore Punk band from Richmond VA with pig in their name they’re called: Death Piggy and they have a couple of songs on kbdrecords.com under 1984 but anyway Dead Pigs is really cool really punk, sweet!! More chainsaws in rock!!! Wendy O anyone????
JON
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Thanks for posting this!
March 5th, 2008 at 2:33 am
“This means that, should the rights ever be resolved, there’s potential for a 6-hour 2-DVD special edition, possibly containing over 100 songs.” (see wikipedia) Yes, “Urgh!” is a very strange documentary; this weird sci-fi element is plastered all over the original new wave era, and 90% of these “farce-style” bands are now totally obscure…. and only collectors really know who they are and where they are now…. the only let down is that Blondie is not in this documentary, yet this was before their landmark 1990
“No Exit” cd….