Ever start something silly that just sort of takes on a life of it’s own? Welcome to Snaildartha: The Story of Jerry the Christmas Snail. It started as a silly little idea: Make the Life of Buddha into a Christmas story oh yeah and make it a snail. The story was originally created to be read by Shawn Stewart as part of the Red Eye Collaborations Uneasy Listening series Holiday extravaganza. Cause nothing says Christmas like a whole mess of feedback.

Time marches on as Time is want to do and in 2003 we retooled Snaildartha this time as a Soul Jazz record, a Christmas gift for friends and family limited to 100 copies, then we gave it away free on the internet. It sounded , well kind of awful but it was free, two years latter we remixed it and it was released on Innova, as a limited edition of 500, and it did quite well. Then of course Tower records folded, and most of the copies disappeared into the either, now you can buy it from Innova, for a reasonable price, or on GEMM or Ebay for a ridiculous price (last time I checked about $35 (us)

All the while every holiday it seems my bandwidth bills would spike up in December, that’s when I remembered the original was still up.

So now we are taking it down, but not to fret here in its stead is the remixed, remastered version yours for free. Sure its available on Itunes but the labels never sent me a check, so pppbbbtttt to them. And Happy Holidays to you!

The band here is truly something else Organ by Scott ”Pink Slippers” LeGere master session player and demigod of the Ecletone records label, On Drums the Buddha of the beat Mr. Terry “Poker Face” Haanen, and rounding out the musical trio Free Jazz legend George Cartwright , one of the many things that makes this record special is that it marks a much more melodic side of his playing, as opposed to the insanity of his group Curlew.The story is told (and mostly written by)by Comedian and raconteur Matt Fugate. Mixed by Brian “don’t give me nickname” Jacoby .Mastered by Bob ”What’s with all these strange capitalization last names” DeMaa and produced and directed by me ; Chris Strouth.So here it is Download and spread the wealth, its Creative Commons licensed and you can use it as lon as its not commercial.

Happy Holidays from all of the Snaildartha 6 and your friends at AlliedChemical.com

PS: these are the liner notes from the original l release just for the purists:

So dig it: in your hands you hold a special Holiday gift just for you. well that would be the case if this was the disc, but since it’s the Internet you probably have something else in your hands…like a mouse! The Story was written by Matt Fugate and myself a few years ago for the Red Eye Uneasy Listening series Christmas Show, where it was read by Shawn Stewart, who still is annoyed about some of the tongue twisters she had to pronounce. To be honest I don’t remember what year that was, anyway suffice it to say Britney Spears was still a virgin.

The story hasn’t changed too much since it debuted. It was one of those ideas that I always wanted to revisit, so here it is, reborn as a soul jazz record. Well, a soul jazz record about a Christmas snail, that’s really just a thinly veiled retelling of the life of Buddha. But isn’t that what Christmas is all about; Jazz, Buddhism, and Snails. Well, it has as much to do with Christmas as a fat guy with a thing for elves.

As to why you have a copy, well, you must be pretty special because there are only 100 of these made.Ok well again since your seeing this on the internet you might not be as special, I mean i am sure your special to someone not necessarily to me but someone must like you.Even GW Bush has friends, granted there all on the board of Haliabriton but they must like him. Just a little bit of holiday cheer that comes from the heart, for people that are special to us, and of course you poachers on the net who might like it as well.
Happy Holidays,

It’s a little easier on my bandwidth if you just get the zip download, but if you want to here what it sounds like then here are the first two tracks:

Rhapsody In Snail
(1 Meg)

<A Snail is Born
(4 Meg)

This work
is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

Hey alll,

Been surprisingly uncomunicative, its the perils of Kidney disease. I have been focusing more on the abstract, drawing, and am a good way therough my first solo compostions in a decade. Of course thats not what I have for you here, this a mix of insturmental and foriegn laungage tunes. Mixed into a nice little package, It’s all about downloading.  Hence the title, ten points if you get the reference

DOWNLOAD ME HERE

A quick little present from me to you…

I almost never talk about my work in this space  but recently I did a record for the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble  a very cool band from Boston lead by Birdsongs of the Mesozoic Sax player Ken Field. They are a New Orleans  style brass band with contemporary twists. Think the Meters but with a Liberal Arts education. The record is just out now on the  ultra cool Cunieform label, you can buy it at Amazon.  

It was an a weird record to work on mostly because it was finished when I got it, then my partner Brian Jacoby  and I tore it open, recut and remixed it. The idea was to make a Noir type movie soundtrack out of it.  Similar but more extreme to what I did on the Stan Ridgway record Anatomy 

I wrote Linear notes that described the story that I put together for it. They didn’t run them, keep it even more mysterious. But just in case you would like to read them here they are. check out the record if you get a chance, I think it’s pretty good- but then I might be biased.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Have you ever known something truly beautiful, I mean so beautiful, that it made you realize your own ugliness, made you aware of every bruise and scar on your pockmarked soul, that’s what Liza Jane did to me.

I tell myself it wasn’t about the money. But that’s no more true then that fancy preachers talk about the good book, unless he’s talking about the book of French postcards that he keeps under his pillow.

They always try and sell you Jesus, everywhere you look on the street, they are selling salvation but they’re paying for it in whiskey and cheap virtue, it’s a town of thieves and hookers, cons, carnies, pick pockets, killers, and crooked cops. With a prophet on every corner, next to a guy who would kill you for the right price.  Then there is me, and I am probably the worst of the lot.

I knew I was going to hell, turns out I was already there. When your damned already salvation seems at best unlikely, and at worst…a game to be played on suckers.  You get a couple of bucks and a couple of Ya Ya’s. Its not going to change where you go,  just the style you arrive in when you get there.

Brown eyes, brown skin and a little gold cross, innocence and purity- like cheese in a mouse trap, of course its always the rat gets his tail broken in that scene and nobody asks what happens to the cheese.

The wedding was supposed to fix it all-a tonic for my corrupted soul. Wedding white washes away all sin she said. I played it straight, for her, for her I would’ve done anything. Giving up the grift, still not hep to who was the rat and who was the cheese.
No  walk across the threshold  just a cold thud in the back of the head,  and  trunk of a 68 Buick as a bridal suite for one.

Somewhere   beyond the rumble of the road  and the sermon  on the radio I can hear Liza, and her “Pa”. I know I am going to the river and this time its not a baptism . I think of her,  the sun light glistening off her hair, that smile she’d get when she sang that stupid Doris Day song, she’d  stroke my head and tell me  “Whatever would be would be” and now whatever would be  is driving  off a  bridge into the river at 60 miles an hour.

As the water starts to fill the trunk , I think of the baptizing day,  she said I had saved her so it was only right for her to save me.   I thought the con was over,  that I had been born again.  Instead just a long walk and a sudden stop. I think about the money, but mostly I think about her.  Then I fight like hell to not die at the bottom of a dirty river.

I give one last hard kick against the trunk. Because even a drowning man has to fight, but this time it works-this time the trunk opens and  the water rushes in.  Drowning while I save myself, its not pretty but I  make it to the shore.

The moneys gone and so is the girl. Its not the first time, it won’t be the last, sure its cliché  but isn’t it always. The next time won’t be that different from the last, but the next time I am staying the hell away from New Orleans.