News
What? And Give Up Show Biz?
A man works long hours at the circus, cleaning up after the animals and giving enemas to constipated elephants. A friend, observing the menial nature of the work, offers to help the man find another job. The man replies, “What? And give up show biz?”
The punch line to that worn-out vaudeville joke served as the title when the Asylum Street Spankers set up shop for two weeks in January 2008 at New York’s Barrow Street Theatre to look back on their underwhelming career and complain about their place in the music world. Juicing their acclaimed live show with a double shot of theatricality, the Spankers presented a musical revue and memoir of the troupe’s fourteen year history. Featuring many of the most popular songs in their large repertoire along with tales of the ups and downs of life on the road, the show ran for fourteen performances, garnering good critical response, strong ticket sales and many free drinks for the band.
All fourteen shows were recorded, then edited to make this album.
“What? And Give Up Show Biz?” contains adult humor, including frank discussions of sexuality, drug use and/or rock and roll. It also contains four-part harmonies, blues, country, pop, jazz, rock and hip-hop songs, inventively clever arrangements, and a musical saw.
- More details and sound samples
- Album shipping now! Visit the Order page to get your copy.
Eden Brent, The Soul of John Black nominated for Blues Blast Music Awards
We were delighted by the announcement that Eden Brent and The Soul of John Black are both nominated in this year’s Blues Blast Music Awards, sponsored by the Illinois Blues Society and their weekly Blues Blast Magazine.
Eden is nominated for the “The Soul of John Black‘s recent album The Good Girl Blues is nominated for “Best New Artist Debut Recording”.
JB’s nomination follows on the heels of his nomination for “Best New Artist Debut” in this year’s Blues Music Awards, while Eden’s recognizes the buzz around her new album Mississippi Number One, which has earned a raft of great reviews and radio play – reaching #1 on XM Satellite Radio’s Bluesville, #1 on the Roots Music Report Blues chart, and charting for 4 consecutive months on the Living Blues Radio Chart.
To preview these artists’ albums in more detail, please visit their artist pages at Yellow Dog Records. Chicago-area radio station WGLT has also put together a page with sound samples of all BBMA nominees at http://www.wglt.org/programs/blues/blues_blast.phtml.
Voting closes on August 31st, so please visit http://www.illinoisblues.com/bbmavote today to support these artists with your vote! While you’re there, we can recommend Blues Blast Magazine as a high-quality source of blues-genre music news.
Meet us in Minneapolis
Yellow Dog Records will be sponsoring the 3rd annual Deep Blues Festival, July 15-19, 2008 in Lake Elmo MN.- Chris Cotton will perform and we’ll have a booth going all weekend where you can preview CDs and meet the performers.
The Wednesday show will be at the 331 Club and the rest of the festival will be at the Cabooze.