There were songs before I can remember them. But I do remember the first thing that can be called an album. It was called Heavy Spider Volume I: Hot Buttered Bananas. It’s me and my best friend Sadiq (back then known as Deke), recording on an old battery-powered tape player, making up lyrics as we go. The name of our “band” was The Deke And David Organization of Sounds Systems Limited (or DDOSSL for short). These songs are what we called (and still call) “kunjabunjas”: improvised, recorded, always with a spirit of collaboration and ever heeding the policy of quantity over quality. We now have over 1,600 of them. But these were the first. I’m 12, and my voice has not yet broken, though Sadiq’s has. You can hear the sounds of my Atari 2600 in the background. You can hear my mom come in and say, “David, you have to get going soon.” (I seem to ignore her – there’s 20 more minutes of recording after that.)
The track listing is:
1. Hot Butter Bananas
2. Attack of the Frogmen
3. Six O’Clock Blues
4. Camp Stretch-A-Kid
5. Coasta De Calaba
6. Saint Louis Blues
7. Fun Things to Do / Drip
Here’s the lyrics for the title track, Hot Buttered Bananas:
There I was just a-sittin on my couch.
Stubbed my toe and I said ouch.
The only thing I want is something new.
Something better tasting than my old shoe.
So I took a banana and put it in the oven
I also poured on some hot buttered… glovin’.
It tastes really good, now that I’ve tried it
But tomorrow I think I’m gonna fight it.
Last time I sucked it out of a straw
I don’t think it was cooked, I think it was raw
You have to eat it with a spoon, not a fork
It tastes really good, better than pork.
So try the hot buttered bananas
Yeah yeah yeah hot buttered bananas
Hot buttered bananas!
Yeah yeah yeah hot buttered bananas!
Yeah yeah yeah hot buttered bananas!
Yeah yeah yeah hot buttered bananas!
Listen to Hot Buttered Bananas
-David (far left) is a multi-disciplinary artist (film maker, animator, musician, performance artist, banjo player, composer, choreographer, painter, actor, singer) and a member of the music/theater/art collective “Awesome” and the alt-bluegrass trio The Half Brothers. See him at The Project Room Friday April 27 at 7pm for a workshop and preview of his new film, Bladfold.