Here is a write up of the album,
Astro Al Presents Dr. Gumdrop’s Flea Circus Show.
This is a recreation or a creation of a flea circus show with Astro Al acting as all the performers (musicians, actors, fleas, etc.)
Imagine you're at a Flea Circus Show. I've never been to one, but once we finished this album I sure felt like I had.
On this album we made up a Vaudeville Show, full of songs and silliness between and around the songs.
We tried to make it very vintage sounding.
Dr. Gumdrop was a character we created on the first Astro Al album 4:20 and he has his own song on that album. In the song on 4:20, Gumdrop travels from town to town in his covered wagon from the back of which he puts on his medicine shows. His shows is basically him encouraging you to try his elixir while his unnamed female companion plays acoustic guitar.
He was a character we liked and a song we liked, so after many years we thought, why not bring him back? But is it truly him who came back?
How could he be alive in the frontier days of the wild west then be in the era of vaudeville? Well it is possible given the cross over of both ages, but is it the same person or someone just using the name?
Or does his elixir really work?
Is Dr Gumdrop really even a doctor?
If so, what kind? Medical? Philosophical? Who knows? Is it the original Gumdrop's son? The answer is up to you.
At one point we thought about doing something ludicrous. The idea was that when the album was mixed and mastered we would then play it back on a stereo and record that playback with a very old microphone then release that recording as the album, but after much debate we chose not to do something that would make the recording sound so archaic. We also debated about adding a lot of fake hiss and crackling to make it sound more vintage, but we didn’t want to make it sound artificially antique. We chose to record the whole album in an older style, no amps (mostly, had to have one for the theremin), no electric instruments (except the theremin, oh and a humidifier which we used to get some of the water sounds for Away the Good Ship), and no digital microphones.
This really helped get the older style we went with for the production.
We also debated about adding applause and laughter throughout the album, but we just felt that would make it feel too much like a bad sitcom.
The Theremin was created in 1920 and I have little doubt popped up here and there in vaudeville and if it didn't we did it first.
At one point we also debated about making up a thing where we "discovered" this album in a used record store and we restored it. We dropped that found sound idea. It just felt like it had been done too much.
A lot of this album was recorded live with live "foley" FX.
I particularly like DNA Girl's job on the cover art.
Astro Al Presents: Dr. Gumdrop’s Flea Circus Show
1. Dr. Gumdrop’s Flea Circus Show 4:39 -Performed by Dr. Gumdrop & Heppy Beez & The All Gumdrop Orchestra -an alternate version of the original Dr. Gumdrop song from 4:20. This track is the first part of the performance where Dr. Gumdrop comes out and gets the audience going and of course peddles his medicine. Striptease fleas?
2. Introducing Etude 1:19 -Dr. Gumdrop introduces the next song and talks about stripper fleas. Lots of dumb jokes in this one but that is what we specialise in.
3. Etude 2:26 -Performed by Fredrika & Her Flowers - A little classy classical number. A Chopin piece transposed to mandolin. Performed by DNA Girl. You go and you went girl!
4. Introducing Dancing on a Snowflake 2:38 -More song introduction by Dr. Gumdrop and more peddling of his drinks. Merrily is a bit of a nut. She might be the most nutty of anyone who appeared on the album.
5. Dancing on a Snowflake 2:38 -Performed by Merrily Mason & The Raindear - This song was originally created for a winter holiday themed charity compilation cd but for some reason didn't make it onto it, so it sat around until we realised it fit the vibe of this album.
6. Introducing Soupcase 2:40 - Savanna Smiles introduces this one. I think her smile is bigger than her brain. It's about time the Dr. left the stage for a bit. No doubt he was off making more tonic.
7. Soupcase 4:13 -Performed by Smelly Lemon Peel Johnson & The Debutante Washerwomen -Starts off soft before the inanity kicks in. This song was inspired by DNA Girl making jokes about Blues songs. She came up with the title. I love the Blues but it is easy to laugh at which is maybe part of the reason I like it so much. DNA Girl's singing on this one is classic.
8. Sales Skit 4:07 -Introduced by Hella Petunia. Performed by Hella’s twin sister Lola Petunia & Winstone Buffright -We had to have at least one skit. We wrote a few more but this was our favorite and we decided not to include any others because we had so many songs we wanted to cram onto the album.
9. Introducing Queen Liz is the Bee’s Knees 3:25 -The Racoon was a real dance craze for a bit. We did a lot of research on early American pop culture during this album. There were a lot of fun sounding dance crazes back in the day.
10. Queen Liz is the Bee’s Knees 3:10 -Music performed by Sir Piglet & His Hambones -Piglet was the name of one of our craziest cats and this track is a tribute to him. My acting on this track is of course a parody of William Shatner. I love Shatner!
11. Introducing March of the Salem Witches 1:41 -Hazel made her debut in a dinner theater murder/mystery we wrote many years back. In that show she ran a witch academy. What's she doing here? Well, playing music of course. I bet you never knew a flea could juggle an elephant.
12. March of the Salem Witches 2:43 -Performed by Hazel Boudoir & Her All Jugs Band - This is a song we discovered at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem MA. It's thought to be one of the first songs written about the Salem witch hysteria. DNA Girl takes the prize on this one. There's some Theremin on this one. This is only excerpt of a much longer piece of music that the composer created.
13. Introducing Away the Good Ship 2:00 -I wish I could see fleas do this stuff. I have a friend who saw a flea circus once in Germany. I have never seen one live and in person.
14. Away the Good Ship 3:59 -Performed by Winifred & The Waves - The lyrics to this one were written by DNA Girl's real life ancestor, Harold Archer. We had worked at this song for awhile before getting it right. I played water phone on this one. Seemed appropriate even though the instrument didn't exist during this time period. So, we exit the album on a serious, but fun song. Sometimes that's the best exit you can make.
Astro Al is:
DNA Girl: vocals, voices, mandolin, octave mandolin, samples, tambourine, washboard, bottle, cowbell, tongue drum, bicycle horn
Count Robot: vocals, voices, kazoo, slide whistle, duck call, water-phone, samples, bell, saw, theremin, ukulele, rainstick, fiddle
Produced by Dr. Gumdrop’s Medicinal Whiskey
astroal.bandcamp.com
astroal.com
Copyright 2024 Astro Al
Is Dr. Gumdrop going to return? Maybe. We have discussed another potential album for him. We'll see if we ever get around to putting it together. It could be fun, but it will have to be different.
Here is a quote about the album from the amazing author Jerry Kranitz. He posted this on Facebook. "Think Sesame Street meets Pee-wee's Playhouse at the Grand Ole Opry and the entire cast are tripping their asses off. Feeling grumpy? News depressing you? Spend 45 minutes with the flea circus show it'll cheer you up fer shore."
Yours in Gumdropping,
Count Robot
