Yankee Doodle Dice Game

(Released 2001)

This shorter instrumental offering (six songs) is the last in Meadornack’s works centered explicitly around compositional techniques. Centered around guitar and bass lines written entirely according to dice rolls, which set a road map for the songs along the perimeters of phrase length, pitch and note length, the songs make what could easily be considered the most rigorous and rigid music of the group’s entire catalog. These songs were conceived one summer by Walt and Johnnie Kalamitysax during one of their stints as housemates in the attic of an old mansion in Boston that had no locking doors and several missing windows (a raccoon was found eating bread off of their counter at one point during the writing of this album). Atonal notes pluck and ring against each other in offkilter patterns and uncaring harmonic pairings in patterns that patiently await the lister’s familiarity. A bed of percussion and fried keyboard parts were added after the fact by Peck Leathers after the group had moved to the space on Green Street in Jamaica Plain. The key, though, is that he was given no clue or even cursory explanations of how the songs were structured before the record button was pressed – his internal meter thus clashing with the orderly patterns already in place in a blind, exciting adventure.

“2:”

TRACK LISTING:
1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. Yankee Doodle Dandy

Pilotwings

Released January 1998

Pilotwings was a sort of breakthrough step in the career of the All-Stars, like Compositions before it and Supertots later, hinging on a series of real-life events that culminated in a easy outpouring of artistic and musical concepts. Unlike the other recordings, thought, Pilotwings actually employs the use of field recordings spliced in between songs from the actual day’s events. Musically, the group is on a blatantly Dadaist kick here, pirating tunes and beats from a kidnapped PSR-190 while improvising several idiot savant performances in a row about Winter Olympics events, demolition derbies, skiing resorts in the middle of Ohio cornfields, and thoughts on rumors of an ex-classmate cutting off a finger while sledding. On board for this one were Walt, Burt Schmartzky, Donnie Maleriamax and Bobbi Leshmaltfe, with a few fingers on the keyboard and all huddled around a gray Texas Instruments tape recorder like working stiffs in a teleconference meeting hoping to get a word in before the line goes dead or someone spills their Diet Coke on the receiver, screaming, singing and sometimes farting towards the tiny built-in microphone. Entire passages of actual television audio footage pass by for several minutes at a time while the group was likely eating cinnamon sticks and consulting the latest U.S. Cavalry catalog for inspiration, including banter between hosts and bizarre American cable television stars like the workin’ man Dusty Rhodes, later moving into footage of the group ordering from a drive-through at Taco Bell. There are no set-ups or skits involved, just an honest record of one night’s diversions. As time has passed since this album’s original release, different aspects have come to be carry more meaning. The various keyboard programs, for instance, have proven to be remarkably suited for the task of accompanying the more or less scatological content of every song – for many, what began as a random train of thought such as athletes weighing in before competing in the Luge Doubles event ended up a cohesive musical essay on concepts of musical and textual cooperation, spontaneous creation, no-rules improv game theory and genuine look at the interactions of a few relatively insecure young artists with so much to ridicule and so little cassettes to tape over.

“Pilotwings:”

“Butterscotch:”

Track listing:

1. Mad River Mountain
2. Bob
3. Pilotwings
4. Team Luge
5. Demolition Derby
6. Kim Singin’
7. Keyboard Maniac
8. Kentucky
9. Curfews
10. Techno
11. Talker Bell
12. Butterscotch and Friends