The Satan Brothers

I hesitate to even call this a band.

The Satan Brothers were:
Joey Ness (singing and noodling around on keyboards)
Chris Rettstatt (singing without noodling around on keyboards)
Earl Green (noodling around on keyboards without singing)

The idea was this: we were in high school, and we wanted to put something out there under a ridiculous name that made the whole thing sound a lot more dangerous than it was. It was about as offensive as They Might Be Giants on a slow day, but hey, if it was the Satan Brothers, there had to be trouble, right? We didn’t release two cassettes as much as two cassettes happened to escape. The second one was just Chris and me, as Joey had graduated.

It’s very lo-fi, and all terribly silly.

Siamese Twins
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/siamese.mp3]
I seem to recall that this was just me and Joey, hastily writing out lyrics as we went. This was all pretty much live-to-tape. Listener beware: I sing on this one.

We All Gonna Die
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/gonnadie.mp3]
This was when we knew we were really onto something – something amazingly goofy, yes, but something nonetheless. Chris sings; Elabeth played the “red alert” keyboard which may just be the best thing about the whole song!

Are You A Pickle?
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/pickle.mp3]
Words and singing by Chris, contemplating the nature of, basically, being a pickle. I actually managed to cram about half of a Lindsey Buckingham guitar riff into my Casio SK-1 for this (I think it was from Fleetwood Mac’s “Never Going Back Again”), so Lindsey probably gets a co-write credit here, and I probably get a cease-and-desist.

Obvious Filler
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/obvious.mp3]
Joey and me trying to come up with a Depeche Mode-style instrumental.

The Cowboy’s Armpit
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/armpit.mp3]
This one’s just me, doing a strangely western-themed (or so I thought at the time) instrumental.

Fly
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/flyboy.mp3]
From the second tape; my lyrics, which puts Chris in the unfortunate position of singing about planes flying into buildings, long before doing so was all the rage among religious extremists and folks who are mad at the IRS. I seem to recall there being a string of incidents, circa 1989-90 when this was recorded, where planes were landing at places that were decidely non-airport-esque in nature, all completely unplanned, which was the trigger for this one – wow, topical.

Hide The Cow
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/moo.mp3]
My lyrics again, taking vegetarianism to crazy extremes. Chris sings with backup vocals from Chris – early and very primitive multi-tracking with two tape decks. In retrospect, my favorite thing about it may be Chris plaintively saying “Moo” as the song gets going. I also want to go back in time and knock myself unconscious so younger me doesn’t get to abuse the Yamaha “orchestra hit” sound so badly.

There was a lot more than this, but it was all incredibly silly. (In case these morsels didn’t make that abundantly clear.)