Thursday, March 29, 2012

All Her Favourite Fruit

All Her Favourite Fruit

Mr. Swan had a few very difficult and severely unpleasant days prior to this performance, but like any mentally-healthy human, he found a way to counterbalance the totally pointless and completely unnecessary anguish: Sing a song! "Now here's the thing," he says. "I love Camper Van Beethoven so much that there really aren't words to describe the incomprehensible level of adoration. And amongst their many astounding songs, an all-time-fave is 'All Her Favorite Fruit' -- but those who know its rough-hewn majesty may also figure, as did I, that it is slow, moody and turgid: not exactly the stuff of peppy a cappella fun!" As Mr. Swan lay in bed between domestic American horrors, truly drained and contemplating whether or not to go on at all, the "problem" of how to perform "All Her Favorite Fruit" -- solo and with one hand occupied (if you know what he's sayin') -- gradually resolved. First, all the heavy instrumental parts, beautiful though they be, would have to be removed. Th! en there was the matter of the meter: the original recording is a basic dumbass-country shuffle any chimp could replicate -- but why not make it BOUNCY?! Indeed, surely a band as worldly and flagrantly exotic as CVB would not mind having one of their finest tunes adapted to a more uppity 2/4?!?! And so that too was decided. Then came the matter of the vocal. David Lowery is his own very American vocalist. Emulating him would be challenging verging on painful. But could there be a way to cover the song ...





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