Think Bubble: an album of 1995 home demos

From the sleevenotes of "Think Bubble", an LP of home demos recorded in 1995 for a proposed album by The Pooh Sticks:
 

(If it had happened, Claude was going to record links in between the songs...)

You can imagine how happy I was when Todd Rundgren wanted to produce the follow-up to our “Million Seller” album (yes! motorcycle guitars and marimbas!), and then how depressed I was when we jumped ship from BMG and this fell apart (instead, we low-budget self-made “Optimistic Fool”). So in 1995, with one eye on resurrecting the Todd idea, for a possible new album, we came up with a bunch of songs we took to calling “Think Bubble”. So anyway, as usual with Pooh Sticks records, there’d be basic home recordings which Steve would then use to teach to the rest of us: the main shape, some of the playing (drums and bass, mostly), most of the singing, kinda worked out-ish before going to the studio. Now, what with me being not strictly corporeal and what have you, I couldn’t help quite as much as I’d’ve liked, but I pledged my complete support and made the tea and got the Indonesian in from across the road, that sort of thing. I did my bit, is what I’m saying.

Now, nearly twenty years later and presumably cos it’s a slow day, ten of these 1995 “Think Bubble” demos have been whacked onto an LP, which is available to buy right now at this very moment in some shop, or online somewhere, so I’m told. It’s in a nice gatefold sleeve, with loads of hand-holding notes by me and all the lyrics printed with a minimum of spelling mistakes. Pretty much, it looks like this:

 

 

Caution: there’s zero indiepop on it, which’ll come as no great surprise to people who saw which way the wind was blowing with “The Great White Wonder”, “Million Seller” or “Optimistic Fool” so, if you only really liked the early funny ones, I’d be giving this one a wide berth, if I were you, cos much of it sounds like this:

Over the next couple of months I’ll be updating this blog thing every day – well, that’s the plan – with, I don’t know, bits and pieces about the record but, pretty much more interestingly if you ask me (go on, ask me… no-one ever asks my opinion on anything around here, which is a shame cos I’ve got lots of really great things to say, really I have), I’ll also be doing a countdown of the 50 ‘most important’ singles in our little world, just so you know who to blame for everything and everything. When the countdown reaches the end, this “Think Bubble” LP will self-destruct. Well, OK, no, but if they haven’t all gone by then we’ll stop selling it. Now, I’m guessing this won’t mean that copies won’t still be in shops or whatever, but it will mean that our own postal-room staff (pfff, that’s me, then…) won’t be doing any more orders this end. Got it? OK. Check back tomorrow for the start of the Top 50 and we’ll see what happens after that.

Love,
Trudi xxx