Today is Bandcamp Friday! We are participating in this now-venerable tradition by releasing, for the first time in a streaming format, the Mike Keneally Band Pup EP from 2004. This was a very private pressing made available at the time only to those who pre-ordered the Dog album.
In addition to three otherwise unavailable live Keneally Band tracks, it contains a long studio take of the song “Li’l.” This freaky instrumental, in a later recording, ended up on Wine And Pickles, but this earlier version is longer, faster and rawer, and also contains the mysterious sounds of the Mattel Optigan that was available for our use at Stanley Recordings.
There’s also two one-man-band studio recordings, “Sun Flute” and “Party Poopers,” both recorded at Chatfield Manor in the span of time after Wooden Smoke and Dog, and very different from both of those albums. This was during the period when I was just beginning to sink my claws into Pro Tools. They are pretty sturdy examples of bizarre home-recording experimentalism.
All the music pieces are tied together with radio-style announcements and jingles, as this EP also functioned as promo for the then-brand-new Radio Keneally streaming service (no longer with us, and may its light forever shine in our memories). Pup captures the vibe of Radio Keneally in kind of the same way that The Who Sell Out captured the vibe of pirate radio of the ’60s.
Thank you to Chris Opperman for suggesting to Scott Chatfield and I that we make Pup available on Bandcamp, and then put his hard work where his ideas were and uploaded Pup to Bandcamp himself along with all of the supplementary textual material I prepared to accompany it. The hope is to continue uploading recordings from my catalogue to Bandcamp every month until we finally have it all up there.
For now, this is the first step, and it is here: https://mikekeneallymusic.bandcamp.com/releases