Clambake Central

2008-05-23T19:37:00.000-07:00

OUR FEST JUNE 6TH AND 7TH

It's hard to believe that a year has gone by since the last OUR Fest. It's even harder to believe that I still haven't put my tent away from last time.
If you're going this year, take a tip from me: Don't fall asleep with your flashlight on. You'll thank me when the time comes.
This year promises even more strangeness and goodies. But remember: Don't feed the clowns.
For more information about the OUR Fest. check out this fancy schmancy 30 second advertisement:

See you at the drum circle!!!
SNAKE BAKE THE WHOLE CAKE!!!!

2007-09-19T17:15:00.000-07:00

Hypnotic Clambake Live on PBS

Hypnotic Clambake filmed a live set for WXXI (a Rochester, NY PBS affiliate), which will be aired on September 23rd at 7:00 pm. There will also be an audio version of it airing on the 20th and 22nd on 88.5 WRUR. We've already seen a DVD copy of it, and it is very nice. It's filmed in Hi-def, with a surround sound mix. We're looking into seeing what it would take to turn it into a DVD available to you folks for purchase. We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, check out this live version of 500 Robots, which was taken from the show. Enjoy.
For further information check out http://wxxi.org/onstage/schedulelist.html

2007-08-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

"Woe is Me" Live

Here is another video of us playing the Wellsville Creative Arts Center. This time the song is "Woe is Me". This video features more views of my mug than anyone should be subjected to.
And watch as I biff the second verse. Hey, there's two whole verses, you can't expect me to remember BOTH of them. Extra special thanks to Angelica14709 for patiently sitting through our sets, and filming all of this great footage.

2007-08-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

Yakko's World

This is a song that we used to cover back when Chris Q was in the band. Chris Q actually memorized this whole song.
Do yourself a favor and get yourself some Animaniacs CD's. They're all outstanding. One of my dreams, is to get the bands at the OUR Fest to record an album of Animaniacs covers.
Seriously. I'm not kidding.

2007-08-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

Dancing to the Feldmans

Here's a video that someone made, and posted on youtube quite awhile ago. I think that they may have been drinking the tea that Mary Poppins serves. Or perhaps they stole some fizzy lifting drinks. Whichever the case, these people just aren't right. To condone this kind of silly behavior would be simply irresponsible, which is exactly why we support it whole-heartedly.

2007-08-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

Live at Wellsville Creative Arts Center Part 2

Here is some video footage that someone shot of us at the Wellsville Creative Arts Center 7/21/07. Our friend John Martz sat in with us that evening. Check him out as he blazes through Old Dan Tucker. Check out JoAnn as she blazes through the guitar solo of "Chef Mobie's Gumbo Gator". And check out Maury as we blaze through the vocal parts of "Psychedelic Polka". And by blaze I mean putz.
This is right after we wandered down to the balloon fair, where we called a carney on one of his scams, and played a round of redneck roulette -which involves a big spinning wheel, and a very dizzy rat.
Dizzy Rat, wasn't he in 2 Live Crew?

2007-08-05T09:57:00.001-07:00

OUR Fest 2007 Part 2

Here are some photos taken by the lovely Ami Worthen of the Mad Tea Party

First up, is a glimpse inside of the Freakshow tent. The first exhibit is a plaster cast of a footprint from the mysterious and elusive "Biggun Foot". Biggun Foot, once considered a mere fable, is a giant beast which roams around the North East eating berries, and avoiding human contact. It is kind of an East Coast version of the Pacific Northwest's Sasquatch. The only difference is that it is way more uptight, cusses a lot more, and honks it's horn the second the light turns green -which is really annoying.

Next up, is the first real scientific breakthrough of the OUR Fest. Through the aid of government grants, and many moderately successful bake sales, our team of scientists were able to produce the first automobile to run exclusively on salmon.

Here's a few photos of me and Baby Gramps.
Seriously, I don't know what these two guys are up to, but you can bet that it's no good.

Jason Krekel of the Mad Tea Party in the throes of rocking.

Stewed Mulligan picking, grinning, scaring the children.

Here's a rare stage-eye view of Saturday afternoon.

This is a view of the fabled Stewed Mulligan camp. Rumor has it, that the Stews actually sleep playing their instruments. Sometimes, while they're jamming away, you can actually give them a nudge, and they'll tip over like cows. Be careful though, because Stew tipping can be very dangerous, and could result in a banjo to the forehead.

Here's Ami Worthen, the taker of these photo's, next to artist Phil Cheney.

Thanks for the great photos Ami.
I already can't wait until next year's festival.

2007-07-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

Cool Student Video

Here's a cool film done by a student with an old-fashioned camera. The soundtrack is done by none other than Hypnotic Clambake! The song is 'Bulgarian Boogie' off of the 'Square Dance Messiah' CD. Than you Ethan Troopa for making us part of your film!
Dig it:

2007-06-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

Photos from OUR Fest 2007

Another fantabulous year for the OUR Fest. Perfect weather, great music, and enough grins to go home with leftovers. Hi-lites? The whole danged weekend was superb. I don't want to toot my own horn or anything but, HONK!

Here is a photo of the set-up session Wednesday night. Janice Grosshans is on the stage, and Phil Cheney is in the foreground.

Here's what the stage looked like.

Here is the tent that housed the freak show, and the man eating chicken. Screams of fear and delight could be heard eminating from it all weekend long.

Here is the bewteeful Ami Worthen from Mad Tea Party, who arrived Thursday night.

Here is a photo of Phil Cheney in transit.

Phil Cheney in transit, with yours truly in the foreground

While we were chatting, a cat walked up to us carrying a frog in it's mouth. The cat dropped the frog in front of us, and ran away. Phil and Jason Krekel walked down to investigate the health of the poor frog.

Phil and Jason, upon deciding that the frog was in good enough health to be released from their care, returned it back to the pond to see it's friends.

Here is a rare glimpse of the community artist studio at Brushwood. This is where all of the bands hang out, chat, and munch cereal.

Here is jason Krekel of Mad Tea Party, about to show a bowl of greens who's boss.

Here is a sculpture someone made at Brushwood. In the background is the room with the swimming pool, and hot-tub -another reason to show up a few days early at the OUR Fest.

Here is the robot that preaches the law of repetition. The law of repetition.

Here is a shot of the fire-pit/ drum circle. In the background is a May-pole.

This is a large sculpture that someone made at the drum circle.

Mad Tea Party's Friday night set.

Stewed Mulligan, Friday night.

Here's Maury and JoAnn breaking down the merchandise booth Friday night.

JoAnn Vaccaro

Here's some photos of JoAnn Vaccaro's Saturday afternoon set. She is a woman of many hats. A suitcase full, to be exact.

Here's Baby Gramps' Saturday afternoon set, backed up with 2/3 of Mad Tea Party.

More photos to come. Stay tuned...

2007-04-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

Alfred University

Here is yet another installment of "Photos I got off the web without any reference as to who shot them".

This was a fun show we played at Alfred University. I'm guessing that this was late 2002, or early 2003. I think that this is one of the first nights that I started playing bass after Jim Kuras quit. I don't know whose bass that is, actually. The line up here, from left to right, is Mark Phillips -drums, Me -bass, Maury, Bram Glik -sax and scrubs, and Robert Lift -guitar. We actually fiddle player Pete at this gig, who stayed with us for about a year.

This was a particularly fun evening, because this was the night we marched the audience all of the way across the quad. We marched everyone downstairs into the lobby, and then decided to leave through the front doors into the evening. I would say it was about 75 to 100 people.
We marched everyone way out accross the campus until we found these to guys sitting under a tree imbibing in the substance of their choice. So we, and the other 100 people, surrounded these guys and gave them an impromptu show.
We found out later that some fuddy duddy college administration type called security and reported us, resulting in a fine for the organization that put together the show.

Here we are heading down the stairs to the lobby.

Here we are heading out across the quad.

Here we are returning to the lobby, with a few more people than we had when we left.

These are the guys who put together the show.
t

2007-04-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

Rooney 'till your dog don't know ya.

2007-04-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

Baby Gramps does Letterman

Last August we were psyched to find out that Gramps was booked to play The Late Show. We were even more psyched to see that our pal Jason Krekel was going to be joining him. That's him playing the banjo in the back.

The spirit of the OUR Fest has penetrated the mainstream!

The song is "Cape Cod Girls" from a CD called "The Rogue's Gallery", which is a collection of modern interpretations of Sea Chanteys done by the likes of Nick Cave, Rufus Wainright III, Sting, Bono, etc. etc. etc. Gramps actually has TWO songs on this CD, including the opening song that kicks off the whole collection.

2007-04-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

OUR Fest 2005 Photos Part 2

These are photos that I shot during the 2005 OUR Fest.

These first two were taken the Wednesday night before the festival. The first one is of the bridge over the creek. The lights kind of give off a pearly-gates-type look. The second one is of the stage.

These two were taken Thursday night. I was hanging out with the Snake Oil Medicine Show crew, and the Mad Tea Party. It was a nice evening full of pluckin' Yuke's, and flappin' gums. It was a particularly nice sunset that night.

Here's Jason Krekel of Mad Tea Party, and George Pond, then of Snake Oil Medicine Show, but currently residing in CX-1.

Here's Caroline Pond of Snake Oil Medicine Show, singing with Ami Worthen of Mad Tea Party.

Here's something from during the festival. It was a jam session with members of the Mad Tea Party, and Snake Oil Medicine Show

Here's some rare photographic evidence of Phil Cheney, capturing some rare photographic evidence of yours truly.

Here are our sound guys Skip, and Larry. I thought I was being slick taking their picture, but discovered later that they were looking right at me.

Here's a photo of The Johnsons, who are now known as Rainbow Tribe.

Here's a night shot of the Snake Oil Medicine Show set. It's actually hard to figure out whose set it is that I'm looking at, because Saturday evening at the OUR Fest tends to turn into a big jam session. Chris Kew of Clambake, Jiggle The Handle, and The Recipe fame, sat in on this set.

Here's George Pond sprinkling science on the audience.

And, last but not least, is the lovely and talented Baby Gramps. We were lucky that he was still able to perform, despite the fact that he had a bone in his leg.

2007-04-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

Hypnotic Clambake's Big Weird Al Cameo

If you think about it, there aren't too many contemporary, progressive, accordionists out there. I mean you got Maury, Weird Al Yankovic, and ... er ... Judy Tenuta? So every once in a while, whenever someone decides to do a write-up on us, Weird Al's name will be mentioned somewhere in the article. This is fine with us, because Weird Al is an icon as far as we're concerned. Check him out, about a week before he became famous, doing "Another One Rides the Bus" in the Tom Snyder show. And check out the genius of the song "One More Minute".

So, needless to say, we were pretty psyched when someone from our message board hipped us to the fact that we had a one second cameo in his video for "Virus Alert".
Look for it at the 43 second mark. On the wall in the background of a guy's office, is the cover for our Mayonnaise CD.

This video was made by a guy named Dave Lovelace. He's famous for doing a series of short flash cartoons called "Retarded Animal Babies". See his website HERE. *Caution -his cartoons can get pretty raunchy. They can also reveal some startling little-known secrets of the universe. For example, did you know that Satan was into collecting sno-globes?

2007-04-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

OUR Fest Photos from 2005

These are photos from the 2005 OUR Fest taken by our old pal Karen Olson.

Let me walk you through these photos, shall I?

These two photos are of a band that looks remarkably like Hypnotic Clambake, but is actually the New York Klezmer Orchestra. The NYKO usually goes on first on Saturday morning (Day 2 of the festival). We usually start up the festival in order to keep the band schedule... um ... on schedule. I usually camp in my van next to the stage. So when it comes time to play the Saturday morning set, I literally roll out of bed, and roll onto the stage.

This is the cat-fish shaped pillow that was hanging under the Aquarium Stage. We caught it while fishing in a river of feathers.

Here is a shrunken version of the Snake Oil Medicine Show playing the Aquarium Stage.

Here is a shot of The Buddhahood.

Here's a random smattering of OUR Fest people.

Here's some shots of the legendary Baby Gramps, one from the Main Stage, and one from the Aquarium Stage. The weird part, is that these two photos were taken at the SAME TIME.

Here's some shots of Snake Oil Medicine Show rocking the hizzouse. The first photo shows Phil Cheney and Tovah painting. Phil is the artist behind the OUR Fest posters and t-shirts. That might be Maury playing piano in the darkness. Sitting in on guitar is Jason Krekel from the Mad Tea Party.

Here is Clambake playing, I think, the Friday night set. From left to right is Jim Shwarz (bass), me, Maury, Rick McCrae (trombone), JoAnn, and Tim Hull. This, I believe, was the OUR Fest that we played after the Mayonnaise CD was released. The line-up here, is the band that was recorded on the CD, and the line-up that we've, more or less, stuck with ever since.

2007-04-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

Wellsville Creative Arts Center Pics

Here are some photos of us playing the Wellsville Creative Arts Center, November 17, 2006. Maury's accordion had broken that night. So we were holding our breath the whole night wondering if the accordion was going to become unglued. The rest of us were unglued before we got there. This place was the coolest. The people were very nice, and the place was set-up very nicely. Wellsville is lucky to have this place. I don't know who took the photos. Here is the page that I got them from:

https://www.wellsvillecreativeartscenter.com/PhotoGallery/galleryhome.cfm

2007-04-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

The Ed McWoman Video

Here is our video for "Ed McWoman". It was shot in the summer of 2006 by Barry Saunders.
This video lives up to the age-old Hollywood tradition of showing a band playing instruments that aren't actually heard in the song. Kind of like Josie and the Pussycats.

2007-03-02T22:07:00.000-08:00

Beardslee Castle Photos

Here's a few photos of us at the Beardslee Castle in New York. I'm guessing that the year is 2002. Left to right is Robert Lift, Bram Glik, Maury, myself and Zack Fleiss. Some of you might notice Zack's long and luxurious mullet. Apparently he agreed to grow the mullet in exchange for a free Trans Am. Sounds like an even trade to me. My apologies to whoever took these photos. I couldn't find any photo credits.

2007-03-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

West Virginia April 30, 2005

This is another date from our Mayonnaise CD release tour. These photos are from a place we played in West Virginia, that I cannot remember the name of.
At the end of the night, we did our thing where we play The Feldmans, and march people outside the bar. But as soon as we went outside, everyone just went apeshit. One lady was flopping around in the middle of the street. One guy took this tree and started shaking it so hard that the leaves were falling off of it. One guy climbed up a street sign and started slapping it(?). Everyone went, in a word, apeshit. The owner ran up to us and basically said "For the love of God, get everyone back inside before we all get arrested".
We need to play down there more often.

Here's Maury telling us something important. This is also a rare photograph of the inside of our van. Also a nice capture of my shoe.

The guy in the brown jacket is Montana fiddle champion Taylor Buckley. Tim Hull is to the right of him.

Here's a Mayonnaise poster we spotted in a coffee shop window. You know, it's one thing to create something weird like Mayonnaise, but there's something oddly satisfying about seeing it out and actively corrupting normal society.

Tim Hull

Tim and JoAnn

JoAnn and Maury

2007-03-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

Hickey Tavern April 2005

Here are some photos of when we played the Hickey Tavern in Olean, NY. I think that this was the first night of the tour that we did to promote "Mayonnaise".
I was messing around with long exposures on the camera. Actually the exposure itself is normal. It's just that we move so quickly, that we can barely be captured on film.
When in Olean, stay at the Green Lantern Motel: Home to the Stars.

Mark's picture is the only one that wasn't blurry, because he was actually frozen in this position for 45 minutes straight.

2007-02-14T12:57:00.000-08:00

Hurricanes and Road Dogs: The Decatur IL trip 2003

These pictures were taken during a tour that ended with a weekend in Dacatur IL. The photos were taken by Larry G. Harris -our occasional sound guy, and noted racconteur.
On the first day we were there, a hurricane blew through the city. And when I say hurricane, I mean an honest-to-God hurricane. As in "Run for your lives! It's a hurricane!!"

We were taking a break when it happened. Larry walked up to me and said "We're on in 15 minutes." I turned away to look out the window, to see a flag on a flag-pole getting practically torn to pieces from the wind and rain. I turned back to Larry and said "I don't think we're going to be playing in 15 minutes". Just then, our fiddle player came running in with his effects pedal board. He turned the board upside down, and about a cup of water poured out of it. All of our equipment was left on stage, and was now in getting soaked with rain, because the roof of the stage had blown clean off. So I ran out to try to rescue my bass from being ruined by the downpour.

As soon as I ran outside, I began to regret my decision when I quickly realized how dangerous the situation was. The streets were completely empty, and there was destruction and chaos everywhere I looked. There was a lightning storm going on, and I quickly realized that I was running right through the middle of it. The air was so electrically charged, that it practically hummed in your ears. It felt like something was about to explode at any minute, and it was a good chance that that something might be me.

The bass was okay, but the case was destroyed. All of the glue came loose from the water, and left it in pieces. Most of the equipment we were using was actually on loan from a local Decatur music store. Most, if not all of it, was destroyed. The soundboard was full of water. The drum-kit had done a summersault off the back of the stage. The sound guys tried to hold the roof down during the storm, but instead ended up getting lifted right off the stage, and tossed to the ground. Everything that was on the stage, had become reduced to piles of mangled debris.

So now we're in this convention center in Decatur (which was where the dressing rooms were) and there's hundreds of people in the lobby who ran in there to escape the rain. They're soaked, their kids are soaked, and everyone's pretty much freaked out. So we set up some instruments and played in front of them. Later on, some of the volunteers pulled us aside and thanked us for playing. They said that we were like the band who played on the Titanic as it was sinking. I tell you, there's nothing quite like playing to an audience of weeping children. Usually it's the adults that weep openly at our shows.

For some perspective, here are some before and after photos.
This is the stage before the storm. Note the drum-kit, monitors, mircophones, and all of the equipment one finds on a typical stage.

And now here's an after picture. Notice how all of those things mentioned before are now missing (The stool was put there later). That mess behind the stage is the roof that blew off.

Other Highlights:
The deep-fried twinkees, AND Snickers bars. The Road-Dog: The World's biggest motorcycle.

Here's a photo of Maury and I rubbing elbows with celebrities.

Then, on our way home, there was a truck accident that sent the thruway into a complete stop for three hours. This is a photo of the view that we looked at during that entire time. This photo was taken at about 5 am.

All in all, though, we had a blast in Decatur. I think that we're, seriously, booked to play there again in the summer of 2008.
For more photos, check out Larry's on-line photo galleries HERE

Oh, and by the way, NEVER order Alligator on a stick. Trust me on this.

2006-10-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

Hello all. My name is Chris, and I am not only the bass player for hypnotic Clambake, but I am also the moderator of this soul stirring, death defying weblog.
There's been a lot of Hypnotic Clambake related stuff piling up in my apartment in the last few years, so I decided to unload it all onto this blog for safekeeping. So, basically, this is going to be a pretty random collection of Clambake curios, with no real chronology or point.
If anyone out there has any Clambake-related photos or videos to contribute, please contact me.

SNAKE BAKE THE WHOLE CAKE