FBO: 'Tall Tales Takes Tip from Doors'

The Doors recently re-mixed and re-did their albums -- Ray Manzarek needed the money -- and have done, Tall Tales' Dan Fallis reports, an amazing job and uncovering lost things in the old mixes, like backups and more tolerable keyboard parts from the spectacled Mr Manzarek.

FBO Member #001 Tall Tales, perhaps, may follow suit.

37-1/2 MINUTES?
In its earlier pre-failed incarnation, the band released four 'albums' on cassette only -- Tall Tales, Your Analysis, Crime in a Bucket and Damn Kat (the latter using a discarded artwork of a cat defecating, found at a Tulsa Kinko's) -- then topping it off with a lone CD, the 66-minute, 25-track 69 Minutes in 1993.

As it was the first time in a real studio (ie one with more than an eight-track recorder), TT mixed up the songs; 11 were re-done songs from the cassette albums, the rest new songs or old ones never recorded. Ambitious, but in the end, one could argue, it lost a little cohesion for casual listeners in the expanded 66-minute format. (Before downloads destroyed the idea of albums, CDs in general watered them down by expanding the length from a more manageable, listener-friendly 44 minutes to 60-plus; por ejemplo compare the Stones' Tattoo You with the rambling, awful Steel Wheels or Bridges to Babylon or A Bigger Bang.)

The FBO recommends for 69 Minutes' 16th anniversary next spring to re-package the CD as a download to focus on at-the-time fresh material only. The suggested new song order is:

1. STUCK
2. OTHERS
3. 2nd NEW SONG
4. I LIVE HERE YOU LIVE IN WISCONSIN
5. WASTED
6. SUICIDAL MUPPETS
7. STATION
8. BOWLING
9. OVER AND OVER
10. I'M SO WHITE
11. TIME*
12. SHEEPS-A-GRAZIN'
13. BARREL OF FUN

* 'Time' previously appeared on Tall Tales, but the FBO allows one re-hash, and this one has a fully extended outro that qualifies it for inclusion.

--> The new name of the album could either be 37-1/2 Minutes, or Skip the Rock, or Tall Tales Won't Try.

It's possible to download, or hear snippets, of 69 Minutes here.

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