FBO: 'Tall Tales Week: Day 5'

It's official!

Tall Tales WILL send a three-song cassingle to Carson Jones Daly featuring a hidden track.

Four-fifths of the band voted on which songs would go.

Simply put, Dan Fallis had the most reasoned ballot, offering a thematic choice with songs that focused on our troubled times. So tentatively we're going to follow his vote (not all things are fully democratic) and send off a cassingle with a hand-drawn cover for

TALL TALES
Soundtrack for a Recession [Please Rewind When Through]

The songs (with featured lyric) are:

1. "TRUE" (from Pot Pie, 2004) 'Voted for this guy before he was a politician slob.'
2. "NEW WORRY DAY" (from Damn Kat, 1991) 'I worry about my family, I worry about my friends, planes are always crashing and killing lots of men, I worry about the wars and the nuclear toys, I worry about the body and the way it's being spoiled.'
   
3. "CEO" (from Pot Pie, 2004) 'Now they are saying that they no longer need me, I just couldn't please, told me to hand over all my keys... they escort me to the door, lost my job and now I'm very poor.'
   
4. "NEOLITHIC NOBODYS" (from Crime in a Bucket, 1990) 'Fenceposts are following roads which are mowing trees and houses to the ground, as it gets older, the elites will get bolder, and start to burn the villages down. Here they come again, they take all they can, they're tearing down your house while you're alive.'
   

We will post a digital download version of the cassingle here when it's completed, and pass on any correspondence between Tall Tales and Mr Daly.

Meanwhile, here's a promo for the Tall Tales Box Set, due sometime between June 1 and January 4, 2010:



FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Tall Tales Week: Day 4'

'UFO' VIDEO: THE WORLD WIDE DEBUT!

The best part about being in a band is thinking about band names, thinking about album names, thinking about album covers, and thinking about covers. Making programs for potential rock shows is another plus. The rest of it -- actually getting people together and working up parts -- is the hard part.

Oh, another great thing? Making videos.

After Tall Tales unexpectedly reunited, after a decade pause, for 2004's Pot Pie, they started working on a video for "UFO." Production began shortly after the CD was packaged, but has never been shown to the greater public till now:

Video/song notes:

* Dan JJ Fallis shot and edited the video.
* The video shot is the only time the full bound has "performed" the song together.
* The best lyric in the song: "they were found naked and very confused." Which is just funny.
* The original guitar parts of "UFO" were made by Robert alone in 2001 or so, then later filled out by the rest of the band -- in the meantime, he naughtily used the progression as a completely different song "Cougars at Cougars Park" by San Francisco's Tender Few, and to be included on a soon-to-be-released CD See Me Sigh.
* The best lyric in that T-Few song: "I'm such a pissed guy."
* The "UFO" video begins with features footage of the late, great Sprockett -- the namesake for Alan Hiserodt's Sprockett Records.
* It's the first Tall Tales video since 1993's "Suicidal Muppets."
* The first Tall Tales videos were "Ways to Stay" and -- this one featuring Dan walking by a train tracks --- "This Song's Not About Love," shot by Oklahoma video-ographer Michael Tico Lynch.


FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Tall Tales Week: Day 3'

MAKING IT

The goal was to be huge, have Rolling Stone ask us what our favorite new albums were, and to co-host MTV's 120 Minutes. There were a few times that Tall Tales thought they'd 'made it.' One was when Robert gave a demo tape of early recordings to REM's sound guy at a REM show in Oklahoma City in 1986. To this day, he swears he wrote on the outside of the envolope 'listen to this or it'll be the end of the world as we know it -- and maybe that's OK' -- or something like that. A year later, REM released 'It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).' We may never know if that was just a beautiful accident. Or prime-time theft.

Then in 1989, Tall Tales got the opening gig for the Fleshtones at Oklahoma City's Blue Note [pictured]. It was the eve of Robert's 21st birthday -- a cake was set on stage, candles melting wax into the frosting. Afterwards, we didn't even bother to watch the Fleshtones -- just figured that opening was enough for a record contract. [FBO finally saw the 'Tones in 2006 and adopted them.]

Around that time there were a few out-of-state gigs, including a disasterous Little Rock show that started, foolishly enough, with a soon-discarded new song called 'Problems Arise.' An amp fell over half way into it. An Austin show -- impotently distant from any SXSW timing -- turned out to be an all-ages 'anarchist benefit.' Later on there was finally the Virgin Records exec Andy Factor who'd listen and nod to TT music too. That was as close as it got, but a signing remained the elusive, leprechaun-guarded pot-o-gold: never realized.

Probably the most fun was when less was on the line, like the barnstorming three-day trip to Greencastle, Indiana -- to play an outdoor picnic for Dan Quayle's university, then a townie show where friends threw pitchers of (endlessly free) beer on Alan whilst Danny climbed above the bar while singing 'Sympathy for the Devil.'

Or maybe the show to protest toxic waste in Seminole, Oklahoma, where Tall Tales burned stuffed animals on stage to show the effects waste can have.

FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Tall Tales Week: Day 2'

NEW VIDEO: "UP & DOWN"
Danny Fallis recorded this around 20 to 23 years ago on a four-track, and the synth-heavy, sell-out song ran out of tape before it was finished. It was never released. It's likely some members of the band have never heard it till now. The new video features stills taken on FBO symposia tours of the world, including trips to Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and Colombia.

Lyrically it re-tells a chillingly true story.

This song will appear -- in a slightly longer analog version -- on the upcoming Tall Tales Fake Box Set free download tri-album.

Here's the new video:





FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Tall Tales Week: Day 1'

A WEEK FOR FBO MEMBER #001!

Twenty-three years today Tall Tales picked its name (Tall Tales). As things do in the 918, it happened in an upstairs bedroom of a South Tulsan's home: first drummer Chad Arnett's house, where early four-track recordings of songs like "Ways to Stay" and "Pictures" happened.

To celebrate, FBO annoints this week as TALL TALES WEEK, to celebrate the 23 years, to release a few new videos never before seen by the public, talk with Tall Tales members about the band, and to garner press coverage for the upcoming "Fake Box Set" -- a digital, free-dowload, three-"LP" collection of live recordings, B-sides, unreleased songs and alternate versions of the "hits" -- and a few "hits" as well.

THE MITCH NEWLIN INTERVIEW

Tall Tales always handed out programs at live shows across Oklahoma's counties. Nearly half of them -- for no apparent reason -- featured an interview with bass player Mitch Edward Newlin. He was immortalized for being younger than the rest of the band in the song "Hee Haw" ("Mitch is a child, going to be a while before he plays on Hee Haw"). Here's what Mitch, still not caught up with the rest in years, says about IT ALL:

Why bass?

Because everybody else wanted to play guitar and drums, and I can’t really sing. I’ve always loved bass, though. It speaks to me.

What was it like spending a summer living in a house in Norman with Danzig Fallis and Robert Reid, a year before graduating high school?
That was a trip. I loved it. I was poor as dirt and spend what little money I had on beer, so I ate a lot of bread sandwiches with Arby’s sauce. I think I lost 10 pounds that summer, but I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Do you remember your first practice with the band?

Hah! Do I ever. Mike Weiser [shown, left] walked in during practice and I thought he was there to kill us or steal our gear (sorry, Mike, but you scared me at little in the beginning). We played a few songs and Danny turned to me and asked what I thought. Everyone was staring at me pensively and I said… “I think you’re all fucked.” Everyone laughed and I felt my place in the band was secured at that moment.

How did you end up playing guitar on "Barrel of Fun," the last song on 69 Minutes?

I wrote the silly little tune, and somehow Rob and I never switched instruments back after going through it. I thought Rob’s bass work was brilliant and I was fairly excited about the way my tinkles came out on the CD. It’s a silly song but it holds a special place in my heart.

If you were going to send a three-song cassingle to Carson Daly of Tall Tales -- which three songs would you pick?

Good question. There is no doubt Carson would be a huge TT fan. Is this just for fun or can we make this happen?! Ok, here it is (in no particular order): "Checkin’ the Tide," "The Falkon Flies (Dies)," "UFO" and just because I don't follw the rules, I'd send him "Why Do I?" too.

FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- West Hurley, NY

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.

FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Tall Tales Played a Show'

IT HAPPENED

FBO spoke with members of FBO #001 Tall Tales about their Saturday night show in Norman. Here's what was gleaned:

* Norman's Deli, while atmospheric, doesn't 'go for' sound checks, so the TTs rushed off with practice amps to have a two-song warmup at drummer Alan Hiserodt's business offices nearby (the music school).
* Alan, meanwhile, was supposedly suffering early on from a chili burrito of sorts.
* TTs played till nearly 1am.
* TTs threw in a surprise rendition of John Cash's 'Folsom Prison Blues' at one point -- spurred on by singer Danny Fallis (to give his windpipes a break).
* Some CDs of the TTs 'Pot Pie' record were given away.
* One song, 'Tables & Chairs,' began with drums.
* Several members of FBO's Soul Shaker were in attendance.

We're looking forward to hearing more about the FBO-induced performance, as well as posting any mp3s, videos or photos from the show.

If you were there, we'd like to hear about it.

FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Tall Tales Bracing for Livehouse, More Shows Possible'

Danny Fallis says of this Saturday's show:

"We are really excited to be playing for the first time in 14 years. I only wish that Rob Reid and his Rickenbacker were going to be joining us on stage Saturday night. The other members of the band and myself have been working overtime to try and make up for his absence. We look forward to being able to play with him in the future"

R Reid adds:

"There is always the FBO Panhandle Show!" (tenatively scheduled for May 2009)

Meanwhile, a Tall Tales video flashback with fake live footage, courtesy of Oklahoma's Jim Gibbons:



FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- Bogota, Colomba

FBO: 'FBO Member #001 TALL TALES Takes Stage for First Time in 14 Years'

THERE MAY BE NUDITY
It's been 14 years since Tall Tales has pressed a distortion pedal, hit a tom drum, or skatted in a livehouse. No burned stuffed animals at nuclear-waste-awareness shows in Oklahoma towns with a population of 7000. No 9-string 12-string guitars plucked out of tune. No tripped Chip Dalbys over Stillwater monitors. No hand-out programs with interviews of bass player Mitch Newlin. No choreographed jumps on songs about whaling. No matching orange-plaid jackets. No fake country songs, no impromptu U2 covers. No mullets or moustaches. No 'Dry Paint.' No betwixt-song banter lasting as long or longer as the songs themselves. That changes this Saturday night.

Drummer Alan Hiserodt (not pictured) offered a few sneak previews of what may or may not happen:

* The hit single 'Station' now features a middle drum/Danny hip-hop break.
* The first song may involve trompe l'entendre (trick hearing).
* The final song could include male nudity.

Also, the show will not include songs from the following EP 'LIVE from a Place in Oklahoma' (2006), Tall Tales' most recent release:



The show is around 9pm at THE DELI, Saturday, November 8. Locust Avenue -- featured Todd Walker -- will open.

FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- Bogota, Colombia

FBO: 'News! Tall Tales to Play Norman'

NEWS IS LIKE MAGIC


November 8, 2008
The Deli, Norman
TALL TALES
w/ Locust Avenue
& The Toothman (featuring FBO's Eric Harmon)

In a sneak preview of Panhandle Show possibilities, FBO Member #001 Tall Tales returns to the actual Oklahoma stage -- an FBO-induced 'live' EP included a fake audience -- a mere 14 years since the last performance. The show may include a 'live feed' of exile member Robert Reid, who will be in Colombia on a FBO cultural symposium in Bogota.

The band has been working up a set of 20-plus songs, new and old. Singer Dan Fallis promises there will be 'lots of grey beards and arthritis, plus tons of new bass equipment' and drummer Alan Hiserodt says one difference of the new era is 'trying to keep up with what I played as a 20-something as a 40 year old.'

More updates on the #001 return to the livehouse to come...


FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY