Album Notes

The Royal We, Bernie Bernie Headflap’s 3rd full-length album, has finally been released in the still somewhat popular CD format... and of course as a digital download! 2007 is the fifteenth anniversary of the formation of Bernie Bernie Headflap. What better way to celebrate, thought lead singer and primary songwriter Alan McCabe, than to finally release those three CDs recorded between 1996 and 2000 which were only ever released as MP3.com Digital Automatic Music (DAM) CDs and so never really saw the light of day? And now this thought has become reality. The second of those three CDs, 1999’s The Royal We is here and available for you to purchase. It is newly mastered, containing 17 tracks in all – 14 of the 17 tracks that the original release had, plus 3 alternate versions never released before -- plus it features all new artwork based on an idea of McCabe’s, brought to life in full blazing color by the illustration and design team of Holly Tickner and Mike Piontek. The Royal We is the first album from Bernie Bernie Headflap’s ‘one-man-band’ phase. It took the five-piece version of BBH who recorded 1998’s Less Like Penguins 3 years to do so, and in the process, that line-up began to disintegrate. Also, McCabe’s health was worsening, so he took a temp bass player’s suggestion to go it alone for awhile, and he sought to find out how long it would take him to record an entire album using nothing but his voice, a guitar, a mic and a pc with appropriate software. This is almost what then happened. He did get some help from friend Mike Bardzik at Your Mom’s Studio to record 3 of the songs; aside from that, he completed the original DAM version of the album in 8 months. The ironic thing is that it took many more years for audio software to develop to the point where all of McCabe’s excessive and wrongheaded recording choices could be processed into something listenable to the near-average ear. This new version mastered by Bardzik still contains eccentricities, but is overall a shiny specimen which should please many early 21st century music enthusiasts. Similar to Less Like Penguins, which is also available on cdbaby.com, the original sequence of songs are framed by a few numbers concerning some characters involved in a plotline. The characters this time are Dataspace.com employee Chad Bradley, his wife Polly and the return of the Really Very Hungry Guy. Between their introduction to the listener and Chad’s apparent untimely demise in ‘Social Intercourse’, a bunch of extremely catchy songs transpire -- these songs’ relation to the frame story is anybody’s guess. But the allure of the album, like that of any BBH album -- is that not only are the songs ridiculously catchy and fun -- they also cover a remarkably wide array of stylistic ground as well as a variety of moods. For instance, “The North bounders (The Common We)” combines elements of new wave and white geek rap in a way no one else had done before or has done since, and though it rocks, there is nary a stringed instrument in the mix. “Stand the Kitsch” is funk parody with outrageous vocals. “List” is like Steely Dan meets Nirvana backing some dude who fancies himself to be a hard drinkin Irish stream of consciousness wordsmith poet. “FallApartGuy” is like Syd Barret-Philip Glass backed pseudo-sadness. All in all, you will find that this music touches upon as many colors as are represented on the cd cover -- and most are really that bright, too! McCabe is particularly proud of the lyrics on this album. Here is a sampling: (coming soon)