Album Notes

Listening to Phil Ward is "Like listening to set-to-music entries from an obsessive-compulsive’s diary...a really funny one." So says the Pasadena Star-News, anyway. SING OUT! magazine, the Bible of folk music, says "His risky, rapid-fire rhymes, oddball topics and deadpan delivery bring to mind Tom Lehrer and Loudon Wainwright III." And George Grove, of The Kingston Trio, who should know what's what, said “I listened to your CD--not once, but twice all the way through. You're a weird, wacky, eccentric, compulsive, and slightly demonic talent. Wanna have tea?”

The long awaited follow-up to Ward's 2001 release EASILY AMUSED, DO NOT INSERT IN EAR CANAL was, like its predecessor, recorded live in concert and is full of songs pretty much guaranteed to make listeners laugh aloud repeatedly. Some of the songs on the album are recent creations, such as Elevator Music, a detailed warning about the quirks of the elevators in Ward's old apartment building (his wife was once trapped inside one and had to be rescued by firefighters); The Day The Carpet Cried, one of only a few songs in recorded history which is sung from the point of view of a carpet; and the joyous singalong The Hoosegow, a show-stopper that smacks of the flapper era and features sprightly tap dancing by its co-author Myles Nye.

You'll also get Stupid, Ward's pre-November 08 assessment of the voters who kept Bush in power for eight years, which was a minor sensation on YouTube. The album closes with Ward's often-requested mini-opera Ugly Little Pizza, usually performed solo but here featuring a chorus of sixteen singers, bringing the proceedings to a thunderous climax.

So come on. Treat your ear canals to DO NOT INSERT IN EAR CANAL. Where else are you gonna find a song that teaches you valuable trivia about the TV show Lost In Space?