Thursday, May 26, 2005

Cruns: "Bed Hair"

CAT #DNRC 25 Format: Long Player Released 2004 Status: DELETED Despite the barnstorming success of their first single "Extra Hair", Cruns made the ridiculous decision in 2004 to stop listening to their own music. This, their debut album, is the result. Composed of what could loosely be described as instructions for session musicians, "Bed Hair" was a disappointment on its first release and indeed continues to disappoint Cruns' three fans, all now living under heavy police protection in Launceston. It should be pointed out that the lacklustre nature of many of the album's tracks (note, especially "Is This Thing Switched On?" and "Where The Drum Comes In, There") was due mostly to the band's choice of producer, the now-notorious and happily-deleted On da Levelle, whose eyebrow-raising methods constituted a kiss of death for any band wishing to engage his services. The middle section of this album - a near-unlistenable litany of complaint that sounds like it was recorded in the smoker's corner behind the old DNRC studios in Tribesco - reportedly drove at leats two Cruns members to complain to war-crimes prosecutors at The Hague, with little success. Nevertheless, Cruns were also their own worst enemy, refusing to record "Bed Hair" for this release, choosing instead to insert silence where the title track should have been, deliberatly playing out of time and out of tune, turning up to recording sessions blindfolded, letting loose animals in the studios, refusing to change the band's name to Cruntastic when asked, changing the band's name to Crunny Joel when specifically ordered not to, adding extra members to the band, sacking all old members from the band, toying with the idea of becoming spoken word artists, planning a terrorist attack on their native Boston, denying they ever lived in Boston, and finally, going to the movies instead of working out the track order for the album. It's little wonder, then, that Cruns finally wore out the patience of DNRC executives, who personally tore up the cardboard cutouts left by the band in the DNRC parking lot, an act which would later inspire Cruns' so-called lead singers to form a new band, called Crunulosity and the Cardboard Crun Cruns, a barely-disguised Oasis suicide pact.

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