The Cheeseburger & Fries audio archives, consisting of stacks and stacks of crappy cassettes from fifteen years ago, has always been referred to as "the shoebox". Reason being, we originally stored them in a large Nike shoebox. However, the collection of tapes long since outgrew it and the shoebox was placed in a bigger box.
Although a handful of tracks were recently made available online, it's the intention of Creeps Records to make the entire contents of the shoebox tapes available to the world (whether the world wants it or not) in the coming year. Even we don't entirely know what's on these tapes - many of them were never even listened back to after a recording session or street performance.
Ch&F were infamous for their tirelessness, playing gruelingly long sets. I can remember at the Hip Joynt in Lexington, we often played for four hours straight and I didn't even want to stop when they finally made us. Here's an example set list from a show at Mr.Smith's Coffee House, Georgetown, KY, January 17, 1997:
Theme from Cheeseburger & Fries
Like A Prayer
Cigarette Blues
Losing my Religion
1999
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
Spiderman
Secret Agent Man
? (Jeff Rant)
Greasy Tit
Sweet Home Alabama
Manic Monday
Another Brick in the Wall
Uncomfortable for God
Angie/Hotel California/Heartbreak Hotel
Mailbag
Paradise City
Blue Moon
Release Me
That'll Be The Day
The Creeps
Cold Cold Ground
Got My 618 On
Love and Marriage
Women Can't be Trusted
Your Cheatin' Heart
It Was the Whiskey Talkin (Not Me)
Night Owl Screechin'
Little Red Riding Hood
Had Me A Girl
No More Hot Dogs
20 Eyes
My War
Theme from Gilligan's Island/Watching the Detectives
Haircut, Shotgun, Bottle of Corn
Beth
China Girl
Act Naturally
Campbellsville Dead Baby Song
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
My Babe
Battleship Chains
? (Marijuana song requested by some idiots)
Freebird
The Strangler of Boston Town
? (Blues thing as everybody leaves)
Satisfaction
Although we billed ourselves, a la Sleepy LaBeef, as being human jukeboxes capable of playing any song requested by the audience, our true talent in fact was our cheerful willingness to play any song whether we knew how or not. Don't even hum us a few bars, we'll fake it anyway. It's expressionism, man.
- - JSH
3 comments:
I remarked to JSH that seeing that set list brings back the gig more than I knew to be recalled...I remember what I had forgotten that I didn't know to forget. Although the way it comes back to me is that JSH mandated, ahem, these marathon sets, and I went along for the ride: "Sure, Cheeseburger, give me another hit off the bottle, we'll take our breaks on stage."
Sadistically, I just liked not giving the audience even a moment's respite, not even for a pee break.
You were a young and energetic whippersnapper then... but when you get my age, it's like my grandma told me on a hike in the woods: "If I stop and rest, I'll let my feelin's down and I won't wanna git goin' again. Better off just to keep a goin'".
Okay, so I wasn't all that old back then. But I felt older then than I do today. I'm younger than that now. Clean liquor.
Yeah, back then, I only had a few years of arthritis under my belt, now I've had more than my fair share of chronic pain spanning more than a decade. Tends to take the whip out of the snapper. But the soul is strong, like a young man's...
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