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About What? And Give Up Show
Product Description A man works long hours at the circus, cleaning up after the animals and giving enemas to constipated elephants. A friend, observing the menial nature of the work, offers to help the man find another job. The man replies, "What? And give up show biz?" The punch line to that worn-out vaudeville joke served as the title when the Asylum Street Spankers set up shop for two weeks in January 2008 at New York's Barrow Street Theatre to look back on their underwhelming career and complain about their place in the music world. Juicing their acclaimed live show with a double shot of theatricality, the Spankers presented a musical revue and memoir of the troupe's fourteen year history. Featuring many of the most popular songs in their large repertoire along with tales of the ups and downs of life on the road, the show ran for fourteen performances, garnering good critical response, strong ticket sales and many free drinks for the band. All fourteen shows were recorded, then edited to make this album. "What? And Give Up Show Biz?" contains adult humor, including frank discussions of sexuality, drug use and/or rock and roll. It also contains four-part harmonies, blues, country, pop, jazz, rock and hip-hop songs, inventively clever arrangements, and a musical saw. Review "Dedicated to acoustic instrumentation, but mischievously unorthodox in every other way, this octet from Austin, Tex., is equal parts Betty Boop, the Marx Brothers and John Belushi, reveling in moony musical-saw solos as well as the most adolescent vulgarities." -- The New York Times, 1/15/2008 "Since the Austin, Texas-bred Asylum Street Spankers have always had more in common with old-school vaudeville than with the doctrinaire alt-country that dominates their hometown, it's not too surprising that they'd try their collective hand at an old-school, traveling-circus styled revue. What is surprising is how cleverly and seamlessly the ensemble managed to weave its pre-existing material into a narrative tapestry that conjured up images of Kinky Friedman, Ray Stevens and the Firesign Theater without seeming like a pastiche of these influences." -- Variety, 1/14/2008 "The Austin collective tapdances on the thin line between stunning virtuosity and goofy farce, an eight-person dervish of washboard / dobro / harmonica / clarinet / singing saw / upright bass / violin / etc., minimally amplified for maximum impact..." -- The Village Voice, 1/11/2008 There are few acts today as deliciously entertaining in concert, which is why this two-disc package documenting their live set is the ultimate Spankers release. And as much fun as a barrel of weed-toking, wisecracking musical monkeys. -- Blurt, January 19, 2009 About the Artist For nearly 15 years, the magnificently indefinable Asylum Street Spankers' incomparable blend of string-band virtuosity, vaudeville panache, and countercultural wit has made this all-acoustic revue one of America's most distinctive live bands. Since founding the group in 1994 at a booze-fueled party at the Dabbs Hotel along the river in Llano, Texas, vocalist Christina Marrs and harmonica/washboard player/vocalist Wammo have led their constantly mutating musical troupe from country-blues revivalism toward smart, challenging music of boundless variety, sophisticated arrangements, stunning showmanship and determined inventiveness. Though the Spankers are occasionally raunchy and can be more than a little funny, a serious assessment of their catalog reveals a musical inventiveness and formal restlessness that defies easy categorization. Early forays into ragtime (1999's Hot Lunch) and country blues (2000's Spanker Madness) pushed the boundaries of those genres, while more recent records like 2007's family-oriented, multiple award winning Mommy Says No! and 2004's innovative Mercurial abandon genre altogether with complex musical and vocal arrangements. Along the way, they've been lauded by the most prestigious of media outlets, in
