I Am an Elastic Firecracker featured some jelly-covered doughnut guy on its cover and I remember more than a few people asking who he was and why he was so prominently featured. I dunno – I always thought it was someone who liked the smell of napalm.
Anyway, one of three core songs we played off the album was Trip Along, although I should confess it was one we only tried to play. To begin, we actually had a copy of the full album in the control room, a rarity for us, and I believe we had owned it for quite a while. It may have even been one of the promotional copies sent before the album arrived on the scene. The only bad thing was that since we had the disc for so long, it had gotten used – and misused. Somewhere along the way it had gotten scratched up pretty bad and not every track was as radio-friendly as we would have wanted it.
I've mentioned our Wednesday night program of new music and regional musicians (see I think it's worth it for you to stay awake); one night in October of a now-forgotten year (probably 1997), I was on the air Friday night from 9 to midnight and not by my hand. I forget why, since this was not my regular shift by any stretch – someone had either made arrangements to be off that night or, more likely, forgot to. At some point in the second half of the 10:00 hour the music director stopped by and, one thing led to another, we decided to essentially kick-off "What's New Wednesday" on a Friday. Why not ( see So much for the days...tribal life)?
We laughed and thought it was funny, the two of us working tag-team for the next hour and endlessly finding a way at every stopset, or break, to point out that this was, indeed, "What's New Wednesday – on a Friday."
One of the instances of where I had a "sonic boom" – our name for some sort of on-air gaffe – arrived about midway through the hour when I decided to play the Tripping Daisies and, more so, play something I knew hadn't been played recently. So I played Trip Along – rather the first 0:40 seconds or so, before it morphed into this twitchy, stuttering echo-tinged sound that reminded me of the reason why we didn't play this song. The disc was scratched, stupid.
Calmly popping on the air, I faded out the song, noting the aforementioned music was a rare Tripping Daisy-esque song entitled "Skip Along," and, with the music director laughing in the background, I managed to get some other music on the air. The two of us managed to get through the remainder of the hour without incident that night.
Did I mention it was a Friday?
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Trip Along
(Tim DeLaughte/Tripping Daisy)
Tripping Daisy
From the album I Am an Elastic Firecracker
1995
Sitting on a curved back couch
My mind it rolls
Reminds me it was so easy
Staring at the christmas lights in a box
That were once hanging on my tree
Proving once again that seasons change
So do we - it's nothing new
Similar to the love you find while kissing
Your first kiss, the world was blind
Trip along my mindless waveless
thoughts they carry on......
Trip along my mindless waveless
thoughts they carry on......
The magic potion within my brain
Painted pictures of everything
The cat that barks the dog that meows
The bird that flies all around
Trip along my mindless waveless
thoughts they carry on
Sitting on a curved back couch
My mind it rolls
Reminds me it was so easy
