First, Happy New Year and here's the song: Superfreak/Can't Solve This.
Well, I finished the album but I still have the blog. So I might as well use it, right? Since the new thing on Facebook is putting up retro pictures, I figured I'd post a retro song. This was a band I was in back in the day, Dr. Lüst and the Chiefs of the European Space Agency. We were mostly East Campus folks, though we were more popular at Bexley (being invited to play Beast Roast two years running, and maybe even headlining in 1991?).
We played a mix of originals and covers, doing the whole "irony cover" thing way before its time. We were playing Superfreak in 1988, and so were dismayed when MC Hammer effectively covered the song in 1990 with U Can't Touch This. Someone (me?) hit upon the idea of doing a medley and making up U Can't Solve This, and the rest is very small-scale history. This performance is from the 1991 MIT Battle of the Bands where we came in 2nd place, netting us a prize of nothing at all (IIRC). I used this arrangement in Science Diet, though we also added Der Kommisar, which is topologically the same song.
As a last anecdote, at one point U Can't Solve This was supposed to include the halting problem. I could never quite word it right (sample lyrics/dialog during practice: "Write a computer program that can tell when another program has finished. Can't Solve This!" "Actually, Andy, you could solve that." "Oh, well, I can't solve it."). So I left it with the three insoluble problems presented in the song. Dan also had a clever reference to Fermat's Last Theorem (solved since then?) he snuck in during one performance (the inevitable reunion gig? Beast Roast '91?), but perhaps fittingly, I don't really remember it.
As for the post title, "Stupidfreak" was the nickname we gave the song in Science Diet setlists. but it was a good stupid. :)
Well, I finished the album but I still have the blog. So I might as well use it, right? Since the new thing on Facebook is putting up retro pictures, I figured I'd post a retro song. This was a band I was in back in the day, Dr. Lüst and the Chiefs of the European Space Agency. We were mostly East Campus folks, though we were more popular at Bexley (being invited to play Beast Roast two years running, and maybe even headlining in 1991?).
We played a mix of originals and covers, doing the whole "irony cover" thing way before its time. We were playing Superfreak in 1988, and so were dismayed when MC Hammer effectively covered the song in 1990 with U Can't Touch This. Someone (me?) hit upon the idea of doing a medley and making up U Can't Solve This, and the rest is very small-scale history. This performance is from the 1991 MIT Battle of the Bands where we came in 2nd place, netting us a prize of nothing at all (IIRC). I used this arrangement in Science Diet, though we also added Der Kommisar, which is topologically the same song.
As a last anecdote, at one point U Can't Solve This was supposed to include the halting problem. I could never quite word it right (sample lyrics/dialog during practice: "Write a computer program that can tell when another program has finished. Can't Solve This!" "Actually, Andy, you could solve that." "Oh, well, I can't solve it."). So I left it with the three insoluble problems presented in the song. Dan also had a clever reference to Fermat's Last Theorem (solved since then?) he snuck in during one performance (the inevitable reunion gig? Beast Roast '91?), but perhaps fittingly, I don't really remember it.
As for the post title, "Stupidfreak" was the nickname we gave the song in Science Diet setlists. but it was a good stupid. :)
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