So this is old… Flashback to early 2005 when a perfect storm of events occurred.

• 1. I found out the keyboard I had at home (that we assumed was broken) still worked as a midi controller.
• 2. I was trying to re-learn how to use audio editing programs after having problems with them on a project.
• 3. I’d bought the cheapest vocal mic I could find at Best Buy to do a voice over for that same project.
• 4. I’d just downloaded Fruity Loops 5

And that’s how ended up “writing” a song called Space Beauty Pageant.

“Space Beauty Pagent (Demo)” by The Baby Whales off of their debut record “Songs from the Distant Future: 1973″

I wanted it to be like The Fat Lady of Limbourgh by Brian Eno from Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) — an album where he actually out-Bowie’s Bowie. It ended up sounding like… well… this. It’s an interesting failure.

I blame the questionable instrumentation partially on my not being able to hear the notes as I played them on the broken keyboard, and partially on my inability to figure out how to hear midi sounds in Fruity Loops until I exported them. It’s hard to write a song that you can’t hear until it’s finished.

(to keep reading click below)

I’m still surprised at how much I like the lyrics (which get really mangled from my bad mic and my inept “mixing”)

Space Beauty Pageant
Forty-nine seconds to launch
The crew waved at their loved ones
Who applauded their assignment
The crew, thirty-two strong
Took beauties along
For six months of confinment

CHORUS:
Space beauty pagent
I didn’t know such things exist.
I’m glad I tuned in
And one woman had fins
And she was the woman I couldn’t resist.

Mishi Kowasaki
The girl from Japan
Did vie for the judges attention
‘Til a fire she started
In the living quarters
Did test the whole ship’s smoke detection

And there’s Becca DeJeune
Well she entered in June
A hundred years-old
Born on Saturn’s first moon
They thought her a loon
She was smart as a goon
But the viewers they loved her,
They ate her up with a spoon!

If anybody ever wants to make a real version of Space Beauty Pagent with me… hey, why not?