BIG MESS ORCHESTRA

About four or five years ago, when I was still teaching, over the summer break I tended to stay up all night playing cool games on my computer while listening to Rice University's student radio station. As many people know, college radio stations tend to play cool and weird music that is not ordinarily part of the mainstream. Late night gets particularly weird, and Rice's station is no different from others. I heard them playing lots of weird and cool stuff, but there is one song their DJ's seemed to love that really blew me away, a big band/lounge version of Boston's "More Than a Feeling." For some reason, I never managed to find out who recorded what has turned out to be one of the coolest covers I've ever heard.

That all changed a few days ago. I was doing essentially the same thing, playing video games late at night and listening to Rice radio (KTRU), only this time it had to be streaming over the internet because I live in Baton Rouge now. For the first time in years, I heard that trippy little song that had haunted me for so long. KTRU's website has, I noticed recently, an online set list, constantly updated by the on air DJs. So I finally found out that "More Than a Feeling" was performed by...the Big Mess Orchestra. A quick Google search had me at their website listening to samples of their stuff. Like the above mentioned "More Than a Feeling." Or their Brecht inspired theme song. Or their latin tinged version of "Smoke on the Water."

Apparently, they grew out of a Philadelphia underground theater company called Big Mess Theatre, which is no surprise--underground theater gets pretty weird sometimes. Unfortunately, because the last performance listed on their site was in 1998, it appears that the company is now defunct. But their cabaret band seems to still be active, playing weird, loungy, off kilter stuff, which is quite cool. Although their site doesn't seem to offer any CD buying opportunities, I'm going to try to score one, anyway. Maybe I'll email them or something. Anyway, go check out their site; they're doing good stuff.

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