Search - Brian Woodbury :: All White People Look Alike

Brian Woodbury?s All White People Look Alike was originally issued on LP in 1987. The title track is a 20-minute long musical manifesto on race, conformity and (pre-internet) mass culture. It opens cinematically in a cotton field and travels through a series of feels and styles (an African hoedown, an acapella choral tongue-twister, a Fred Frith-like metrical breakdown) each transforming seamlessly into the next. It culminates at a stand-up comedy club in a diatribe on "skin colored" Band-Aids, the origin of Valley Girls, the supposed twenty-seven Eskimo words for snow ("snow, snow, snow, snow") and "why when you move and go to a new elementary school, all the kids look the same at first." Along the way, Woodbury, backed up two female singers and a highly percussive score of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, saxophones and violin, makes reference to Stevie Wonder, Gil Scott-Heron & Steve Reich?s "Come Out." The CD continues with songs that evolved from a theater piece, "Harangue." The theme seems to be the inadequacy of economics as an explanation for human endeavor. It features a fake opera recitative ("I can tell the time of day"); poly-metric rap ("I?m Just the Kind of Guy That I Like"); the haunting/ridiculous aria "The Birds Don?t Owe" ("The bell can?t owe its ding-dong"); Schumann-esque choral music ("Our Sin"); exquisite industrial noise ("The Work Ethic") and show biz Gospel ("Who Says?"). History of the LP: The title cut and "I?m Just the Kind of Guy" received extensive airplay on college stations in 1988-1990, making several best-of lists. Subsequently, the title cut curiously ended up (uncredited) as the B-side of a Jane?s Addiction bootleg LP. This somehow led to the unsubstantiated rumor that Jane's Addiction was signed to Warner Brothers on the basis of this song, with the label being under the mistaken impression that Jane's Addiction was more along the lines of They Might Be Giants. This further popularized the song, but not the artist. However, many diligent listeners managed to track Mr. Woodbury down and it is because of their constant requests that this re-issue has happened. Note: The original "Harangue" song cycle contained "My Favorite Things," a duet ("mash-up") of John Coltrane & Julie Andrews. The rights to the original recordings were unobtainable, so, alas, it is not included on the CD.