Dummy’s Dumb Idea

lesdebutantes@gmail.com ……Write to Les Debutantes like you’ve never written to them before!!!!

05/22/08

It seemed like a funny idea at the time.

Conceived by Brent Stewart while taking a bath, “Centennial” was imagined as a solid brick of pop music, an absurdly large and immovable monolith of rock conceptualism. In an era where the album format is fighting to draw breath in a hospital bed, and songs are sold only in ring tones or video games (or are stolen wholesale from torrent websites) “Centennial” stands in defiance. Stupid, stupid defiance.

Planned as a four disc cd box, “Centennial” is like a boxed set retrospective for a band no one has heard of, drawing upon a history that may or may not have ever existed. The songs are all of normal length, ranging from 1 minute pop ditties to 6 minute ambient jams.

Moreover, “Centennial” is conceptually and practically a “Louisville” album. The weird little river city makes itself known not only in its lyrical content, but also in the form of guest stars. The album contains a virtual Who’s Who of L-ville music, including collaborations with Venus Trap, Ultra Pulverize, Kevin Ratterman (Wax Fang), Drew Osborn (Your Black Star), and many, many more.

No one will ever listen to “Centennial” in its entirety. Not even Brent or Glen. But it will still be there. You can’t stop it from happening.

The album is dead. Long live “Centennial”!

05/23/08

Not everyone thought it was a funny idea.

Various types felt very put out. Money never to be recouped, dream girls lost, baths missed, career paths untaken–the debutantical misshapen equation led to an empty set of the non-applicable.

To this day I exude the filth of Fall 2006. No one is to blame but myself, but I recall those who allow me to yet lie here. All my recollections are bitter additives to my lost time.

My pastor denounced the Centennial project. Since that fateful press conference in 2001, no prayer has self-siphoned to my lips. Centennial, written in two weeks, recorded in three, was not the pious deal-breaker the percussionists thought it would be. Even the trumpeter left after the annual pool party without his chord charts. And so many likable ideas edited out!

With yearning despondency, I want to cry.

Now I’m unloved with no car. Unmarketable, I can go nowhere. I do not function effectively.

–Keddiz

06/04/08

On February 6th, 1995, my fated return to full duty was as bittersweet as an Okolona shopping center. Upon divorce, I tuned up and walked the seven blocks to noises and laughs they lowly shot out until late evenings. Denying what I craved in lieu of a “current thorough perspective,” I jammed my second toe in any city door that would injure me. The Debutantes made sure it swung both ways.

So it was that the Lord of the Pizza would deliver more uneasy lightning bolts than could be stomached. So it wasn’t that childhood promises remembered the dreamful handshaking. So I sit to write as briefly as my nature allows about why I can’t find a sufficiency.

–Keddiz

05/23/08

I think of February 26, 1987….. Glen and I bussed ourselves to the Fresher Cooker after functional brainstorms at the Joe and Jean Co. (R.I.P, Oliver.):

Keddiz: “How many bean sprouts are you going to eat?”
Glen: “Roughage.”
K: I’m quitting.
G: Er…
K: I’d like to be the accountant. And I can write grants with an eye for the grand scale.
G: If it’s what you…. What the!!!!

It was at that moment that Fresher Cooker was closed forever. Now it’s Burger Queen. You can still collect those plastic rings that smell like apple pies. Myself, I have a big bag of those rings in my second closet. (Muriel has about had it with that bag.)

–Keddiz