SONG: “Beautiful (Have Another Plum)” (To download: right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: “Baboon Birth Control” entry, from “Primates on the Pill”, New Scientist, 19 July 2007.
ABSTRACT: When I first read this article, I started hearing a baboon woman singing the word “beautiful.” Here’s a lady trying to keep a family together when times get hard – probably has a good-timing man – who has to make an effort to keep herself from being sexually attractive for the good of her family. It sounded, in other words, like a country song. I didn’t wind up writing a country song, exactly, although if I had my druthers, there’d be a pedal steel coming in for the “Cousin Dora” verse. The bridge was definitely written with the lyrical style of Bob Lind in mind. (Hi, Bob!) Recording this was a challenge – not only is it the first thing I’ve really written on a piano, but once I finally figured out where my fingers should go, my Powerbook died – so I had to hook up my old Compaq and use recording software that was somewhere below state of the art in 1998 (and sing in a living-room whisper once my own family had gone to sleep). I always like lo-fi anyway. I hope you enjoy it… and spare a thought for the baboons of Gashaka-Gumti when you give it a listen.