Mr. Nasty

Mr. Nasty was recorded in July of 1992 at Tim Dorman's home studio. Mikey Brown played all of the keyboard and synth stuff and he added all of the sound effects and even a few backing vocals. Tim is responsible for the lyrics and the vocalizations including the maniacal laughter that everyone associates with this masterpiece. Tim also played the trombone because no one told him not to. It was a very hot afternoon in July and at one point in the day, Mikey was in the control room of the studio layering in the outrageous sound effects, while Tim was off in the bedroom "sound booth" adding the trombone and laugh tracks while Mikey mixed everything onto the Yamaha 4 track cassette deck. It was hot and Tim had pretty much shed most of his clothing except for some baggy boxer shorts. He was also wearing headphones in order to hear the playback of the previous tracks, and of course, he's playing the trombone and laughing like an idiot. Mind you now, no one else could hear the previous tracks that were coming through the headphones, so if an being from another planet would have looked into the window of that bedroom on that hot July afternoon, he would have seen this guy in baggy boxers wearing headphones, playing a trombone, and laughing like a totally eclipsed lunatic.

Mr. Nasty had a brief brush with fame during the mid 1990's when it got airplay during the Lonesome Cowboy Dave Radio Show on WCSB at Cleveland State University. Over the course of several months of the show, people would occasionally call in and actually request the song. The Lonesome Cowboy Dave Radio Show was affiliated with a "sister" radio show titled Radio Shorts that aired on KUSF in San Francisco. The Radio Shorts players and the Lonesome Cowboy Dave ensemble would trade material and episodes back and forth from time to time and one of those trades included a copy of Mr. Nasty. The staff at KUSF couldn't restrain themselves and they aired the song one evening during the Radio Shorts program. They had calls on a weekly basis for repeat plays of Mr. Nasty. It seems that the Bay Area audience couldn't get enough of this song and it became a staple of the Radio Shorts broadcast for a brief period of radio history. If it's true that all of the I Love Lucy shows are actually playing way out there in outer space and that you could fly to the edges of the galaxy and watch them as they were broadcast all those years ago, just image a weary space traveller cutting through the radio beacon of KUSF or WCSB some day and hearing Mr Nasty come over their scanners. Ahhh bliss...

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