Andrew Hickey
speaker
2,253 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 3 Sep
Andrew Hickey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
And, on one track, the session drummer Reese Clark replacing French, a sign of Van Vliet once again trying to play head games with his band members and show that they were replaceable.
The Spotlight Kids cover showed Beefart alone, wearing a nudie suit which according to some band members cost a substantial proportion of the album's total budget.
The music on the album is another step towards a slightly more straightforward blues rock sound.
French and Harkelrode were by this time joint musical directors, but neither ended up happy with the album.
Harkelvoad bluntly saying later I hate that album, it sucks.
On other occasions, Harkel Road could be more generous to the record, saying of it Spotlight Kid was really great music but a horrible time for the band.
Performance wise it was one of the worst experiences for the band.
We were just emotionally beat to death by his particular environment.
The stress started to show.
We were playing really anemically and it sucks because of that.
The album was made with the best of intentions.
French had been pushing for the group to make something that might actually sell a few copies and earn any of the band members some actual money for six years at this point.
But the band members felt that the result was sluggish.
Harkelrode also resented the presence of Ingber, because Harkelrode's job in the band was to play the same thing the same way every time, while Ingber, while he was an amazing guitarist, was an improvisatory one who was essentially incapable of repeating a part, so Ingber was given free reign to play what he wanted while Harkelrode was stuck playing grindingly repetitive parts.
The album still contains plenty of good music, taken out of the context of the apparently miserable experience of making it, but you can hear what the band members mean about the tempos in general being a bit sluggish, on songs like the blues track, There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evening Stage.
There's also a sense that Van Vliet was starting to recycle his ideas.
For example, the musical figure in the title track is essentially the same variant of shortening bread that had previously been used on Pachuco Cadaver, just slowed down a lot.
Shortly after the release of the Spotlight Kid, French left the band again, having what he describes as a moment of clarity after Harkelvo told him how Van Vliet was going to be generous to the band, and not tell the press how badly they'd let him down recently.
To quote from French's autobiography.
I went back to the hotel we were staying at and contemplated the whole lousy mess.
Showing 701–720 of 2,253 · page 36 of 113
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