The Squirrels are a mutant in the King County music scene, satirical offspring go showy Northwest acts like Paul Revere & The Raiders. The band has never sold lots of records, but it's fan base includes some of Washington's top musicians. Its live performances resemble a children's television show gone hopelessly wrong, usually involving costumes, toys, food, and bubble machines. What other band has gotten audiences moshing to the tune of Neil Diamond's "Cracklin' Rose"? What other band would even try?
 
It's been 6 years since the release of the last official Squirrels CD, "Harsh Toke Of Reality", three years since the release of the band's compilation album, "Scrapin' for Hits". Finally, The Squirrels are making a comeback, & they're doing it in style. Pink Floyd style.
Tonite, as part of their annual Christmas concert, The Squirrels will debut tracks from their new disc, "The Not-So-Bright Side Of The Moon". It's a track by track recreation of Floyd's landmark "Dark Side Of The Moon", molded into a goofy new form. The heartbeats in "Speak To Me" are replaced by hiccups. The cynical "Money" degenerates into Berry Gordy's "Money (That's What I Want)", then snaps back to the Pink Floyd song, both melodies now playing simultaneously. The verses of "Brain Damage" are performed as hillbilly rave up, while the choruses are set to (surprisingly effective) disco music. "The Great Gig In The Sky" wails on for three excruciating minutes (gibbering voices, whining singers, shrieking whistles, barking dogs) until the track- knowingly- surrenders to Frank Zappa's "The Torture Never Stops".
 
"This is a project that's been on the back burner for years and years", said Squirrels vocalist Rob Morgan. "The late, great (Squirrels guitarist) Eric Erickson and I used to discuss, many moons ago, that the most logical thing for The Squirrels to do would be to (re-make) an entire album, all the way through. We boiled it down to 'Dark Side Of The Moon' being the one, because choosing (to re-do The Beatles classic) 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' seemed to easy a call. 'Sgt. Pepper's' has been parodied to death. What more are you going to do with it? It seemed that 'Dark Side Of The Moon' was much more of a sacred cow to people. Musicians have (performed individual) tracks off of it, for sure, but I don't think anybody has dealt with the album the way we have."
 
"The Not-So-Bright Side Of The Moon" may have been a long in gestating, but it was recorded remarkably quickly. Morgan explained, "Most of the (instrumental) tracks were taped in one day. I think Eric was definitely driving this album from above because the whole thing came together far too easy, really fast. It was this freaky, blessed thing. It kind of blew everybody's minds." Portly Elvis Presley impersonator Tortelvis & percussionist Ed Zeppelin of the Led Zeppelin parody group Dread Zeppelin contributed the background dialog. Kurt Bloch of The Fastbacks & The Young Fresh Fellows played some guitar. Skerik, a Seattle saxophonist who is regarded as one of King County's hottest musicians, chipped in with a hair-raising solo for "Us & Them".

The obvious & inevitable question remains: what'll the members of Pink Floyd think of The Squirrels' demented revision of their most celebrated work? Morgan hasn't got high hopes of receiving a thumbs up. "I don't see these guys as having much of a sense of humour. If they could find a reason to sue for this, I think they would. "There's nothing they can do about (the album). We paid for the rights to perform the songs, but why give them the option? If Roger Waters heard it at all, I think he'd be furious. The band members don't have much of a sense of humour, any way you look at 'em." Morgan won't be sending the musicians copies of "The Not-So-Bright Side Of The Moon" for the holidays. "Not intentionally myself. There's no reason to stick my head in the lion's mouth if I don't have to. If they're paying any attention, they'll find out about it." Opening tonites concert is The Penningtones, a great new band which performs blues & country music.
 

"The Not-So-Bright-Side of the Moon," the new CD by the veteran Seattle comedy-rock band The Squirrels, is not a parody of Pink Floyd's classic. The lyrics and spoken word bits are all preserved verbatim, and there's not a whiff of Weird Al anywhere on it.It is a tribute of sorts, but performed by musicians who, by the sound of things, do not appear to have a great love of Pink Floyd, which is all for the best. The result is as if Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention and the staff of Mad magazine twisted around the whole concept of the album until it had no beauty or meaning -- just a completely whacked-out shell of a record. Remember the voice in the first few seconds of "Dark Side" that says, "I've been mad for (expletive) years"? This is what it sounds like from his point of view.

For the most part, The Squirrels forge a new way of listening to and analyzing "Dark Side of the Moon." Only twice, on "Time" and "Any Colour You Like," does the band fall back on pointless copycatting. But even though much of the album is too cluttered, sophomoric and bizarre for its own good, there are a few tracks that garner both musical and comedic superlatives. The uniquely constructed "Money" forces into the listener's confused consciousness simultaneous versions of two different songs: a tune that sounds like Pink Floyd's "Money" and a song that resembles "Money (That's What I Want)," but with the Floyd's lyrics. Add to this soup the fact that singer Rob "Captain" Morgan sounds like Groucho Marx in a straitjacket (his twitch is almost palpable), and the listener has a whole new way to consider a song that they may have heard a thousand times.

"Us and Them" rides on a smooth, reggae-ish groove and a hilariously indifferent sax solo (courtesy of Skerik from Critters Buggin'), and "Brain Damage" features possibly the first-ever marriage of bluegrass and disco, a combination that would have made Spike Jones proud.

"The Not-So-Bright-Side of the Moon" is a decidedly mixed bag, butby and large it achieves the crucial goal of a tribute album: relevance. To a radio listener sick of hearing the same classic rock songs ad nauseam, The Squirrels' interpretation can serve as a deranged, fresh breath of air.
 

"Without question, "The Not-So-Bright Side Of The Moon" is the best album I have not yet heard, at least on my stereo. I flew back from sunny Florida to balmy Toronto today, and insisted on a window seat on the right side of the plane (usually I'm an aisle guy), just so I could see a total eclipse of the moon from sub-space. And for some weird reason, Dark Side of the Moon came into my internal walkman, but it was fun, and happy, and, unlike anything Pink Floyd has done since "Bike", it had a sense of humour. . . I realized that I wasn't listening to the unsmiling, dour boys from England at all- I was listening to what I imagined Squirrels hade done with it, and it was good. . . "