Bringing Back Boobs, Butts, and Feets, Pt. 4

Since the last time I posted, I haven’t made any major progress with the album, but when you’re talking about an album that was technically finished almost 8 years ago to begin with, there’s going to be a time when there’s just not that much left to do. I’m still making minute changes, but mostly what I’ve been doing is listening to the album over and over again in my car and at work, making notes to changes I want to make. Then I get home, I’ll make those changes, render out new audio files to listen to, and the cycle continues.

I’ve detailed most of what I’ve been doing in the previous entries of Bringing Back Boobs, Butts, and Feets. If you haven’t already read those, feel free to. This post isn’t really going to be about releasing the album officially; it’s going to be about why I’m doing it.

There are a few reasons why, after all these years, I felt like taking the time and energy to polishing up and fixing the 2008 mixes of Boobs, Butts, and Feets. I suppose there was always a desire to do it, but it wasn’t apparent to me exactly when or how I would do it.

After I released Heat Stroke in January 2015 and I realized how relatively easy it was to do, it made me want to put out more albums. Remember, I’ve got a handful of albums under my belt that you’ve never heard before. So it’s not like I’m having to write and record on top of everything else in order to put out an album. Granted, I wasn’t as knowledgeable about recording and crap back then, so it has still taken a lot of effort to get this project going, 8 years later. In other words, one simple reason why I’m doing it is because I do want to get more of my music available everywhere to everyone, and it’s generally faster to fix up something old and release it than create something new and release it. In a sense, I’m doing it just because.

Another reason is due to Boobs, Butts, and Feets being the most accessible album of mine, in my opinion. Sometimes I call it poppy or dancy. I don’t know what about it makes me think it would be better received than Heat Stroke or even Punk Rebel Renegade, but I do. Right now, the only Robby Suavé albums you can listen to are those 2 albums, and they sound more alike than anything else I’ve done. There’s some humor in some of those songs, but they’re kind of dark and not very fun, I guess. When I listen to BBAF, I want to dance. It’s weird that so early on in my music-making-career, I made songs that still make me feel that way.

For the most part, all the songs are somewhat brief. Track times are still a work in progress, and if anything the final versions will be shorter than what they are as of typing this, but I don’t think any of the songs are longer than 4 minutes. A lot of them are in the 3 minute range. Compare that to the songs on Heat Stroke and PRR where the average song length is probably over 4 minutes. And it’s not like there are these awesome musical parts that necessitate the longer song length. I think they just drag a little bit. But if anything, the songs on BBAF are too short. It makes me want to play them again and again, which is probably a good thing.

Essentially, I kind of look at it like if you were to discover me on iTunes and listened to samples of Heat Stroke and Punk Rebel Renegade, you would think that was my sound. Even though both of those albums are fairly eclectic, except for maybe “When Heck Freezes Over” on Heat Stroke, all the songs have a certain feeling to them. Whatever it is, I want something to contrast those albums so that when people do sample of few of my albums, they’ll see that I like to be in that sort of techno sound as well. And people aren’t going to know that unless they played my songs in Rock Band, which brings me to the other reason why I want to officially release Boobs, Butts, and Feets…

It was late 2014, and I was likely working on Heat Stroke to some degree. I’m not sure what prompted me, but I searched for “everyone i know is an alcoholic” on YouTube. To my surprise, a handful of people had uploaded their gameplay videos of them playing “Everyone I Know Is an Alcoholic” in Rock Band. Now, I know people played the song in Rock Band, and I know people like to make these videos, but it still surprised me that they’d take the time to make them of my songs.

More than just the videos though, it was the comments on those videos that made me happy. Here are a few that I found:

i would gladly say that this song is sexy

I was bobbing my head the whole time lol

I’ve never heard a weirder song on Rock Band, with the exception of Portal’s “Still Alive” and “Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld”.

That last one was in response to this video that had a short narration from the player, saying he made the video because he “wanted to play his favorite song.” That’s so crazy! And every so often, I’ll reply to a tweet or a post on a random message board about something completely unrelated, and someone will recognize my name from Rock Band and quote “Everyone I Know Is an Alcoholic.” It’s awesome, but it’s also a lot to live up to. I know how many people bought the songs in Rock Band. Three songs from BBAF were made available in Rock Band: the aforementioned “Everyone I Know Is an Alcoholic,” “Around the World,” and “Electro-Heaven.” The latter two performed pretty well, but “Alcoholic” got a lot of attention. I don’t want to say it doesn’t have its own merits, but I think the RBN Megamix might have helped the song out too.

In other words, I’m finally putting this album out because people want it. Or they used to at least. I haven’t been talking up the release as much as I should probably, but with what I have been announcing, I have received more feedback than with anything else I’ve put out, so that’s good.

I want to be known for more than just “Everyone I Know Is an Alcoholic,” but that if it has to always be my trademark song, hey, I’ll take it. And you know what, if you liked how it sounded in Rock Band, you’re going to love hearing the album version. I can’t believe how loud and super compressed the vocals sound in Rock Band. Heh.