M+M (Martha & the Muffins) - The world is a ball (1986)

"The World Is A Ball" makes me think of weather. We did the rhythm tracks at Le Studio, north of Montreal, surrounded by huge snow drifts. Drummer Yogi Horton and bassist Tinker Barfield had come up from New York, (still wearing their Luther Vandross tour jackets), to do some tracks. Walking with Martha and me down a half-buried lane, they were astounded by the snow. "So this is what Canada is like!" Then on to David Lord's studio in Bath, England where we spent the spring and summer of 1985 doing overdubs and mixing. A lot of rain in a beautiful city.We returned to Toronto in the middle of summer to find it buried under a canopy of trees. It seemed almost tropical. Perhaps the climate changes as well as the obsessively long recording process influenced the making of "The World Is A Ball", for it seems to me the most schizophrenic album we have ever made. Straightforward pop/funk tunes like "Song In My Head" rubbed shoulder to shoulder with angry diatribes like "Stuck On The Grid" and "Don't Jump The Gun", the latter marrying our love of noise, (angry wasp sounds and underwater shouting from a "sub-igloo"), to David Lord's masterful vocal arrangements. When RCA balked at releasing "Only You" as a single, (featuring the brilliant rhythm section of David Piltch on bass and Michael Sloski on drums), Martha and I took the matter into our own hands. We shot several hours of black and white Super 8 film footage utilizing projected lyrics and primitive, real-time "special effects" like mounting the camera on a washing machine in spin cycle. With the inspired editing of our friend Bob Kennedy, we made the best video of our careers for only a few thousand dollars. RCA released the song as a single and the video received considerable critical acclaim as well as influencing the look of several subsequent television commercials." from Martha & the Muffins official website.

This was taken from my MC version which sounds as good as the CD (if there ever was one?!..) One of my fave Martha recordings, only beaten by their 1st & 3rd album...


Tracks:

1- The world is a ball
2- I watch, I wait / Watching the boys fall down
3- Only you
4- By the waters of Babylon
5- Song in my head
6- Don't jump the gun
7- Stuck on the grid
8- Someone else's shoes
9- As a matter of fact

my MC@256