Mike Fuller, Producer: I met The Beefeaters in 1981, when I was a DJ at Seattle radio station, KCMU. One day, several staffers and I were in a bar, discussing Weird Al Yankovic. He was just becoming known and someone lamented that we had no one who could do song parodies. Enter The Beefeaters. The lads had overheard us and, for a lark (and many beers), agreed to be "our Weird Al." Each week, we'd record another song for a series we called Mud On The Looking Glass. No more than three people could fit in the studio and with only two microphones and no multi-tracking ability, the sound was primitive. The band's attitude shone through, though, and the songs were tremendously popular. You can now listen to these songs, unheard in 25 years, in mp3 format. You can click on the link (it will take two or three minutes to load) or save them to your computer by right-clicking on the song you want, choose "Save Target As." Purple, Blue and Green [2.8 mb] The Beefeaters' version of Yellow Submarine pokes fun at the punk culture Grant and Nigel felt had, by 1981, become a parody of itself. Dead People [3.5 mb] One-upping Randy Newman's controversial hit, Short People. The line about "Jim Carroll dartboards on their coffin walls" is a reference to Carroll's song, People Who Died. At the end, you can hear a DJ mistakenly enter the studio. Crazy Little Thing Called Lust [2.6 mb] Nigel had hurt his throat the night before and couldn't sing back-up. Since I couldn't reach either microphone while engineering, we recruited our friend, Mark Tucker. In 2006, Mark and Nigel would collaborate again on a fabulous CD by a band called Lions On Saturn, although Nigel is credited under a pseudonum, "Nigel Stryke." Caffeine [5.4 mb] This parody of J.J. Cale's Cocaine was the most complicated of the lot. Nigel brought in a synth that took up about half of the studio, so Cary had to drum while sitting on the sound board and we had to put Ian in the hall. The fact that he had no headphones and so couldn't hear anything or even get visual clues from the rest of the band shows you what a good guitarist Ian was. The "Mrs. Olson" and "Juan Valdez" references were my contribution to the writing. He's Just a Little Troll [3.0 mb] Years later, I was working on a TV show in Hollywood and gave a copy of this song to Herve Villechaize, who played Tattoo on Fantasy Island. He laughed very hard when he heard it. Cuticle World [5.0 mb] I recently discovered this Devo parody on an unmarked reel of tape. I don't think it was ever broadcast. Drugs Drugs Drugs [2.2 mb] Only Grant and Nigel showed up, so we had to attempt multi-tracking the vocals using a portable reel-to-reel. I'm told that George Martin cringes when he hears his edit halfway through Strawberry Fields Forever, so you can imagine how I feel when I hear the edit in this song...but there was no other way; attempts to match the sonic quality simply didn't work. The lads didn't feel this was their best writing effort, either, essentially adding nothing to the Beach Boys' Fun Fun Fun. With the exception of an occasional postcard from Grant, after the day of this session, I lost touch with the band for almost 20 years. I'm glad to be back with them, doing the Web site.