The Original Shadow Cabinet 
Chaos And Wonder
Donnette Thayer
This picture was used to develop the new cover art
The Original Shadow Cabinet
| Donnette Thayer | Fender-Martin Formulae, Primordial Oohs, Voices Issuing Subliminal Commands |
| David Foerstner | Spirit Organs, Cosmic Strings, Gabriel's Trumpet |
| Bruce Zeleznik | Space-Time Descriptors, Renormalization of Infinities, Big Bang/Big Crunch, Babbla Obscura Salta |
| Rick Novak | Theraminalaylic Guitar, Harmonic Conversion |
| Bryce Goggin | Dimensional Shifts, Backwards Masking, Chandrasekhar Limiting |
| Patty Hood | Harp Matrix, Vocal Celestial Mechanics |
| Mike Lindsey | Bass Matrix A, E.Bowa Virus, Yankee Mandolin |
| Jonnie Hargis | Bass Matrix AA |
| Jim McGrath | Percussion Matrix |
| Earthly Powers Make It Now Black Salt Bali Hai My Room Sleepwalker Lemon Tree Home Away Holotown Gabriel Other Winds Heavenly Running Time - 45:23 |  |
"earthly powers" is a great opener and begins the magnificent mango-tinged tropical sub-thread.
"make it now", a seductive teaser. innocence in your voice, a great bridge and an enviro-amazon plunge.
"black salt", lyrically conjures a million colour impressions. "he halves himself"- now that's just perfect, isn't it.
"bali hai"- breathy vocals, sleepy.
"my room", i just love this one. a great single. cd5 release with junior vasquez's reggae remix. just kidding.
"sleepwalker", should be longer as should the whole album. great driving sound.
"lemon tree home away", i love pine.
"holotown", patient, mature, like a barrel-fermented, malolactically fermented, batonaged chardonnay from the russian river valley.
"gabriel" angels love you.
"other winds", pacific deep belief. great music.
"heavenly" yes thank you.
More reviews are available - I'd love to receive more opinions on this great album. Mail me yours !
Another review can be read at the end of this link.We just finished the album (the pressing anyway) this year, and haven’t had any kind of formal release date or anything. We were playing show after show after show, and it was a ridiculous amount of time and expense for what essentially amounts to a method of appeasing one’s vanity for all the good it was doing us. I never was the "I wanna hear you say YAAH" type of front person, and the music doesn’t lend itself to mindless goodtimes in a bar, either. But lo, that’s where we were. I decided that what we needed was to put out a record. People really like the record. It’s funny, I know some bar bands that do very well live, but when they put out a record, people say, "Yuck! it’s just like their live show - who wants to listen to that kind of moronic trash over and over again?" So here we are with a pretty good record, a video, and the best webmeister in the world ! [Aw shucks... :-) ] What happens to it now is anybody’s guess, but at least it will last longer than one night.I asked how Patti Hood played sweeping harp strums so fast...
She plays a pedal harp, rather like an incredibly complicated auto harp, in that by pushing down a certain pedal, the instrument dampens all the F’s,for example, and it has one pedal to correspond to each note. She needs to determine what pedals need to be depressed, and then if she needs to play one of those notes later, she has to get in there and take thepedal off and put it quickly back on. It’s extremely complicated. I have a lot of respect for Patti, watchingher play these songs like, for example, in C# minor, is like watching this little creature drive a diesel truck. And she can really sing.On Holotown...
Did you get the cult connotations in Holotown? I had been reading "The Doomsday Cult" about the Moonies when I wrote that song, and I realized that people create little cults all over the place. Power struggles, sheesh.On Bali Hai...
That was the one song I had the closest thing to complete control over in that I created the sequence on the EPS and we just piped it onto the board. Bruce added some magnificent drum parts (I can’t get enough of his drumming - think he’s awesome), and Patti played some harp glisses, all in C major, I played open tuned 12 string in, believe it or not, E minor, and we were done! When I decided to create a sequence of Bali Hai, all I had for reference was a very scratched Bing Crosby 78 record. I couldn’t really tell what the lyrics were, and Bing would change them too, (I love Bing Crosby - got a cat named Bing) and he was pretty free with melodies, too. I did Bali Hai Bing’s way, even Binger.On the time signature of In My Room...
I have to admit to being influenced by Tchaikovsky on this time signature. He could cook up a fluid piece that you had to listen to about 25 times before it hit you that something weird was going on with the time signature. That was what I was trying for, you’re the first one whose noticed it, and you don’t miss a thing, so I’m going to consider it a success.
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