(March 2018 "From the Archive) - "Mr. Shlappy"

From the journal of Dan McGowan, Thursday, October 9th, 2003:

"Today was the first day that all four of us practiced... We played Mr. Shlappy with Kyle on drums and Pat was flipping out. He was, like, playing, standing on his amp with his back on the wall, and he kicked over his amp and got some nice feedback from it. The sound it made when it hit the ground was pretty extreme. Kyle thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen... Everybody really likes that song. It's pretty kick ass. It might go on the demo."

That night was the first time that The Tea Club ever rehearsed. I could have cut the musical excitement in the air with a knife. We were still teenagers at the time. Kyle was 15! This song reminds me of the basement we practiced in, the Line 6 amp that Kyle's dad let me use with all the cool effects, and the ridiculous humongous tan coat that Pat used to wear all the time.

Mr. Shlappy was a song that we played often for the first few years of The Tea Club. On January 31st, 2004, the second show that we ever played, we opened with this song. I played the opening bass riff so hard that I dropped my pick, and instead of stopping and reaching down to grab it, I started playing with my finger nail. Halfway through the song, I looked down and saw that I had cut my finger open and was bleeding all over the bass. We did a lot of switching of instruments in those days, so after the song, I handed the blood covered bass off to Jim, our original bassist. Then I picked up the guitar and proceeded to bleed all over that as well for the remainder of our set. Luckily, the audience LOVED it. I'm half tempted to revive this song for our live show now!

The song actually began as an instrumental that we were working on in early 2003 when me and Pat were in our previous band, "Book of Thoughts". It started off as a bassline that I was playing around with one day. As was often the case, Pat heard me playing it, came in the room, crafted a beautiful guitar part and chord changes, and made it into a song. He added lyrics and vocal melody once we started playing it as The Tea Club. The questionable and completely inappropriate song title came from a Bugs Bunny mug that I used to drink out of all the time that I, for some reason, referred to as "Mr. Shlappy". 

Mr. Shlappy did eventually make it to "the demo" I was talking about in that journal entry. It was recorded by Kevin Stehm, the same guy who had recorded our Book of Thoughts demo the year before. That recording was a harrowing experience, but Kevin was great. When we managed to scrounge together enough money to record a few more songs at his studio in the Spring of 2004, Mr. Shlappy was one of them. I still vividly remember sitting in the control room while Pat recorded his vocals for this song. When he hit that first glorious high note, me and Kevin looked at each other in amazement. It gave me chills then, and it still does now.

In the morning's cold light
A crystal view
The unflinching past
I know you now

Look at this place
It's all dead earth
We are not from here
We will not stay here

I'm sorry but
I need to see the scars
So I can still love you

I still love you

This recording of “Mr. Shlappy” was performed by:

Patrick McGowan - Vocals, Guitar

Dan McGowan - Bass

Kyle Minnick - Drums

(The drawing accompanying this song was done by Dan McGowan and is the cover of the "Stehm-O" EP that this recording first appeared on.)