Yankee Pot Roast?
LITERARY CADGERY




LINER NOTES FOR
THE BEST OF TREVOR SEIGLER: COVERS

by
Trevor Seigler



  1. “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” (Recorded in the shower, June 5, 2000, 8:00 a.m.)

    This was my first foray into the art of taping myself singing, and as you can tell by the audio quality it's not up to par with my later material. Indeed, the shower almost endangered this recording, but I've decided to include it as a display of how I grew an artist before achieving later triumphs. The song itself is barely memorable for me (I simply repeat the title phrase and the rejoinder "Fire away!" over and over, with vocal stylings akin to how an electric-guitar solo would sound), but the fans love it when I do it at shows nowadays.

  2. “Baby Got Back” (sung during a study break, October 3, 2001)

    This is a track off my ill-fated foray into hip hop, Trevor S Got da Madd Hitz, but it sold surprisingly well as a single. Here, as with the previous example, I run out of steam after storming through the first half of the song ("I like big butts and I cannot lie..." up until "You get sprung!"), but I recover with the "anaconda" line--"My anaconda don't want none/Unless you got buns, hon!"--and all is well. The B-side (my take on the Beastie Boys' “Fight for Your Right (to Party)”) couldn't be included for legal reasons.

  3. “I Think I Love You” (sung to embarrassed friends at a karaoke bar, October 9, 2001)

    Here I finally find my way, singing lousy 70s love songs by teenage idols who really, really sucked. I am in full drunken form here (the occasion being my birthday), and you can hear the faint catcalls of hecklers and close friends who threw glass bottles at me during the instrumental break. My attempts at vocalization are tinged in alcohol-induced slurring, but, thanks to the teleprompter, every line of this immortal piece of shit is rendered by yours truly with gusto and no hint of the remorse that would accompany the following day's hangover.

  4. “Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?” (on my way to work, August 24, 2002)

    After taking a sabbatical from the exhausting tour to promote my album of old English folk songs (Trev Does Tull!), I decided to return to my true calling while en route to my “day job.” Rod Stewart's melancholy attempt to steal yet more from the African-American bluesmen who inspired him is rendered here almost dirge-like by yours truly, seeing as I hadn't really even attempted a recording in some time. Nonetheless, the trance-hip-hop-funk-ska remix of this song (available here as the “hidden track”) was my reëntry to the top of the charts.

  5. “70s Medley” (recorded while waiting for an order of Chicken McNuggets, September 20, 2003)

    This continuing series of tracks (dubbed “70s Medley” by my record label) was recorded in one shot while I waiting at the local McDonald's drive-thru for my partially processed meat byproducts to be served in a charming but innocuous paper bag. The songs included are “Another One Bites the Dust” (the title repeated ad nauseum), “I'd Love You to Want Me,” “The Night Chicago Died” (it cued up on the light-rock station I was listening to, so I sang along), and “Mandy” (which elicited howls of laughter from the McDonald's staff when I uttered the line, “You came and you gave without taking.” It's included here just as filler by the record label, who don't respect me enough as an artist to run the idea by me first. Something about making it like “the second side of Abbey Road” or some other nonsense.

  6. “Three Times a Lady” (sung to the cute girl working the counter at Hooter's, December 12, 2003)

    The words of Lionel Richie could melt even the coldest of hearts, but the mousy girl whom I tried to entice with this little ditty proved resistant to the maestro's poetry. Nonetheless, this proves that my career is back in full swing, and that I have horrible taste in women (a fact confirmed by the sudden interruption from said mousy girl's weightlifting boyfriend).

  7. “Alison” (sung in the library, March 3, 2004)

    After so much crap, it's nice to end this collection on a positive note, from my latest album loosely based on the sitcom “Night Court” (Trev Does Bull!). True, the song here came out years before the show, and never even featured in an episode, but I was shit out of ideas after the hip-hop “Roz's Paradise” (“Killed old granny/ Now I'm the bailiff/ Let me clear my throat/ Can I get a holla?”), so I tacked on four other songs at thirteen minutes each and turned it into the record company. Elvis Costello's classic bitter love song gets a full treatment here, as I tap out the melody with a copy of Mr. T's autobiography and The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Complete Idiot's Book Series. Despite repeated warnings by the pre-Stone Age librarian to hush, I continue until security drags me out just as I get to repeated chorus of “my aim is true” that closes out Costello's version.