The Onion: How many of your songs are inspired by The Simpsons?
Ira Kaplan: I think "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" is the first one.
O: Really?
IK: I think so. Well, our songs take a long time to become songs. Most of the songs on this record have earlier incarnations as instrumentals with varying degrees of shape to them. Different elements of those instrumentals get preserved, so James [McNew, bass] keeps track of a lot of those instrumentals and gives them funny titles, which of course all go away eventually. A song that is an instrumental will sometimes keep its title, but not "Tired Hippo," for instance. He named one series of instrumentals after the Troy McClure filmography, and, much to his surprise, the title stuck. He didn't never intended for it to be the last word on the title, but then I showed him the lyrics I wrote.
The story in the song is some sort of fiction (weeklywire.com/ww/02-28-00/boston_music_1.html):
Not everything is quite this direct: Kaplan reluctantly glosses "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" as "a made-up story about Frankie Valli. He's jealous that the name 'Dawn' is associated with Tony Orlando instead of the Four Seasons, so he burns down his house."
There's an interesting interview in The Onion which explains where the title of the song came from: theonionavclub.com/feature/index.php
The Onion: How many of your songs are inspired by The Simpsons?
Ira Kaplan: I think "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" is the first one.
O: Really?
IK: I think so. Well, our songs take a long time to become songs. Most of the songs on this record have earlier incarnations as instrumentals with varying degrees of shape to them. Different elements of those instrumentals get preserved, so James [McNew, bass] keeps track of a lot of those instrumentals and gives them funny titles, which of course all go away eventually. A song that is an instrumental will sometimes keep its title, but not "Tired Hippo," for instance. He named one series of instrumentals after the Troy McClure filmography, and, much to his surprise, the title stuck. He didn't never intended for it to be the last word on the title, but then I showed him the lyrics I wrote.
The story in the song is some sort of fiction (weeklywire.com/ww/02-28-00/boston_music_1.html): Not everything is quite this direct: Kaplan reluctantly glosses "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" as "a made-up story about Frankie Valli. He's jealous that the name 'Dawn' is associated with Tony Orlando instead of the Four Seasons, so he burns down his house."