”Ivan in Paris“- the Chandler Travis Philharmonic, recorded by The Valet at an outdoor party thrown by the Perkins Fambly, July 26, 2014.
This song has a somewhat long, strange history. It started life as an extremely minor, tossed-off experiment with an obscure electronic instrument, an Omnichord, that Bruce Maclean loaned me that somehow ended up being the title song of my second solo album, “Ivan in Paris”, about twenty years ago or so.
And there I expected it to end, but then somehow the Philharmonic got started, and changed everything… we ended up doing this silly song for about twenty years (so far -we’re still doing it!) in a wide variety of different arrangements, that’s about to get a lot wider this week on Feb. 2, Groundhog Day, as we see how many (extremely) different versions we can do of “Ivan in Paris” without getting boring -at least, that’s the goal, and we’re all quite intrigued by this challenge.
What you have right here, though, is a fairly basic regular live CTP version of “Ivan”, albeit abetted by Dave Harris on both tuba and trombone, some interesting vocal noises from someone, a fab sax solo by Berke McKelvey, and an equally fun piano solo by Jim Gambino (his only appearance with the band so far, alas!)
And, a little chunk of it backwards. Because we care, and because it’s cool.