Reviews:

The G.R.I.M. Retailers are proud to announce their inaugural release, "That Dirty Clown," a dark and resonating story told in song that spotlights a troubled carnival employee, the woman he betrays and the son that could bring them together. It's a narcoleptic waltz through a sodium-lit county fair and then a few after at the town tavern. It's intoxicating bleakness is tenderly balanced with pathos that rings genuine, never saccharin or maudlin. Yes, it's a story that builds and builds like a journeyman carpenter who loses his balance and falls off an erection of iron scaffolding. Will he land on something soft? "That Dirty Clown" is a humble release. Just 1000 compact discs will be distributed to independent music retailers across the country. How easily it could get lost in the shuffle. What if it were stuffed under some dog-eared periodicals, or blown out like so many other poor-performing CD's in some lonesome basement bargain bin? It happens. And isn't that part of the beauty of it? Wallowing in those deliciously sad thoughts we have of beautiful things being ignored and languishing forever in obscurity. Imagine the greatest things you've never heard. This is one of them. K. Ross' "That Dirty Clown," was originally recorded on 4-track cassette in the American south during the mid-90's. There, crouched uncomfortably on a friends industrial wheat-colored carpeting, K. Ross composed a series of interconnected musical snapshots that resulted in an unintentionally cohesive song-cycle. To say the music wrote itself would be horribly cliche but, perhaps just once in an artist's lifetime, there is that brief but incendiary burst of muse-fueled creative output that results in something worthwhile. This was it. Sparrows could be seen flitting about unnaturally on the yard. "It was like riding a borrowed Schwinn," K. Ross says of "That Dirty Clown., "It was as if I was pedaling as fast as I could go, down Church Street in the dark, thinking there were bats flying all around my head, and that if one got caught in my hair and it bit me, I was going to get rabies and have to have a series of painful injections in the abdomen. Then again, sometimes it was just like finding a dollar." And that's what it's all about ... unnatural fears and corn-fed county fairs, filtered through the distorted memory, bad whiskey, insanity, lust, dysfunction and death. And, what of redemption and happy endings? In K. Ross heartland homily, the line between happy and sad is badly blurred, until one is interchangeable with the other. This 14-song popera comes wrapped in a pleasantly disturbing sonic cocoon of off-kilter spinet, mid-price range synth, found-sound and cleverly mutated voices. It's by no means filled with irreverent cacophony and clatter. There is a subtle sophistication in the sparse musical landscapes that beguiles and plays concierge to the macabre danse unfolding in the plotline. When it comes right down to it, there's a simple reason "That Dirty Clown" is worth listening to. It will affect you. "My wife and I laughed. We wept. We were totally hooked on every word of The Dirty Clown, Becky and poor little Dirty Clown Jr. Thank you!!!!!" Dale H. Mount Hope "My girlfriend and I listened with rapt attention whilst driving through the rainy streets, to an operatic opus entitled 'That Dirty Clown'. It was amazing! I'd never heard anything like it. For me (and I'm not hyperbolizin') it felt akin to what listeners must've felt when listening to something like, say, Orson Welles' broadcast of 'War of the Worlds'. The music, the story, everything was just wonderful and I'd love to be able to hear it again (and again and again) if it's in any way possible. Alex M. Los Angeles "My girlfriend and I heard it in the car and we were changed as people. I'm not really sure in what way, but I know it happened." -T Originally released in 1996 on cassette tape, (200 were distributed with an accompanying hand-made libretto) K. Ross' "That Dirty Clown" has been kept breathing through word of mouth, bootlegging, file sharing and by a loyal cadre of Dirty Clown fans. Now, fine independent stores across the cournty have seen fit to re-releasing this micro-cult classic on CD with an in-store date of October 31st, 2006. The CD features handwritten lyrics and accompanying illustrations. Nothing has been re-recorded. It is as it was, a creepy little story filled with sadness and sin and loss and love. "The Carnival's all set up on the seedy side of town." You should go.