fifi: History and Ephemera

“Well… it’s interesting, but it’s not really ‘music,’ is it?”
My father, upon hearing an early fifi recording.

In 1984, Eric, Paul, Joey and I formed a band. We spent a lot of time talking about music in that obsessive, slightly creepy way common among teenage boys, and we could all quote at length from episodes of Monty Python; forming a band was the next logical step.

Incredibly, 20 years later, we found ourselves (well, three of us, anyway) gathered in my living room, screaming into a broken karaoke microphone plugged into a laptop, and trying to figure out how to tune Eric’s guitar an octave lower so that we could fake a bass track.

In short, this is not one of those stories where the main characters learn a valuable lesson and change their ways. No, this is one of those stories where the main characters stubbornly cover their ears, stamp their feet, and refuse to grow up, leaving a wide swath of acrimony, frustration, unemployment, bankruptcy and divorce in their wake.

Eric and I wrote a fictionalized autobiography, which you can read here.

I made a semi-serious documentary, which you can watch here.

If you just want to stream or download the music we made, you can find all of that (well, almost…) on our Bandcamp page here.

But if you are looking for the complete, unexpurgated story of fifi in actual old-fashioned “words” – including links to the lyrics, associated music videos, and even lossless audio files… see below.