- Martini Ranch
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Martini Ranch is a new wave band conceived in 1982 by Andrew Todd Rosenthal. The band was composed of Andrew (vocals and guitar) and actor Bill Paxton (vocals and samples), and featured a similar sound to late 1980s Devo. The Martini Ranch track "How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture?" featured three members of Devo. Martini Ranch is currently recording a new Jazz/Rock album with some musical collaboration with composer Michael Sherwood. This project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2011.
In 1989 Martini Ranch was featured in the end credits of Bill Paxton's 1990 cult movie Brain Dead.
Contents
Holy Cow
In the period of 1986 through 1988, Martini Ranch released two extended play records and one album. How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture? and Reach were released as 2 EPs, with a follow up album being Holy Cow, all of which were released on Sire/Warner Bros. Records. The album was reissued in 2007 by Noble Rot. In 2010 Warner Special Products made "Holy Cow" available on itunes.
How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture? was produced and engineered by Devo guitarist Bob Casale and also featured drummer Alan Myers and vocalist Mark Mothersbaugh on keyboards.
The tracks "Hot Dog", "New Deal", and "World Without Walls" feature the vocals of Cindy Wilson of The B-52's. Actor Judge Reinhold is credited as the whistler on the song "Reach". Mark Mothersbaugh and Bud Cort donated their voices to the informercial satire, "Fat-burning Formula".
The album also features film composer Mark Isham; keyboardist Robert O'Hearn (bass player for Frank Zappa and brother of Missing Persons bass player Patrick O'Hearn), who also performed bass on the song "New Deal"; drummer Curt Bisquera of Morris Day's Band (singer for The TIME), who performed drums on "Serious Girl"; and backing vocalist Carol Parks.
Videos
"How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture?"
Directed by Rocky Schenck, Bill Paxton & Andrew Rosenthal, the video mimics the dystopia of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and German Expressionism.
Aside deom Rosenthal and Paxton, the cast of the video features cameos by actors associated with Paxton. Anthony Michael Hall, with whom Bill Paxton starred in the 1985 film Weird Science and Rick Rossovich, who appeared with Paxton in The Lords of Discipline, Streets of Fire and The Terminator, represent intellectual class and working class men.
Other appearances include Michael Biehn (The Lords of Discipline and The Terminator), Judge Reinhold (The Lords of Discipline) and Kathryn Bigelow (director of Near Dark).
"Reach"
Director James Cameron created the cowboy-themed video of "Reach". The production included cameos from his soon-to-be-wife, fellow director Kathryn Bigelow, as well as Aliens and Terminator alumni Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser and Jenette Goldstein, Judge Reinhold, Brian Thompson, and Adrian Pasdar. Also seen is Bud Cort, as the crazy person admiring Bill Paxtons' motorcycle.
External links
Categories:- American pop music groups
- Sire Records artists
- Musical groups established in 1982
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