A TRIBUTE
TO OUR FRIEND
ERIN CONNELLY

Among the gems and turds within this website are some genuinely wonderful recordings featuring our dear departed pal Erin.

For example, there is the bizarre 1981 version of "You're Lost Little Girl" -- the earliest tape we have of Erin, singing along with Paul and Danny. This may help clue you in to our weird "Sheep" sense of humor!



To skip to the GOOD STUFF, though, check out the ambitious four-part radio mystery plays we made for National Public Radio -- "Murder Under a Malathion Moon" in 1991 and "The Tabloid Torture of Tess Von Tosterone" in 1994 -- both of which have been remastered with behind-the-scenes "bonus tracks"! (Or if you're in a hurry, click here to hear the short previews: MURDER NPR PROMO - or - TABLOID TORTURE NPR PROMO.)

• Just added is the newly-remastered 1994 e.p. release by Erin & Danny's band CHURCHILL'S WINDOW, produced by me (Chris) somewhere in Northridge just days before the big quake!

(NOTE: Danny has boxes full of unreleased tapes documenting his & Erin's prolific collaboration. Together they wrote probably close to a hundred songs, some of which were never recorded, dating from pre-Mad Cocoon demos in 1990 through plans for the final Churchill's Window project in 2001. A few glimpses of this vast catalog have been digitized for this website, though, such as the very first demo of "Fly Down Annie," which was released as part of the Appollo Music Group various artists compilation SAMPLES 1991. An early Mad Cocoon recording, also from 1991, was discovered at the end of the music reel for the "Murder..." project, entitled "All I Want." And there is an excellent Churchill's Window song called "Soldier" which appeared on SAMPLES 1994-1996, featuring one of Erin's most powerhouse vocal performances!)

• In 1997, Erin asked me to co-produce a song for a classmate she'd met at a songwriter's seminar. "Yellow Cake" was written and sung by a 72-year old Czech immigrant named George Bilek, and Erin's idea was to take his weird hybrid urban-folkpolka demo and make it into a techno-extra-va-GANZA! (When I remastered the track for CD in 2002 I made a couple of suitably freaky remixes, plus added demos and behind-the-scenes studio noise, all for fun. To access the full CD version, click HERE, man!)


OTHER RECORDINGS:

• Erin can be heard singing the part of The Angel in the song "I'll Jump Off a Bridge" (from Sheep's 1991 opus PART THREE).

• An unrehearsed live Sheep jam from Sylvia's Diner is the Motels song "Mission of Mercy," which I have combined with a rare early tape of Erin doing her Janis Joplin impression, singing "Summertime" in 1987.

• As we dive further into the realm of bizarre Sheep rarities, there is the unreleased 1989 improv entitled "I Just Can't Get Rid of This Angst," in which Erin trades off non-sequiturs with Jeff and Jeanne. Uhhh...

• AND FINALLY--for those of you who are truly brave--there is the amazing fifteen-minute mini-play from 1993 devised by Jeanne called "Pumps Part Two," in which she prompted everyone in the Sheep gang to more-or-less improvise their way thru a scenario wherein an unhappy housewife (played by Erin) is hit by a truck, goes into a coma and experiences an alternate universe of Disco dancing!