The Brown Album is the debut album from Canadian

funk rock Funk rock is a fusion genre that mixes elements of funk and rock. James Brown and others declared that Little Richard and his mid-1950s road band, The Upsetters, were the first to put the funk in the rock and roll beat, with a biographer stat ...

band

Bootsauce Bootsauce was a Juno Award-winning Canadian rock band based in Montreal. The band was composed of Drew Ling (real name Drew Thorpe) (vocals), Pere Fume (real name Perry Johnson) (guitar), Sonny Greenwich Jr. (guitar), Alan Baculis (bass guitar), ...

. It was released in 1990 on

PolyGram Records PolyGram N.V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a ...

and spawned four singles, the last of which, their cover of

Hot Chocolate Hot chocolate, also known as hot cocoa or drinking chocolate, is a heated drink consisting of shaved chocolate, melted chocolate or cocoa powder, heated milk or water, and usually a sweetener like whipped cream or marshmallows. Hot chocolate ...

's "Everyone's a Winner," became the band's biggest hit. In 1991, the album was certified Gold in Canada by the

CRIA A ''cria'' (pronounced ) is a juvenile llama, alpaca, vicuña, or guanaco. Etymology The term comes from the Spanish word cría, meaning "baby". Its false cognate in English, ''crya'' (pronounced ), was coined by British sailors who explored C ...

, having sold over 40,000 copies.

Production

''The Brown Album'' was recorded at Lac-Chat Studios in

Saint-Sauveur, Quebec Saint-Sauveur () is a town and municipality within the Les Pays-d'en-Haut Regional County Municipality, Quebec, Canada. It is in the administrative region of Laurentides in the Laurentian mountains, located about 60 kilometres north of Montreal. ...

in late 1989. It was produced by the band themselves under the pseudonym "The Fudge Brothers," along with former

Mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually highe ...

drummer

Corky Laing Laurence Gordon "Corky" Laing (born January 26, 1948) is a Canadian rock drummer, best known as a longtime member of pioneering American hard rock band Mountain. 20th century A native of Montreal, Quebec, Laing was the youngest in a family of f ...

. The album was recorded over the course of six weeks, during which time what was originally intended to be an EP evolved into a full-length album."Buz 23" by Mark Phillips, "Thrust" Magazine (September 1990). Page 22 Additional production was done at Hudson Studios in

Westchester, New York Westchester County is located in the U.S. state of New York. It is the seventh most populous county in the State of New York and the most populous north of New York City. According to the 2020 United States Census, the county had a population ...

and the album was mastered by

Howie Weinberg Howie Weinberg is an American audio mastering engineer with over 2,257 mastering credits, three TEC Awards, 21 Grammy Awards, two Juno Awards, and one Mercury Prize. Career Weinberg mastered Herbie Hancock's 1983 album '' Future Shock''. Other ...

at Masterdisk in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Michael Jonzun Michael Jonzun is a musician and music producer. His specialty genres are electro, electronic dance, and electrofunk. Born in Florida, he formed the Jonzun Crew in Boston with Steve Thorpe and Gordy Worthy. In the early 1980s, the group recor ...

co-produced the fifth track, "Everyone's a Winner," with Laing and the band.

Musical and lyrical style

''The Brown Album'' laid the groundwork for Bootsauce's trademark musical style, which was an eclectic fusion of genres that include garage rock, heavy metal, funk,

rap Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The ...

, and

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

. The album also introduced other elements that would prove to be distinctive band trademarks, such as lyrics rife with

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(as evidenced by many of the song titles); their fondness for

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(note the final two syllables in "Catastrophe Seas"); and their heavy use of sampling from a diverse range of sources (from old R&B records to movie dialogue) for flavor.

Album cover and design

The album was packaged in an attention-grabbing, bright orange sleeve. The cover, designed and created by internationally acclaimed, Montreal-based artist J.W. Stewart, features the outline of a blindfolded giant filled with the photographed heads of the band members and their friends. The interior features individual photos of the band members (minus Alan Baculis) standing shirtless before a black backdrop, with images of graffiti-filled brick walls projected onto them. On the

vinyl Vinyl may refer to: Chemistry * Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a particular vinyl polymer * Vinyl cation, a type of carbocation * Vinyl group, a broad class of organic molecules in chemistry * Vinyl polymer, a group of polymers derived from vinyl ...

pressing of the album, Side A is listed as "Eh," and Side B is listed as "Huh." On the

cassette Cassette may refer to: Technology * Cassette tape (or ''musicassette'', ''audio cassette'', ''cassette tape'', or ''tape''), a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback ** Cassette single (or "Cassingle"), a music single in th ...

, there is no reference as to which side is which; each side of the cassette features the album in its entirety.

Track listing

Personnel

;Bootsauce * Drew Ling - lead vocals, electroblending * Pere Fume - guitars, keyboards, lead vocals on "Sex Marine" * Sonny Greenwich, Jr. - guitars * Alan Baculis (as Baculis) - bass ;Additional musicians * Rob Kazanel - live drums ;Production personnel * Bootsauce (as "The Fudge Brothers") &

- producers * Mike Scott - engineer, co-producer *

- producer (with "The Fudge Brothers" & Corky Laing) on "Everyone's a Winner" * Phil Greene - engineer on "Everyone's a Winner" *

- mastering * Chris Muth - assistant engineer ;Additional personnel * J.W. Stewart - cover concept and artwork * Vicki Fekete - conceptual photos * Eve Damie - conceptual art

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown Album Bootsauce albums 1990 debut albums