stealthy, like that cat who came back
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Here’s the third song in a row that starts with “I” from the “Viper Half-Century” songbook. You can’t spell “Viper” without “I,” and there’s no “team” in “Famous Orchestra” (though there is an “orc” and almost a “mouse”). The song is “I’m Here to Steal Your Song,” so stick ’em up, stand, and deliver.

This might be my favorite Viper song! For reasons I could talk about all day and which involve Irving Berlin, Cher, Bach, Thelonious Monk, Wall of Voodoo, Don Draper, and the Adams Family. This is a good example of something that, once I had the concept, it took me about 10 minutes to write all the lyrics and then 5 weeks to work out the exact notes that we’d use for the “la-la-la” parts. (See also “Bled-a-loe Lang-de-lang.”)

Here’s a clip of us rehearsing it in 2014 at Riley Broach’s then-house in Palatine, Illinois.

Then here we are playing it live later that month – I think the rehearsal must have been for this show! We’re more serious in this performance because we’re wearing suits.

And just to give you a sense of how The Viper & His Famous Orchestra actually works, here’s a scan of Riley Broach’s notes that he uses for playing “I’m Here To Steal Your Song,” which is a real model of efficient equipment-for-living transcription.