The Shirt
Lyrics
[There There Betty Betty] Down here at the poolside I see myself in the surface My mirror's broken, baby Won't serve its purpose
No, my Cadillac can never fly No matter how hard it might try You know eighty-nine Is a game that I don't even recognize
So there, there, there, there There There, there, Betty, Betty
[In My Baby's Ruth] Oh, when I come to see her Ask her, let me in She always opens wide the doors To that one place within
Once inside, it is so good That I know I will come again Now while in my baby's room
[Mother] Oh, this is her name Baby she's not a game You cannot play her on a field of nine Oh she's not a game She will never, never, never Never be the same
Chronology
God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It 
- Mayo Thompson - vocals, guitar
- Steve Cunningham - bass
Interpretations
- The lyrics are taken from three of the Red Crayola's earliest songs. Each song was later recorded separately for Fingerpainting (1999)
Retrospectives
Mayo Thompson, 2010[1]
I guess that we had the funniest use of the Gold Star reverb chambers. One night we just decided to do something funny in the chambers. So we went to a 7-11 store and got a whole bunch of those little paper bags. . . . So we had a whole stack of these things, and we opened up the chamber and crawled in there. We put a guitar in one corner, then we started blowing up the bags with air, and then popped them, wadded them up, and threw them at the guitar. We recorded the whole process and used it in a song called "The Shirt." We added some tracks to that, but it was basically the song.
I think we were the only guys at the time — except the engineers who moved mics around in them — who ever saw the insides of the reverb chamber. The studio had a spring reverb and a plate reverb in those days, but we had the live chambers. If you asked the engineer for a longer reverb time, he would disappear for a few minutes and then come back, and it would be done.
References
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