After finishing Liquid Dwarf, Rusty Dwarf, the four Steaks took a brief but well-deserved rest from their academic and musical endeavors. One evening, while relaxing in a Holborn House (aka Linn House) dorm room, they purposed that their next project should be rendered in the inherently pretentious (and, some might say, oxymoronic) medium of rock opera. Then, for some reason since lost to the vicissitudes of memory, someone brought up Buster Crabbe.
Buttsteak recalled a Readers' Digest Strange Stories and
Amazing Facts article which detailed Buster Crabbe's
mysterious disappearance during World War II. Ribeye objected
that that couldn't possibly be right because he had seen Buster
Crabbe make a guest appearance on the 1980s television series
Buck Rogers, starring Gil Gerrard. Buttersteak buttressed
the anti-disappearance view by remembering a Buster Crabbe
guest appearance on the 1960s Batman TV series. The
BCTROstory synopsis, conceived largely by Buttsteak, was an expert attempt at synthesizing a coherent narrative from the Steaks' wildly disparate recollections.
Although Buster Crabbe, The Rock Opera is a genuine group effort, it was constructed largely from contributions realized independently by the four Steaks. Unlike the songs on Liquid Dwarf, Rusty Dwarf, very few of the Crabbe tracks were co-written. Most of the album was recorded in Buttsteak's Regents' Park apartment, primarily on one marathon day during which Ribeye and Buttsteak consumed large quantities of Crispy Critters cereal and Berry Blue punch.
The music and the plot of Buster Crabbe revolve around
the numbers 5 and 6. The BCTRO project has not yet been
fully realized as originally conceived. Like Disneyland, it is
incomplete, and will remain so, as long as some spark of human
imagination survives in the world. Indeed, Buttsteak is currently
in the process of remastering and repackaging the original BCTRO
for a 10th anniversary release on CD.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Buster Crabbe
the hero of our saga
Modak
evil master of puppets
Seņor Wences
Buster's campaign manager, wacky puppeteer
Norah Gunta
the Woman, also known as Susie
Boris Kräbs
Buster's evil twin
Digbie Crabbe
Buster's father, a divine crab
Sophia Crabbe
Buster's mother, a beauty queen
Howlin' Willis
a blues singer
Octavius Snow and the Tenderloins
lounge act extraordinaire and the narrators of our saga