Even in the odd annals of
Uncle Bonsai, "Sponge Boy" is an oddity. A rarely performed, typically quirky number, it was used by the trio as a means of sending up the singalong typical of folk music concerts. They taught different parts of the audience different ways to sing the chorus that were much more difficult than most singalong parts and made fun of the whole process. This CD single, released in 1999, contains a recording from the late '80s of a performance of "Sponge Boy" on the group's home turf, the Backstage, in Ballard, WA. The single runs over 16 minutes, with the first 12 taken up by the mock teaching of the chorus and comments by group members Andrew Ratshin, Arni Adler, and Ashley Kristen that amount to a comedy routine about life on the road. The song itself, which is performed with interruptions when it finally turns up, is an anticlimax. "It's a really stupid song, anyway," Ratshin says earlier, though he also notes, "This is my favorite song I've written." Not so much the song but the overall performance says a lot about the appeal of
Uncle Bonsai, a group that subverted the notion of a folk concert in the process of performing one. ~ William Ruhlmann