WTF??? Rosebud wants you to Have A Cigar

I had an awesome day all things considered! Went to work, got done early, got paid really early, picked up some new vinyl (PiL reissues on 4 Men With Beards and Rhino), was on the radio for a minute (Comedy By Request on XM Raw Dog) and then found a piece of utter weirdness. I noticed what looked like a late seventies Warner Bros. disco 12" by a "group" named Rosebud with a song named Have A Cigar on the A-Side. I figured there was no way that it could have been Pink Floyd's Have A Cigar, but upon seeing the song was credited to Waters I assumed I could be wrong. Just to confirm, I flipped the record over to find the B-Side was labeled Money, also credited to Waters. I had just found an obscure disco 12" of Pink Floyd covers. WHAT THE FUCK?

When I returned home I did a quick google search and found a page for Bill DeYoung who wrote the liner notes to a 2008 CD reissue of Rosebud's full-length album, Discoballs - A Tribute To Pink Floyd. Turns out a fellow named Gabriel Yared, now much better known for his award winning score for The English Patient among other films (Madonna's bomb, The Next Best Thing, is one of those other films), was the force behind the project, producing and arranging the bizarro Pink Floyd disco covers with a cast of session musicians backing him up. Officially, the production credit went to a team known as ARENA, but ARENA may have been no more than the financiers.

What really matters when it comes to novelty records like this one is how it sounds, and having not heard the whole album I can now assume that it's less than essential, but might be interesting for a few laughs. The version of Have A Cigar, listed as a Special Disco Mix by Michael Graber, is boring as hell, with the unidentified female vocalist merely repeating the first line of the song over and over. The version of Money fares quite a bit better though, with the first two verses sang completely, curse intact! The verses get repeated once, but it's not so annoying since the track continues to weird-out throughout it's four minutes. If there is a winner here, Money is where it's at.

I linked the page with Bill DeYoung's liner notes for Rosebud's Discoballs reissue above, but you can access it here too. As for sharing my musical find, you can download my rip of this ridiculous platter of wax below, but if you want to test your mettle with the full-length Discoballs, you'll have to look elsewhere. It was apparently available via Collector's Choice in 2008, but I don't know about it's current status.


Rosebud - Have A Cigar

01 Have A Cigar (Special Disco Mix)
02 Money