Have YOU ever heard of us? We aren’t affiliated with any label you’ve ever heard of, we don’t have hordes of good-looking babes shouting our names, and we’ve never even had a concert (unless you count wandering around Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley with a guitar belting out our odd lyrics a concert). The truth is we aren’t really even a band.

We do, however, have a CD "out", called Bret Turner Sings, on the label Breakfast Music, which is available at www.mp3.com for six bucks. If we were to call ourselves something, it would be something along the lines of Bret Turner And Da Crew, but realistically, something like Bret Turner And A Bunch Of Guys Who Wrote Some Funny Songs would be more appropriate.

Courtesy of Bret Turner "You say that calling things stupid is childish/But I say that calling things childish is stupid/You stupid child"

The other band members are Christopher Ford and Andrew Hasse (who are busy killing each other as roommates at NYU film school), Drew Beck, and Jake Misrach.

Ford sings the lyrics on one track, Drew added some background vocals and "played" the harmonica, and Jake played the bass sometimes and provided much of the equipment used for recording. Then there was me, Bret Turner, who sang and played guitar on all (but one) of the tracks.

The writing of the songs has been an almost entirely collaborative effort. Usually someone would say something funny and we would say "hey, let’s write a song about that," or "hey Bret, play something catchy. No, that’s stupid. I said CATCHY," or even, "Let’s write a Beatles song, only funnier." Usually the words would be written before the music, sometimes vice versa, and a couple of times they handed me a microphone, a guitar, and a vague outline of the song and told me to sing it and make it funny, dammit (such was the case for the hit number "The Stupid Song", a semi-freestyled piece about the stupidest man on Earth: "You say that calling things stupid is childish/But I say that calling things childish is stupid/You stupid child").

One time, we found a list of funny song titles we had written a while back in the hopes of writing the songs someday, and one of them was "That’s when his mom kicked his mom." None of us had the faintest idea who wrote that one down, not to mention what the hell it meant, but that didn’t slow us down one bit.

And now, it’s a hit song. In its way. Go figure.

Once we had enough tracks to make a CD, we headed on over to Jake’s house and put it together. I sang and whammed on my guitar, Drew added some vocals and harmonica, Jake slapped on some bass, and "kablamo!" 20 tracks worth of hilarity. Our song "Oh thank God for Amateur Recording Equipment" pretty much sums up our level of professionalism: "We’re making our own records here/And all it cost us was the price of a few gadgets."

Although the album is, in the interest of honesty, peppered with a couple of duds, most of the songs are gold. Gold, I tellya. Who could listen to the chorus from Naked Baker ("I bake naked all day, yeah/And I hear what the people say, yeah/ Everyone can see my wiener/Luckily, indecent exposure is just a misdemeanor") without laughing with, or at least at, us? Come on, I dare ya. Other classic tunes include "Perfect Time to Take a Crap in the Sink," "Buckle Me Into Your Spacecar," "Lonely Robot," and "People on TV Are So Much Better Than Me."

For a summer project, and for a "band" whose members are going to various schools that span the country, we put together a pretty funny little CD. Opening with the slightly offensive yet undeniably clever "Juan Santos" and finishing off with the wordless whoop-ings of "Crazy Bret," the CD with will make you laugh, cry, sing, dance, and learn about yourself. Mostly, it will make you buy one.

Most of the songs are featured in the upcoming motion picture release "The Tale of Moby Dick" by Breakfast Films, made by the same bunch of idiots. If you happened to catch the film festival put on last semester by Studio 47, and saw "Chicken Bread," "Ford For President," and "How To Stick Your Finger In Your Eye," you’ll recognize the sense of humor, although this time you will have to imagine for yourselves how good-looking we are. Tentative future projects include "Bret Turner Flows" with half-written tunes like "Ode To Slick Rick" and the Snoop-ish "Three Bitches And A Bitch." Mostly, we just like to write songs and force me to find funny-sounding guitar licks, then record them cheaply. But hey, check us out. And as they say, "If you take half a lobster/And you add half of a turkey/You’ll get a tobster." Peace.