Preoccupied Pipers is the name of an
audio zine put out by members of the now-defunct
Davis-based
ska band
Lawsuit.
According to member K.C. Bowman, the Preoccupied Pipers series "featur(ed) oddball pop outtakes and experiments from the Lawsuit era." (http://artists.mp3s.com/info/64/kc_bowman.html)
Their albums, or issues, began with names like "Summer 1995" and soon evolved into "The Ubiquitous Lamp Twin Pack" and "The Crispy Taste of Hell." Despite the demise of the band and then its lead singer Paul Sykes, a new issue was released in 2002.
Listening to a given issue of the zine is a strange experience for any seasoned Lawsuit fan. They often feature apparent first drafts and covers of the band's songs. In the former case, fans often find themselves listening to a familiar song with the entire melody line missing, or with one verse of radically different lyrics. In the latter, they might feature a popular hit executed entirely by orchestral instruments.
The experience of being witness to the red-hot magma birth of a favorite song is mixed, in each zine, with serious lyrical flavor and with comical musical parodies. One can go from a song which repeats "I like crunchberries, I like crunchberries... I like crunchberries I LIKE CRUNCH BERRIES" over and over to a bright piece of something very like swing music.
The zine is produced through Oakland's Timber Trout Studios, which boasts that it "functioned as a ground zero of creativity for the members of Lawsuit; they streamed through with the help of some of their wacky friends, leaving a trail of inspiring recordings made for the sheer fun of it."