Art Barnes Returns To Tell Us Sh!t Happens

One half of the eccentric geniuses behind Fish Heads returns with a new album.

You remember Barnes & Barnes, right? The magnificent duo behind the immortal classic Fish Heads, a song once heard, never forgotten and a track that used to be a mainstay of both Dr Demento in the US and later night request shows in the UK, back when actually obtaining a copy of the damn thing was quite hard. You won’t hear it on our modern-day homogenised and demographically-controlled radio stations of course, but then you probably no longer need to.

One half of Barnes & Barnes, Artie Barnes – real name Robert Haimer – died earlier this year and so the remaining member, Art Barnes, is now back as & Barnes with a new solo effort, Sh!t Happens. Here’s the animated promo for the new album, released today on brown vinyl (or course!) and digital formats, with cover art from Stephen Blickenstaff.

Art Barnes is, in fact, Bill Mumy – the kid from Lost in Space and the It’s a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone – and the Barnes & Barnes back-catalogue is more extensive than you might expect. We’re going to take a deep dive into their 18-plus recordings and odd career as soon as we can get hold of the new album but this promo clip, with Mumy as ‘Joe Solid’, certainly suggests that the latest recording is up to the eccentric and oddball nature of what has gone before.

You can buy it here.

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