Fat Cats [Audio CD]

Meatball Fulton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

Lucas Trust, a wealthy New Yorker, buys an island in the Hudson River in upstate New York and builds a lavish summer home. When Willie is hired to paint the immense living room, he meets Lucas' girlfriend, a prominent wet T-Shirt model by the name of Christie St. Nichols. It seems Lucas has it all - mansion, money, model, a man's dream come true - until his shadowy past returns to haunt him. Well, more than haunt him, there's a car bomb and BOOM! Lucas is no more. Short Top Detriot is a tough, private eye who only exists in cheap detective novels. One way of stepping out of the novels and into the world, is through Willie. As Willie tries to figure out who blew up Lucas, he begins to hear Short Top's voice inside his head. Recorded with Fritz, the binaural microphone that captures 3-D sound, this is an exquisite listening experience. When you listen with headphones, the sound is all around you, in front, behind, even above and below you. 1.5 hours.

Editorial Reviews

From AudioFile

Audio drama auteur Tom Lopez, the award-winning proprietor of ZBS, enjoys cult status among aging hippies and their spiritual heirs. His plays feature meticulous production; low humor; childlike-and often downright childish-themes, plots and dialogue; nearly wall-to-wall musical underscoring; imaginative juxtapositions of time, space, reality and illusion; cartoony acting; and the influence of New Age mysticism, underground comix [sic], pulp fiction and Lopez's erotic fantasies. FAT CATS is no exception. It concerns a housepainter, a lover of cheap detective novels, who comes to investigate the murder of a playboy millionaire. It is a "binaural" recording; if you wear earphones, you can hear not only left and right, as in conventional stereo, but up and down, forward and back. Without earphones, everything sounds distant. Y.R. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: ZBS Foundation (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881137686
• ISBN-13: 978-1881137689
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,268,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Murder, Mystery, Abbie Hoffman, April 10, 2001

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fat Cats (Audio CD)

Fat Cats is an audio production of exceptional quality. A multi-layered production in both story and sound, Fat Cats is recorded with a Neumann ku8li binaural microphone. This technique produces "3-D" sound. With head phones on, the sound swallows you up, enveloping you in a way no other medium can match.

I have experienced a few of these 3-D recordings before, and this is the first one I found where the story makes good use of the technique. Bill Raymond plays a painter, Willie, who fantasizes about being a detective. Willie floats in and out of the adventures of his hero, the hard boiled detective Short Top Detroit. He is hired to paint the house of Lucas Trust, a billionaire who's girlfriend is a prominent wet T-shirt model, Christie Adair. This could be a recipe for cheap thrills, but the story is in ZBS' good hands. Playing against stereotypes, Christie is intelligent and sees the irony of her profession. Willie varies his time between reading cheap detective novels and listening to recordings of Abbie Hoffman. Lucas is involved in murder.

Willie tries to put the pieces together while his hero Short Top Detroit teaches him the art of sleuthing. Slowly, the lines between the two characters begin to blur.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Walter Mitty - in 3-D sound!, May 7, 2000

By 

David Yager - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fat Cats (Audio CD)

Great use of the binaural technique, to ensure that you use headphones to catch all the fun! I jumped out of my chair when a door slams at one point - thought someone had just come into my own house! The mystery premise allows the exploration of the 'hero' Willie's relationships - and there needs to be a new word invented for this exploration, since "mature" and "adult" are taken. How about "responsible"? This responsibility is contrasted deliciously against the predictable exploits of Willie's pulp fiction detective hero (and alter ego) Short Top Detroit - after some of the teaser passages that are worked into the narrative, I'll never think of gabardine in the same way again! A fun adventure - hope there's more to come.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great recording and a great story, May 22, 2000

By 

Darryl Riser (Mangham, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fat Cats (Audio CD)

As always, ZBS Foundation has delivered pushed binaural recording technology to the limits. Listen to this with headphones and you literally feel like you're in the middle of the action. And there is a lot of action on the two-CD set. This is a very stylish update of the film noir genre with nice, quirky characters ZBS fans will recognize from Saratoga Springs and Travels with Jack.