Alternative minds must think alike, and when put together, anything is possible. Beatnik Turtle, a Chicago based alternative rock group, recently released its third studio recording, “The Cheapass Album,” a collaboration between the band and Cheapass Games, an independent board game company run out of Seattle.

The idea for “The Cheapass Album” began when Beatnik Turtle band members Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan were playing one of their favorite Cheapass Games, “Deadwood.” They drew a card which read, “Were all these beer cans here last night?” and something clicked; the band realized that their sense of humor and that of Cheapass Games were similar.

“The lucky thing is Beatnik Turtle never sings anything straight,” says Chertkow, the band’s reed player. “It’s all tongue and cheek, like the games.”

The “Deadwood” card the band members drew sparked their musical creativity, leading them to write a song and record a demo named after it.

Beatnik Turtle sent the demo to the president of Cheapass Games, James Ernest. Ernest loved it and put it up on the Cheapass Web site. When Beatnik Turtle found out their song was getting hundreds of hits during the first few weeks of its online stay, they pitched a new idea to Ernest: recording an entire Cheapass album. Ernest liked the idea and Beatnik Turtle wrote and submitted songs inspired by the various Cheapass Games’ themes, cards and characters.

“As a band, we went to a cabin in Lake Geneva, Wisc., and asked ourselves ‘What can we do with this?’,” Chertkow says.

After submitting the recordings to Ernest, the Cheapass Games president picked the tracks he liked and agreed to distribute the album.

“The Cheapass Album” debuted in August of 2004 for more than 30,000 people at Gencon, a gaming convention in Indianapolis, and has left the band in good spirits.

“It feels like a good fit,” says Feehan, the band’s lead vocalist and guitarist.

The album follows the trend set by the first two Beatnik Turtle albums in its zaniness.

“I would call our sound rock music with horns and a sense of humor,” Chertkow says.

Feehan takes a similar perspective towards the band and their personalities.

“I haven’t grown up,” Feehan says.

The group names They Might Be Giants and Cake as some of their primary influences and displays a slapstick style of comedy that one can also see in their second album, “Santa Doesn’t Like You.” The release, a comedy Christmas album, was featured on the nationally syndicated “Dr. Demento” radio show. The group also recently brought their holiday spirit to their third annual “Un-Holiday Show” at Martyr’s in Chicago.

Cheapass Games, like the band, puts an interesting twist on familiar things. Cheapass Games has a rather unorthodox credo: they make only the bare essentials of games. The company figures that most people have dice, little plastic pawns, and other generic components of board games lying around their house. Therefore when you order a Cheapass game, you only get the rules, the board, and the cards, eliminating unnecessary pieces and cutting the price. The games’ themes are often offbeat and attract untraditional board game audiences. In “Get Out!,” players are college students living in their parents basement and the goal is to get out and get on with life. Cheapass Games may in fact be targeting college students, as they have made numerous card and board games at prices as low as $4. One could fairly say that they really are cheap ass games.

Because of the collaboration with Cheapass Games, creating “The Cheapass Album” involved a unique process for Beatnik Turtle.

“The difference for this album is that we had this list of games as inspiration, and they were all a bit twisted like we are,” Chertkow says.4

Weinberg junior Dean Schraufnagel is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].