Background
The inspiration for this song came when I was dating a girl whose step-father was a paranoid, obnoxious police officer (once, while off-duty he gave a ticket to a neighbor kid for riding his brand-new motorbike on Christmas Day). Frisbee® throwing was a harmless activity that you could engage in with your girlfriend and even a hard-line police officer stepfather wouldn't object. As I was putting the finishing touches on this song, a visitor came in the studio with his 5-year old daughter. She walked out of the studio singing the chorus of this song over and over - it was a great feeling!
Instrumentation
An old high school friend (Mark Maynard) used to be in the brass section of Bill Deal and the Rhondels, and then helped form the group Hotcakes, which was one of the top groups around in the '70s and '80s. Mark was a super Trombone player (the best I've ever heard live or recording), and I asked him if he and the other two Hotcakes brass players would play on my album. They all accepted (they wouldn't even take any money because they said they had fun doing it). As good a Trumpet player as David Britt from Hotcakes was, I still made sure that I played the highest notes in the song (Trumpet players have big egos), but his octave rips really make the brass line. Those guys are great musicians, and the sound was perfect for the song. I also wanted to have a small group of kids singing the background countermelody at the end, and this presented the perfect opportunity to bring in my kid brother and sister to sing with me. They were in their teens and our high vocals blended together well, sounding like that group of kids I was looking for. Alan put in a unique drum rhythm that really fits the song well. At the beginning of the song, that's my whistling 'cause I thought it kind of fit the easy-going attitude behind the song.
Behind the Scenes
Alan had taught me everything I needed to know about recording engineering by this time, and when other musicians came into the studio to record on my album I did the recording engineering (since Alan was giving me studio time for free, I certainly didn't want to bother him with having to come in and run the session also). This worked out well except for those times that I was also playing or singing with the other musicians. The Hotcakes brass session was one of those situations, but I was lucky in that I could set up the equipment and only had to rely on a technician to hit the record, stop, and rewind buttons. My technician for the Hotcakes brass session was my fiancée Ann Campbell, who later became my wife.