Chris Butler, later of Tin Huey and the Waitresses, played bass with the Numbers Band in the 1970s. Of all the songs on Jimmy Bell’s Still in Town, “The Animal Speaks” has had the strangest afterlife. A Band Outside the SystemThe Numbers Band emerged when Northeast Ohio was producing an improbable concentration of groups that seemed unable—or unwilling—to make themselves easy to explain. By the time “The Animal Speaks” appeared on Visions of Excess, however, the Numbers Band had largely stopped playing it at home. “The Animal Speaks” began as the sound of a band playing to a live room, ready to dance.