Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Words fail me...a warning to the men-folk from a thoroughly eccentric (just take a look at these song titles), highly prolific Nigerian/American outsider recording artist. Not safe for work, radio airplay, or your sanity. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Yeah, yeah, I know: everybody plays air-zither along with their favorite 'zither heroes,' they even play the Zither Hero video game, the zither-bass-drum lineup has been the standard for decades, and yet here we are again, posting another zither album. We're so damn trendy. I apologize, because I realize that our culture's obsessions with the zither has made so many other stringed instruments unfairly obscure. Perhaps other instruments have potential, but no-one knows because they're considered uncool? Like the "guitar," a six-stringed instrument of Spanish origin, whose strings are strummed or plucked by hand. Since it's held in the hands instead laid out on a table like a zither, it's sure to draw guffaws from the too-hip. Who knows, maybe in some bizarro-world alternate universe, it's the guitar that's the most popular. Nevertheless, this album of fun, peppy, all-instrumental Euro-cheese is another example of why all peoples of the world hail the zither as the King of All Instruments. Zesty percussion, accordion, and sleazy electric organ and cool vibraphones add to the belated Oktoberfest (Decemberfest?) festivities.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.A1 Ramona A2 Down By the Riverside - the familiar hand-clappin' American gospel song A3 Schöner Gigolo - hey, it's that Louis Prima song, "Just A Gigolo" A4 Tanze mit mir in den Morgen - love this Latin-a-gogo groover A5 Bye Bye Blues - one of my fave ol' Tin Pan Alley standards A6 Estrellita A7 Wochenend und Sonnenschein B1 Winke winke B2 In einer Nacht im Mai B3 La Paloma B4 Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein B5 Das machen nur die Beine von Dolores - Great hotel lounge psuedo-calypso B6 Das alte Spinnrad B7 Du schwarzer Zigeuner B8 Good Night, Ladies
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view."Trout Mask Replica"..."Eskimo"...The Shaggs...any such list is now incomplete without a mention ofFive Starcle Men's "Gomba Reject Ward Japan." Coherent biographical info on this band is hard to come by, but apparently Five Starcle Men were two nuts in the '90s making low-fi (presumably) home recordings out in the desert town of Lancaster, CA. Or maybe they were from Austin, Texas. Or maybe they heard the works of those two town's most famous loonies, Capt Beefheart, and The Butthole Surfers, and said: "That's nuthin; get a load of this," and proceeded to lay down 28 tracks over the course of a few years that in comparison makes Ween sound like Journey.
At first, it may come off as a couple of stoners' self-indulgent mucking about on a Teac four-track, and there may be some truth to that, but keep listening, and one starts to wonder if there may be some genuine insanity at work here (apparently, one of the members killed himself, thus ending this band's "career.") Every sound is warped beyond recognition, lyrics range from unintelligible jabbering to surreal nonsense, samples and tapes loop themselves into delirium, unnatural rhythms pound away, all adding up to a mind-melting experience. Some "songs" sound like they were made up on the spot, many are less than 30 seconds long, and a surprisingly high amount of the tracks are really quite good. Play this for over 99% of the population (even those who consider themselves "alternative"), and they will probably will scrunch up their face and say, "What are you listening to?!" Free listening/download here: Five Starcle Men "Gomba Reject Ward Japan" courtesy of 'net-label Lost Frog, who have also blessed us with releases by R. Stevie Moore, The Happy Flowers, Animals Within Animals, Big City Orchestra, and some people who make noise music out of bicycles.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.I love the creepy, creaky sound of the Wheelharp, a newly invented instrument developed and sold thru L.A.'s Antiquity Music company. But rummaging thru the sofa cushions for spare change will probably still leave me a bit short of the $10,000 needed to buy one.
It would be great to own one, tho - playing it's keyboard (a very strange-looking round keyboard) rubs the strings like a violin bow, so it's like having a string quartet at your fingertips. A scant 3 1/2 minutes of music on Wheelharp has all that's been recorded so far, but it is very nice indeed:
Word has it that some of you Maniacs have been looking for Wayne Butane's hilariously profane kooky kristmas kut-up in the handy popular mp3 format in all it's 12-minute glory. I figgured, well, if I'm going to post it, might as well post a whole mess of other holiday themed sound collages. These are some of the must-haves, the classics, mostly from the Golden Age of Mashups, the 2000s. Not included: anything featured on djBC's series of "Santastic" comps (number 8 just came out) since they are all still available. "A Mutated Christmas", likewise is also still in print, thru illegalart. And don't forget People Like Us'"Sounds of Christmas." But that still leaves plenty. Many of the "biggest" names in the field are featured here, but the ultimate just might be "All Your Christmases" which is nothing more than 7-and-a-half minutes of the word "christmas" taken from inumerable old xmas records artfully strung together, courtesy of Australia's Alias Frequencies. It's so great, and so annoyingly evil, bwa ha ha!
01 cassetteboy - xxxxmas 02 Voicedude - Here Comes Santa Claus In Black (Elvis Presley Vs. AC/DC ) 03 The Kleptones - Bling Crosby Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.04 The Bran Flakes - Lovely Sleigh Ride 05 Satan's Little Helper - All your Xmases 06 Evolution Control Committee - The Christmas Wrong 07 My Favorite Things (PISs covering Negativland) 08 A Very Special Wayne Butane Christmas 09 V/Vm (Michael Jackson vs Paul McCartney) - Simply 10 The Bran Flakes - Here Comes Santa 11 cuechamp - 942003 (Nutcracker vs Daft Punk) 12 BigBadBaz - Christmas in Compton 13 Jima vs George W. Bush - The Night Before Christmas 14 JoolsMF (BuenaVista vs Beatles vs DrDre) - Havana Good Christmas 15 Gordyboy - bam bam the Cavalry (Toots and the Myatalls vs Jonie Lewis) 16 BuG - 12 boots of xmasx 17 Culturcide - Depressed Christmas 18 BRAT Productions - Chemical Christmas 19 fukjamum - Hankys Park Minimix 20 rx - Happy RxMas & a Whole Lotta Love 21 John Oswald - White (plus: hideous bonus track!)
I had a request for the Ridiculous Trio Plays the Stooges album, but I can't find a couple of songs: "Scene Of The Crime/Death Trip" and "We Will Fall." Anyone, anyone? Thanks!
re: the"Merry Chrismash" collection I posted a few days ago - I bring you glad tidings of an improved bitrate version of that most glorious bit of irritainment, "All Your Christmases," thanks to Adrian of Satan's Little Helper who personally sent it our way, available via divshare here:
And now our musical sleigh ride moves on to the snazzy sounds of Jaymz Bee & The Royal Jelly Orchestra. Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.We've posted several albums by this most entertaining Canadian lounge parodist, and if you've been diggin' them, then you'll want to throw back this potent potable, what with it's finger-snappin' Rat Pack-ready versions of "Rudolph" and "Jingle Bells," bossa nova versions of "The Christmas Song" and "Let It Snow," the Andrews Sisters-like close harmony vox of The Beehive Singers, a '70s action theme wah-wah guitar "Sleigh Ride," and the Esquivel-esque "White Christmas", complete with Latin percussion and "zoo-zoo-POW!" vocals. There's a few original songs here as well, inc. the smooth title track, and one called "Space Age Santa" that you can add to the collection.
I'm probably outta here 'til sometime in January. Thanks to all my wonderful readers and contributors. You-all make it happen.
Reader Eric writes to us to requesting what sounds like a pretty amazing bit of Christmas darkness and sick humor, Noah Quisenberry's "Daddy Came Home On Christmas," in which a boy murders his sexually abusive father. It's the merriest Christmas ever! I don't have it. Anyone? Snippets of it can be hear in the last minute or so of this vid, from a series about outsider music that we've covered here before. This one's an all-xmas special.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.As long as we're searching for lost records, Brian from AZ is desperately seeking the b-side to that lovable old coot Walter Brennan's "Space Mice," called "Thievin' Stranger," another one I don't have. See folks, I really don't have every weird record ever made. Not even close. Make their Christmas wishes come true!
Someone who does have a lot of strange/bad/outsider/unusual Christmas record is Bomarr, who's back with his latest collection:
featuring goodies like a Rodd Keith (under the name Rodd Rogers) song-poem, R. Stevie Moore, a Brazilian nugget from Caetano Veloso, the video-game bloopiness of 8-Bit Synthtown, and some Staxx soul from Carla Thomas.
And I had to put my nomination for the Worst Christmas Record back on-line, just because.
Need a last-minte gift suggestion? Darryl Bullock's book "The World's Worst Records," from the stellar blog of the same name. Get a 16-song download wth it, too. I'm gonna sit on Santa's lap and ask for a copy. Or at least I'll try, until security rousts me out again. DAMN them.
And nothing says "Christmas spirit" like sappy music from an irate right-wing talk-radio host: Glenn Beck's "Believe Again." He claims it will have you dancing and crying at the same time. Isn't that what goths and Morrisey fans do?
Now back up by request: one of the first posts ever in this blog's history:Polka Rap; and the happy yodeling of Arthur Brogli. Still working on your other requests.
The start of a brand new year - a time when so-called psychics traditionally do their thing, with mixed results. So surely an appropriate time to remind everyone of "The Amazing Criswell", of Plan 9 From Outer Space fame? Did you know that in 1970 he made a spoken word LP consisting of a 42-minute Dadaist stream-of-consciousness rant about what was going to happen over the next 30 years? Probably. He himself admitted that his success-rate was only 87%. Fortunately that other 13% included his prediction that the world would be completely destroyed by God on 8 August 1999.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.2013 was a good musical year for me: I saw the Residents, saw "Einstein on the Beach" (more on that later), this blog continues to get more popular (the Eno and Lou Reed posts in particular really blew up) even as other great music blogs sadly fell by the wayside...but Rapidshare and Mediafire knocking my stuff off-line wasn't exactly a cherished memory. More re-up requests back up: - Christmas may be over, but isn't any time of year the right time to listen to the flatulent sounds of pot-bellied pigs "singing" christmas songs? - music from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.
Something old, something new: a funny, well-produced parody from San Diego comedy-rockers Pony Death Ride that skillfully references numerous Smiths standards (the strings at the end are a nice touch); best appreciated by those of you who have the Smiths catalog burned into your brain from adolescence.
When my unbelieving eyes saw that parts of the US were going to be below -50 F (factoring in wind chill), my mission was clear: post that exotica compilation I'd been sitting on. You people need to warm up, and what better way to do that then with this collection of steamy, sultry, pseudo-tropical musics rescued from singles and otherwise non-exotic albums, not unlike our previous "Savage Exotica" comp.
Like that collection, this features folks you wouldn't expect to be making tiki tunes: The Residents? Sun Ra? (His biography "Space Is The Place" confirms that he was a fan of exotica maestros like Les Baxter.) Sinatra singing with a Hawaiian group? A Rodd Keith song-poem? You bet your aloha. The "Fifth Beatle" Billy Preston, even, as well as famous bandleaders like George Shearing & Xavier Cugat, and contemporary revivalists like Combustible Edison, Cocktails with Joey, and the man whose track gives this album it's name, Fred from the B-52s. Plenty of unknowns, lounge acts, and private-press records in here, too. And "Noisy Village" and "A Night In Bedrock Forest" are bizarre, sound-effects-laden novelties, presumably parodies. TOTALLY NUDE EXOTICA
01 Superions - Totally Nude Island [w/Fred Schneider] 02 Exotic Adventure - Mel Henke 03 Caravan - The Three Suns 04 Tahiti - Rodd Keith 05 Exotic bird-bird - Dickie Harrell 06 Ferry Across The Mersey - Billy Preston [sounding more like "Ferry Cross the Amazon", this is from 1965, years away from Preston joining the Beatles, or his '70s solo fame] 07 cults percussion ensemble - baia [feat. a then-teenaged Evelyn Glennie] 08 Slow Hot Wind (Lujon) - The Trilogy [a Florida lounge act covering Mancini] 09 Poinciana - Art Van Damme [one of many versions of this oft-recorded exotica standard performed here by the world's foremost (only?) jazz accordionist] 10 The Residents - Syx Things to a Cycle (part 1) 11 Solar Drums - Sun Ra & His Mythical Science Arkestra 12 Tabou - Lecuona Cuban Boys [very early 78 rpm version of song that would be a perrenial exotica standard, often spelled "Taboo"] 13 Jungle Fever - The Mighty Accordion Band 14 Frank Sinatra - Bali Hai 15 Tropical Espionage - Cocktails with Joey 16 Noisy Village - Bobby McFadden and Dor ['Dor' is a pre-fame Rod McKuen] 17 Michael Farneti - In the Jungle [sleazy '70s lounge disco!] 18 The Veldt - Combustible Edison 19 Bahía - Xavier Cugat & his Waldorf Astoria Orchestra (with Bing Crosby) 20 Fred Flintstone - A Night In Bedrock Forest [near as I can tell, this has nothing to do with the actual "Flintstones" show] 21 ブンガワン･ソロ (Bengawan Solo) - Kiyohiko Senba and his Haniwa All Stars 22 patrick vian - oreknock 23 george shearing - caravan
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.You asked for it! Perhaps inevitably, the subject of this album, the music gods' gift to drag queens everywhere, came up in discussing the "Disco Sellout" collection recently posted here of mainstream music stars' late '70s disco cash-in records. Unlike those individual songs, Ethel Merman, the 70-something star of stage and screen musicals, cut an entire album of confoundedly inappropriate showtunes set to a well-produced orchestral disco beat. "The Ethel Merman Disco Album" is widely known and loved by bad/strange music fans, and one that lives up to the legend. 'Twas even re-issued on (now out-of-print) CD back in 2001, with a bonus track that I don't have, as I took this off my vinyl.
All the songs are lengthy "extended disco versions" (only 3 tracks on side one!) which begin with interminable kick-drum thump thump thumps, intros, and then - finally - La Merman starts singing after like a minute and half. It is so worth the wait. Merman hated disco and refused to sing over it, so after initially singing with a pianist, they took her voice and, lacking today's beatmapping technology, then tried to fit her vocal tracks over the disco backing. It sometimes sounds slightly off, a bit wobbly.
And then there's her singing: Merman was one of the last performers left from the pre-microphone days, when live theater performers had to belt out songs with operatic fervor to hit the back rows. Rendered here, it's the musical equivalent of the hammy actor "chewing the scenery." Ethel sounds like she's ready to bust a gut belting out "There's NOOOOO business like SHOOOW business!," on a track later famously sampled by Negativland. Pretty much the reason why the phrase "camp classic" was coined. I found myself snickering with glee throughout this wonderful atrocity.
1 theres no business like show business 2 everything's coming up roses 3 i get a kick out of you 4 something for the boys 5 some people 6 alexanders' ragtime band 7 i got rhythm
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view....tho compared to the '80s/'90s tape underground: - the sound quality of indie music sites like Bandcamp is usually a lot better than those hissy tapes - even if you don't buy you can listen for free - you don't have to go to the bother of sending away for items via the mail: they're right here! Go get 'em! So consider this post the equivalent of when magazines like 'Option' used to have tape reviews.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.- Convivial Cannibal "Buy The People Afford The People": An album as good as the band name; Absolutely fascinating unclassifiable L.A.-area weirdness that conjures up an air of dark esoterica by mixing live instruments with what sound like old ethnic music samples, children's music boxes played backwards, and unidentified sounds; the audio equivalent of a Joseph Cornell shadow box. Sometimes it resembles traditional music when it's just singing and guitar, but they're both buried under effects to the point of illegibility. "Avant garble" they call it. Numerous other-worldy videos and the new "Iniquitous Ubiquitous" album (check the hypnotically droning "There Are Greys Outside Your Window") are likewise recommended. Price: name your price.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.- Dr. D.R. Barclay "One Note Mixtape": I don't believe this. Some mad genius has taken every one-note guitar solo he could find from the rock era and mixed them together into two 7-minute mixes. Some I recognized (Neil Young, The Ramones) and plenty I didn't. Hilarious and utterly mental. Price: $3.
- "Roncheras" v/a: Traditional Mexican styles like the polka-esque ranchera and the melodramatic mariachi get cooked into a delicious burrito of electro, rock, experimental, even 8-bit post-modernism for a furious fiesta. Highlites include Dr. Almeja's rockin''Ek Chuac,' and Dada Ket's cartoonishly crazy 'LA Costenida.' Muy fun. Price: free. -The Hathaway Family Plot "Worry": a horrible year of illness and family deaths inspired this brief but powerful electro/noise suite. Individual tracks like "I Should Be" work well on their own, but the album is best experienced as a start-to-finish whole. - Jaw Harp Potential "My Boyfriend, Your Cat": Need a little light relief after "Worry"? Try this: three wholesome girls from Iowa who sing five simple, catchy songs on accordion, ukulele, toy piano, glockenspiel, and harp (not a 'blues harp,' an actual harp) that are cute without being overly cutesy. Better then most Beat Happening albums. Really quite wonderful. Price: free.
Oh man, I've got at least 6 more albums I was gonna review...err...think I'll wait until another "issue" of our little 'zine here, this post is getting too long. (Press 'eject.')
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Before Louis Farrakhan was the hate-mongering nut-job running The Nation of Islam, he wasn't even Louis Farrakhan. He was Louis "The Charmer" Wolcott, calypsonion. His brief show-biz stint in the mid-'50s didn't exactly pack stadiums the way The Million Man March did, so clearly the religion biz proved to be the more lucrative career choice. His music was actually pretty decent, tho. There just wasn't much to distinguish it from all the other records made to cash in on the post-Belafonte '50s calypso craze. "Is She Is, Or Is She Ain't" is the most well-known of his recordings, a parody of the then-recent phenomenon of sex-change operations! Countless religious leaders have made recordings, from the Pope on down, but I don't believe too many have touched upon this important subject. "Female Boxer" is another new one to me, in which our protagonist recounts the time his butt was kicked by, yes, a female boxer. (Actually, I believe the Pope did sing about "foxy boxers," but it was in Latin, so few knew.) Otherwise, calypso fans will recognize most of these songs as oft-recorded standards. But hey, they're still good: can't have too many versions of "Zombie Jamboree" (aka "Back To Back Belly to Belly") or "Ugly Woman," a song famously remade by Jimmy Soul in the '60s as "If You Wanna Be Happy." The rockin' version of "Hold 'Em Joe" is as good as any, and the energetic piano + percussion musical backing is fun. Charmer's voice is rarely more than adequate, tho his occasional hiccuping vocal accents are a nice touch.
As evidence that he is perhaps losing what's left of his mind, Farrakhan has embraced Scientology in recent years, encouraging members of the Nation to get themselves "audited"! As regular readers of this blog know, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard made some awful albums that we posted here within the last year or so. Farrakhan is just what Scientology needs! Next time, John Travolta and Chick Corea should forget Hubbard's terrible music and sing calypsos about transsexual zombie boxers!
The Charmer is Louis Farrakhan 1. IS SHE IS, OR IS SHE AIN'T 2. BROWN SKIN GAL 3. DON'T TOUCH ME NYLON 4. ZOMBIE JAMBOREE 5. FEMALE BOXER 6. FIRE DOWN THERE 7. UGLY WOMAN 8. DON'T LET ME MAMA KNOW 9. STONE COLD MAN 10. MARY ANN 11. HOLD 'EM JOE 12. TRINIDAD ROAD MARCH
Thanks to Count Otto Black for reminding me of this album - more of his bizarro British comedy rarities to come.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view."More" (or is it called "Soul Surfin'"?) by Denmark's trombone-toting bandleader Kai Winding is a fave thrift-store find of mine, a thoroughly unique mixture of EZ orchestra rockin' to a surf beat, and featuring the pre-Moog electronic keyboard, the Ondioline. Huh? Who came up with that combination? Perhaps it was an attempt to cross over from the youth rock market to the adult pop world and grab a potentially huge audience. If so, the plan worked - the single "More" was a big hit in 1963 and this album followed. Which is pretty unusual, as most adult pops bandleaders didn't get into the dirty world of rock'n'roll, and if they did, they'd cover a rock song in a jazz/big band style. But not here - actual electric guitars and 4/4 drumming keep it cool for the kids. The arrangement here of the surf standard "Pipeline" isn't all that radically different from the Chantay's original. Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Quite a fun album, perfect for lunar pool parties and tiki lounges, but I'm posting it today because the composer of "More," the great Italian soundtrack composer Riz Ortalani just died at age 87. Kai's instrumental version became Riz's biggest hit in the States, and countless others, from Sinatra on down, would cover "More," esp. after lyrics were added. If you buy enough EZ/lounge records from the Sixties, you will become very familiar with this haunting theme for the Italian "shockumentary""Mondo Cane.""Mondo" is the Italian word for 'world,' (the film title translates to 'A Dog's World'), but after 'Mondo Cane,' the word came to mean anything weird and sensational, e.g.: Russ Meyer's "Mondo Topless." I have Riz's original soundtracks to "Mondo Cane" and its sequel, and they're quite nice. Nothing too crazy about them. Has anyone actually seen "Mondo Cane," and is it really that weird and shocking? I kind of doubt it.
The wiki article on Kai Winding suggests that it was none other than legendary Moog-master Jean-Jacques Perrey himself performing on the Ondioline, tho Winding claims that he played it himself. I've been meaning to check out Perrey's book. Maybe the mystery is solved within it's covers...
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.WFMU is hosting a battle-of-the-bands right now thru Feb. 4, and of the three finalists, I really like the hilarious Hyemen & Metalfunkel, who do spot-on parodies of heavy-metal classics as performed by Simon and Garfunkel. Their version of Black Sabbaths'"Paranoid" is one of the funniest things I've heard lately, but they also do justice to Van Halen, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, etc. It helps that I've always like Simon and Garfunkel. Even tho I hate Paul Simon. Odd, isn't it? I guess I just really like S&G's vocal harmonies and that '60s folk-rock sound. And they were young, which makes Simon's pretensions bearable, no different from any number of other earnest college students bullshitting in the dorm room.
Unfortunately, Hyemen & Metalfunkel are currently losing to a boring mainstream rock band, so do your patriotic duty, and vote your conscience.
Speaking of metal parodies, a reader recently wrote asking if Metalachi, the Los Angeles combo who play metal classics in a Mexican mariachi style, have an album out yet. They do! When I first wrote about them, they only had a few tracks up on MySpace, but their short but very enjoyable debut album "Uno" is now available, boasting swooningly romantic, trumpet-and-strings takes on Guns 'n' Roses, Bon Jovi, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, and this Ozzie standard:
Like I was saying...Listen for free, buy if you like. This batch is loosely associated by a shared fascination with the surreal and fantastic, injecting a little much-needed magic into our world.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.- Ergo Phizmiz "Idiot": The prolific madman across the water has two more winners. This one's a generous 18 tracks of mostly instrumentals (w/some sampled vox) cobbled together out of found-sounds and whimsical instruments. "Ornidisco" is a dance track ingeniously fashioned entirely from sampled bird sound effects. "Night on The Town" is an absurd disco raver performed entirely acappella (complete with beatboxing) that's as funny as it is funky. Avant-garde, or just good ol' British eccentricity? Price: free. - Ergo Phizmiz "Music for Pleasure": "A 17 track behemoth of Ergo Phizmiz's singular take on guitar based rock'n'roll & pop music." Yep, these ramshackle constructions suggest actual rock music, sometimes in the Neil Innes or Syd Barret vein, with much Kink-y garage punk energy. Bonus points for reviving Bobby Goldsboro's '60s bubblegum gem "Little Things." Album title = truth in advertising. Price: £7.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.- Doctor Midnight "Crotch Rocket Extremities and/or Popular Culture Atrocities": What the ..? This short (12 tracks in 23 minutes), utterly unpredictable album makes as much sense as that album title. This duo comes from Alabama, not with a banjo on it's knee, but plenty of other noises: sound effects, screaming, computers, piano, marimba, guitars, and scary hillbilly voices that may be sampled, or may belong to the band members. My fave moment is when "Chocodino" almost turns into a remake of Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain," followed by 38 seconds of "There Ain't Shit On TV!" Price: free. Paul and Pierre "Eggs Benedict With Mr Wu On The Seahorse Monorail": Pierre is the man behind naive toy-pop masters Carton Sonore; this time out he's joined by Scottish warbler Paul Vickers for actual songs, but still retaining the whimsy of past projects. Acoustic instruments like musical saw and mandolin meet Casio-tronics to realize sea shanty-like sing-alongs replete with fantastical imagery. Well written, wonderfully evocative, effortlessly enjoyable. Price: €7, tho the super song "Lon Chaney" is free, and you know a song has to be good if it's about Lon Chaney. Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.-Zlata Sandor/Shaun Sandor "Band on the Moon": If you're pressed for time, here's 5 minutes of a father and his 4-year-old daughter singing about the kinds of things you would expect little girls to sing about, e.g.: party balloons, animals, and playing on the moon. C'mon, how can you not like this? Price: $1.00.
Timur and the Dime Museum "X-ray Sunsets": These Angelenos conjure up a dark carnival for accordion, ukulele, violin, and on the rollicking "Distance Of The moon," a spot of toy piano, with a bona-fide opera singer up front; I featured their amazing take on Nine Inch Nails'"Closer" here previously, but this album is all original and it's all good. Don't be surprised if David Lynch uses the dreamy doo-wop ballad "Asleep At The Wheel" in his next film. Flamboyantly theatrical without quite being campy. Recommended, even if you hate opera. Price: $7.
Tho he was hardly an indie band/ bedroom producer like the above, I still would like to point out that - holy crap! - there are now 48 Fela Kuti albums now available on Bandcamp.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view....so help me, I did it. *hangs head in shame* I recorded the entire Myron Floren "Disco Polka" album, and *chokes* am releasing it from my laboratory to an unsuspecting public. Have mercy on my damned soul!
I had a dream the other night that Elvis Presley was fronting a young, collegiate alt-rock trio called The Masters Of Logic. Elvis, in a white jumpsuit, appeared to be in his '70s Vegas era, and despite the lack of the expected brassy big band, he appeared to be acquitting himself quite nicely with this aggressive guitar/bass/drums lineup. Unfortunately, I can't recall exactly what the music was like.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Even more surreal: the fact that a Grammy was recently awarded to a man formerly of a punk group originally called Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens, who had food regularly thrown at them by audience members, and would throw up on stage.
Good gawd awmighty, PAT SMEAR won a Grammy. Smear was in The Germs, perhaps the first true hardcore punk band and certainly one of the most notorious, and I guarantee that no one in the late ‘70s thought that this guy was headed for anything other than jail or a mental hospital. Allow me to cut-and-paste: Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.“The band started when Jan Paul Beahm and Georg Ruthenberg decided they should start a band after being kicked out of University High for antisocial behaviour, allegedly for using ‘mind control’ on fellow students. They named themselves “Sophistifuck & The Revlon Spam Queens,” with Beahm (then ‘Bobby Pyn,’ and later Darby Crash) on vocals, Ruthenberg (then and later called Pat Smear) on guitar… the Germs began as an objectively pathetic musical outfit. The first single…arrived back from the pressing plant with the note, “Warning: This record causes ear cancer” printed on the sleeve by the plant staff, much to the band’s displeasure. They were supposed to appear in the Cheech And Chongmovie, Up In Smokebut were not invited back mostly due to the fact that The Germs’ anarchic performance included a full-on food fight.... Singer Darby Crash often arrived onstage nearly incoherent from drugs, singing everywhere but into the microphone and taunting the audience between songs. The other band members had similar problems, with many contemporary reviews citing collapses, incoherency, and drunken vomiting onstage."
Darby did in fact O.D. Smear spent the next decade/plus hanging around the L.A. scene until fate came a-calling, and he joined another band with a leader singer who killed himself, Nirvana. (If I was singing in a band with Pat Smear, I would be very, very nervous.) Nirvana led to the Foo Fighters, who somehow ended up recording with Sir Paul McCartney last year, who all won a Grammy. Forget the Grateful Dead, this was a long, strange trip.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Smear's a great guitarist, and his contributions to the Germs, and punk legend, are inestimable, but as I recall, after the disintegration of the Germs and his subsequent sometimes-excellent band Twisted Roots (whose stuff is in print) in the early '80s, and before his early-'90s Nirvana/MTV stardom, Smear was considered kind of a has-been, wandering thru the L.A. club scene a decidedly minor player. Even recording for the "It" label of college radio, SST Records, didn't help. I rarely recall his albums getting reviewed, airplay, or any kind of buzz. I knew a grand total of one (1) person who bought one of his albums, and that was just because, y'know, he was the guy from the Germs. I don't remember actually hearing the album.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. And now Pat's playing with, of all people, a Beatle. And not Ringo! A knighted Beatle. And he's winning Grammys. Does the Academy know that they just gave a trophy to a key figure in a scene that was (allegedly) opposed to everything the music industry stood for? Oops, heads will role! Or not - if a Beatle says it's okay, then it must be okay. I wonder how many music biz weasels will now claim that they loved punk all along. "Marvelous stuff the young people were doing."
And so Mr. Smear, we salute you, and your half-assed albums. Albums that, to their credit, often fit no known genre, and are almost punk-free. Albums that have never seen digital release (tho maybe they will now). At least he doesn't sound like he's taking himself too seriously on these four obscurities.
Pat Ruthensmear "Ruthensmear" (1988) - Amateur glam w/synths, drum machines, Smear's guitar (work that wah-wah!) and strangled vox; an odd, almost random eclecticism. "Golden Boys" is the completion of an unfinished Germs song.
The Death Folk "Deathfolk" (1990) - Acoustic duo with Gary Jacoby from the band Celebrity Skin, but hardly "folk" music; covers Queens'"'39."
Pat Smear "So You Fell In Love With A Musician..." (1992) Sounds properly grunge - his audition for Nirvana? - but hints of glam still pop thru. As usual, he sounds like he's having fun, uttering lyrics like "Wicked witch, your titties drip red lava 3-D fantasies."
The Death Folk "Deathfolk II" (1992) - No longer acoustic, but grungy glammy pop-rock. This former punk minimalist is not afraid to guitar-wank as much as any arena-rocker. "Medely" honestly isn't that far removed from Styx'"Come Sail Away." Covers The Go-Gos'"Automatic."
Confounding the naysayers who don't consider the toy piano a "real" instrument, Boston's master of toy-tronica Twink, has just released yet another album, his eighth one I believe. It is appropriately entitled "Happy Houses," as you just can't make sad music on toy pianos. (Although I'd love to see some mopey goths try, wouldn't that would be interesting?)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.At first glance this appears to be a somewhat modest effort: it's short (8 songs in a half-hour), doesn't have any gimmicks like sampled kiddie records or guest remixers that are found on prior releases, or elaborate artwork. Just a man and his toys (and electronics) simply backed by a few other cats on guitar, banjo, horn, flute, bass, and a mystery instrument called a 'playett.' But have no fear: this is some of Mr. Twink's best songwriting yet. The first two songs, "Close To Home" and "Ostrich Hop" (with an most un-childlike free-jazz sax solo) are instant Twink faves. "Gumdrop Glitter" has a '70s Moog disco feel. As the album progresses, things get more odd and experimental. Couldn't find any info on the instrument called the playett featured on the exotic waltz "Turtle Trap," but something on that song sounds like an mbira, the African thumb-piano, and something else sounds like a horn man playing a garden hose. "Interloodle" has an unidentified cartoonish flatulent sound that I really like - too bad the song's barely a minute-and-a-half long. The wacky electronics on "Crocodilly" move things into Perrey/Kingsley territory, and despite the ravey trappings of the epic "Frankentoy," I can't imagine any DJ having the nerve to play a song so festooned with clinking, clanking sound effects. Their loss, as it's one of the most ambitious things Twink has ever tried. Toy-prog?
Git tha album off of Twink's happy web-house. Click tha song title to be whisked off to DivShare land:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.What's more ridiculous than death metal? Howzabout acapella death-metal? EyeSea's "blue ten" is an entire album of Cookie Monster vocals going 'rowr rowr rowr', screams, and silences. And they don't cheat by sneaking in other sounds - there really are no other instruments. Are they even "singing" in English, or is this a guy clearing his throat for 22 minutes? Whatever it is, I was laffin'!
To the remixers and sound-collagists of the world: you're welcome.
Words fail me...a warning to the men-folk from a thoroughly eccentric (just take a look at these song titles), highly prolific Nigerian/American outsider recording artist. Not safe for work, radio airplay, or your sanity. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Words fail me...a warning to the men-folk from a thoroughly eccentric (just take a look at these song titles), highly prolific Nigerian/American outsider recording artist. Not safe for work, radio airplay, or your sanity. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
