PETER COOK RARITIES pt2: "Here Comes The Judge"

Here's a second and final blast of comedic genius from the late Peter Cook, this time from 1979 - 24 minutes of "Here Comes The Judge" (no relation to the Pigmeat Markham song, or any of those other r'n' b novelties by the same name - scroll down to 'session 211' HERE for that phenomenon). The great man making this available to us, Count Otto Black, tells us:

As a follow-up to the collected works of E. L. Wisty, I give the the EP that Peter Cook made as a response to the trial of Jeremy Thorpe in 1979. As a non-Brit, you probably don't know about this, but in its time it was the British O. J. Simpson trial, only much more fun because nobody actually died. Also, politicians and kinky sex! What's not to like? Jeremy Thorpe had until recently been the leader of the Liberal Party, the most important British political party with no chance whatsoever of winning an election (especially after this). Some years previously, a whiny, neurotic, and thoroughly unpleasant male model called Norman Scott had alleged that Thorpe had been in a homosexual relationship with him. Not only was this not the sort of thing you could possibly admit to in those days, but at the time Scott claimed that it happened, homosexuality was a criminal offense in the UK. Thorpe, a thoroughly respectable public figure who was married (to a woman), managed to brush this off as a pack of lies concocted by a seedy little creep he'd briefly known (though obviously not that well), mainly because Scott was obviously the kind of person you couldn't trust, let alone like.

And then Scott made further allegations that Thorpe, along with several of his friends, had conspired to murder him, a plot which only failed because they had no experience of serious crime, and hired a totally inept hit-man who only managed to kill Scott's dog, a Great Dane called Rinka (as a result of which the British press called the whole thing "Rinkagate"). This was a much more serious allegation, and because various people panicked and admitted that at least some of it was true, Scott was taken a lot more seriously this time. Thorpe's defense was that some of his buddies had paid huge sums of money out of their own pockets to have somebody who was inconvenient to his political career murdered, but at no point had they mentioned to him that they were even thinking of doing any such thing.

Since there was no proof either way, the jury had to decide whether the charge of conspiracy to commit murder was true or false on purely subjective grounds. The extremely pro-establishment judge did his best to emphasize Norman Scott's obvious character flaws throughout the trial while painting Jeremy Thorpe as a saint, and in his notorious summing-up, practically ordered the jury to find Thorpe not guilty. After initially being deadlocked 6-6, they eventually decided that Thorpe was innocent. Nevertheless, his career was ruined. He's still alive, but ever since he has with rare exceptions kept out of the public eye, concentrating on low-key charity work, almost as if he felt guilty about something.

Peter Cook's blistering satire of the judge's summing-up was written very quickly for the Amnesty International benefit gig The Secret Policeman's Ball, and is often regarded as the best sketch he ever wrote, though apparently it was Billy Connolly who came up with the famous line "self-confessed player of the pink oboe". The other three tracks on the subsequent EP Here Comes The Judge were written later, but the peculiar sermon is a spoof of the real sermon preached at Thorpe's local church in front of him by an absurdly sycophantic vicar who directly compared his recent sufferings with those of Jesus Christ. I think the other two tracks are self-explanatory. A comedy genius at his darkest and best - enjoy!

Peter Cook - Gay Sex Dead Dog Atrocity!

PETER COOK RARITIES pt1

By request, the private-press lounge crooner Mr. "Home" Center is back up.

Count Otto Black, our expert in silly 78 rpm oddities, has sent us another batch of wonderfulness, this time a collection of out of print rarities by British comic genius Peter Cook. Two songs from a single, the entirety of the 1965 "The Misty Mr. Wisty" album, and a couple of other leftovers, inc. a brilliant call-in radio show prank. Quite a revelation to me, as I only knew Cook from his work with Beyond the Fringe and his subsequent partnership with Dudley Moore.

Quoth the Count: "...let us consider the bizarre character E. L. Wisty who, with slight variations, featured throughout his career. He is a paranoid schizophrenic based on a mentally ill staff-member at the private school he attended as a boy. At least one psychiatrist commented after watching his performance that if somebody exhibiting those mannerisms and speech-patterns checking into his clinic, he'd unhesitatingly diagnose him as a genuine schizophrenic who couldn't possibly be faking it!

E. L. Wisty was invented for an early sixties British TV show called The Braden Beat. The host wanted a weekly guest spot for Peter Cook that was similar to the famous (and still hilarious) "Dagenham Dialogues" performed by him and Dud on their ground-breaking (but, thanks to the stupidity of the BBC, only partially preserved) show Not Only But Also. Incidentally, since you're not British, I should explain that Dagenham is a suburb epitomizing dull, shabby, working-class London. It is famous for exactly two things (other than the Dagenham Dialogues of course) - the Dagenham Girl Pipers, the only British majorettes that anyone has even vaguely heard of, and the phrase "a couple of stops short of Dagenham", meaning mentally unbalanced, since if you're traveling in a southerly direction, Dagenham is two stops after Barking.

Anyway, in the absence of Dud, that format, in which a very stupid man with delusions of brilliance (Pete) explains lofty subjects to the only man in the world more stupid than he is (Dud), couldn't be used, so a character who had been the high point of Pete and Dud's breakthrough review Beyond The Fringe was revived. Technically, that character, though never named on stage, is called Arthur Grole, and he is very similar but not identical to E. L. Wisty. Both are strange men sitting on park benches and talking nonsense in a peculiar monotone, but Arthur Grole is always talking to, or rather at, somebody else, whereas E. L. Wisty is alone and talks straight into the camera. Also, Arthur Grole's major preoccupation in life is dissatisfaction with his job, since he wanted to be a judge but didn't have the Latin for it and had to be a coal-miner instead. E. L. Wisty has no job, and apparently almost no contact with anybody else, other than his best and only friend Spotty Muldoon, whom we never meet, which, given that is covered from head to foot in terrible acne, is probably just as well.

Although these sketches were written for television, E. L. Wisy was almost entirely motionless and expressionless, and sat on a park bench staring hypnotically at the camera while he delivered his monologue, so the entire visual content of this material is basically the same as the photo on the album cover.

 

And finally, a few non-album extras comprising the only other material recorded by the character officially known as E. L. Wisty. This single reached No. 34 in the UK charts in 1965. Even though Peter Cook never could sing to save his life, the B-side is oddly poignant. The character's brief celebrity also led to him starring in several beer adverts that were aired on British TV and released as a flexidisc (remember those?). American readers way be unfamiliar with the Watney's brand. All I can say to them is: lucky old you! As mass-produced characterless British beers go, Watney's is arguably the worst of the lot, and inarguably not much better. You may have noticed Eric Idle's repeated references in the Monty Python travel agent sketch to "bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel!" This is a beer which has an exceptionally long cask-life, allowing it to be profitably sold from venues which for some reason don't sell very much of it, and nothing else going for it whatsoever. It's supremely ironic that a man who was eventually killed by alcohol helped to promote the world's worst beer in the character of a madman who was completely wrong about everything. Or is it more ironic that Watney's hired him to do it in the first place? Go figure...

Therefore, without further ado, I give you his 1965 album The Misty Mister Wisty."

Peter Cook: "The Misty Mister Wisty"

More Peter Cook rarities to come! [note to non-Brits: "spotty" means pimply]

 

Beat Writer's Got The Beat: William S. Burroughs Sings!

One of the most unlikely stars of the late '70s-to-early '90s punk/college rock days wasn't a musician at all, but a taciturn, elderly writer clad not in flannel shirts and Doc Martens, but a three-piece suit, hat, and cane. How a novelist with no musical background who began his career in the 1940s became so popular an alternative music figure that Kurt Cobaine backed him up on one of Cobain's last recordings is one of the odder, more fascinating footnotes in this otherwise heavily examined musical era.

William S. Burroughs is, of course, one of the most celebrated figures in 20th century literature due to his key participation in the "Beat" movement that essentially dragged American letters into the modern era, rejecting classical European/Shakespearean influences in an attempt to create a literature as unique to the U.S. as jazz is to American music. And, indeed, the cliche of the beatnik reciting stream-of-consciousness poetry over cool jazz is the first thing that pops to mind when considering the confluence of the Beats with music.

But Burroughs was never a beatnik.  He was a junkie and heroin dealer who accidentally shot and killed his wife, traveled thru Latin America and Morocco, helped popularize North African trance ritual music, dismantled literature via his "cut-up" method of chopping up and rearranging pages of writings, was put on trial for obscenity, saw his son go to prison, saw his son die, was gay in the pre-Stonewall days, and co-created a "dream machine" said to create somewhat hallucinatory experiences when activated.

In other words, he'd been thru some shit. By the late '70s, he was back in the States and started giving public readings in his now impossibly craggy, deep, world-weary voice.  This was to be his main source of income for the last years of his life. The downtown New York scene was receptive to both his writings and his voice, filled as it was with not only the weight and wisdom of a life you never led, but with an idiosyncratic rhythmic delivery. He left New York for Kansas in 1981, well on his way to becoming an icon of cool.

After a while, it wasn't enough to just listen to Burroughs read his own works, with increasingly elaborate musical backings, but to hire him to perform on other people's recordings. And that is what we have here: not Burroughs' own releases, but his various miscellaneous appearances on other bands' songs. Having Burroughs perform your music gave you instant hip cred, and gave a Bill a paycheck. As this article puts it, he was a rock star to rock stars. William S. Burroughs died in 1997, at age 83.

William S. Burroughs Sings

UPDATE 10/13: Also now up on ubu.web: http://www.ubu.com/sound/burroughs_sings.html

1. Star Me Kitten (with REM, from "Songs in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by 'the X-Files'" - 1996)
2. Is Everybody In? (with The Doors, reciting Jim Morrison poetry, from "Stoned Immaculate: The Music of the Doors")
3. Sharkey's Night (with Laurie Anderson, from "Mister Heartbreak" - 1983)
4. What Keeps Mankind Alive (from Kurt Weill tribute album "September Songs")
5. 'T 'Aint No Sin (1920s jazz song, performed on Tom Waits' "The Black Rider" - 1993)
6. Quick Fix (w/Ministry, "Just One Fix" b-side - 1992)
7. Old Lady Sloan (w/The Eudoras, covering a song by a Lawrence, Kansas punk band from "The Mortal Micronotz Tribute!" - 1995
8. Ich Bin Von Kopf Bis Fub Auf Liebe Eingestellt (Falling In Love Again) - Marlene Deitrich cover, from "Dead City Radio" - 1988

SILLY 78s pt3

At long last! Count Otto Black's continued spelunking into the dark, forgotten caverns of music history has resulted in another overdue (my fault, not his) collection of funny, strange, suggestive, and/or offensive audio oddities from the first half of recorded history. The Count speaketh:

"Firstly, some bizarre examples of political incorrectness from days gone by (these are nowhere near the worst). "We're Gonna Have To Slap The Dirty Little Jap" is symptomatic of a more innocent age, when we apparently thought that wars could be won by giving the enemy a jolly good spanking. There were plenty of post-WWII jingoistic propaganda records, but after Hitler, it was generally agreed that the ideal way to cope with evil dictators involves death rather than spanking.

Moving swiftly on, I give you Helen Kane, a young lady who in 1932 attempted legal action on the grounds that, since for several years prior to the cartoon she'd been singing like Betty Boop, saying "Boop-boop-be-doop!" on a regular basis, and even looked like Betty Boop, obviously she was Betty Boop, so she deserved a slice of the vast profits that mega-successful character was generating. She lost when the prosecution demonstrated that she had herself pinched her entire act from an even earlier very obscure black performer called Baby Esther, and as for alleged resemblance, Betty could equally well be said to look like the much more famous Clara Bow. This didn't stop Helen Kane from spending the rest of her career implying as heavily as she could without using the actual name that she was Betty Boop, and cutting a great many records on that basis. I include one to demonstrate what I mean.

However, she had nothing to do with the cartoon - almost all of the classic 1930s films were voiced by Mae Questal, who lived to be over 90, and was still doing the Betty Boop voice whenever it was needed right up until the end - amazingly, that's her in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. To provide a useful "Battle of the Boops" comparison, I've attached an incredibly strange record by her, which seems to be about a rag-doll who dies of cancer. Who thought this was a good idea? And if it somehow is, why aren't there any Skooby Doo AIDs records?

Continuing the theme of cartoon characters singing about death, there is, however, an Elmer Fudd road safety record! Though once again, the vocalist "Waymond Wadcwiff" is not the real voice from the cartoons (according to Wikipedia, the only famous Raymond Radcliff was a basketball player, but I think this must be a different one), so the name "Elmer Fudd" is not used - it's all rather confusing, really. Presumably that's why "wabbits" are never mentioned, and a goose is run over instead.

You may be familiar with "I've Gone And Lost My Little Yo-Yo", though this is a lesser-known version by Leslie Holmes (50% of the Two Leslies). At one point every version was banned by the BBC for being far too filthy! Then Ruth Wallis came along a few years later and obsessively carried on with the rude yo-yo theme in a way that makes Chuck Berry's notorious "ding-a-ling" sound quite innocent. So here's a trilogy of increasingly filthy yo-yo songs - how specific can a genre get?

Continuing with the mild innuendoes that seemed terribly daring at the time, the Pearl Boys discuss female absentmindedness in large hotels, and the Milt Herth Trio protests about how carelessly policemen handle fruit. But the reflections of the Deep River Boys concerning the culinary shortcomings of underage poultry are by today's standards downright creepy... I think I'd better take the curse off it with another merry and totally innocent Hadacol song completely different from the previous one - clearly the stuff was popular!

 

Just for jolly, I've added an utterly incomprehensible song about the Stellenbosch Boys, and how they coped with Germany's terrible baboon problem (or something), and of course "Take Out Your False Teeth, Daddy" - surely a neglected classic?

I also include both sides of a record which proves that Gefilte Joe and the Fish, one of the numerous one-note "comedy" acts of very dubious merit promulgated by Rhino Records, did not invent the concept of parodying popular songs in an excessively Jewish manner for comic effect. Mickey Katz & His Kosher-Jammers were doing it decades previously! They weren’t Spike Jones and his City Slickers, though Mickey Katz did play with Spike’s band for a year. He was quite prolific, and cut numerous tracks that were controversial even among other Jews, some of whom felt that in the wake of WWII, this kind of cartoonishly exaggerated Jewishness was doing them no favors. Anyway, I attach what seems to have been his greatest hit, “Yiddish Square Dance”. It’s a very lively number which may well have hilarious lyrics, though if you don’t speak Yiddish it’s hard to tell.

Wendell Hall retains his dignity and wants to know “Who Said I Was a Bum?” Meanwhile the Pearl Five’s “Golfin’ Papa” somehow manages to make golf sound naughty - and now I think about it, “niblick” does sound as though it ought to be smutty. And we can't not have another one from at least half of the Two Leslies (Leslie Holmes is the tall one with the glasses).

Moving swiftly on to Frank Marvin’s “Yodellin’ Rambling Cowboy”. The odd thing about yodeling records is that, although it’s absolutely impossible to sing about anything the slightest bit serious if you’re going to yodel in the middle, some people insisted on trying. This is the surprisingly merry tale of a misogynist psychopath who married a nymphomaniac and ended up committing murder and going to prison for life. Yodel-ay-he-hoo! And now it's time for the scratchy old Count to go back in his box..."

I once again offer my thanks to Count Otto Black (and so should you!)

SILLY 78s pt3

1. Todd Rollins Orchestra & Chick Bullock "The Boogie Man"
2. Nellie Lutcher "Chest X-Ray Song"
3. Denver Darling "The Devil And Mister Hitler"
4. Pearl Five "Golfin' Papa"
5. Bill Nettles "Hadacol Bounce"
6. Mickey Katz & His Kosher-Jammers "Haim Afen Range"
7. Helen Kane "He's So Unusual"
8. Mae Questal "I've Got a Pain In My Sawdust"
9. Leslie Holmes "I've Gone And Lost My Little Yo-Yo"
10. Ruth Wallis "Johnny Had a Yo-Yo"
11. Ruth Wallis "The New Yo-Yo Song"
12. Oscar Quam "Oscar Quam Calling Ducks"
13. Milt Herth Trio "Please No Squeeza Da Banana"
14. Pearl Trio "She Had To Lose It At The Astor"
15. Waymond Wadcwiff "The Silly Goose"
16. Leslie Holmes "The Squire's Wedding Day"
17. Josef Marais "Stellenbosch Boys"
18. Margie Day "Take Out Your False Teeth Daddy"
19. Monroe Silver "That's Yiddisha Love"
20. Deep River Boys "That Chick's Too Young To Fry"
21. Al "Jazzbo" Collins "Three Little Pigs"
22. Carlson Robison "We're Gonna Have To Slap The Dirty Little Jap"
23. Wendall Hall "Who Said I Was a Bum?"
24. Mickey Katz & His Kosher-Jammers "Yiddish Square Dance"
25. Frank Marvin "Yodellin' Rambling Cowboy"

HOW TO PICK UP GURLZ!

Hey losers! A while back I posted a "charm school" album for girls, and now it's the fella's turn. From 2000 comes this curio:

"Pheremones are in the air ... and San Francisco's nationally known spoken word/music group the Apes of God have a new CD release, How To Pick Up Girls!. The bemused recital consists of twenty-six pick-up lines (fifty-two in total) from a 1970's book The Hundred Best Opening Lines, a manual for perplexed bachelors by Eric Weber. In the background, a piano solo from an jazz instructional ear-training tape hauntingly meanders up and down various modal and diminished scales to the lonely ticking of a metronome. Synthesizer noises gurgle and glissando deep in the sonic substratum, and are later re-edited into an eleven minute musique concrete sequence called Making Love The Right Way - suggested listening for the date won by the lines once thing settle into the comfort zone."

The Apes of God - "How To Pick Up Girls"

Let me know how it works, okay, studs?

I'm still kinda on summer vacation, but the requests you-all have been sending in will be met eventually: The "Music For Weirdos" series, the '60s Mexican garage comp "Ya No Hay Beatles," The Everyday Film...I'll get to 'em all, I swear.  And more 78rpm strangeness from Count Otto Black. Gotta give you something to look forward to in life, right?

CHRISTMAS IN JULY - SILLY 78S EDITION

Count Otto Black has been sending us an amazing smorgasbord of shellac lately, including these three seasonal numbers, just in time for these hot, humid months.  The Count sez: "here's a 78 which has to be the WORST seasonal release ever! It's a sermon rather than an actual song, which is a pity, because a song with a title like "Death May Be Your Christmas Gift" would undoubtedly have been covered by the Smiths, and/or possibly Joy Division. In fact, it's so depressing that I'd better add another Xmas 78 which is a little bit more seasonal...another of Spike Milligan's Goon Show spin-off 78s, "I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas". Spike, incidentally, is playing a regular minor Goon Show character called Webster Smogpule, and his pianist (Peter Sellers) is credited as "Reuben Croucher". Merry Christmas, everybody!

SILLY 78S - CHRISTMAS

1. Unknown Creepy Preacher - Death May Be Your Christmas Gift
2. Gayla Peevey - I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas
3. The Goons - I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas


(UPDATE 7/18: I think the preacher is Rev. A.W. Nix. )

Silly 78s pt2

Count Otto Black returns!  With a further batch of awesome audio oddities and atrocities from the first half of recorded history. Perhaps even more spectacular than part one. The Count sez:

Firstly, for no reason at all, Oscar Quam the professional bird impersonator demonstrates in all seriousness that he can convincingly call crows. Why would anyone go to a lot of trouble to learn how to attract crows? Are the edible? Anyway, Oscar Quam could do it. Perhaps he was a sort of anti-scarecrow who made a living standing a long way away from the crops decoying crows? Who knows!

And now for something completely different. I haven’t the slightest idea who Mister Goon-Bones was, except that he plays a mean set of spoons! And it’s not often that you encounter a band consisting of spoons, piano, banjo and organ.

Moving swiftly on, Irving Aaronson and his Commanders go very convincingly insane over “Wimmin Aaah!”,  and Kenny Roberts telling us how "She Taught Me To Yodel" because - well, just listen to him! - why was a vocal style this bizarre every popular, however briefly???

Ever onwards and upwards - here's a very ancient recording from the Van Eps Banjo Orchestra, who give us "My Hindoo Man" - obviously nothing evokes the Mystic East like massed banjos and loud mysterious scraping noises. And we can't not have another one from at least half of the Two Leslies (Leslie Holmes is the tall one with the glasses).

Moving swiftly on, the Milt Herth Trio inform us for no particular reason that "The Monkeys Have No Tails In Pago Pago", and in a throwback to a much more innocent age, George Beaver solemnly explains that he likes to ride a camel because it goes bumpity-bumpity-bump.

"The Laughing Policeman" is sung by, of all people, Paul Robeson! (Given his commitment to fighting for the rights of black Americans, I can't help feeling that there may be a certain amount of intentional irony involved...)

The original version of a record which I presume must once have been a big hit, since it was parodied by Spike Jones as "Hawaiian War Chant". I don't speak Hawaiian, but it sounds to me as though it wasn't terribly serious to begin with, and may not be in any language at all. [Indeed, every other Hawaiian and exotica record of the '50s had a version of 'Hawaiian War Chant' - MrF]

 

And another one from the Two Leslies. This was a big hit for them, and spawned a catch-phrase that was still around as late as the 1980s, when on the occasion of the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands War, British tabloid The Sun printed the magnificent headline "Umpa, Umpa, Stick It Up Your Junta!"

"You Gotta Go Owww!" was the first and most obscure of the singles released as Goon Show spin-offs, and was sung by Spike Milligan.

And of course the song with possibly the best title ever: "Who put the benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?"

Silly 78s pt2

1. Leslie Sarony - Ain't It Grand To Be Blooming Well Dead (Side B)
2. Rex Stewart - B.O. Blues
3. Nora Bayes - Cheer Up, Eat, & Grow Thin
4. Mr. Goon-Bones - Crazy Bone Rag
5. Basin Street Six - Everybody Loves That Hadacol (Side Two)
6. G. H. Elliott (The Original Chocolate-Coloured Coon) - The Ghost Of The Yodelling Coon
7. Helen Kane - Hug Me, Kiss Me, Love Me
8. Mr. Goon-Bones - I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles
9. George Beaver - I Love to Ride a Camel
10. Paul Robesonn - The Laughing Policeman
11. Harry Champion - Little Bit Of Cucumber
12. Al "Jazzbo" Collins - Little Red Riding Hood
13. Milt Herth Trio - The Monkeys Have No Tails In Pago Pago
14. Van Eps Banjo Orchestra - My Hindoo Man
15. Ozie Waters - Old Man Atom
16. Oscar Quam - Oscar Quam Calling Crows
17. Three Earbenders - The Parade Of The Little White Mice
18. Kenny Roberts & The Pinetoppers - She Taught Me How To Yodel
19. Andy Iona & His Islanders - Ta Hu Wa Hu Wa I
20. Helen Kane - To Have You
21. Two Leslies - Umpa, Umpa (Stick It Up Your Jumper)
22. Bertha Willmott - Up Aroun' The Ole North Pole
23. Harry "The Hipster" Gibson - Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?
24. Irving Aaronson and His Commanders - Wimmin Aaah!
25. Count Jim Moriarty - You Gotta Go Owww!

Part 3 coming soon.
Much thanks once again to Count Otto Black!

The Conceptual Crank-Call of "Conversations (Revisited)"

As I wrote last year: "Brandon Locher's "Conversations 2012" is a near-20 minute tour de force that does for prank phone calls what "The Velvet Underground & Nico" did for rock 'n' roll, uncovering unexpected depth and scope in what had been dismissed as childish nonsense.

What he basically did was call a store in a Johnstown, PA shopping mall and then did not speak. The "Hello? Hello" etc. response was recorded and then played to another shopkeeper in the same mall. Then their bewildered response was recorded and played for whoever answered the phone at yet another store in the same mall, and so on, until this game of tag went throughout the mall.
It does what a crank call is supposed to do - makes ya laff! - but there's much more going on here. It's ingeniously constructed, a well-edited piece of sound-collage, if nothing else."

Locher's back with another epic of prog-prank, 15 minutes longer then the last "conversations," and we're not in a shopping mall anymore. Just random folks are the unwitting stars rockin' the mic here. The first couple minutes are just people saying "Hello?," but the random collisions eventually become fascinating, thought-provoking, hilarious, and, when the really ancient-sounding old ladies are talking, kinda poignant.
I could listen to this all day - but bursting into laughter doesn't look so cool at the office.

Brandon Locher "Conversations (Revisited)"

ALBUM DU JOUR #8: ...To The Ridiculous

There's just no way you can dismiss today's music scene as not being as good as that of some mythical golden-age. I have so many new releases to cover, I split them up into last months' "From The Sublime..." and today's "...To The Ridiculous." The first batch was largly instrumental avant-gardsey-ness, but this batch, tho just as experimental, is more in the whacked-out weirdo spazzy song-form end of things. Most of these albums are not downloads, but are for sale - makes great gifts! 

M4M...To The Ridiculous

1. F.K. Dreyer & Mark Recording Co. "Intro/Aries":  from the album - and, yes, there's a whole album of this - "Your Dogs Horoscope"
2. Michael McDaeth "Happy Just To Be Happy": a few tracks here from Seattle's McDaeth, and his 7-count 'em-SEVEN disk album, "The Socket Set." It's ramshackle one-man-band rock, sometimes a little too loose, sometimes dead-on in a Half-Japanese-for-the-Nirvana-generation kinda way.
3. Looping Jaw Harp Orchestra "Tuba for Klaus (Tribute to Klaus Nomi)": Vienna, Austria unleashed this mad crew of jews harps as the lead instruments, joined by the likes of steel drum, marimba, kalimba, accordion, etc.  No normal Instruments! The entirety of their latest album "Universal Language" is great. Just the fact that they dedicate a song to Klaus Nomi proves their awesomeness.
4. The Chewers "Burn It Down": Another fantastic album- I reviewed their first one, and the new one "Chuckle Change And Also" is even better; low-key Beefheart/Residents influences filtered thru a Southern low-life sensibility, with lyrics examining a side-show's worth of human grotesqueries. Get it.
5. The Toilet Bowl Cleaners "I Forgot to Wipe My Bum": one of 2 tracks off their album "Songs About Poop, Puke & Pee." The fact that such an album even exists is amazing; the fact that the Toilet Bowl Cleaners have many albums, all focused on the subject of human waste, and that some of the songs are actually good, is nothing short of mind-boggling. The main toilet-bowl cleaner sez that he's released 8000 songs in the last 4 years.  That's kinda prolific. Wanna hear 86 songs about dead animals?
6. Kitschstortion "Cutie Honey" - Another returning guest. The Kitschstortion release featured on these pages last year used the bizarre vocal synth gizmo the Vocaloid to dazzling effect. This is from the new EP "How To Have Boring Dreams"
7. Michael McDaeth "She's Just A Torso"
8. Flossie and the Unicorns "Jr. Troopers Are Go": 37-seconds of the album "LMNOP."
9. People Like Us "Seven Degrees": Another super bit of sound-collage pop from this British master (mistress?) of the form; the new one is "This Is Light Music." Sawing sound-effects (not musical saw) adds percussive zeal to samples of cheeseball '60s EZ instros, Morricone themes, and girl groups. I could leave this one on repeat for very long times.
10. 'Church On The Move' - Dad Life: I once knew a guy whose parents lived down the street from Snoop Dog in a thoroughly suburban neighborhood, far, far away from South Central LA. They'd see the infamous 'gangsta' shopping, taking his kids to the park, etc. This funny rap song about everyday domesticity really is 'keeping it real.'
11. Michael McDaeth "From the Midwest" 
12. The Electric Grandmother "Mr Clyde": Not sure if a 'sitcom-core' band is really something the world needs, but this alleged ode to Bill Cosby's character is an agreeable bit of bizarre pop.
13. The Chewers "The Fat Man"
14. Looping Jaw Harp Orchestra "Wabba Dubu"
15. Toilet Bowl Cleaners "Gotta Poop, Puke & Pee (Simultaneously)"
16. Bobby & Paul "DMT9": these guys are from the late great electronic noise band Margaret Raven.  They sent me this a year or two ago and I forgot about it.  Sorry, guys, it's good stuff!

Music For Saw Blades, Wood Planks, and Rolling BBs Around in a Dish

 I am woefully behind in heppin' you-all to the latest and greatest releases awaiting your cold cash. I have so many samples of new releases that I'm splitting them into the avant-classical/experimental/electronic/weird-instruments genres (today's batch) and the novelty/outsider/wacko pop/rock end of things (next post). From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Our universities are still producing music majors who move into composing, teaching, conducting, etc. and labels like Innova and Ravello are still promoting them. I have no academic music background, but this collection of the latest works from composers far beyond the classical mainstream sounds great to me. Not exactly chilled/ambient, but, as it's mostly instrumental and often atmospheric and emotional, great stuff for waking to in the morning, or for evening's contemplation with a cocktail. Tho we start off with  a bit of a bang:

1. David Kechley "Design And Construction - III. Cross Cuts": Percussion!  The aptly-named "Colliding Objects" album features not only pitched percussives, but just about anything else that can be struck with a stick.  The title track "requires marimba, cymbals, large drums, tam tam, pitched gongs, crotales, woodblocks and exotic bells." The piece featured here utilizes circular saw blades, and wooden planks cut to different lengths.

2. Andrew Violette's "Sonatas For Cello and Clarinet" is as moody as it's cover - tracks with names like "Mournful Bells" offer truth in advertising. The piece also boasts such non-standard classical music oddities as a cha-cha, but what really grabbed me was the dreamy piano that came in at 1:30 of "Grazioso leggiero." It's what I imagine Alice's trip to Wonderland must have sounded like.

3. McCormick Percussion Group "With Intensity": Awright, more percussion! The title piece of the McCormick's new album, "Concerti for Piano with Percussion Orchestra" is 15 minutes of variations on an oddly sentimental, but gorgeous melody. It's as old-fashioned as you can get for a piece for piano and nine percussionists. Part one is included here, but all three movements are, well, sublime.

4. Jeffrey Weisner's album "Neomonology" is bass-ically just upright acoustic bass. "The compositional process for Armando Bayolo’s 'Mix Tape' began with Weisner sending a mix of his favorite tunes to Bayolo, who then reworked them with pop and rock favorites of his own." I can't tell what the original sources are (maybe they were changed due to copyright issues?) but I dig this. It could have been the bass part to something out of Glass' "Einstein On the Beach."  Elsewhere on the album, Weisner delves into micro-tonal territory.

5, 7. We now move completely out of any recognizable musical traditions with two short excerpts from Ulrich Mertin & Erdem Helvacioglu's "Planet X." Were this the '70s, the concept album about the arrival of a mysterious planet of hostile aliens would have been told with corny lyrics and a histrionic singer. Fortunately, today we get pure abstract electronica, along with something called a GuitarViol.

6. The title track of Yvonne Troxler's "Brouhaha" album, features violin, cello, and ball bearings being rolled around in three glass bowls. Cool! Elsewhere, Troxler and the 11-person Glass Farm Ensemble work their strings, horns, electric guitar and, again, plenty percussion into a variety of pleasingly dissonant (possible micro-tonal) shapes, inspired by the noise of New York City, and, on another track, meteorites. The meteorite piece is a good 'un, sounding like it's performed entirely on pitched plastic cups. Lots of variety and invention - one of my fave albums of this bunch.

7. Barry Schrader's "The Barnum Museum" is, like "Planet X," an electronic concept album, and this concept is so rad that the booklet that comes with the CD is at least as interesting as the music - a phantasmagorical visit to PT Barnum's 1800s "museum," where every room in the enormous mysterious building contains another enigma, or seemingly real-life myth, from mermaids to flying carpets, to things best left unexperienced. Behold! The Chinese Kaleidoscope.

8. Harry Partch's "Bitter Music" is one of my Albums Of The Year - a 3-disk collection of the legendary gay/ homeless/ hobo/ micro-tonal musical instrument inventor/ writer/ outsider /genius (phew!) It's mostly spoken-word, but hey, it's the journals of a Depression-era hobo "riding the rails" - illegally hopping on freight trains criss-crossing the country in search of work, all the while virtually re-inventing music. Reading from his journals is KPFK radio presenter, and founder of the Micro-Fest annual music festival John Schneider, who also plays some mean guitar, custom-made to Partch's bizarre specifics. This is one of the more musical, as opposed to text-heavy tracks: Just in time for winter, it's "December, 1935 - Night. Four black walls."

M4M Sampler: From The Sublime...

I have just done your holiday shopping for you. You're welcome. Coming soon: 'M4M Sampler: ...To The Ridiculous'

Devil's Music: The Satanic Panic Paranoia of Pastor Gary Greenwald

Anyone who was around in the 1980s, esp. music fans, remembers well the 'Satanic Panic' that swept that era, at least in America (did this happen elsewhere?). Apart from ruining lives by claiming that perfectly innocent people were killing children on Satanic altars (despite that fact that not one corpse was ever found), crazy fundies also waged war against pop music, seeking hidden and not-so-hidden messages from the Evil One hisself. They analyzed lyrics and album covers, and played records backwards, claiming that 'subliminal messages' effected human behaviour.  I wish humans were that easy to manipulate.  We could put on backwards messages saying: "Don't murder. Don't wage war. Stop watching 'American Idol' and listening to crap music." And the world would be a better place.

Orange County, CA pastor Gary Greenwald got a lot of mileage out of this hysteria, selling the sermon/lecture tape presented here, as well as appearing on tv. A friend of mine back in my school days videotaped one such appearance, invited us all over to watch, and we had a regular Prince of Darkness par-teee. Oh! how we joked about it for ages.  Not only did it not scare me off pop music, I remember thinking that the clip he played from "Animals" was pretty cool. Pink Floyd sez: thanks for the free publicity, Pastor Greenwald!

You had to have a good imagination to find these allegedly hidden messages. They'd play something backwards that supposedly said "Worship Satan, kill yourself, don't vote for Reagan," but all it sounded like to me was "Wurp-nya glurp, wobwob, yob rulb." Towards the end of part 1 of the tape and the beginning of part 2 you'll hear what happens when they played some Christian records backwards!

Apart from the unexpected nostalgia blast this tape gave me, there was another eye-opening moment. I realized: hey, that's where DJ Loberdust got the sample for his classic mashup "It's Fun to Smoke Dust (Queen vs Satan)"! I maintain that it really sounds like the backwards Freddy Mercury is saying "It's HARD to smoke marijuana," not "It's fun..." But that of course, would turn it into an anti-drug song, ruining the pastor's point.

Pastor Gary Greenwald: Rock a Bye Bye Baby 1
Pastor Gary Greenwald: Rock a Bye Bye Baby 2

Part 2 gets cut off, but he's just yammering on about how eeeeevil Jim Morrison was.  Thanks again to windy - you are truly doing the lord's work.

Hey Gals! Still Single? Go To 'Charm School'!

Gurlz nowadays, look at em!  Swearing, tattoos, wearing men's trousers instead of purty dresses.  Bring back the charm school, I sez! Like what Bess Rothman used to do in the '50s and '60s: have girls walk around with books on their heads so that they could learn to move gracefully, like proper ladies.  As Miss Rothman's authoritative male announcer sez on her "Charm With Cents" record:

"Poor posture habits might even be keeping YOU from getting dates.  Or be the reason your husband is looking to trimmer, slimmer figures."

This is one of my all-time favorite spoken-word records.  It's an amazing time-capsule of the pre-Women's Lib era, as well as an entertaining production, what with it's lush piano music, and occasional use of dramatic echo on the announcer's voice.  I've used it in sound collages, mash-ups, and dj mixes from the moment I bought it for a buck or so at a garage sale in the '90s. And it's a good thing I did buy it then, because I certainly couldn't afford it now. It's one of my secret weapons, but now I pass it on to you, dear Maniacs. And ladies, when you nab Prince Charming, remember who to thank, 'nkay?


Bess Rothman's Charm With Cents

1. Intro
2. Importance of Speech
3. Visual Poise
4. Theory of Color

The Conceptual Crank-Calls of "Conversations"

Brandon Locher's "Conversations 2012" is a near-20 minute tour de force that does for prank phone calls what "The Velvet Underground & Nico" did for rock 'n' roll, uncovering unexpected depth and scope in what had been dismissed as childish nonsense.

What he basically did was call a store in a Johnstown, PA shopping mall and then did not speak. The "Hello? Hello" etc. response was recorded and then played to another shopkeeper in the same mall. Then their bewildered response was recorded and played for whoever answered the phone at yet another store in the same mall, and so on, until this game of tag went throughout the mall.

It does what a crank call is supposed to do - makes ya laff! - but there's much more going on here. It's ingeniously constructed, a well-edited piece of sound-collage, if nothing else. It's also a snapshot of corporate retail culture - jeez, the long greetings they make these poor kids say when they answer the phone! 

Then there's the fact that no-one answering the phone knows that they're speaking to a recording.  Everyone thinks that they're having a real conversation.  Between guffaws, Mrs Fab said to me that this is somewhat of an illustration of the cold-reading method that con-artists use to convince suckers that they have psychic powers, based on the fact that people generally say and act in very limited, predictable ways, even tho we like to think that we are very free-thinking, unique individuals.

Best of all - it's really funny. Listen/download here:

Brandon Locher "Conversations 2012"

Exotic Sounds of Tiki Gardens

Here we are, back from vacation, ready to...go back on vacation. So let's warm up these darkest depths of winter with one of the most expensive exotica albums ever. Yep, this one goes for hundreds of dollars on ebay, and I have no idea why. For one thing, it's not a music album so much as a tourist souvenir record, complete with nerdy narration. As such, it's a fascinating time-travel back to '60s kitsch America, but the one-man organ band ain't exactly on the order of Les Baxter's complex arrangements (tho Princess Carloa's "Hawaiian Wedding Song" is beautifully sung). Tropical birds, waterfalls, ocean waves, and a volcano also make guest appearances.

Florida's Tiki Gardens was built in 1963. Alas, it was sold in 1990 and demolished - just before the tiki revival.

Exotic Sounds of Tiki Gardens
includes: "Torch Lighting Ceremony," "Selected Sounds of Tiki Gardens," "Polynesian Fantasy Theme Song ."

BIZARRO CLOWN JAZZ

Jazz legend Charles Mingus needs no introduction, and if you don't know the name of writer Jean Shepherd, you probably know of his works, e.g. the 1983 film "A Christmas Story." None of which will prepare you for this 12 minute hunk of twisted circus jazz and dark humor, the kind of spoken word/music surrealism that Joe Frank does, but this is from 1957. From Mingus' album of the same name, prepare thyself for..."The Clown":

The Warhol Tapes

The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh put out a book that included a CD of excerpts from Warhol's private audio tape collection. The album is narrated by John Giorno, the poet who starred in some of Warhol's early films.*

Warhol used to carry tape recorders with him everywhere, and the Warhol museum has thousands of hours of 'em. This is but a wee sample, but a fascinating one, featuring goodies like a raw Velvet Underground jamming on "I'll be Your Mirror" with Nico, and some songs I don't recognize; Andy discussing a commissioned portrait of a guy with a hard-on that has never been exhibited in public; a campy Pope Ondine; a no-nonsense Edie Sedgewick; a Man Ray photo session; Holly Woodlawn on why it's a pain to be a drag queen; and a discussion of art featuring famous people's private parts. Yes, Mick Jagger and Studio 54 are here, but we also go shopping with Warhol at a grocery store. As Andy would say, "Oh, gee!"

The Andy Warhol Museum

The book/CD is way out of print and going for crazy sums on Amazon: $160 is a bit out of my price range. There is one (1) copy in the entire L.A. County Library system, and it's in the "closed stacks," meaning a librarian has to retrieve it for you and you can't take it out of the library. So I had to bring my wife's laptop to the library at a later date, they sat me in a special section, and I loaded in and copied the CD. Dang, the things I do for you people. Send me booze and chocolates! Remember me in your will!


*But I know Giorno for the boss albums he put out in the late '70s/'80s on his own label that featured everyone from Laurie Anderson and William Burroughs to The Butthole Surfers. Good stuff.

STAR TREK FAN BANDS: NOT NEARLY AS BAD AS ONE WOULD THINK

(Vote for "M4M Idol"! You've got 'til Oct. 6.)

A Klingon death-metal band. Just think about the sheer awesomeness of that concept.

"Trekkies 2" is a 2004 documentary about the most extreme 'Star Trek' fans, produced and hosted by, of all people, Bing's granddaughter Denise Crosby. The soundtrack album features some funny bits of dialogue from the film, a few soundtrack cues, and lots of entertaining fan songs. Somehow Fred Schneider of the B52s ended up on here as well. Maybe he's a Trekkie? Wouldn't be too surprising.

As for the musical acts, who pretty much only perform at 'Trek'/sci-fi conventions, Warp 11 are quite good in that Descendants/Bad Religion/Green Day-style of melodic punk. "Everything I Do, I Do With William Shatner" really is as good as it's title. No Kill I: The Next Generation (yep, that's the band's name) make a great Devo-ish New Wave ruckus. Ash Productions are two charming teenage girls. Reminding us of Trek fan history, Leslie Fish does it old school: a solo acoustic "filk" (sci-fi folk) tune. And then there's death-metalers Stovokor, who not only dress up as Klingons, but they sing in the Klingon language.And if you ain't down with that, well, pally, you have landed on the wrong blog.

I don't know much about 'Trek" beyond watching the original series ("TOS" in Trek talk) as a kid, but it's inside nature is what I like about this stuff. Fan music, like song-poems, make me realize how generic most music is. Frank Sinatra couldn't have sang about "Star Trek" (or what his favorite color is, or who he supported for President) because he had a general audience, so we just got lots of love songs since, presumably, that's a human universal. So it's fascinating to me to hear people singing passionately about something very specific. They can only exist in the rarefied world of fellow fans, or, in the case of song-poems, they just put out tiny pressings of private recordings. They don't have to worry about what the music biz (even the "indie" end of it) thinks.

Trekkies 2 The Official Soundtrack

1. Since I Was Zero - Denise Crosby 2. Beam Me Up - Fred Schneider 3. The Worst Time To Call - Gabriel Koener 4. Italy Theme - Billy Sullivan 5. Channeling Roddenberry - Karl Miller 6. Red Alert - Warp 11 7. A Girl Came - Brian Dellis 8. Everything I Do, I Do With William Shatner - Warp 11 9. We're Niners - Michael Leon 10. Boldly Going - No Kill I: Deep Space Nine 11. Extremities - Gabriel Koemer 12. Vulcan Mind-Meld - No Kill I: Deep Space Nine 13. Low Frequencies - Jason Lewis 14. For The Glory Of Qo'nos - Stovokor 15. Klingon Santa Claus - Denise Crosby 16. Life In Exile - Stovokor 17. My Rank Is Commander - Renee Morrison 18. Arkansas Theme - J.J. Holiday 19. Ever Hear Of Filking? - Denise Crosby 20. The Expendable Guy (Live) - Ash Productions 21. A Typo - Kathleen Sloan 22. Banned From Argo (Live) - Leslie Fish And Friends 23. What's Normal - Dave Smith 24. No Kill I Theme Song (Live) - No Kill I 25. Auk - Jean Whitehead 26. Tranya (Live) - No Kill I 27. Remain Calm - Allen Maxwell 28. Data And The Beta (Live) - No Kill I: The Next Generation 29. Starbase Dentist - Denise Crosby 30. We Are The Borg (Live) - No Kill I: The Next Generation 31. It's Just Good - Jon Garrison 32. Germany Theme - Billy Sullivan 33. Ethan's Aliens - Ethan Philips 34. Beam Me Up (Instrumental Reprise) - Fred Schneider 35. Lame Reality - Ward Young

"Get some haircuts on your kids! Teach 'em some decent music!"

(Vote for "M4M Idol"! You've got 'til Oct. 6.)

This nearly hour-long sermon starts off nicely enough, before we get to juicy quotes concerning: dirty stinkin' hippie beatniks! The Communist conspiracy! 15 minutes in we get to hatin' on The Beatles and rock music. "DIRTY FILTHY VILE ROCK FESTIVALS...are bent on destroying America." Hey, botanists! We learn about how rock music kills plants - it's been scientifically proven! He recites almost all the lyrics to "Back in the USSR" and "White Rabbit" ("Feed your head! Feed your head!"). He pronounces Bob Dylan's name "Bobby DIE-lin" and Phil Ochs "Phil Oh-cha," and screams about LSD. First time I've heard a preacher quoting Frank Zappa.

Communism did fall - clearly it was no match for Pastor Jack's awesomeness. Sound collagists/mashup producers...start your samplers!

sermon by Pastor Jack Hyles

His "Satan's music" page has lotsa good readin': "The Jonas Brothers—Satanic to the Core!!!," "Country Music Television (CMT) is of the Devil," and "Miley Cyrus' Supports Immoral Rights, Corrupts the Bible, and Works to Destroy America!"

(Long hair and sandals are evil? Isn't that how Jesus dressed? Damn hippie liberal...)

God bless windy for the tip.

VINYL-PALOOZA #3: The Complete Cockatiel Training Album

As we continue our all-month thrift-store record binge......Today's album was supposed to be played for your pet bird. It would listen to the repetitious tracks and start to imitate them, whistling and talking just like the record. Side one is nothing but unaccompanied whistling of short song fragments, repeated for three minutes apiece. Side two is great if you want your bird to talk like a bored, unimaginative phone-sex operator. The most annoying album ever made??!?!?!?

Actually, the whistling is well done - it is, after all, by Muzzy Marcellino, one of the biggest whistling stars of his day, back when there was such a thing as a "whistling star." The guy even did the bird calls at Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room."

Did anyone ever buy one of these records for the purpose for which it was created, and not just as a source of goofy samples? Do they actually work?

The Complete Cockatiel Training Album

Whistled Tunes
• Pop Goes the Weasel
  
• Charge - Wolf Whistle
• Dixie
• Star Spangled Banner
• Oh Susanna
• Race Track Call
• Beautiful Dreamer

Spoken Word
• Hello Baby
• I Love You
• Hello Baby, I Love You
• Hey, Good Lookin’
• Want to Play With Me?
  
• Hey, Good Lookin’, Want to Play With Me?
• Hey, Good Lookin’, I Love You, Want to Play With Me?

Thanks to windbag!

FORBIDDEN 45s!! (windbag edition)

Last year, Otis Fodder asked me to put together a guest-dj mix for his late, lamented radio show Friendly Persuasion. I decided to go thru my boxes of (mostly) old 7 inch records and put together a thing called FORBIDDEN 45s!! And since Our Man in Salt Lake City, windbag (who has shared so much awesomeness with us before) sent us a mind-boggling assortment of 7" platters, I'm calling this:

FORBIDDEN 45s!! (windbag edition)

So much here to warm the heart of any Maniac: song-poems, disco atrocities, singing children, singing animals, exercise records, rap novelties, hillbillies, more song poems, angry Chipmunks, Jane Fonda talking dirty, and an enchanted one-man polka puppet-show orchestra.
1. Bobbi Blake - Rock Rock Beat (Ms. Blake was one of the most-recorded singers of the MSR song-poem factory; this "rocker" boasts such money-well-spent lines as "you're nobody's patsy/so hop in a taxi")
2. Luigi's World's Largest One Man Band - Anaconda Polka (major, major discovery here, folks - the only thing I can find about this guy is from this book about the bars of Montana; read that link and be amazed; anyone else got anything on this guy?)
3. Susan Carroll Presents - Waistline and Tummy Exercises (from an ep called "Milady, Your Figure!")
4. Dick Kent - Smiling Farmer-The President (this bewildering ode to Jimmy Carter is one of the best song-poems EVER; to quote Rudy Ray Moore, "I ain't lyin'!")
5. The Hartz Mountain Master Radio Canaries - Pizzicato Polka (real live birdies tweating along with peppy organ and xylophone)
6. Major Bill Smith with Zane and Hogan - Freddy The Disco Frog (minimal-synth disco novelty: Suicide meets Rick Dees?! Oh, and Major Bill Smith was a successful record producer in the early '60s who later claimed that Elvis was alive and he had a recent taped conversation to prove it)
7. Ira Cook - What Is A Girl? (this 1958 side spends more time complaining about little girls than speaking their praises)
8. Klute - Special Exploitation Lobby Record featuring Jane Fonda Dialogue
9. The Hartz Mountain Master Radio Canaries - Humoresque
10. Bill Nettles and His Dixie Blue Boys - God Bless My Darling He's Somewhere (In Viet Nam) (I'm assuming that this craggy-voiced country singer is calling his SON "darling"...uh, right?)
11. Susan Carroll Presents - Thigh and Can-Can Exercise
12. Dick Kent - Cozy Doe (another most-unrockin' rock-n-roll song-poem: "Come on jive, get alive/'cause the clock is at five")
13. Luigi's World's Largest One Man Band - Billings Polka
14. Fred Carson - This Is Not The Time To Cry (This song-poem's author worries about crime, and wants guys to act like real men. Or something like that.)
15. The Hartz Mountain Master Radio Canaries - Mexican Dance
16. The Curbstones - Scrumpdillyishus Land
17. Dick Kent - She Thumbed A Ride
18. The Chipmunks - I Ain't No Dang Cartoon (the b-side to their version of "Achy-Breaky Heart" that was the hidden "bonus" track on a previous windbag comp "Songs of the Sewer;" Alvin sounds rather cranky and defensive here)
19. Ira Cook - What Is A Boy
20. The Hartz Mountain Master Radio Canaries - Beautiful Blue Danube
21. Gene Marshall - Not Owned (Hey, it's Gene Marshall! The guys who sang all those Richard Nixon song-poems! This isn't one of 'em.)
22. Susan Carroll Presents - Duck Walk and Leg Exercise
23. Fat Boys w/Chubby Checker - The Twist (Yo Twist) (This hip-hop novelty actually made it to #16 on the US charts)
24. Zane and Hogan - Studio 54 (This disco instrumental, the b-side to "Freddy The Disco Frog," is a complete spazz-attack.)
25. Bobbi Blake - Who Played House With You? (weird sci-fi keyboard sounds on this song-poem)
26. Bill Nettles and His Dixie Blue Boys - Got A Lot Of Lovin' To Do (this almost-rockbilly toe-tappin' flip of "God Bless My Darling" is impressively energetic considering that he died shortly after recording it.)
27. The Hartz Mountain Master Radio Canaries - An Artists Life
28. Harry Brooks - False Words and False Kisses (another song-poem)

Needless to say, another great big thankyoooo to windy.