I'm sure we all have our own favorites, but my pick for best cover of Sisqo's ubiquitous 1999 hip-hop hit "The Thong Song" for antique-sounding music box and theremin would have to be the one by British duo Eccentronic. It's short, maybe too short (not to be confused with the rapper Too Short, har har), funny, and really quite nice. One of those audio anomalies that shouldn't exist in our universe, much less work as well as it does. It's a free download:
Speaking of audio anomalies, can someone explain why I was driving down the freeway yesterday evening listening to the radio when a robo-voice came thru my speakers telling me that the Vermont off-ramp was in two miles...and I don't have GPS?!
Alen Robin, a comic with a droll, very nasal voice, took the Buchanan & Goodman "Flying Saucer" concept - intercutting found recordings with original comedy - and applied it to political speeches. His "Welcome To The LBJ Ranch" hit the top of the pops in the mid '60s, and can be found in approximately 84% of American thrift-stores.
This album continues the concept, with American politicos Humphrey, Thurmond, Rockefeller, Lindsay, Nixon, LBJ, Agnew, Buckley, Reagan, and Daley finding their voices ripped out of their original context, now making various bizarre and neurotic statements to Robin, playing their psychiatrist. It's still quite funny and clever, even if you don't know much about the speakers. Even more impressive: it's recorded live. Not sure how he did it in the days before laptop samplers. Maybe he had all the voices, and pauses allowing for him to speak, pre-recorded on a long tape. If so, his timing's amazing.
The above review was taken from my review of another Alen Robin album I posted few years back, with the names of of the sampled parties changed. There is one difference with this album, tho - the groovy psych rock of Billy Mure that abruptly cuts in and out of the funny faux-interviews.
Both sides of this album are pretty short (side two's only ten minutes long) so you just get two tracks here, one for each side:
We've written about The Boston Typewriter Orchestra a couple of times before, but it's been a few years since we last checked in with them, and, as there is some crazy shit going down in Boss-Town right now, it seemed like a good time to think good things about that city and dig the BTO's latest free download single...which is already two years old (sorry, I'm not always right on the beam.) Again, this quartet amazes me with their propulsive percussion performed entirely on obsolete office equipment. Get it here:
The recent news about the wack-job Elvis (and others) impersonator sending politicians envelopes laced with deadly ricin reminded me of the pioneer of this genre, Robert Alberg. When we wrote about him some years ago, he was being sentenced to five years' probation, mental-health treatment and placement in a group home, and his album was no longer available, so I posted it. Incredibly, he's back, selling both his original collection, and a new one. And he sounds even worse than he did on his miserable first album (as you can see, he isn't looking too hot either). Still, let's hope he sticks to singing/song-writing, and doesn't go back to ricin-cooking.
"Purple Amethyst," available thru Amazon and iTunes, is ten "songs" of lethargic, monotone vocals; obsessive/compulsive lyrics (about sand, beaches, rocks); and atonal guitar "playing" that makes Jandek's sound like Eric Clapton. Need I tell you that this is outsider-music gold?
The videos of Alberg's young protege, Kevin Curtis, are striking in their banality - he's just some guy singing over karaoke tapes, occasionally adopting ludicrous fake mustaches. He gets paid to do this stuff? Jeez, I could do that. Curtis needs to get together with Alberg, so he can learn a thing or two about originality. They could cover "House of the Ricin Sun." Or Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Ricin." I got a million of 'em , folks!
Back in the Jurassic era of the internet, the year 2000, L.A. radio personality April Winchell started putting up mp3s of bad/strange/funny music and audio - an early music-blog, if you will. Readers and listeners started sending in more and more tracks, resulting in a remarkably large library of unprecedented awesomeness. Easy to take for granted now, but at the time, it was a truly mind-boggling resource for us weird-music freaks. It's been a few years, but it's all back up now:
Don't think she's added much since, but if you weren't there back in the day, you've got a lot of catching up to do. Much thanks to Ms. Winchell for re-opening the archives. And if any of you-all have a diaper/baby fetish, and would like a hypnosis tape to help you wet your bed, you now know where to go.
(Speaking of re-ups, RIAA's "Risque, Illicit, and Adult" album is now back up, by request.)
You may have heard that The Queen of the Beach, Annette Funicello, recently died at age 70. And, yes, she was a Mouseketeer on "the Mickey Mouse Club" tv series, and starred in the 'beach party' films of the Sixties. But what you gremmies and hodads must dig is that she ticks off a lot of strange-music boxes: exotica; Space Age; novelty music; funny/dumb/clever lyrics; bizarre musical hybrids (e.g.the Cuban/Hawaiian "Surfers' Luau," "Rock-a-Polka,") wild, highly energetic surf/early rock; lounge cheese; explorations of sleazy/kitschy Americana; collaborations with hipster faves like Dick Dale, Fishbone, and the Beach Boys; and songs about circus freaks and mad scientists. And, tho she was most certainly a Big Show-Biz insider, she did everything with the guileless innocence of an outsider - since Annette never intended to be a singer (Walt Disney just pushed her in that direction) she had no agenda, no aspirations, no bitterness about the roles she was offered, and so sang everything with an equal amount of sincerity, whether it was a forlorn love song, or a ridiculous tale about a freak named Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy.
Why haven't punk bands been covering these songs?! She seems to have been overlooked among Crampsian devotees of early mondo-rock collections like "Las Vegas Grind" and "Wavy Gravy." Maybe because the rap on Annette was that she was another not-too-talented 'teen idol' making bland commercial pap, like Connie Francis, Fabian, and her co-star Frankie Avalon. But even a cursory listen to these songs shoots down that characterization. The berserk energy level and general weirdness of these songs clearly distinguishes her from the likes of, say, Shelly Fabares.
All these songs are from her late '50s-to-mid '60s heyday, except for the last two tracks: her 1985 appearance with Fishbone from the film "Back To The Beach" (I saw it when it came out!) and an early '80s tribute to Annette from LA pop-punk stalwarts Redd Kross. And it was indeed my LA punk youth that first got me into Annette, where she was a kind of den mother figure - never a part of, but beloved by the local surf punks. I still listen to these crazily entertaining songs after all these decades, and I certainly can't say that about everything from my youth.
01 swingin' and surfin' 02 surfin' luau 03 the maid and the martian 04 secret surfin' spot 05 Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy 06 monkey's uncle (with The Beach Boys) 07 California sun 08 draggin' u.s.a. 09 beach party 10 That Crazy Place In Outer Space 11 Merlin Jones 12 Don't Stop Now 13 Rock-a-Polka 14 The Rock-a-Cha 15 Lonely Guitar 16 Tall Paul 17 Pineapple Princess 18 Jamaica Ska (with Fishbone) BONUS: Redd Kross - Annette's Got The Hits
Alen Robin, a comic with a droll, very nasal voice, took the Buchanan & Goodman "Flying Saucer" concept - intercutting found recordings with original comedy - and applied it to political speeches. His "Welcome To The LBJ Ranch" hit the top of the pops in the mid '60s, and can be found in approximately 84% of American thrift-stores.
The above review was taken from my review of another Alen Robin album I posted few years back, with the names of of the sampled parties changed. There is one difference with this album, tho - the groovy psych rock of Billy Mure that abruptly cuts in and out of the funny faux-interviews.
The recent news about the wack-job Elvis (and others) impersonator sending politicians envelopes laced with deadly ricin reminded me of the pioneer of this genre, Robert Alberg. When we wrote about him some years ago, he was being sentenced to five years' probation, mental-health treatment and placement in a group home, and his album was no longer available, so I posted it. Incredibly, he's back, selling both his original collection, and a new one. And he sounds even worse than he did on his miserable first album (as you can see, he isn't looking too hot either). Still, let's hope he sticks to singing/song-writing, and doesn't go back to ricin-cooking.
