Here, let me open up those horizons for you
A buddy spotted this on the Dusty Groove website. It's not on Discogs. I bought it. It's 35 minutes long: 105 different blackout comedy skits ranging from 5 to 70 seconds each. A few items earn a surreal chuckle, but most of it's just tedious. There are a few men's voices, one British, and a couple women's voices. It has no copyright or publishing data and it's completely un-Google-able. On eBay I…
If you're a comedy head, you like Nichols and May, because they didn't do comedy sketches so much as character-based improvised riffs with a button on the end: hilarious little scherzos whose conversational tone make them some of the only comedy that still works 60+ years after it was made. WFMU recently hipped me to MonitorBeacon.net , a tribute site for NBC's Monitor Radio , the network's news…
I bought this last month at Portland's legendary Memory Den . It's part mall, part thrift store, part Kowloon Walled City. If you visit, say hi to their ghosts. As someone who produces reissues (and posts blog entries that gleam with the same cleaned-up audio and historical exegesis as a reissue, but in a context that won't make anybody a dime), I am driven as much by curiosity and craving for…
A guitar-playing elephant falls in love with an ant! But they can never marry! He'll crush her! He weighs too much, you see. I wonder if there's a place they could go where weight would not be a problem. Spoiler alert, don't look at the cover. A tiny rock opera from 1969, surprisingly catchy songs, and cute as hell. Music, arrangements, and lyrics are by Roger Flax, who penned two sunshine pop…
Q: Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? A: Also dachte ich, hey, vielleicht liegt es an meiner Nadel. Deutscher Humor Aus de Schule Geplaudert Über die Ehe Missverstanden (Teil 1) Missverstanden (Teil 2) Die Freien Berufe Die Polizei Fremde Sprachen—Fremdes Denken Höhere Mathematik Abschiedsgruß Album audio & artwork DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not…
This is (surprise/no surprise) a really good disco album! Speaking as a guy who had the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack gifted to him at age six, and then Sesame Street Fever shortly thereafter, this one didn't have much of a shelf-life, not when I was already playing Ralph MacDonald's "Calypso Breakdown" every morning before walking four blocks to first grade. But while I imprinted on my musical…
This, another loan from stalwart DJ pal Rich in Washington , has a somewhat twisted story behind it. When Rich found it, he had to add it to Discogs, as it had no listing; nor did label "Band Box Ethnological Music Series" or curator Binx Selby. I of course as an irascible (indomitable? obsessive? wrong-headed?) digger had to know more, and here's what I've dug up: Band Box Records was a Denver…
From 1966 comes this classic educational record in which "...we find ourselves enmeshed in a net of historical confusion." We're hot on the trail of the Star of Bethlehem, and Hubert J. Bernhard, lecturer at the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, intends to find it, with the help of Science Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE — and every suspense cue in history of production music.…
When I digitized my grandmother Esther’s archive this year, I had maybe 2000 photos to ingest, half of them loose, half in scrapbooks. Many of the black and white photos shot prior to 1920 suffered from silvering, the condition where the dark parts of a photo are obscured by a shiny reflective coating. Age and poor storage are to blame. A black and white photographic image, generally speaking, is…
The first of producer Hal Willner's tribute compilations from the 1980s (to be followed by the Kurt Weill collection "Lost in the Stars" in 1985 and the Disney music collection "Stay Awake" in 1988). This double-LP contained 7 tracks not on the CD. Bruce Fowler—Thelonious NRBQ & The Whole Wheat Horns—Little Rootie Tootie Donald Fagen & Steve Khan—Reflections Dr. John—Blue Monk The Carla Bley Band…
I'D LIKE A PIECE OF...MEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT! I! SAID! I'D! LIKE! A!... And then he stopped. Mr. Noisy Mr. Messy Little Miss Naughty Little Miss Trouble Album audio & artwork DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get…
This is one of two Tom Lehrer albums that were not collected on the glorious Rhino box set The Remains of Tom Lehrer (hopefully my next blog post will be about the other one). They were no doubt omitted for the sake of redundancy, but since Tom gave up writing and performing so long ago and no new material will be forthcoming, fans justifiably tend to grab anything they can find with both hands.…
I first read about Jerry Rayson in the book Enjoy the Experience , a survey of private press LPs in the United States. Supercollector Paul Major of New York wrote about Rayson's record The Weird Thing in Town : It's incredibly scarce, and Major's description of it naturally drove up demand, which is why Craig Moerer (RecordsByMail) wants $1500 for a copy on eBay , and Bananas Records wants $1200…
You've seen it for $8 in every Lounge/Exotica bin in every record store you've ever visited...but you never bought it. So here it is! And it turns out it's pretty good! Hambro plays piano and Kingsley plays all the synths in this deathless classic from the height of Moog Madness. Rhapsody in Blue I Got Rhythm Porgy and Bess Introduction and Opening Scene I Summertime My Man's Gone Now It Ain't…
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Around 1942, my grandmother Virginia Carter Stumbough wrote a children’s book, Three Bugs in a Rug . Her children Gene Nora (age 5) and John Charles (age 7) did the drawings. It’s the story of three bugs, Eenie, Meenie, and Minie, who live in a rug in a woman’s house, and who have to grab their beds and run for their lives when she does spring…
Been coveting this for a long time; delighted to find a copy after all this time and restore it. Some notes on people not credited in the original packaging: The poets on the cover are (clockwise from top right) John Giorno, John Ashbery, and William S. Burroughs. The poets in the gatefold are (left to right): Barbara Barg, Tom Carey, John Cage, and Eileen Myles. The other voice in "So Fine" is…
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE It’s Spring 1970 and you’re about to finish four years of study at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. There’s a non-zero chance that very soon you’re going to get shot, possibly by the Vietcong, possibly by the National Guard. What do you do? Why, discover the meaning of life and make a Firesign Theatre album about it, of course! That’s…
When at the mall, do drop in to the Washington Square Magnavox Store for a demo! The Music Box Dancer Just the Way You Are Satin Doll California Girls / Help Me Rhonda Give Them All On the Rebound Summer Samba Day by Day Sweet Maria A Man and a Woman Rise Again Album audio & artwork DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If…
Pink Panther on premises! No date, but probably 1980 (the year Fame hit theaters). From the Vancouver Washington Columbian , 8/3/1979: They don't build organs like they used to, but with Milton Kieffer around, they don't have to. Kieffer, the "Uncle Milt" of Uncle Milt's Pipe Organ Pizza Co. opening at Fourth Plain and Grand boulevards this weekend, has dusted the cobwebs off a monstrous organ…
As the title promises, lots of great garage-eriffic trash here. Songs with just two chords when one was too many! (Be aware that unfortunately this record either was not Q.C.-ed during mastering or it was intentionally put in the race with a broken leg, because the side 1 master tape got crunched on many tracks, which suffer intermittent dropouts.) The Cannibals "Good Times" The Otherside "Haunted…
Benjamin Vander Meide (1933-2007) was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He came to the United States and settled in Utah, where he began performing a hypnotist act onstage in 1969. This LP probably dates from before 1973, as there is another version of the LP dating from that year with an alternate cover, the art for which was clearly cribbed from this one. Album audio & artwork DISCLAIMER: To…
A really sweet album of kids' songs by French singer-songwriter Anne Sylvestre, with some glorious album art that I've carefully restored. Technically this album is still available for purchase, for instance from App Ull Myu Sick (and honestly this vinyl was a bit crunchy, so audio taken from the master tape is obviously preferred); but none of the streaming sites give a shit about artwork, and…
Volume 4 (of at least 6). Wedding of the Painted Doll Somebody Loves You No Se Porque Te Quiera Strolling in the Park They Didn't Believe Me Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland Cocktails for Two Let Me Call You Sweetheart The Harvest Moon Blue Room Cielito Lindo You Belong to My Heart Album audio & artwork DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase…
From Bruce Bastin's book The Melody Man: Joe Davis and the New York Music Scene, 1916-1978 : On August 29 Davis recorded a dozen titles, including older risqué titles like "Electrician Blues" and "Shake Your Can," by New York City-based Joyce Heath, at Mastertone's studios on 8th Avenue with pianist Al Williams. Davis JD 112 Confidential was released as by Angelina, immediately before an album by…
Documentary record built from actuality recordings related to the RFK assassination in 1968 and the subsequent trial of Sirhan Sirhan. The record is not dated, but in an interview with ZigZag in July 1969, Frank Zappa said: "A guy named Doug Moody put the album together and offered it to us and we packaged it and put it out." Hat tip to Rich Lindsay for the loan of the LP! Campaign Speech Actual…