TRIBUTE TO PINK FLAMINGOS

Donald Featherstone, the appropriately-named creator of those plastic reproductions of our pink feathered friends, has just passed away at the age of 79. As if being the father of the world's most notorious lawn ornament wasn't eccentric enough, Featherstone and his wife were also known for always wearing matching outfits! Now that is just the sort of weird, goofy, good ol' American trash culture that John Waters immortalized in his 1972 film. 

If you haven't seen "Pink Flamings," perhaps the ultimate cult movie, I sure as hell ain't gonna tell you about it. Let's just say that even tho I only saw it once - and this was back in the '80s, when the earths' crust was still cooling and dinosaurs walked the earth - a mere glance at the song titles of the soundtrack recall images that are permanently seared into my brain. So let's pay tribute to Mr. Featherstone with the suitably trashy soundtrack of '50s/60s rock, r'n'b, and easy-listening oldies that Waters used to underscore his characters foul (not to mention fowl) behavior. Some of these songs are as insane as any crazed early rock (e.g.: "Chicken Grabber," "Surfin Bird") while others, like the perfectly presentable "Happy Happy Birthday Baby," are used as ironically innocent counterpoints to the on-screen depravity.

Plus! At no extra cost to you! Other "Pink Flamingos"-related audio oddities thrown into the file:

- Edith Massesy's single, which featured her "singing" a cover of the Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry," and a lovely original, "Punks (Get Off The Grass)." Massey had moved to the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, and her thrift store was a popular hangout for local punks and weirdos, who recorded this with her in 1982.

- Divine "You Think You're A Man" (7'' version); S/He recorded a surprising amount but I just have this one catchy bit of '80s disco.

- The Illuminoids "Satan Said Walrus Eggs," a mashup from 2007 that mixes Massey's "Pink Flamingo" dialogue with the Beatles, over a stomping beat from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The Egg Lady meets the Egg Man, with special guest: Satan. One of the members of the Illuminoids was Howie Pyro, who took the name for his super-swell internet show "Intoxica" from one of the songs on this here soundtrack:

"Pink Flamingos" + Bonus Filth

1. The Swag - Link Wray & His Ray Men

2. Intoxica - The Centurions

3. Jim Dandy - LaVern Baker

4. I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent - Frankie Lymon And The Teenagers

5. The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard

6. Ooh! Look-A There, Ain't She Pretty - Bill Haley & His Comets

7. Chicken Grabber - Nite Hawks

8. Happy, Happy Birthday Baby - The Tune Weavers

9. Pink Champagne - The Tyrones

10. Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen

11. Riot In Cell Block #9 - The Robins

12. (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window - Patti Page

Ultimate Ultimate Xanadu

Not just the ultimate Xanadu collection. No way, we leave that to other, poorer blogs. We've got the Ultimate Ultimate Xanadu collection. Two disks worth of covers of songs and documentary snippets relating to a film I've never seen. But since the wiki entry on it says that it was the inspiration for "the Golden Raspberry Awards to memorialize the worst films of the year", then maybe I should see it. Apparently there's a sizeable cult for this 1980 "romantic musical fantasy film" - these 2 disks are boiled down from a 20-disk fan collection.
 
Tho it's heavy on the electro-disco and ELO outtakes/rarities, there is still a variety of sounds here. Particular faves: Klaus Wunderlich's disco organ instrumental (in my world, '70s discos don't have DJs spinning the BeeGees, they have old guys playing the organ); what sounds like an inept school or amateur theater cast (disk 2, track 4); a Japanese pop-punk girl band called Tiger Shovel Nose; Hemes House Band (and I usually hate house music); and a "bossa-nova toy pop" version of the title song. Tho I suspect I'd like a bossa-nova toy pop version of anything. Brazilian band La Sound even covered the entire soundtrack (?!), tho we get just one song from it here (disk 1 track 16), a nifty lounge finger-snapper. 

This plethora of Xanadu-nocity comes to us courtesy of Don-O, the man behind the Hour of Crap podcast, the Twilight World 'zine, and many other useful pursuits. This was originally a project of his Xanadu fan site, in which he whittled down the collection of Robert Porter, who ran a Jeff Lynne fan site. Lynn is of course the man behind the Electric Light Orchestra, who provided much of the music for "Xanadu."

Didn't think I would like this much, but the unrelenting, irresistible perkiness of the damn thing wore down my resistance, and I was happily bopping around to all this nonsense. Drive yourself and everyone around you crazy with lots and lots of versions of an Olivia Newton-John disco showtune! "A place where nobody dared to go":

Ultimate Ultimate Xanadu disk 1

Ultimate Ultimate Xanadu disk 2

Thanks to Don and the Xanadu Preservation Society.

JANE BIRKIN "Lolita Go Home"

Filthy Mondays? If last week's Kay Martin album whet your appetite for songstresses known more for sex appeal than singing abilities, check this 1975 product of the post-birth control pill, pre-AIDS "Sexual Revolution." Music for water beds, wife-swapping parties, and singles bars where people may have actually said things like "Your place or mine?" 

This album was released six years after France's greatest musical export Serge Gainsbourg recorded the all-time heavy-breathing classic duet "Je t'aime... moi non plus" with non-singer English actress Jane Birkin. This time out, Serge contributed original songs like the lovely disco-lite title track, and "Bebe Song," one of his catchier creations, all sung by Jane in her best French-as-a-second language come-hither voice. These are mixed with unlikely porno-funk versions of English language standards that are usually sung with a swingin' beat. Dig the fantastic take on Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" that's pure shag-carpet '70s polyester electric-piano sleaze. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't exist, but fortunately it does. 

"Lolita Go Home" 

Music by Serge Gainsbourg, words by Philippe Labro; except where indicated

1. Lolita go home 
2. What Is This Thing Called Love? (Cole Porter)
3. Bebe song 
4. Where or When (Rodgers, Hart)
5. Si ça peut te consoler
6. Love for Sale (Cole Porter)
7. Just Me and You
8. La fille aux claquettes  (Words and music by Serge Gainsbourg)
9. Rien pour rien 
10. French graffiti 
11. There's a Small Hotel (3:05) (Rodgers, Hart)

Arranged and conducted by Jean-Pierre Sabar

Thanks again to Count Otto Black!

AN ALBUM CALLED "DISCO POLKA" THAT HAS DISCO VERSIONS OF POLKA SONGS AND POLKA VERSIONS OF DISCO SONGS AND...

...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 onto an unsuspecting public.  Have mercy on my damned soul!

Myron Florens' "Disco Polka" album of disco versions of polka songs and polka versions of disco songs and disco versions of easy-listening songs and some songs have Moogs

The Ethel Merman Disco Album

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 vocals: Merman was one of the last singers 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 as she bleats 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. 

Ethel Merman Disco Album

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

DISCO SELLOUT!

By the late 1970s, the memo had come down from the music biz execs: make a disco record. Everyone, and we mean EVERYONE is hereby ordered to march into the studio and sing over anonymous lush orchestras, wah-wah guitars, congas, and female backing singers.  Yes, even you, Ol' Blue Eyes.  It's hot, it's commercial, you have no choice. 

And so we have here an assortment of some of the biggest names in music pounding their well-established square peg styles into the round hole of disco. Faded stars like Frankie Avalon, Petula Clark and Teresa Brewer remade their old hits inna disco stylee. EZ listening acts like Percy Faith, Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis figured this would be a way to squeeze onto rock-dominated charts. Leftover hippies like Country Joe McDonald and The Byrds cut new songs designed to get them back into the good graces of their old Baby Boomer audience, now living a coke-filled life of affluence. I suspect that some, like Ringo Starr, simply had nothing better to do. Toot toot, beep beep, ka-ching!

One of the great musical mysteries of my life is why I find old forgotten disco cheese so entertaining.  I never really liked disco in the first place, and I still couldn't care less about most of the big hits, e.g.: the Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, etc. But the hilarity of hearing utterly inappropriate material subjected to the disco treatment, the surrealism of the likes of Sinatra or The Beach Boys on the dance floor, the aura of pre-AIDS decadence, some genuinely impressive arrangements and powerful performances (Andy Williams kills it here), and yes, those exuberant rhythms all add up to tacky kitsch taken to almost Liberace-like levels. Plus, we have not had these songs pounded into our brains over the years/decades a la the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack.

DISCO SELLOUT

If for no other reason, download this for the incredible Country Joe McDonald song. Granted, he never struck me as being the most talented sort, but this song is the very definition of "wrongheaded."

Thanks to MadJon! He's the madman who gave us the worst of Sinatra collection.

In case you missed it: more disco sickness.  (I did two other thrift-store disco comps, but they got knocked off-line.)

FRANK SINATRA'S GREATEST SHITS

I love Frank Sinatra's music, got tons of his records. But anyone with a career spanning six decades has got to drop a few turds along the way, and even The Chairman of The Board is no exception. And that is what we are presenting here today: 15 examples of the worst, from the greatest.

There's the good-bad Frank, which is fun, e.g. finger-snappin' his way thru unlikely/inappropriate songs like Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" (a staple of my Vegas road trips) or his hep-cat spin on Simon and Garfunkel; his groovy mod duets with daughter Nancy (sample lyric: "I'm lookin' out love-colored windows"); or when his take on "Mack The Knife" becomes a self-conscious history lesson on that oft-recorded classic.

And then there's bad-bad Frank. "Mama Will Bark," a duet with the now-forgotten Dagmar, a performer more known for her curvaceous figure than her singing ability, has been called the worst thing Frank recorded, and I would not argue. Literally, a dog of a record. Nothing else here is quite as cringe-worthy, but the unreleased (for good reason) disco version of "All or Nothing At All," or the appalling duet with that ghastly creature Bono come pretty damn close.  Yes, sometimes you can judge a book by it's cover: "Everybody's Twistin'" sounds exactly like you think it would. And has there ever been a good version of "Winchester Cathedral"?

This collection eases you in: at first, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly wrong with this version of "Some Enchanted Evening." The "South Pacific" standard should be a slam-dunk, right?  But it gradually becomes clear that Frank has no feel for the song whatsoever, as he's been hobbled by a terrible arrangement, and it just goes completely off the rails. Surprising that this one got out of the can. (Although I guess you could say that for most of these tracks.)

This collection come to us thru our regular contributor windy via his pal, another mad-dog record collector named MadJon, who conceived, compiled, and created the cover artwork (above) for this festering concoction. Thank (or blame) them! Jon's notes for each song below.


Frank Sinatra - "Come Suck With Me"

01some enchanted evening
02Everybodys' twistin
03 i whistle a happy tune
04mama will bark
05all or nothing at all (disco)
06winchester cathedral
07mrs robinson
08 feelin kinda sunday (w/nancy)
09 life's a trippy thing (w/nancy)
10 you are the sunshine of my life
11bad bad leroy brown
12ive got you under my skin (w/Bono)
13mack the knife (w/Quincy Jones; vibes: Lionel Hampton)
14the 12 days of christmas (w/Nancy, Frank Jr, and the rarely-heard Tina Sinatra)
15 my way

Some Enchanted Evening: The Richard Rodgers estate was very strict about licensing its songs for recording. Altho' Sinatra had recorded this tune in the past, on Columbia in 1949, they gave him a difficult time about it two decades later. Personal? Who knows, but when Sinatra finally got the rights, he made it personal and recorded this ridiculous, horrible version as revenge.

Everybody's Twistin': Sinatra craved hits as much as anyone and would lower his famous standards when required. Here, he takes an old song by Fats Waller called "Everybody's Truckin'." changes the title and imagines he has a twist hit. He didn't. In America it only went to #75.

Mama Will Bark: It's too easy to say that Mitch Miller forced Sinatra to record this. Imagine ANYONE telling Frank what to do! Sinatra puts his all into this record, and seems to be enjoying himself. The flip was the tragically beautiful "I'm A Fool To Want You" which he co-wrote. Both sides did well on the charts. It remains awful only because it's incomprehensible that he would have gone along with it.

All Or Nothing At All: Before the huge success of his Trilogy album, Sinatra was lost in the 70's, with the label he founded only releasing several singles between 1974 and 1980. Clearly desperate, Sinatra re-recorded two old hits of his as disco records in 1977, this and "Night And Day," but "All Or Nothing At All" was so awful it remained unreleased until the Complete Reprise box set in 1995.

Winchester Cathedral: Enjoying a surprise return to the Top 10 charts in the mid-60's, Sinatra decided that every other album would be "for the kids." Like the kids were waiting for this.

Mrs. Robinson: Reportedly, Paul Simon hated what Frank did with his song, as should we all.

Feelin' Kinda Sunday and Life's A Trippy Thing: Juvenile hippy crap. Worst, who could even imagine the word "trippy" appearing in a Sinatra title?

You Are the Sunshine Of My Life and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown: Both from the album Some Nice Things I've Missed (1974), it's another one "for the kids!" The latter song being a #1 hit in 1972, Reprise thought the kids would like Frank's version as a single two years later. It (#83), like the album (#48), did poorly, and so began Frank's lost decade.

I've Got You Under My Skin (duet with Bono): Inexplicably, the public made Sinatra's first Duets album a smash hit, even if it never sounded like Frank was ever in the same studio with his guests, as is most evident here. Frank sounds flat, while Bono's vocal is produced with his trademark ethereal sound. When their vocals are mixed together, their phrasing doesn't match.

Mack the Knife: Sinatra's last album, L.A. Is My Lady, produced by Quincy Jones, is almost entirely awful throughout. Here, Sinatra can't resist changing the lyrics as he salutes the members of the orchestra.

The Twelve Days of Christmas: Featuring his three children (only one of whom ever achieved success on her own) the repetition of the all-too-cute, terribly unfunny jokes quickly becomes horribly obnoxious. It is the one track on this compilation that I cannot bear listening to.

My Way: It would be easier to take if recorded by a better man with a lesser voice, but here Sinatra celebrates a life of bullying abuse which the public is well aware of. Additionally, it is ironic that at his own label, Sinatra cared less about the engineering of his records; on the line "For what is a man?" there is an over-saturation of the vocal on the tape, creating horrible distortion that technology can never fix.

I threw this collection together quickly one day, being too lazy to look for more, but I know more stinkers are out there, and perhaps in the future there will be a Volume Two.

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.

ROCKIN' DISCO SANTA CLAUS

Our busy elf helper windbag sent a us batch of singles, including a Christmas disco one, which inspired me to root thru my own disco/old school archives to pull out my fave 12" and vinyl yuletide artifacts. Totally kitschy, funky and, tho sometimes awful, always awfully fun.

01 Wayne Newton - Jingle Bell Hustle
02 Santa's Disco Band - Xmas Medley Disco
03 Charo - Mamacita (Donde Esta Santa Claus)
04 Walter Murphy Orch - Disco Bells
05 Irwin The Disco Duck - Disco Duck II
06 The Sisterhood - The Rocking Disco Santa Claus [the one track I did get off a cd, the crucial Song-Poem Christmas album]
07 Walter Murphy Orch - Deck The Halls
08 Kurtis Blow - Christmas Rappin' [from 1979! pre-"Rapper's Delight"?]
09 Santa's Disco Band - Santa Claus is Coming To Town Disco
10 The Treacherous Three - Xmas Rap (Un-Censored)

ROCKIN' DISCO SANTA CLAUS