The NOW SOUNDS Of Outsider Music

Had a request to re-up Tony "The Cool Casanova" Fabbri. Sometime after I wrote that post in 2013 I acquired a full-length CD by the man, which I just posted in its' entirety. HIGHLY recommended for outsider music enthusiasts.

France's super-swell toy-pop maestro Carton Sonore remixed acapella tracks from one of outsider music's founding texts, Daniel Johnson's "Hi, How Are You?" album, adding his trademark ukulele/musical saw/ocarina sound. Only complaint: too short! More, s'il vous plait.

Carton Sonore - Mini Orchestre Pour Daniel Johnston

(By the way, the latest Cartone Sonore release is 4 bits of spacey loveliness, like Joe Meek on Casios.) And in other outsider music news:

Ms Marilyn Miles sez: "I am a 64 year old grandmother with no music background that likes to write anointed poems."  She's put up a short album entitled "Welcome Marilyn To Area 19" on every conceivable platform, and you can listen to most of it HERE. It's a kind of concept album about the UFO/Marilyn Monroe connection, or something like that. She doesn't sing, but recites clunky verse over r'n'b loops that are only a small step above Wesley Willis' pre-set beats. A couple songs about her encounters with space aliens are certainly interesting, but the real gem here is "Nice Man," a tale of an encounter with a different kind: a weirdo pervert. Gets me laffin' out loud every time. Her prim, schoolteacher-esque vocal delivery is the icing on the cake.  And remember: "My spoken words are from a real experience direct and indirect."

For individual songs, I used to use DivShare, but as it is now apparently kaput, I'll try using Box.com. You can listen, or download by clicking on the downward-pointing arrow in the upper right. Let me know if it works or not, gang!

MsMarilyn Miles "Nice Man"

And who doesn't like experimental electronic psychedelia by 7 year old girls? Stinky Picnic, an old favorite of ours, returns with another name-your-price download album, and once again li'l Ponky Pie Pea (as she is now known) is joined by dad to discuss such crucial matters as hamsters, doggies, rainbows and "A Fungus And A Mungus And A Wungus."
 
"Hamster World"

PIck Hit: the doo-woppin' "No, It's A Smiley Love Heart." The family that plays together, stays together.
 

THE COMMIES ARE COMING! THE COMMIES ARE COMING!

The Berlin Wall may have fallen 20 years ago, and you can buy McDonald's in Red Square, but the United Nations, that festering hot bed of godless Communism, is still around. Side 1 of this ludicrous fear-mongering document from 1962 pounds home the notion that anti-Americanism is built into the UN. Side 2 repeats the malarkey that is still heard today about America being 'founded on Christian values,' citing The Mayflower Compact, and something Woodrow Wilson said. For more shoddy research, unconvincing arguments and implausible conspiracies, dig this spoken-word, very sample-able LP:

Billy James Hargis - The UN Hoax (1962) 

You will be shocked - shocked! - to know that Hargis' career was knocked askew by a sex scandal. Wiki sez: "In 1974, when Hargis was nearly 50, he was forced to resign as president of American Christian College due to allegations that he had seduced college members. Two of his students claimed that they had had sex with Hargis—one was female, one was male. Other students corroborated the story. The account was reported by Time magazine in 1976, along with other alleged incidents at Hargis' farm in the Ozarks, and while on tour with his All American Kids musical group."  The UN, laughing diabolically, had their revenge!

(Thanks once again to windy)

Your Dead Pet Sings To You

Oh, so horrible, so hilarious...how can this be real?! I just discovered this on craigslist whilst looking for something else entirely. From reading the below description, you know this is all kinds of wrong, but the reality is even worse than you can imagine. 

A touching memory from your beloved little friend you miss can always be as close to you as your computer.
In our Pet Memorial Photovids,,,the pet photo that you send us will be animated to sing our original song,,,"When You Think Of Me,,,Smile !". Yes,,,your own pet will sing to you.

You may order a song-only version,,,or you can choose to order a Customized Memorial photovid for which I invite you to compose a brief script of dialogue that you want your beloved little friend to say in their video.
I will help you with the script as much as you want me to.

IN this example for you,,,,this video is a customized Memorial with added dialogue that I produced for a client. A customized version like this featuring your own script thast your pet would perform is $60.00. A song-only version with the pet just singing the song is $30.00.
This is the song your pet would sing,,,and your Memorial Photovid would be similar to this video: 



The song is acapella - let the mashups begin!

Fat Head's Conspiracy-Theory Rap

One of the latest amusing bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories is that the contrails exhaust coming out of airplanes are really "chem-trails" that drift on down to populated areas and supposedly do all kinds of terrible things to us. It must be true, it's on the internet! So I was delighted to hear this rap song on the radio that deals with this topic, a much more interesting subject than hip-hop's usual cliches, I'm sure you'll agree. Over a nice head-nodding beat, the rapper spits out a paranoid fever-dream of "weather warfare," demons, black ops, mind control, population control, martial law, etc. Who knows wtf he's talking about? Funny, but pretty freakin' psycho. Makes me wonder how seriously Fat Hed takes all this. You can listen to it here:

Fat Hed "Clouds"

or download it as part of the FREE! album "The Jump Room"

Of course only a really stupid super-villain would attempt a 'chemtrail' conspiracy, as any chemicals dropped at that great altitude would soon disperse into the atmosphere, leaving only harmless trace amounts by the time they reach our level. Or so "They" WANT you to think!  You're so naaiiiiive!!

I was raised during the heyday of the L.A. aerospace industry, and many friends and family members were/are engineers and pilots. (I actually get kinda nostalgic when I see contrails...) But to a segment of the population, science and technology is still as mysterious and scary as it was in the day when the first cinema-goers dove under their seats when a film showed a train approaching. Or the "cargo cults" of the South Pacific who built wooden airplanes in an attempt to lure back the great white gods who landed on their islands during WWII in their magic flying machines, bearing miracles like aspirin and chocolate. Surely, no mortal could create such wonders!

Louis Farrakhan is Quite The Charmer

By request: Ray Schmitt's music for tree-huggers is back up.

Before Louis Farrakhan was the hate-mongering nut-job running The Nation of Islam, he wasn't even Louis Farrakhan. He was Louis "The Charmer" Wolcott, calypsonion. His brief show-biz stint in the mid-'50s didn't exactly pack stadiums the way The Million Man March did, so clearly the religion biz proved to be the more lucrative career choice. His music was actually pretty decent, tho. There just wasn't much to distinguish it from all the other records made to cash in on the post-Belafonte '50s calypso craze.  "Is She Is, Or Is She Ain't" is the most well-known of his recordings, a parody of the then-recent phenomenon of sex-change operations! Countless religious leaders have made recordings, from the Pope on down, but I don't believe too many have touched upon this important subject. "Female Boxer" is another new one to me, in which our protagonist recounts the time his butt was kicked by, yes, a female boxer. (Actually, I believe the Pope did sing about "foxy boxers," but it was in Latin, so few knew.) Otherwise, calypso fans will recognize most of these songs as oft-recorded standards. But hey, they're still good: can't have too many versions of "Zombie Jamboree" (aka "Back To Back Belly to Belly") or "Ugly Woman," a song famously remade by Jimmy Soul in the '60s as "If You Wanna Be Happy."  The rockin' version of "Hold 'Em Joe" is as good as any, and the energetic piano + percussion musical backing is fun. Charmer's voice is rarely more than adequate, tho his occasional hiccuping vocal accents are a nice touch. 

As evidence that he is perhaps losing what's left of his mind, Farrakhan has embraced Scientology in recent years, encouraging members of the Nation to get themselves "audited"!  As regular readers of this blog know, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard made some awful albums that we posted here within the last year or so. Farrakhan is just what Scientology needs!  Next time, John Travolta and Chick Corea should forget Hubbard's terrible music and sing calypsos about transsexual zombie boxers!

The Charmer is Louis Farrakhan

1. IS SHE IS, OR IS SHE AIN'T
2. BROWN SKIN GAL
3. DON'T TOUCH ME NYLON
4. ZOMBIE JAMBOREE
5. FEMALE BOXER
6. FIRE DOWN THERE
7. UGLY WOMAN
8. DON'T LET ME MAMA KNOW
9. STONE COLD MAN
10. MARY ANN
11. HOLD 'EM JOE
12. TRINIDAD ROAD MARCH


Thanks to Count Otto Black for reminding me of this album - more of his bizarro British comedy rarities to come.

CRISWELL PREDICTS YOUR INCREDIBLE FUTURE

Now back up by request: one of the first posts ever in this blog's history: Polka Rap; and the happy yodeling of Arthur Brogli. Still working on your other requests.

Our Man in The UK, Count Otto Black, sez:

 

The start of a brand new year - a time when so-called psychics traditionally do their thing, with mixed results. So surely an appropriate time to remind everyone of "The Amazing Criswell", of Plan 9 From Outer Space fame? Did you know that in 1970 he made a spoken word LP consisting of a 42-minute Dadaist stream-of-consciousness rant about what was going to happen over the next 30 years? Probably. He himself admitted that his success-rate was only 87%. Fortunately that other 13% included his prediction that the world would be completely destroyed by God on 8 August 1999.
 

Criswell Predicts! Your Incredible Future

 

Oh, by the way, he sings as well. Or at any rate, nearly as well...

 

Criswell - "Someone Walked Over My Grave"

 

Thanks, Otto!  All of this reminds me of this mind-boggling oddity, also available from archive.org:

 

Mae West sings "Criswell Predicts" (1956) - I believe Space-Age pop master Bob Thompson wrote this one, as he was West's pianist at the time.

 

 

 

The Strangest Album Ever Made?!

"Trout Mask Replica"..."Eskimo"...The Shaggs...any such list is now incomplete without a mention of Five Starcle Men's  "Gomba Reject Ward Japan." Coherent biographical info on this band is hard to come by, but apparently Five Starcle Men were two nuts in the '90s making low-fi (presumably) home recordings out in the desert town of Lancaster, CA.  Or maybe they were from Austin, Texas. Or maybe they heard the works of those two town's most famous loonies, Capt Beefheart, and The Butthole Surfers, and said: "That's nuthin; get a load of this," and proceeded to lay down 28 tracks over the course of a few years that in comparison makes Ween sound like Journey.

At first, it may come off as a couple of stoners' self-indulgent mucking about on a Teac four-track, and there may be some truth to that, but keep listening, and one starts to wonder if there may be some genuine insanity at work here (apparently, one of the members killed himself, thus ending this band's "career.")  Every sound is warped beyond recognition, lyrics range from unintelligible jabbering to surreal nonsense, samples and tapes loop themselves into delirium, unnatural rhythms pound away, all adding up to a mind-melting experience. Some "songs" sound like they were made up on the spot, many are less than 30 seconds long, and a surprisingly high amount of the tracks are really quite good. Play this for over 99% of the population (even those who consider themselves "alternative"), and they will probably will scrunch up their face and say, "What are you listening to?!"

Free listening/download here:

Five Starcle Men  "Gomba Reject Ward Japan"

courtesy of 'net-label Lost Frog, who have also blessed us with releases by R. Stevie Moore, The Happy Flowers, Animals Within Animals, Big City Orchestra, and some people who make noise music out of bicycles.

STRANGE/OUTSIDER/NOVELTY JFK SONGS

John F. Kennedy inspired a lot of music. This is some of the weirdest. Song-poems! A Frank Zappa composed/produced surf record!  A singing psychic! Mexican music! And all 6 tracks from the great "Sing Along With JFK" album that featured pre-sampling tape manipulations of Jack's voice "remixed" with original music and a vocal chorus. You've heard of musique concrete?  This is musique ridicule.


Sing Along With JFK

1. George Atkins and Hank Levine: Begin Anew For Two (from "Sing Along With JFK")
2. George Atkins and Hank Levine: Let Us Begin Beguine
3. George Atkins and Hank Levine: Alliance For Progress Bossa Nova
4. George Atkins and Hank Levine: Ask Not Waltz
5. George Atkins and Hank Levine: The Trumpet 
6. George Atkins and Hank Levine: Let The Word Go Forth
7. Los Conquistadores: Homenaje a John F. Kennedy
8. Brian Lord & The Midnighters: The Big Surfer (written/produced by Frank Zappa, recorded in his Cucamunga studio, 1963)
9. Frances Baskerfield, "The Singing Psychic" - The Grassy Knoll
10. Johnny Tucker - Mr. Kennedy
11. Mike Macharyas - Lee Harvey Oswald (from the 2005 album "Ashlee Simpson" in which all Macharyas does is repeat famous peoples names over and over; he has 17 albums of this insanity)
12. Lee Roy Abernathy: John F. Kennedy The Greatest Of All (like the Johnny Tucker song, this is an indie country/folk record, but this guy seems really worried about Texas' reputation as much as anything else)
13. Norm Burns and the Five Stars: John F. Kennedy Was Called Away
14. Norm Burns and the Five Stars: John F. Kennedy's Election Race (Song-poems! This one's the more inept/funnier of the two)


Thanks for some of these to WFMU's Beware of the Blog, and master blogger Bob Purse.

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?

L. Ron Hubbard & Friends "The Road To Freedom"

We interrupt our usual assortment of good music for this...this...well, it's a Scientology album, whaddya expect?  Following up on our "Joy of Creating" post: clunky amateurish lyrics, horribly dated '80s wimp-pop that makes Toto sound like the Ramones, vocals by b-list actors, brothers of celebrities, washed-up child stars, never-made-its, a children's chorus, and John Travolta...yep, it's another musical pep rally/indoctrination tool from America's wackiest cult, with a truly jaw-dropping vocal from El Ron himself. If you've never heard one of these Scientology albums, you should check one out, at least once (in fact, once is probably all you'll be able to take!) to really experience how far over the edge seemingly sensible people can go. As Travolta sings: "Reality is me, reality is you, yeah yeah yeah..."

Listen with horrified fascination here:

 

The Road To Freedom

 

All songs written by L. Ron Hubbard.

1. The Road To Freedom (w/Frank Stallone, Leif Garrett, John Travolta)

2. The Way To Happiness (w/Leif Garrett)

3. The Worried Being (w/failed soul singer Amanda Ambrose in a laughable approximation of funk)

4. The Evil Purpose (w/Frank Stallone)

5. Laugh A Little (the sound effects get disturbingly psychotic; I'm pretty sure that was not the intention)

6. The Good Go Free (Bang yer head! This one "rocks 'n' rolls" like John Tesh trying to go heavy metal.)

7. Why Worship Death? (jazz/prog with Chick Corea; Julia Migenes unleashes hair-raising operatic vox that will send animals scurrying)

8. Make It Go Right

9. The ARC Song (w/a straining John Travolta really trying to, y'know, emote; and Karen Black)

10. L'Envoi/Thank You For Listening (w/L. Ron Hubbard)

 

Much thanks to ma main Thetan Rich, from KillUglyRadio!

 

 

 

 

L. RON HUBBARD SPLURGES ALL OVER YOU

"Force yourself to smile and you’ll soon stop frowning.
Force yourself to laugh and you’ll soon find something to laugh about. Wax enthusiastic and you’ll very soon feel so. A being causes his own feelings. The greatest joy there is in life is creating. Splurge on it!"

If you don't have those words memorized, you will, after hearing them repeated over and over on this ghastly 2001 album released by the Church of Scientology, voiced by a semi-all-star team of singers. It sets the poems of the cult's late founder L. Ron Hubbard over crappy music that sounds way too dated to have been recorded only 12 years ago.  I genuinely figured this was from the mid-'90s at the latest. So what's it's all about, Alfie?

- We kick things off with an intro from soul legend Isaac Hayes, who unfortunately only has a couple of quick cameos on this album. Hearing Hayes' trademark baritone speaking voice trying to give this drivel a bit of gravitas is pretty great - as funny as his "South Park" work.
- Anyone who thinks joining Scientology will give your showbiz career a boost should ask "fresh new singer" Shannon Star Roberts, or L.J. Jackson - this album is their sole Discogs credit. One of Roberts' boring songs references Scientology mythology: "Theta, Theta, See You Later." Catchy, eh?
- Carl Anderson apparently was one of the original stars of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and had some pop hit in the '80s "that endeared him to soap-opera fans" (gee, wonder why I never heard of him?); one of his two songs here is a mindbogglingly awful 16-minutes long. Two minutes would be bad enough, but, holy hell, sixteen interminable minutes? He should be shot! Oh wait, he died of an illness a few years after this album. Never mind.
- I always respected Doug E. Fresh as a hip-hop pioneer who recorded the classic single "The Show"/"La Di Da Di." But one of the low-lights of this album is the appalling apocalypse fantasy "We're Going Up While The World Goes Down," which Fresh futilely tries to pump up into a wave-your-hands jam despite lyrics like:
"I was in a Safeway row
of housewives and no chow
Who said they'd been forsaken
by even moldy bacon
The manager's cruel cry
Was the actual why
They'd ate up all the animals
And now must turn to cannibals"
Apart from retarded grammar ("The manager's cruel cry Was the actual why"?!?) Hubbard's attitude of: you're-all-gonna-suffer-and-die-but-we-won't-ha-ha! is hideously immoral for someone claiming to be a spiritual leader. It reminds me of the Xian fundies' 'rapture' fetish. Needless to say, the generic music has gone thru the Scientology washing-machine, bleaching out any chance of black funkiness.
- Someone named Pamela Falcon has the thankless task of translating one of Hubbard's free-verse poems into music, to whit: "CUPIDITY/Cunning mind/Which unnerves the eye/Unclean lancet." Come on everybody, sing along!
- Another low-light: albino blues-rocker Edgar Winter is one of those well-known figures I'd never really had an opinion on one way or another. Well, I have one now: I fuckin' hate him! His "The Joy of Creating" begins with him saying "Y'all know about the joy of creation? Well, this is how we do it down in Texas." He then proceeds to insult the entire Lone Star State with hysterical gurglings that pass for singing over pseudo-enthusiastic music that has all the soul of John Tesh. I have a hard time having much respect for someone  who would allow this abortion to be released under his name, with his consent, while calling himself an artist.
- Chick Corea, the guy who contributes the only boring parts to otherwise-classic Miles Davis albums, drops by with under two minutes of pointless piano noodling and recitation.

A former Scientologist known on-line as Tiger Lily wrote on an ex-Scientologist message board: "At the time I was in, those albums were touted as being so theta-infused that just listening to them was supposed to key you out. They had the songs on their phone system "hold", and played them in the lobby over and over (how the staff stood that I'll never know).

I took that to heart and listened whenever I could. I lived 2 hours from the Org so I would listen to those *&^%$%# things for 4 hours on course days trying to internalize them. I memorized all the words. I sang along.

I remember thinking it was pretty cheesy , but they told us that Ron's music was way ahead of it's time, so I just decided I must be stuck in the 70's or something and made myself like it."

Listen to the "way ahead of it's time" music here:

The Golden Era Musicians and Friends "The Joy of Creating"

1	Isaac Hayes–	The Joy Of Creating Prelude	0:48
2	Shannon Star Roberts–	Theta, Theta, See You Later	3:22
3	Shannon Star Roberts–	From Sea Of Dreams	2:46
4	Carl Anderson and Brenda Eager * –	The Love Of A Man	3:58
5	Doug E. Fresh–	The Joy Of Creating	2:39
6	Doug E. Fresh–	We're Going Up While The World Goes Down	5:55
7	Howard McCrary and L.J. Jackson–	The Joy Of Creating	1:12
8	Pamela Falcon–	The Sum Of Man	5:40
9	Edgar Winter–	The Joy Of Creating	2:32
10	Edgar Winter–	Blue Endless Sea	3:55
11	Elena Roggero–	The Joy Of Creating	1:41
12	Elena Roggero–	Stamboul	3:38
13	Chick Corea–	The Joy Of Creating	1:46
14	Carl Anderson and Elena Roggero–	Song Of The Bard	16:58
15	Isaac Hayes–	Envoi                                                           00:32

The OTHER Singing Ricin Terrorist

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?

Robert Alberg: "Quartz Creek"

As he is back to selling copies of his first album, I'll just post of couple of tracks from it:

Robert Alberg: "I Want To Fly"
Robert Alberg: "Walking Alone On The Sand"

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!

Creeps And Pervs Like Pop Music, Too!

There are no doubt scads of great releases in the Free Music Archive, but with hundreds (thousands?) of album downloads on the site, there's no way I can listen to even a fraction of 'em (any recommendations?).  I did luck out and stumbled across this goodie recently:

Amil Byleckie: Amil is Personal

described thusly: "The songs are all short form pop gems inspired by adult personal ads from the Providence Phoenix. This is genuinely bizarre recording."  And that's about the size of it. Short is right: the 20 songs here fly by in just over 17 minutes, and gems they are: most of the simply-played guitar and/or keyboard + drum machine tunes are quite good and catchy. Only drawback: that trendy indie "lo-fi" sound that can be so distracting.

And the personals themselves are pretty interesting, revealing the twisted, perverted worlds that lie beneath mainstream America. Even the "Charming Beauty" who starts off sounding pretty decent and normal slowly reveals herself to be a golddigger. Tho many of these songs are funny, some of this stuff is creepy, occasionally even a bit gross, but I admire the way Byleckie can take non-musical material like newspaper ads and craft some excellent pop tunes out of them.

The Earth Not a Globe!

There really are people who think that the Earth is flat, just like it says in the Bible, regardless of what you see in pictures from space. Obviously, those pictures were faked. By who? By...The Conspiracy, of course. I believe that the Flat Earth Society were thus the first to promote that moonlanding-was-faked nonsense.

Which brings us to Lady Blount. Wiki sez: "Lady Elizabeth Blount, wife of the explorer Sir Walter de Sodington Blount, established a Universal Zetetic Society, whose objective was "the propagation of knowledge related to Natural Cosmogony [the creation of the world] in confirmation of the Holy Scriptures, based on practical scientific investigation". The society published a magazine entitled The Earth Not a Globe Review, and remained active well into the early part of the 20th century. A flat Earth journal, Earth: a Monthly Magazine of Sense and Science, was published between 1901–1904, edited by Lady Blount."


The Flat Earth Society message board posted a song written by Lady Blount from her 1898 book Adrian Galilio; a Songwriter's Story, described as "a unique combination of prose, poetry, illustration, drama and sheet music. And now, 112 years after its publication, the Society is very proud to present 'Star-Dream', a song from Adrian Galilio, as performed by The Nordic Countess, Ingeborg and with the help of gotham from our very own TFES forums! As far as we know it has never been recorded before, so this is truly something special."

The song, a pleasant piano/violin instro (durn, no lyrics about the Flat Earth) is now off-line, so I'm a-postin' it here. Couldn't find any info anywhere on the performers Ingeborg and gotham, but there's a slightly lo-fi, somewhat off-kilter feel to this that I like.

Lady Blount "Star-Dream":

Do Other Music Bloggers Get This Kind Of Mail?

"Hello:

Guinness World Record holder (for woman with the longest fingernails), The Dutchess, is breaking into the music industry. The multi-talented phenomenon has recently announced the debut of her rock single, “Phoenix" The song was released on YouTube earlier this summer and created a buzz..."

So sayeth her publicist. Which is why I couldn't go into publicity. The Python-esque results would have been something like:

The Dutchess: I want to be a singer.

Publicist: Okay. And what are your qualifications?

The Dutchess: I have the world's longest fingernails.

Publicist: I see...You know, if a record company is looking for singers, I doubt that the first thing they'll ask is, 'Does she have long fingernails?'

Her useless song features Miss ScaryNails' r'n'b vocal stylings over rock guitar. The video (which I bailed out on half-way thru) had me wondering: how does she do anything with those nails? It would be more interesting if they showed her going about her day, getting dressed, etc. Maybe I shoulda watched the whole video...

Caribbeana Esoterica #3: Fungi

It's great that we're searching for life on other planets, but there's so many places right here on planet Earth that we know nothing about. Ever heard of fungi music?

Named after a native dish, not fungus, this British Virgin Island style (pronounced "FOON-jee") is somewhat of a throwback to classic '50s style calypso - it's got more of a laid-back feel, with more emphasis on lyrical cleverness and storytelling. It's performed on banjos and ukulele, with low-key percussion (e.g. triangle, bongos, calabash or squash) adding toe-tapping African dance rhythms. Today's two albums show two different approaches to fungi.

Elmore Stoutt's album features some spoken-word introductions giving you the historical/cultural context behind the folks songs (he is an educator, after all, with a school named after him). But amidst all the funny, sunny fun there's a odd song that seems to suggest that Princess Di was murdered. Huh? An amusingly risque song about Bill Clinton, however, restores the topical subjects to a more down-to-earth level.
If Stoutt seems like grandpa casually spinning tales, The Lashing Dogs sound like his younger rowdy grandkids. Tho still playing trad fungi - no electronics, no rapping - the furiously-strummed banjo and vigorous percussion (rock that triangle!) boost up the energy level. Oddities still pop in tho, like "Only The Gotter," a cranky political tirade with such poor rhymes that it almost sounds like a song-poem, and "Where The Men Dem Gone," which questions modern males' masculinity, even claiming that this situation has led to St. Thomas Island's dramatic increase in lesbianism! Otherwise, it's all rum-drenched groovers designed to "nice up de party." "No Excuse" is a particular favorite - apart from the irresistible music, we get a lesson on the B.V.I. legal system. "Ignorance is no excuse for de law!"
Elmore Stoutt - The Fungi Master "Welcome To The B.V.I."
The Lashing Dogs "What A Difference"

SKREWED UP

Skrewdriver are one of those bands more heard of than heard. As members of the Class of '77 British punk scene, one of the most celebrated movements in rock history, you'd think they'd be in the history books (they even did a Peel session), but a hard-right turn into Nazi/KKK territory had them written out as if they never existed. Their status as the premier neo-Nazi skinhead band has gained them a certain amount of notoriety, but I don't know of any record guides or rock history books that mention them, nor did I ever hear them on alt/college radio.

Sure, they're not that great, but plenty of other lesser UK punkers got ink. Hmm. Since when has rock 'n' roll been about upstanding citizenship? I wanted to know what they actually sound like. (Disclaimer: Nazis are bad.)

Their debut "All Skrewed Up" is decent raw, basic punk with a few unexpected, unpleasant forays into mainstream rock. There's not a hint of racism in this original line-up, tho their propensity for dumb lyrics was already coming to the fore on songs like "Gotta Be Young." As if anyone has a choice about their age? Duh. But it is a catchy tune:

Skrewdriver "Gotta Be Young"

Bandleader Ian Stuart Donaldson dissolved this lineup, and re-emerged a few years later with a new-and-unimproved Skrewdriver that now openly embraced Nazi, anti-semitic, racist ideologies, with lyrics as un-poetic as slogans shouted out at a political rally. The irony of declaring themselves strongly patriotic Brits while supporting that which tried to destroy Britain in WWII is, of course, lost on them. And then there's the puzzling hatred of Communism. Why support one bloodthirsty dictatorship while condemning another - professional jealousy? (Har har!) The music didn't advance, even if the punk scene had. Still, they could come up with the occasional memorable melody:

Skrewdriver "White Power"

After this period, there wasn't much gas left in their musical tank. 1984's "Hail The New Dawn" album starts off with some exciting rockers:

Skrewdriver "Before The Night Falls"

before tedium sets in: dull production, plodding tempos, and weak songwriting won't whip up a race war any more then the tiresome repetition of lyrical themes that blunt the shock value after a while. Meanwhile, the oi! scene in British punk was moving in the opposite direction - faster, louder, and more engaged with the public, as Skrewdriver retreated into the neo-Nazi subculture.

I can see how a group like this might have caused some alarm in the '80s, but it all seems fairly toothless, even a bit pathetic now. Donaldson's death by car crash in 1993 ended the band, and the Nazi skinhead scene, tiny to begin with, became increasingly marginalized to the point that it's now practically invisible to the general public. Good night, Adolph...

BAD 9/11 TRIBUTE SONGS vs. BAD 9/11 CONSPIRACY SONGS

There are LOTS and LOTS of sincere, well-meaning, awful songs by amateur tunesmiths commemorating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They're usually sappy, melodramatic ballads. Sometimes, as in songs that feature child narrators pining for their dead parents, they're almost downright tasteless, reducing an epic disaster to the level of a tv movie tearjerker. These kinds of songs often invoke patriotic or religious themes. Hey Christians! Did you know that Islam is based on the Judeo/Christian tradition? Yep, they believe (and the Koran reiterates) Bible stories. Therefore, Christianity is not the opposite of Islam, atheism is. No-one sings about that, tho. Anyway. Some of these songs are so inept that they're quite entertaining:

Jay2d "Freedom Fell" - Just when you think it can't get any worse, a guitar solo wanders in, seemingly from another song.

Kevin Fortin "I Still See" [UPDATE 9/11/10 9:00am-dude asked me to remove his song; damn, how'd he find out about it so fast? But it's available elsewhere on the web] - Unintentionally funny song-poem-esque lyrics on this one.

At perhaps the other end of the political spectrum, there's the more recent phenomenon of songs by 9/11 conspiracy kooks claiming...oh, who the hell knows? Their grasp of engineering is about as flabby as Creationists' understanding of biology and they're just as illogical. Actually, I would think that only a Republican would buy these ideas - who else would think that the thoroughly inept Bush administration could pull off such a massive conspiracy? They could barely tie their own shoes. At least this guy's funny:

The Free Bees "9/11's A Lie" - To the tune of "Stayin' Alive." He's the Weird Al of kooks!

Zan Overall "I Want To Believe You Mr President" - This guys was 83 years old when he recorded this Sinatra-ish finger-snapper. And he doesn't believe Jews died in the Holocaust either. I admit, I'd love it if he did a whole album.

HUMAN MUSIC ANTHOLOGY

Our pals over at Pleonasm have done future anthropologists and historians (not to mention weird-ologists of all stripes) the great service of collecting hours worth of audio oddities that mainly seem to have been recorded off of that most democratic of mediums, YouTube. There are four volumes (so far) of free downloads, organized by theme.

Vol. 1 Tongues - Largely spoken-word babbling and acapella singing, from Christians filled with the Spirit, to space-alien prophets, to drunks caught on camera, to a very funny bit of acoustic heavy metal. Tho there's plenty of unaccompanied vocals just dying to be sampled (check track #6), there's also some smooth-jazz, and blues w/ Peruvian Pan Flute. The Talking Heads named one of their albums "Speaking in Tongues," but another of their titles could apply here: "Stop Making Sense."

Vol. 2 Left Fieldists - Outsider music bonanza! Featuring such hits as: "You Tube Guy Sings About Prostitute," "Developmentally Disabled Guy Sings In Stairwell," "Song About Drinking Robitussin," "Down Syndrome Poetry," and an Asperger's Syndrome guy singing about his "Asperger's Girl." It's not all laffs, tho: "Man Sings About Infidelity" is a cringe-worthy confessional, and the "Song For My Deceased Wife" is pretty heart-wrenching.

Vol. 3 Extra Credit Songs - You can get school credit for performing music?! Damn, kids got it too easy nowadays! I would have loved that. There's a wide range of skills here, from inept singing or rapping American history or science lessons over karaoke backing tracks, to pretty professional-sounding original songs. The hip-hop/r'n'b (complete with Autotune!) "Digestion Song" is hysterical. A+.

Vol. 4 Antediluvian Moderns - Apparently an assortment of old folks. Haven't heard this one yet.

THROW YOUR PAWS UP

Bucktown Tiger is a seemingly average guy who, for unfathomable psychological reasons, likes to dress up as a tiger, and then perform rap songs about dressing in animal costumes at "furry" conventions for other people who like to pretend to be animals. He has several albums available of hip-hop tunes detailing furry life, with song titles like "Get Fursuited Up," and "Get Your Yiff On," "yiff" meaning furry sex. Two people who resemble, say, a Disneyland employee dressed like Mickey Mouse and the San Diego Chicken having sex is, to me, fairly incomprehensible. But, apparently, it happens. The varieties of human experiences!

Tiger plays keyboards and raps simultaneously when performing live. This song is taken from "Orange + Black: The Furst Album."

Bucktown Tiger: "Throw Your Paws Up"

Hey, I'm not here to judge. They're not hurting anyone, right? Go get 'em, Tiger.