Pop Music » Strider's Journal

Crappy Album Covers #103 — My Bruthas’ Johnson (more phallic symbols)

The funk/disco/R&B duo The Brothers Johnson’s 1980 recording, “Light Up The Night”, was the high water mark in their career as a duo. Rolling Stone listed this record as #48 in the top 100 records of the 1980s.Looks like George is using his Johnson to light up Louis. Probably didn’t help sales, which went to #5 on Billboard’s Top 200 despite the album cover.

The record did not release any pop hits, but likely had at least one dance club hit, “Stomp!”. The Brothers Johnson were probably best known for their mid-70s pop hit “Strawberry Letter 23” (peaked on BB as a single at #5 in 1977).

Now we have a guitar as a phallic symbol. But they always kind of were. The drummer never gets the girl. It’s always the guitarist. Lead guitarist? Even better. They are the alpha males in the group (if you want to carry the analogy to apes).Chicks also dig motorcyles. And motorcycles and guitars together? SCORE!!!! Evidently, Ray Nelson’s invention of a guitar-shaped motorcycle never quite caught on, except as novelty. Nelson rode around the country in one which he built himself in 1980.

He also recorded this record 10 years earlier with a few colleagues of his. The idea stuck in his mind to build a motorcycle that had a guitar motif, from the drawing on this album cover. If the drawing was followed exactly (it probably wasn’t), they would probably find that the fretboard was blocking the headlight.

Nelson has made several selefless contributions to society, through his “Guitars not Guns” campaign aimed at wayward youth, and also by being a foster parent.

Visits: 165

Crappy Album Covers #96 — More Unworkable Trekkie Ideas

You got to hand it to Leonard Nimoy. He had tried so hard to be something more than his public image of Spock, yet the public image of an unemotional, totally logical humanoid was larger than he was.

But he keeps sticking it to himself. In all of these “image makeover” LPs, Nimoy can’t get out of depicting his Spock image somewhere on the jacket. There is Spock in the upper left. In the act of trying to make you forget Spock, he reminds you at every turn.

“The Way I Feel” is a title that strikes me as being a little over the top. Also, it’s great artwork; but if you ever want to make the public forget, at least for a short time, who you played, then riding on your own coattails will get you nowhere. He is here coverng songs such as “I’d Love Making Love To You”, “Both Sides Now”, and “Sunny”.

This album is a more explicit breaking of the rule. It may have been acceptable as a first attempt. But it was not his first attempt. AMG lists this record as being released in the same year as “The Way I Feel”, 1968.

This time, you see two sides, alright. And rather than being two parts of a whole, they clash. Imagine hearing songs with titles that could appear on a Kraftwerk album (or fill in your own industrial/synthpop group): Amphibious Assault, Spock Thoughts, Once I Smiled, and Highly Illogical; next to songs like: Gentle On My Mind, If I Were a Carpenter, and, The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, for which I presented a video over a month ago. You don’t have to watch it again, unless you haven’t seen it. I’ll understand.

Visits: 128

Crappy Album Covers #89 — Crappy Beatles

album_cover_crap_127_-_beatlesnonexistent I wish I could say this was a joke. But the 1966 American release of “Yesterday and Today”, which I don’t remember, probably because I only remember the santiized version of this record cover, really did exist. 750,000 of these were released, but most of them had the alternative cover pasted on after the controversy ensued.

So this is how The Meat Puppets got their inspiration. It goes without saying that collectors are reportedly paying at least $40,000 for this album cover, and still more if it is one of the stereo releases.

The Beatles themselves reportedly had mixed reactions. Lennon and McCartney were OK about it, while Harrisson reportely was more retrospect. Personally, I would have left the blood and gore for Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper. I can’t see McCartney biting off the heads of chickens on stage. Not even Lennon.

yesterdayandtodayalbumcover Even after using this sanitized album cover, this album remains as the only money loser for The Beatles that Capitol ever released, despite the hit songs that were on it: “Yesterday”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Nowhere Man” and “Day Tripper”; and despite the fact that it hit #1 on Billboard, and became certified Gold.

This is way off the other end. Clinically sanitized. The Beatles are neither extreme, and that is their whole appeal, in my view. They established their reputation by taking artistic risks while being in full control of their craft.

Visits: 61

Crappy Album Covers #88 — Boots that smell

album_cover_crap_126_-_dylan_starbucks This is a 2005 first official release of a 1962 recording that Dave Van Ronk helped record which had been a bootleg for decades.

Now, I have nothing against Dylan making money where he can. But does anyone agree that putting “The Times They Are A-Changing” in a bank commercial, as he agreed to do for Bank of Montreal in the last decade constituted good product placement and promotion of the “Dylan” brand? Do you want that message to be given to you by a folk singer or your bank?

This album was recorded by Dylan before he became well-known. It is done in the packaging which Starbucks approved of for their 6-month exclusive 2005 deal for which he once again became infamous as a sellout. Much ink and electrons have been spilled on this topic, and I won’t venture there. More interestingly, he was also reviled by record/CD retailers such as HMV for doing this. After all, HMV feels (somewhat rightly) that they shouldn’t be competing against a coffee shop to sell CDs.

Give Dylan a break. First of all, “Live at The Gaslight” is a bootleg, and what better way to stick it to the bootleggers than having your own authorized relase? And coffee shops are where common, ordinary, grass-roots people meet, isn’t it? That is, common people who commonly order $5 lattes and $3 biscottis in fake Italian. Near where I live, such common folk walk their 3″ tall toy poodles and wear Florsheims. These customers take about 3 minutes to say the order in a nearly operatic key; then the server takes another 3 minutes to repeat the order in-tempo to another server who works the espresso machine. Who will sing their songs? Who will sing about the time that the chashier, who has a nose ring and a Master’s degree in Anthro for his thesis on “The Impact of the Roncesvalles Streetcar Terminal on Popular Culture in Toronto”, thought he nearly got skin cancer by scanning so many fifty-dollar bills under the UV? And after the customer pays an inflated price for coffee, he leaves out that tip jar. Now, that takes real guts. And no one sings their pain like Dylan.

Here’s one way to really “stick it to the man”: Go to Starbucks, and order “instant”. That ought to throw a monkey wrench in the system. I guarantee you that because most of these people are from a generation that hasn’t heard of “instant” and don’t know how to cook their own meals, no one will know how to handle the order, but everyone will feel that they absolutely must or fear getting fired. For one thing, it’s not fake Italian, and it doesn’t take 3 minutes to say.

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This is also believed to be a bootleg. Now I am beginning to believe that if Leonard Nimoy can be bootleged, anyone can. Wonder what price bootleggers were getting for this album?

Two late ’60s standards are on this single. One is Peter, Paul and Mary’s “If I Had A Hammer”, and the other is Bobby Hebb’s jazz standard “Sunny”, which quickly got covered by Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Martino, James Brown, Dusty Springfield, and just about every lounge lizard act with a pulse. My father had a James Last LP with Sunny on it. Boney M even put out a disco version of Sunny.

In case you were not alive during the 60s, I started scratching around for a You Tube video to show you. The original Bobby Hebb versions are out there, but you have to go to You Tube directly to view them. Instead, I have a double-bill: a duet with Tom Jones and Ella Fitzgerald from 1970, more than likely on Tom Jones’ own variety show:

Visits: 101

Crappy Album Covers #87 — Belly Dancing II

I’ve noticed that in the past copule of posts, album covers of middle eastern music/belly dancing of the ’50s and ’60s appear to prefer redheads. Here, even the blonde has to settle for being upstaged by this redhead. If the bald fella hits the gong, the performance is over and the dancer gets escorted off the stage.

“Orienta: The Marco Polo Adventures” could have been made in the late 50s and early 60s when most blockbuster movies consisted of stories of history and exploration. But no exact information exists.

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Mambo at Midnight, by Belmonte and his Afro-American Music. At least it’s not that other Midnight Mambo: the horizontal one.

Click here to hear a sampling of what Belmonte sounds like.

Visits: 122

(Video) The Gandharvas – First Day of Spring

Enjoy the first day of spring. Break free.

Visits: 78

Time to plug your ears

William Shatner (who played Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek) recites “Lucy in the Sky”. The animator wins big for visual accompaniment. It is kitschy in exactly the right way. Guest starring Lucille Ball and Lucy Van Pelt. Cameo appearance by Ricky Ricardo and The Flying Nun (with Shatner’s face pasted on).

Visits: 153

Crappy Album Covers #82 — Classic Crock

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Rock set to classical music, especially in the 60s and 70s, was done with no small measure of contempt for the rock genre. Here, the greater works of The Beatles is set to opera.

I can see Elanor Rigby being set to opera, or Yesterday, but Can’t Buy Me Love? Or the song Revolution?

And the line drawings on this cover is an obvious send-up to similar drawings of The Beatles’ Revolver album, which has some of these tracks on it. If it were really a send-up to Revolution, what artwork would they parody? The White Album?

This 1968 album cover is not really crappy, since the general design would be predictable for Shatner: kitschy late 60s computer lettering; Shatner in a trance; and so on.

What is legendarily horrible about this album lay in its contents. The album’s pièce de résistance for masochists was in his reading of the Beatle’s Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. Those who boldly assert that Shatner’s talents extended beyond acting usually quiet down whenever they hear Shatner take a hatchet to recite this track.

I have a link to a video of Shatner doing Lucy, which is so brilliantly done and animated, that I felt it deserved its own entry.

Warning: Once you view the video, you can’t UN-view it. Sorry.

Visits: 228

Crappy Album Covers #81 — Crappy By Request

Bunk Strutts has requested that I look at a link he sent me, and here is what I am coming back with. He had sent me a link to Franklarosa.com some weeks ago, and only now I am coming around to the requests. So, you might have to wait up to 3 weeks, since I post a couple of weeks in advance, before people actually see it.

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A group called “The Pop Singers and Orchestra” has this album called “Themes from TV Hit Shows”, obviously from the late 70s/early 80s.

Get a load of these cartoony impressions of the stars of these programs. Kind of makes it look mindless. Just the way I remembered those programs. It’s just that the offerings by networks these days make these 70’s programs look like “University on the Air” by comparison.

We witness Valerie Bertinelli, the hearthrob from One Day At A Time, looking as if she has Down’s Syndrome; Angie Dickinson (Police Woman) gritting her teeth instead of smiling; Jack Lord (Hawaii Five-O) looks like Dudley Moore; and Lindsay Wagner (Bionic Woman) looks like an 18 year-old valedictorian. Archie and Meathead look like they’re gonna kiss and the ladies look terribly worried; and Sanford is going to be strangled by his son.

Michael Landon (Little House On The Prarie) looks like a seventies’ lead guitarist surrounded by his child-age female groupies (Hold it! That’s exactly how he looked on the TV show!). Lee Majors (Six Million Dollar Man), whose portrait presented here was drawn during his brief encounter with a moustache, looks sad that Charlie’s Angels has borrowed all three of his pink turtlenecks, and he had to settle for wearing a crappy orange one.

Then, there’s The Waltons. Look, I grew up on this program. It was my mother’s favourite, since she grew up in the praries in the ’30s, the same period of the program. This means that the theme is forever burned on to my cerebral cortex. Why on earth does someone feel the world needs yet another rendition of that infernal theme?

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Going back a decade, Sebastian Cabot played the butler Giles French in the sitcom “Family Affair”. Here, he recites (not sings) the greater works of Bob Zimmerman (nee Dylan) in his album “Sebastian Cabot, Actor/Bob Dylan, Poet”.

I am unsure why the silhouette of Dylan is distorted near Cabot’s head. Looks like Dylan’s harmonica is trying to eat his face.

You have not lived until you have heard Sebastian Cabot read (not sing) “It Ain’t Me Babe”. I can’t seem to find an MP3 of this, but he recites it like he is reciting Shakespeare. I heard it once years ago, and I recall it was unintentionally hilarious. The “music” is in the same league as William Shatner’s “Transformed Man” made around the same time. Recall that in that album, Shatner distinguished himself by reciting (not singing) “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”. Or you’re maybe better off not recalling that one.

I went through his track listing, and he thankfully does not do “Subterranean Homesick Blues” or “Lay Lady Lay”.

This album has since been re-released in 2007 on CD, and is sold on Amazon, if you really want to hear “It Ain’t Me, Babe” that bad. You can download the individual MP3 from there, I believe.

Actually, I have found the song embedded in a video from You Tube:

Visits: 170

(Adult Content) Crappy Album Covers #72 — Crappy Classical

The Eastman-Rochester Orchestra wanted to portray Pinocchio in an innocent way, but I’m not sure. First of all, he doesn’t look all that friendly, and something about him looks larger than life. Kind of like “Pinnochio attacks Manhattan”.

Imagine a giant Pinnochio, tall as a skyscraper, dancing and causing havoc in a metropolitan area. “I got no strings,” indeed. When I look at this Pinnochio, I can’t get that image out of my head.

Now, that’s something to set to classical music.

All of the photos for today are from LP Cover Lover.

Relaxation therapy, from Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman and Bill May.
To be fair, this album has strong followers. Just read this promo. But I’m not sure if I want to wrap myself in cellophane (that’s not water!) and lie in a river for any amount of time. What would the police say if they pass by?

This is what makes me think that she looks like a murder victim who just washed up on shore. Looks like a case for CSI.

Another possible scenario for this photo is that this chick on the cover works in a Glad Wrap factory, see? Then, she gets caught in a roller, and she gets wrapped up in the stuff. Nobody notices, so they ship her out, and when she gets to Receiving at a warehouse, guys look at what they ordered, and see this chick hanging off at the end of the roll, semi conscious. No-one in receiving could find a semiconscious woman on the packing list or the invoice, so she and the roll are shipped back to the factory, where she is finally revived by paramedics to everyone’s … Peace of Mind, which is the title of the record.

Classical artists try. They really do. What they need is their own “decade”. The fifties was a decade for jazz and blues; the sixties and seventies were owned by rock. In recent decades, I can’t think of any particular music that has dominated.

Naked/topless women have been tried on many classical album covers, with uneven levels of success. A couple of my friends got together one time and someone talked about how the rapper 50 Cent got to be a big seller. Sales skyrocketed after he got shot in a gang dispute. Apparently, being shot several times gives rappers something called “street cred”, which boosts album sales.

So, the conversation turned to how fewer kids are being turned on by classical music. Packaging of classical music albums are often dry and stodgy. But even when they get seductive like this cover, album sales still remain low. The idea we had was to go into various classical studios where the musicians were, and shoot all of the performers, and see if their now-earned street cred makes their record sales go up. Late into the night, we gave up on the idea.

Visits: 147

Crappy Album Covers #71 — Hats and Accordion Players

Apologies for this posting being over 4 hours late. I set the date on it OK, but not the time. I just checked ahead to the posts for the next couple of weeks, and fixed any time probelms there. Normally, you should see these postings on or after 6PM EST/EDT, with some obvious allowances for the odd bit of human error.

Today, we have a double bill from the same artists. The duo Elna Fredhoy and Rigmor Odun, both members of the Norwegian Salvation Army, one of whom is playing the much-feared accordion.

The other musician is playing a guitar, and it does not look terribly familiar. According to lpcoverlover.com, the 6-string guitar can be identified as an Isana, from Germany. According to the website, Elvis Presley once owned an Isana.

Branches of the Christian religion have never completely gotten along: Pentacostals snipe against the other protestants; and of course almost everyone snipes against the Catholics while the Catholics feel superior to other Christians. But no one has ever had anything negative to say about the Salvationists. I’ve never heard a peep said against them. OK, so some of them wear funny hats.

The hats say a lot about these ladies. To me, they say things like “we’ve never heard of The Red Hot Chili Peppers”; or “what on Earth is Jungle?” or “Peeps in your hood? I had that problem once, and they gave me some kind of medicated shampoo for it, maybe I could lend you some.”

Visits: 148

Crappy Album Covers #69 — Creepy Similarities IV: Music from Other Worlds

Now we know where This Mortal Coil got their ideas from. The thing about a beautiful woman emerging from the sky (perhaps a visual pun on the “heavenly body”) seems to be with precedent.You can’t go much further back than this 1931 album cover by Johnny Green and His Orchestra, called “Out of Nowhere”. Johnny Green (1908-1989), a former Wall Street stockbroker became a band leader, working with the likes of Guy Lombardo, and producing many jazz albums, which, along with Out of Nowhere, became jazz standards.

This multi-artist effort, led by producer Ivo Watts-Russell, was populated by personnel from bands signed on to the 4AD record label which Watts-Russell owned at the time. It is considered an ’80s alternative classic. They did covers of other artists like Tim Buckley, The Byrds, and even Emmylou Harris, but the covers were always done the same great care they give to thier original material. Anyone who saw this package knew they were expecting to hear strangely beautiful music that seems to come from another world.

This one is an obvious improvement on the design concept of this above album. The mood you see on the cover is exactly what you get inside. One track that is an exception to this eternally dreamy mood is the song “Not Me”, which is the only track on the album that borders on pop.

I still have this CD in my collection, and it had been released on vinyl. It is not listed on E-Bay, a sure sign that few people want to part with their copy.

Visits: 149

Crappy Album Covers #68 — Bravely Crappy: The Record Covers of Bruce Springsteen

What I mean by the title of today’s blog is these covers were neither crappy to please an audience, nor were they crappy by way of poor judgement. They are here because it would appear that Springsteen would rather get out a crappy album cover if it meant it would help him get his artistic point across rather than just record whatever sells with the most attractive packaging. You have to respect that. They are not crappy for the wrong reasons, indeed they are crappy for exactly the right reasons. They are not negatively crappy. Oh, no my dear readers. They are positively crappy.

This kind of cover would not be out of place on the cover of Sinclair Ross’s 1941 book “As for Me and My House”. Anyone having to endure a class on Canadian lit knows of the devil I speak. A story about a preacher’s wife, living on a bleak stretch of Saskatchewan prairie during the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression. The book didn’t actually sell in its day. It was a bleak book, bleakly written, about bleak times and bleak relationships. But it has made the canon of Canadian Lit courses, and this cover with its stretch of dirt road across a seemingly endless flat plain reminds me of that.This was his sixth album, recorded with voice, guitar and harmonica, came out in between his two monster albums “The River” and “Born in the USA”. It peaked on Billboard at #3, and yielded 2 top-40 singles.

This cover was chosen because it takes the name and rallying cry of folk legend Peter Seeger and pretty much puts it on a beer label.”Come to the Springsteen Bar, we have Seeger Stout on tap. You’ll love the way it gets you drunk!”But looking at this cover reminds me of how a lot — maybe most — of Springsteen’s biggest hits sound like beer commercials. Or given the weightiness of the mark Springsteen has left on Music, perhaps the Beer commercials are trying to sound like Springsteen.

Visits: 111

Crappy Album Covers #67 — Casting Out The Demon

Before I start, I would also like to say, that you can also access my front page when there are no crappy albums for other interesting and amusing articles. They tend to be published almost every second day starting from Sunday: Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and sometimes on Friday. Right around this time, there have been articles on The Politics of Dancing, a series of 3 articles named after a song from 1983 that I knew from the band Re-Flex. This time, I try to breathe some meaning into the title. But it shouldn’t be a heavy read.

Someone, somewhere, some time ago, there was an album where someone went around with a mike and recording equipment and recorded the voices of people said to be possessed by demons.

Even if this were real, would it really matter? The only evidence of demonic possession will be the voices on an album, and for all you know they could be acting in a cushy air-conditioned studio and drinking chilled Perrier during their breaks.

Now the question is, is the guy on the album the demon or the body possessing it? To me, he just looks goofy.

“Satan is real unless declared integer” is a twist on an old computer programmers’ joke, known to those who programmed in FORTRAN 77 and earlier. Actually the joke was supposed to settle the theological question of God’s existence: “God is real unless declared integer”. It also was a play on the idea that the default variable type in FORTRAN was floating-point, for which FORTRAN used the keyword “real”.

Charlie and Ira Louvin are stitched into Americana about as much as apple pie. They were an integral part of The Grand Ole Opry for 8 years from 1955 to 1963, recorded with Chet Atkins, and played everything from Gospel to Waltzes. Ira Louvin died in a car crash in June 20, 1965. Charlie, now over 80 years old, has seen himself and his brother mentioned in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

Visits: 119

(Images may be disturbing) Crappy Album Covers #66 — Food On Vinyl III

You know that after all that has pased through this blog, I wouldn’t have to put up a warning like that. But I do, if you scroll down.

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Look at that pizza. It could easily feed a small army, but these 7 adults are having it all to themselves. Where did they get an oven big enough to fit this monster?This album is called “Pizza Party”, with Joe Biviano on accordion. He, along with two other performers, Abe Goldman and Gene von Hallberg, were the first accordionists to make it to Canegie Hall, where they apparently appeared together for a 1939 performance.He was said to have gone consistently low-brow in music, to which the theme of this album testifies. He had gone as far as any accordionist can expect to go in his career. Unless your name is Weird Al Yankovic.

Kraut Rockers Eulenspygel’s first album in 1971, called “2”, had a cover with a controversial design (this one) that was soon replaced by something more appetizing. They survived long enough to do a second album in 1972 called “Ausschuss”, recorded at Apple Studios in London. After a breakup, a reunion, and several lineup changes, they made a third album in 1979 and finally broke up in 1983, and haven’t been heard from.

Visits: 666

Crappy Album Covers #65 — Food On Vinyl II

This is the original Herb Alpert album, playing mostly in-tune by the owner of A&M Records and his Tijuana Brass, called “Whipped Cream and Other delights”, released in April of 1965.There is a lot of food referred to in the song titles. There is mention of lemons, tangerines, peanuts, green peppers, lollipops, and honey.The album cover, depicting a young lady covered in whipped cream who would feel a whole lot better if ten guys came and licked it off her, was of such a borderline tasteless nature that it BEGGED for parody, and the two below are likely the most famous examples.

This 1966 album from The Frivolous Five called “Sour Cream and Other Delights”. This album contains lots of standard instrumentals made famous by Alpert, and from time to time they seem to go off-key. They’ve got Tijuana Taxi, A Taste of Honey, Spanish Flea, Lemon Tree, and they even cover The Beatles’ “All My Loving”. Of course, The Frivolous Five can’t have an album cover without chicks. You have to wonder how did they get access to enough sour cream to cover these five middle-aged ladies? Also, notice one of them is holding a single long-stemmed rose, just like the lady in the original Herb Alpert album cover.

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During the same period, stand-up comedian Pat Cooper made this album called “Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights”. Now, do you think he was parodying The Tijuana Brass? Naww… Can’t be …At least he isn’t holding a rose.Somebody get a fork …Cooper was doing stand-up and hit it big on The Jackie Gleason Show in 1963. His Italian-American brand of ethnic comedy got him into bigger venues, appearing with Sinatra, Steve and Edie, Tony Bennett, and Connie Francis.

He currently appears occasionally on comedy channels and has been featured on Howard Stern a few times, and has appeared on sattelite radio stations as late as 2007.

Here, Cooper takes liberties with American history:
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Visits: 503

Crappy Album Covers #62 — The Dance

	This one is from Michelino and his Cha Cha Band. The color scheme of the album obfuscates the black lettering near the bottom. Something about “Cha Cha Cha” and secretaries. This whole thing gives me an understanding as to why lpcoverlover.com headlined this as “Banging The Secretary“. There is the secretary there with her typewriter. Either he is playing bad music and she wants Michelino to stop, or he wants to dictate a letter to her using drum signals, and she can’t keep up.
	I have discovered that the “Cha Cha” has within it a nearly endless goldmine of crappy album covers. Look at “Dracula Cha Cha Cha”. Well, of course one problem I have, and it goes without saying, that the cover looks like it was done in pastel by a 14-year-old.But even the mere idea of doing the “Dracula Cha Cha Cha” is quite another topic. Gone are the images of warm Spanish climes, where engage in the dance such as the Cha-Cha or the tango, or to any of the many other Latin rhythms that make travelling to Spain or Latin America a treat. Instead, you the Cha Cha, done with an element of fear. Fear that you might get caught, I’d say. Some things can never be forgiven.I guess, then, I would consider this Cha-Cha album where the themes are non-standard, a kind of “alternative Cha-Cha” album to please, say, the punks and the skinheads. Imagine punks and skinheads doing the Cha-Cha. Just imagine.
	It seems that everyone had tried their hand at disco during the seventies. Here, the late Danish pop-rocker keyboardist and heavy metallist Tommy Seebach (1949-2003) wants you to believe that he can do disco, with his album “Disco Tango”.It is rather surprising that in the seventies, a person like Seebach could wear his mustache and hair like that and probably still get laid. It sure was a different decade. Those who lived through those decades must admit: in the 70s, we all thought we were something. We all thought that up to that point in modern history, we had the coolest clothes, and the coolest hairstyles. I mean having a blowdryer was a cool thing, as was having one of those hair brushes with the bristles that go all the way around, so that blowdrying your hair could get you that puffy head of hair that made your head look bigger than it really was. And you felt so cool when you wore it! Now, you guys have to admit that if that was the deal with you and your immediate clique, then you didn’t look too different from Seebach over here. If you were on a date, you wore a sports jacket and one of those shirts with pointy collars, and you made sure that you left the top button undone so that the girl can see your necklace and possibly some chest hair. And since ties weren’t cool, you never wore one. Therefore, we must conclude that this album is only crappy in retrospect.This blogger seems to have dicovered in those multiple heavy metal videos he did, that they all seemed to be the same shots of the same riffs of totally different music. Even the images of the drummer hitting the cymbals were in different time with the music. The same girls were dancing the same dance out of the same forest, regardless of the music. On different songs, I saw the same shots of the same guitar riffs; the same shots of the same bass riffs, not even bothering to change the camera angle.
	While we’re on the topic of clothing styles, I’m afraid that these guys, The Drifters, have a clothing style that is like nothing in the history of the universe.Tracking information on these folks was next to impossible. There is a polka tune called “Drifters Polka”, which seemingly everyone covered — even Roy Clark. But A band called “Drifters” and an album called “Polka ‘n’ Fun” only led to other crappy album blogs, short on straight info.

Visits: 125

Charles Manson covers Beach Boys’ “Cease to Exist”

Charles Manson covers the Beach Boy’s tune “Cease to Exist”, accompanied by talent from The Manson Family. Not great, but I have heard worse from ’60s music. Is it too bad of a pun to say that this song is likely a “cult favrourite”? The video is all imagery, and not badly done. I hear that the Beach Boys later changed the song title and first line of the lyric to “Cease to resist”.

Visits: 155

Crappy Album Covers #26 — Phallic symbols

Phallic symbols, their effects, and other weirdness…

Sigmund Freud once was quoted as saying “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” After inventing the idea of phallic symbols, and knowing how much he loved to smoke cigars, there are people who would have disagreed with Freud’s veiled attempt to shield the psychological dimensions of his own smoking habit from public scrutiny. Cigarettes are no different in their role as phallic symbols. First, I have got to tell you about Tex Williams. You are looking at the album cover for the biggest hit of his career. “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke (that Cigarette) was a #1 hit on billboard for six weeks in 1947, and was the first million-seller for Capitol Records. Despite the uber-cheesy look of the album cover, it seems that the song is actually an anti-smoking song, but with a certain postwar morbid sense of humor. Scroll down for the You-Tube video (black-and-white, of course).
Pioneer flautist Herbie Mann is a big name in Jazz circles. He helped get Chick Corea’s career started by having him play with a few of his ensembles. He has enjoyed quite a range of crossover success, with 25 of his jazz albums entering the top 200 pop charts. The album cover suggests that he has a talent with more than one kind of flute.
… Just ask Herbie’s taxi driver. He saw everything. He should have first suspected something was up when he picked up Herbie and his GF in a swanky bar in Lower Manhattan, and then they asked to be driven to an obscure Pizza Parlour in Hempstead (Long Island), taking only the side streets. After about an hour he had to ask Herbie and his lady friend to tone it down a bit because he had to concentrate on driving the car. However it must be said that talent with playing the flute is really a talent the partner has, and not of the possessor of such a flute. That taxi driver has quite a smirk on his face…
Jerry Williams, Jr., known to his adoring fans as “Swamp Dogg”, is a soul musician, and has been putting out such music since the 1970s. He has been making records under various monacres since 1954, and has his present name since the 1970s. He continues to make records to this date. “Rat On!” is Mr. Dogg’s second LP, released in 1971. Swamp Dogg has commented on the relatively recent trend by rap singers to go for names like “Snoop Doggy Dogg”, “The Doggs”, and “The Dogg Pound”. He seems unsure that he had any influence on those musicians.

Tex Williams: Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!

Visits: 148

(Cocteau Twins) Lyrics to Fotzepolitic — NOT!

These Fotzepolitic lyrics (or a close facsimilie) had appeared on a newsgroup some years ago. The approximate lyrics are below. I was convinced that these were the actual lyrics, but recently I have looked at some “lyrics” websites, and they all post more or less the same “approximate” lyrics, but to my knowledge, none of them are like the one I have here.

If you had not heard the song Fotzepolitic, I recommend you give it a listen. Seriously, I thought it was a cool song (click below).

The Cocteau Twins had this strange style of singing, which could only arguably be called “the English language”. I think they invented a few words and used some non-words also. But of course, we were all charmed by Elizabeth Frazier’s singing and music and bought their recrods anyway. It didn’t matter what she was singing about; it was how it was sung. Their style was atmospheric and ethereal. But Fotzepolitic was more on the “pop” side.

Maybe these are the lyrics, maybe they’re not. But you can play the above video and sing along with these words anyway. They are as good a guess as anything out there.

My dreams are like a chemist
Must be drugs
They're a young girl's dreams

True some drool
and shoot like a baby with stones
But I'll use just rouge

Not like the scary hairs on other singing groups
Like the scary hairs on other singing groups
Big boobs

Family food its you like a stone inside me
Sit on my face

I am stoned; 
I am drowned, now
I'm bleached to blonde
Now I'm empty-headed.

See and saw bounce me back to you, will you?
See and saw bounce me back to you, will you?, 
Will you?

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