Crappy Album Covers #87 — Belly Dancing II

album_cover_crap_114_-_orienta 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.
album_cover_crap_114_-_orienta_back “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.
album_cover_crap_108_-_mambobelmontemidnight 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

Crappy Album Covers #86 — Bad Hair II

album_cover_crap_121_-_hair_franklarosa_com I have no idea how many remakes of the Hair soundtrack there were. You know, this hippie chick looks like she has a case of running out of conditioner and shampoo. While this doesn’t hurt album sales in the least, it is still part of the problem.
Once again, we see a gorgeous naked woman but for her hair, “Hair” in large letters and “Music from” in small letters. In the same small lettering are the performers, called “The Sunshine Generation”.Would you rather hear songs like Aquarius and Good Morning Starshine from The Sunshine Generation or from The 5th Dimension and Oliver respectively?
album_cover_crap_109_-_howtosaveamarriage This was not going to be a bad hair album until I realised that the lady in this photo is wearing a wig.

The plot line to the movie is something like: A bachelor tries to save a friend’s marriage only to end up getting married himself, I think, to the friend’s mistress. This is a soundtrack to this 1968 comedy starring Dean Martin opposite Stella Stevens, with music by Micheal Legrand.

 

Visits: 95

Crappy Album Covers #85 — One up for the ladies

album_cover_crap_115_-_ragtime Never mind what the (usually male) record company exectives tell you. The real record salesmen are women. All they need to do to sell a record, regardless of its quality, is take off some or all of their clothes and pose for the album cover. Too bad the ones in this blog are entry are nameless, as they are most of the time.
album_cover_crap_111_-_dances This model  remains possibly clothed and looks suggestively at the camera lens. Definitely a “money shot”. Believe me, I have nothing against women who play no part in the music performance on album covers, but what makes this cover crappy is that it has little else going for it. Just a spinning globe in the forground to keep the guys guessing.

Visits: 95

St Patty’s Day Matinee

This is a humorous kid’s animation that tells the story of  St. Patrick.

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On a raunchier tone, comedian Mark Day offends several nationalities equally with this send-up to St. Patrick’s Day, and describes sainthood as divided into the A-list and B-list.

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Visits: 93

Crappy Album Covers #84 — Why sex is like chocolate in record cover design II

album_cover_crap_112_-_lalala Caravelli and His Magnificent Strings seem to have the benefit of a nude model for this 1969 album in order to distract listeners from the fact that big band and non-electric music that wasn’t folk had been dead for decades.And getting a hippie chick to pose nude with the playlist painted on her skin in psychedelic lettering wasn’t going to help.

Notice that 1969 is a couple of years after Herb Alpert hit it big with his suggestive album cover for “Whipped Cream and Other Delights”. The sexy cover gained Alpert a whole audience that would not have given him the time of day. By 1969  all of the nerdy non-rock acts wanted a piece of the action.
album_cover_crap_113_-_bambuco Pancho Purcell also wants his share with his late 60s/early 70s offering “Bambuco Moves In”. It is likely to have been made around the same time, although the exact date could not be even hinted at.Bambuco is moving in, and she hasn’t got a thing to wear. She also does not appear to have a belly button.

Bambuco is a music common in South America, particluarly Colombia.

Visits: 110

[Video] DHMO: The ultimate conspiracy theory

In answer to Bunk Strutt’s re-broadcast of a conspiracy-nut video about rainbows oozing out of our ground and taking away our rights, here is a notable response in the same vein which heretofore has been under-viewed.

First, you must view the original video:

Then, view this particular response to the video (which in my opinion was the best out of several responses):

I understand that, according to a site I visited (link below), the answer to what is oozing out of our ground, and the answer is DHMO, or something called “Dihydrogen Monoxide”, alternatively known as “Hydric acid” or “Hydroxyl acid”. Inhalation of its liquid form can cause death in minutes, and exposure to its gas form can cause second-degree burns. It is also a principal ingredient in acid rain, and is also used in nuclear power plants as a coolant. It has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients. In fact all diseased people seem to be loaded with the stuff. DHMO is also used in cruel animal experiments.

To precisely explain the shocking truth of both phenomena above, experiments have shown that fine sprays of DHMO will cause it to diffract sunlight, causing the presence of rainbows. In addition, the second video was wrong in implicating sulfur as being the cause of “yellow snow”. The scientific community is unanimous in that, after repeated experiements and scientific papers, in the shocking conclusion that the addition of diluted urea to one of the solid forms of DHMO will actually cause it to turn yellow, and melt somewhat, exactly as you saw in the video.

DHMO’s solid form has been known to cause automotive brakes to fail by reducing the degree of friction between tires and the road to almost zero. DHMO concentrates itself in huge areas of our sky on a daily basis worldwide, sometimes even blocking out our sun and interfering with radio waves. DHMO also seems to concentrate itself in many junk foods as well. Yet, the government feels that it is safe for us, and they do not seem to feel that by blocking our radio signals that DHMO is tampering with freedom of the press. It is time to stand up for our rights! Say NO to DHMO! Thank you.

I present my research reference.

I will accept any donations to this cause that you are willing to give.

Visits: 81

Crappy Album Covers #83 — Belly Dancing I

album_cover_crap_116_-_port_said Port Said (Bur Sa’id), an Egyptian city lying on the Mediterranean Sea, was originally built in the mid-1800s, so the story goes, to house people hired to costruct the Suez Canal. The Canal runs through Port Said and ends at the Red Sea. 

I would imagine that belly dancing became popular in Western culture precisely by Europeans and Americans coming to Egypt to work on the canal.

I wonder what the deal is with the concentric circles emanating from the dancer’s left nipple. It could be a GPS transmitter.  Ships entering Port Said can use her as a navigation aid.

“Belly Dance Music From Port Said” is one of at least 3 albums from Saffet’s Oriental Orchestra.
album_cover_crap_117_-_belly_2 Exactly how does one convey the music of belly dancing on an album cover? If you have a beautiful wife, you can photograph her in Egyptian garb and have her do various poses and contortions. Take a bunch of polaroids, and paste it as a mini-montage on a hot pink canvas, then title it using a Arabic-style calligraphy. 

Many Westerners who don’t understand Islamic culture (or who understand it only enough to know the tightly-held taboos, especially on women’s mode of dress) have trouble reconciling themselves to this apparent contradiction in their acceptance of belly dancing. But I guess it wouldn’t be a true culture if it didn’t have contradictions.

Ray Mirijanian has had at least 6 albums produced in the mid to late 1960s on Middle Eastern music.

Visits: 211

[Video] Giving Leonard Nimoy equal time

I don’t know why I need to pick on Shatner, when Nimoy was far worse.

Bloggers Joe and Darlene Lacy, who have a Leonard Nimoy shrine page, assert, with visual proof, that Nimoy has recorded more albums than Shatner. Actually, with his other recordings (not on the DOT label), he is said to have more than The Beatles. Nimoy also didn’t help his career along with singing anymore than Shatner did. The one track that tells you everything you need to know about songs from Spock is his tribute to Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, with the song “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.

Visits: 112

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

album_cover_crap_120_-_beatles_franklarosa_com 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?
album_cover_crap_123_-_shatner 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.

album-cover-crap-106_-_hit_70s_tv_franklarosa_com 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?
album_cover_crap_121_-_cabot_franklarosa_com 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

(The Onion) Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport

Visits: 76

Crappy Album Covers #80 — Wanna Come to My Place?

bongodate This is Jazz artist Mike Pacheco with his 1957 LP “Bongo Date”. Back then, there was the fascination with Beatnik culture. It was the Hip-Hop of the 1950s. 

Guy says to the girl: “Wanna come to my place and I’ll show you my instrument?” And the pick-up line actually works! It’s a date! Or maybe the girl is saying it to the guy. For me, it works both ways in this photo. Cherche la femme, indeed!
harmonicagang Johnny Puleo (1907-1983) was a pantomine artist, dramatic actor, and in his later years, master of the harmonica. He has recorded at least two albums with “His Harmonica Gang”, and has had at least two solo efforts. 

He’s the short guy in the foreground. Standing at 4′ 6″ tall (1.37 metres), he would show up on Ed Sullivan playing a bass harmonica that was almost the size of his head. He started in Vaudeville playing all of the large night clubs in the United States. His last performance was on television in 1982, when he appeared once on SCTV.

Visits: 117

Crappy Album Covers #79 — Crappy to Infinity

album_cover_crap_105_blonde_redhead-23 Proof that the lady on Blonde Redhead’s 2007 album “23” has an infinite number of legs: 

1) This woman has 4 legs

2) 4 is an even number

3) 4 is an odd number of legs for a woman to have

4) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity

Therefore, this woman has an infinite number of legs.

Tennis, anyone?

I have this one in my collection. The contents are pretty good, and the CD has had great reviews. 23 was one of the top 10 alternative albums of 2007. I’ve heard comparisons with other bands; but no — they stand on their own. They are very melodic and very listenable.

I think the reason for the crappiness of this cover is that, on one hand, it doesn’t look “alternative”, but it doesn’t look terribly normal. It’s a cover which confuses its audience. It also is not really an indication of what is inside. What’s inside is pretty consistent, well-done, and not so “weird” as this cover would suggest. The cover has since been modified.
album-cover-crap-107_-_polka_disco_franklarosa_com As was mentioned by this blogger, with this 1979 album by Jimmy Sturr and his Orchestra, we witness the union of the two most repulsive words in music. 

And to make things worse, it is actually a double album. But one has to realise that this album wasn’t made to further tighten the noose on disco; it was done to popularise polka. Jimmy Sturr still makes music and has his own website, sponsored by Mrs. T’s Perogies.

Visits: 101

Crappy Album Covers #78 — Crappy on many levels

tubby_boots I can’t resist adding this second Tubby Boots album, called “Goes Topless”.Whoa. 

This one is crappy on so many levels. Recall in our first Tubby Boots record shown last week that he thought he was a hipster. Now he thinks he is a female stripper. A female stripper wearing a Roman war helmet. And pink underwear with a bearded man drawn over his crotch. And, of course, the pasties.

On the bottom it says: “For the Mature-Minded Adult”. I am unsure how many “mature-minded” adults would be seen with this record. But if you are an adult and not mature-minded, you are obviously spared from having to buy this record.
cartyparty Bill Carty’s album here is also crappy on many levels. Imagine pulling up your blinds, to be confronted with this guy staring back at you?We have already seen Carty’s head go into orbit with the last album we saw, when we witnnessed him as the world’s first suicide bomber. Now his head is landing in front of your window. 

His eyes popping out of his head could be a mirthful look, or it could be hyperthyroidism. Or it could be his forever frozen look of surprise when he found out all he needed to set off the grenade was to pull the pin.

Visits: 68

Crappy Album Covers #77 — Big Heads II

billbarner1 Comedian Bill Barner was a comedian for a short stint in the Florida area in the 1960s. His comedy records are one of the earliest to appear. However, his career didn’t go too far, according to my informants (actually, it was from an interview between Woody Woodbury and WFMU in New York, which was podcasted). 

You can see clearly this is some kind of ’60s anaesthetic aesthetic. A woman is showing herself off, and Barner seems to show his appreciation.

Barner had to travel to San Francisco to get this recording made, signing up with Arrow Records. Lots of hints that this is from SF: Recording is done in “Mirth-Quake”; and Barner is standing (sort of) on a trolley.
billbarner2 Perhaps Duo and Arrow Records are the same company, since both have the “Mirth-Quake” monacre, and both have mostly the same messages on top and bottom as a whole. Both also show the same love for excessively large heads in the album artwork. 

Barner apparently plays piano, and does so live in front of a night club audience (as was the above album). They don’t say which night club allowed them to record. It would have been great publicity for the night club. But for all we know, a laugh track may have been his only audience.

He has released six other albums that I am aware of. Those lack the requisite big heads to be in this entry, but they are still pretty bad. One of them is a sequel called Trolley Bar Party II. Some of these records, depending on the condition, are collectors’ items.

Visits: 113

(video) Proof that all songs since the late 60s sound like Waltzing Matilda

The comedy rock group Axis of Awesome will set out to prove that all songs since the Beatles’ Let It Be sound like Waltzing Matilda, and that Waltzing Matilda sounds like intro to “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. By syllogistic reasoning, therefore, all songs sound like Journey. This is only a five-minute video, but it’s five minutes of the same four piano chords, without tempo changes or changing the order the chords that are played. That may take some patience. But the fact that it applies so widely over 45 years of music fascinates me, although it could easily apply over 100 years. I could imagine singing “Should auld acuaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” to those chords. And since Robert Burns wrote Auld Lang Syne over 300 years ago, that would make Journey a band of Johnny-Come-Latelies by comparison.

Waltzing Matilda is heard about halfway through, just after that other Australian hit, “Down Under”, by Men at Work. Quite compelling.

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Visits: 78

Crappy Album Covers #76 — Keyholes and topless women

keyhole_woodywoodbury_wfmu1

Guys, keyholes and topless women are a staple in the CAC blogosphere. This is Woody Woodbury’s big comedy album from the 1950s, Woody Woodbury Looks at Love and Life, put out by the Stereoddities label. This was one of the first comedy records ever made (probably the first), and are considered innovative. Woody put out comedy records before Bill Cosby, or Bob Newhart, or any of the other ’50s and ’60s comedians.

Woodbury was a big name, and he almost had the job of hosting The Tonight Show, except that the plum job was instead taken up by some wisecracker named Johnny Carson. Woodbury was a guest host of that talk show in the past, and thought he had the job.

album-cover-crap-100_lpcoverlover_comProving that the suckiness of album covers are never limited to English-speaking countries, we present Jacinto O Donzelo, looking into a keyhole of his own. When this name came up in most searches, it appeared without the comma.

From what I can make out, Jacinto has made what appear to be comedy records, well into the 1980s. He has sold apparently well in Spain, Portugal, and Brazil. MP3s of his comedy are ripped and traded on several websites.

I shall declare that this cover is so bad, that merely gazing upon it will make you feel as though you stepped on something warm and brown. I’ve called the cops, Jacinto. They’re on their way down.

The photo of Jacinto and the keyhole was photoshopped at lpcoverlover.com, who uses the photo as an overlay to indicate that the album cover “underneath” is X-rated. It is not so much serving as a warning, and more like an urging to “click here you idiot if you want to see some nudes”. Great system they have. Anyone who is highly moral has to put up with having to stare at Jacinto eternally pointing at the keyhole, which by itself simply forces visitors to click on the photo if they want to make Jacinto go away. Once they do, they see the album cover depicting nudes underneath. Prudishness is inherently maladaptive in the blogosphere.

My blog isn’t nearly that high-tech. I put “Adult Content” in my title as a warning, telling patrons that they should visit my site as an invitation to see a really cool posting. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Every time I view a movie on TV that has an announcer saying “This movie may involve mature subject matter and scenes of sex/violence/coarse language” what the television folks are really saying is “whoa, this show is really cool, folks — watch this one!!” Just imagine that if they didn’t use that disclaimer and you didn’t know the movie, would you really watch it? I almost never do. And I think that the TV folks know me, since I think they make that disclaimer in almost evey movie. I think I even saw it once on Bambi. That’s for the part that when Bambi’s mother dies, I think I heard Bambi say something like “Oh, shit”. Of course you have to keep kids away from that kind of nonsense.

Visits: 106

Crappy Album Covers #75 — Big Heads I

album-cover-crap-95_lpcoverlover_com 1960 crappy album cover (CAC) maker and, oh yeah, comedian to boot, Bill Carty has a variety of albums which all fit the high standards of crappiness that gives this blog such longevity. Here, we see a standard technique for CAC making that has been imitated by many CAC makers in many countries worldwide: thoughtless photo retouching.Workers at a construction site on the other side of Pompano Beach were probably scratching their heads after it appeared that ten of their blasting caps went missing.If Bill Carty is really “Blasting Off”, it’s only his head that is blasted off. Spectators below stare aghast at this horrid spectacle. This would mean that the late 60s the audience in The Space Sattelite Motel in Pompano Beach, Florida were witness to the world’s first suicide bomber. In those days, they didn’t have Homeland Security, either.

The Space Sattelite Motel, which was located in a city located north of Miami and closer to Fort Lauderdale was the epitome of 50s kitch. Carty would have been placed on a stage in the middle of an audience and a bar which surrounded the stage. The motel does not show up anywhere I have looked in the Pompano Beach area, and it may no longer exist.

lpcoverlover.com says this is from “Stere Oddities”, but I think that on seeing another record from the same label, I think it should be “StereOddities”.
ninonanni_bighead This is the other record I saw. See? The words are closer together. StereOddities just seem to love big heads on their records. And there are more. Many more. CAC collectors even have a special section for albums depicting disproportionately big heads (or disembodied big heads) of the artist on their covers. This is true for lpcoverlover, and it is also true of another account of a curio record store in the states that I have heard about.Nino Nanni (b. ?- d. circa1991) was another comedian on the same label. Both Nanni and Carty are mentioned in WFMU’s Beware of the Blog as “Nobodies”. Nanni did in fact have a great braritone voice, and perfect enunciation, apart from his talent with the piano. The main attraction from Stereoddities will be presented later in this series.

Both of these albums are rare, and are discussed at length, halfway through this WFMU podcast, starting at about 30 minutes:

Visits: 87