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The unusual and strange from news and popular culture.
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Boy’s Town Gang consisted of Cynthia Manley, and a revolving door of pretty boyz. These two are most likely to be Tom Morely and Bruce Carlton, seeing that the release of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You was around 1982.
They were into the so-called “high-energy” disco, in the late 70s and early 80s, as it was on its last stages of life support.When the Village People met a quasi-demise with their musical interpretation of the film “Can’t Stop the Music”, leaving a hole in the “high energy disco written by homosexuals” market, The Boy’s Town Gang were right there to take up the slack, giving the San Francisco area a steady supply of disco. |
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Phillipino comedic vocalist Roman “Yoyoy” Villame (1938-2007) shows us how to get the woman we want to marry.
Villame recorded over 40 albums in his lifetime, mostly to do with political and social satire. He is admired for his sense of humor, both on and offstage. |
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Well, no, this wasn’t MS Paint. You can tell that a toddler was set loose on a piece of blank ruled paper with markers.Wikipedia makes no mention of whose toddler it was that did this, but does say that this 2004 album was critically well-received, and debuted at #7 in the US.The Cure’s 12th album has been inflicted on over 2 million fans worldwide. | |
Frank Black’s “The Cult of Ray”, was recorded in 1996, three years after The Pixies broke up. But this record is not mentioned on the Frank Black website. It is mentioned on the Black Francis website. Why there are two websites referring to the same person, I’ll never know.Frank Black, who also goes by a third monacre, “Black Francis Black” — frig it, let’s keep it simple and call him Charles Thompson. Chuck, you see, released this third album to negative reviews, and had gone on releasing many more albums garnering only but a shadow of his former glory under The Pixies.
In fact, that was the state of affairs by the time this album came out. They were punishing him for overuse of the cut-and-paste tool on MS-Paint. Allmusic.com has it that The Pixies have reunited as of 2003 and have started touring again. I don’t know of any new albums by them except for “best of” compilations released by 4AD. Chuck’s “Frank Black” website, however, has a list of tour dates. |
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Milton Babbitt looks like he is trying to out-do Stephen Hawking for the tackiest cover. At least Hawking might have an excuse; but Babbitt here is trying to make this poster look avant-garde.
So here he is, like your most imposing physics teacher, making music about ends being a new beginning, and manifolds. As if there were not enough ended beginnings, he also plays “Swan Song #1” (as if there will be a #2…?). Allmusic says that he is a leading avant-garde classical performer who taught both music and mathematics at Princeton, and taught music at Julliard. He was a leading music theorist, but you look at this and think that this 2001 CD just contains self-indulgent tomfoolery. The 50-minute CD appears to be selling for $48 on Amazon. |
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Uhh, … Hi, yourself….This 1979 album appears to have been Barraclough’s last LP, and she had disappeared amid rumors of connections to Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan. Some fans revere her as quite a talent, but you wouldn’t know it with that cartoony “Hi” on this album cover.This link to You Tube shows her potential talent. |
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It is not clear what year Mike Melvoin recorded this 12-inch LP, but the hits listed on the jacket place this record in the early-to mid-1970s.
Hear synthesised versions of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”; Blood, Sweat, and Tears’ “Spinning Wheel”; The Beatles’ “Ballad of John and Yoko”; Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild”; Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay”; and many other monster hits. His treatment of Lay Lady Lay is given below, superimposed on a Pierre Cardin fashion display. |
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This hard to look at 1995 album cover along with its title hides the fact that this is an electronic album from the British electronic duo known as Fortran 5.
The members of Fortran 5 have gone on to form the duo Komputer. They have released 7 albums of their synthesised works. They have been releasing EPs and LPs in both CD and vinyl formats, with their latest release, Synthetik, being a CD-only release in 2007. |
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By the time this record came out, Nirvana already took the idea of totally immersing the kid in water, so I guess they had to settle for this. Neverhteless, I hear that the Children’s Aid Society is looking for the guy who took this photo and allowed the infant depicted in this photo to play with the toilet water.
I have it on some authority that Sebadoh’s album doesn’t suck as much as the cover suggests. In fact, this 1996 album is considered their finest, and it put them at the forefront of the indie rock scene back then, helping to pioneer the so-called “lo-fi” music genre.
Wat Tyler’s (circa) 1999 recording “The Fat of The Band” is actually a parody of Prodigy’s “The Fat of the Land”.
Tyler has a few humorous songs on this LP, but they have not garnered good reviews. A New Music Express reviewer said of this recording “If this is punk rock, my name is Rick Wakeman”. I could only guess that his name already wasn’t Rick Wakeman, since the article is uncredited.
And just to show you the difference, here is Prodigy’s 1997 million-seller (2 million, actually)Â “Fat of the Land”, released on Warner and peaking at #1 on Billboard for 1 week.:
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OK… I said that Jabberwocky was going to be the last Herb Alpert parody, didn’t I? Well, it seems as though poor Alpert must have a red-and-white target painted on his back, since even the Washington Symphonic Brass is now into it for this 2007 rendition of Carmina Burana.
Many famous musicians such as Bizet, Puccini, Berlioz and Karl Orff have composed pieces for this collection of medieval Bavarian poems, written in Latin. It is thought by some to be the most famous operatic work after Handel’s Messiah.
This monk seems to have the easy job of drinking beer and dipping his pastry into himself before he eats it. That’s probably why he’s smiling.
I keep saying that I am a newbie with respect to all things classical. So, thus, the use of pan-fried bacon and eggs as the choice of a cover photograph for the “Best of Brahms” is a mystery to me.
Was there ever a “Brahm’s Breakfast Concerto”? Or a “Brahm’s Bacon Bolero”? Or, “Eggs over Easy in E-Flat?”
Whatever it is, I found out through my trusty reasearch that Johannes Brahms has been hawking breakfast cereal. I’ve seen it on You Tube, so therefore it must be true! Just look:
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Crappy Album Covers have been a staple of this blog for over a year now. I think I may have posted over 400 album covers in that time, and I have particularly, but not always, targeted the unintentionally bad ones.
There have been certain themes/artists/genres I have avoided:
Metal: I’ve said it before that many metal/punk/hard rock bands release sucky/disturbing covers on purpose, because they know their audience will buy the record/cd. Picking on metal or punk bands would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I have made exceptions (Pantera and Stryken, notably) when the album crosses the line of bad taste to unintentional bad taste.
Bob Dylan: I’ve noticed on some blogs, many commenters pick on Dylan’s albums as a source of bad album art. Face it, folks. Nobody buys Dylan for the album cover, so no one cares. However, in a future post, I make a point that there is a Dylan album art concept that is getting a bit repetitive: the blurry-photo-of-Dylan-in-concert idea. Oh, and yeah, there was also that Starbucks promo CD I discussed earlier.
Nobody buys Leonard Cohen for his album art, either. Or Joni Mitchell for hers, even when she draws the covers herself in crayon (Ladies of the Canyon, and Court and Spark, I believe are two examples) .
Most “lounge lizard” acts and Gospel acts are the same way. For the most part, you tend to get a picture of the artist, the album title, and at least a partial track listing. The whole intent is predictability, and a total avoidance of any artistic risk-taking. Lounge acts start crossing the line, however, when they become too grandiose, or too “nerdy”, or show a total lack of thought in the photo/artwork.
This is at least a partial rendition of my thought processes when making these CAC entries.
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Enough with bad hair on women, Guys are equally capable of falling out of the wrong side of the bed and combing their hair with a mixmaster.
Many may like the music inside this 1998 double CD by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, but clearly, their hair is wearing them, not the other way around. The album was recorded over two separate years, all but 5 tracks were done in 1967 and the rest in 1969. |
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Chris Lee clearly has a case of bed-head. Photo was likely cut off at the top to hide the “cow-lick”.
This 2003 album “Cool Rock” has been mildly recieved by reviewers, and has not charted, that I am aware of. |
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Here is the Lawrence Welk organist Bob Ralston, who while trying to be Alpert-esque with the album lettering, has still managed to do this album cover without being covered in food, to his credit.
Judging by Ralston’s youthful appearance, this album probably dates to about the same time as “Whipped Cream”. |
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“Sweet Cream and Other Delights” is a 1978 album by the all-girl funk/soul trio from Detroit called Sweet Cream.
When working as backup singers, they would be featured on many albums as “The Ridgeway Sisters” or “The Ridgeways”. The three Ridgeway sisters (Gloria, Esther, and Gracie) have been singing as a group since age 4, 6 and 8 respectively. At most recent report, only Gloria has survived the three, the others having passed on in this decade, while still in their forties. |
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While I can’t say whether the alternative group Soul Asylum qualifies as Aplert “wannabees” exactly, having bassist Karl Mueller sit half-naked in a mountain of clam dip and other unintelligible seafood was actually something that made Alpert very un-amused. And since he is the owner of A&M Records, who in turn own Twin Tone (where Soul Asylum was signed under), this 1989 album was something that almost marked the beginning of the end of the group.
This album is still in print (according to Wikipedia) under Rykodisk. |
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Is it a parody of Alpert’s record? *Is* it?
Take a good look at the woman’s “dress”: yes, kiddies, it is made of bubblegum. This is “Right to Chews: Bubblegum Classics Revisited”. Features groups with quasi-familiar names (at least to me) like “The Mitch Easter Sound!”, “Jim Laspesia With Michael Quercio”, “The Rubinoos”. This website has verified that this 2002 album does not suck. It’s currently selling on many websites for around $15. |
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Yes, Herb Alpert was at it again, back in 2006, when this CD got released. Re-Whipped appears to have some of the same standards on there, with some new stuff thrown in.
In this age of “Hoochie Mamas” and Paris Hilton getting laid in front of the whole Internet, the whipped cream idea doesn’t have the same impact it used to have. Having discovered many of these covers, I now have a plethora of Herb Alpert wannabees which have now engendered an extension to my “Food On Vinyl” subseries over the next few days. |
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At least Peter Nero isn’t flogging food but he certainly is a Herb Alpert wannabe, having stolen his typeface design for his own album. This was released in 1967, about the same year as Alpert’s “Whipped Cream and Other Delights”.
Having won two Grammies, and having many honorary degrees, you would think that he wouldn’t need to play a “salute” to anyone. Nero has been playing Jazz and Pop music since 1958. He still conducts and plays piano for the Philly Pops. |
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Frickin’? Friggin’? I wish they had a dictionary for the correct spelling of expletives.
Lillian Southard Robinson looks like a kindly enough elderly woman in the picture. The kind that would give an extra quarter to the paperboy, and who would visit shut-ins twice every week. In the middle ground of the photo is a quote from the Gospel of St. John 4:35, which she quotes as: “Look on the fields/They are white to harvest”.Funny. My copy of the Bible (NAV), says the fields are “ripe to harvest”. Finding the word “white” required me to dust off my wife’s King James Bible.
I was almost willing to forgive her for this almost white supremacist-sounding reference, until I discovered that the very next verse talks about the Grim Reaper receiveing his “payment”… Hoooo—kay… Next album … |
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The Summons Team (?) is here to proclaim their belief in “The Man of Reality”.Now if only the record cover reflected some reality: where do they plan to plug in their electric guitars and keyboard? Also looks like the dude in the foreground lost his drum kit. It happens, you know. Some thief sneaks into the studio, stuffs the drum kit, seat, and bass drum in his shirt pocket, and escapes through the door un-detected by security cameras. Happens all the time. So the drummer had to force himself to smile in this photo.So, I guess that means this is the first ever record album to come without batteries. (A strained pun, I know). |
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Whirlwind Heat formed 12 years ago in Grand Rapids, Michgan, and continue to make recordings of their own unique brand of alternative music.
For their 2006 offering, their second full-length album, they find that this young lady closes her eyes when she licks her wood. Or maybe she was told to. You never know with these photographers. |
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This is another woman who likes to close her eyes. There is also something that appears to be smoke rising from the banana. Or steam.
I have no information on the group Bananas or their recording “Get it & Come” “Come & Get It”. It’s probably a rock album. Most rock albums have something to do with the sex act or with getting laid in general, don’t they? |
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Not much is known about Fontanna and His Orchestra. But the guy on the cover of “Music for Expectant Fathers” seems a little presumtive. He seems to be all geared up to have a boy, but how does he know that? I am guessing that this LP came out before the days of ultrasound. | |
Germans Ralf Bendix and the voice of a little baby girl named Elizabeth made a worldwide smash hit in 1961 with Babysitter Boogie.
When the single came to North America it was played without any translation. It didn’t need any. It was a delightfully funny novelty song. Bendix made me laugh when I first heard it, and I don’t understand a word of German, or for that matter German baby-talk (which I would suppose is the same in all languages). |
Here is Babysitter Boogie, with a much older Ralf Bendix (and, uh, the baby looks older too) from 1979:
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I chose these records because both women have similar poses, except this one is more clothing-challenged.
What this lady doesn’t seem to know is that Cerrone keeps more ladies in the freezer she’s reclining on. Cerrone has used nudity on several of his records. When being marketed to his more uptight American audience, the nudity had to be greatly subdued, or covered up. French musician, talent scout, and stud with the ladies, Jean-Marc Cerrone, marks this as his fifth album out of 26 he has made in total since 1972, the latest one, “Cerrone XXIII”, being released in 2009. |
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The lady may not be nude in this second album, but it has every other element needed for proper seduction: a piano, a waiter to keep up the flow of booze to reduce the inhibitions, a smoky bar. I have to admit, however, the lights are a tad bright.
While I can’t think of any women who would be interested in listening to ragtime, Eddie “Pianola” Barnes proves with this 1957 release that, by playing ragtime tunes on his piano, he can play ragtime on his piano and still be a hit with the women. Honky Tonk Piano is listed on some websites as a jazz album. |
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