Crappy Album Covers #269 — For the Kiddies

Colby was a TV series that began in the late ’80s, that send a Christian message to children. You can find Colby records and CDs for sale at on-line Christian bookstores everywhere.The title “God Uses Kids!” smacks of this other CAC posting.
If I was a child and I wanted to be introduced to jazz, I would let Cannonball Adderley introduce me to it. In the 50s and 60s, he, Miles Davis, and others were considered the best in their field. Adderley played on Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” LP, released in the late 50s, the album which was to Jazz what Sergeant Pepper was to Rock and Roll.

Visits: 103

Crappy Album Covers #268 — Sensitive People

By some coincidence, both of these album releases are from Cuba, and from the year 1968.

Eduardo Davidosn (1929-1994) is a cuban-born musician who released a 1968 album called “Le Chien (The Dog)”, perhaps in an early effort to make himself the darling of animal rights groups.
A muted version of The Many Facets of Roger… here, we see the two sides of La Lupe’s armchair.

Guadalupe Victoria Yoli Raymond (1939-1992) had a brief but rewarding career in the late 60s and early 70s, being the first Cuban singer to sell out in Madison Square Garden, but was in an increasing state of poverty later in life.

Visits: 102

The “Hall of Shame” Hall of Shame

A list of halls of shame I have found on Google. I stopped after the 5th page:

Reality TV Hall of Shame

Pet Store Hall of Shame

Twitter Hall of Shame

Graphical Interface Hall of Shame

Weed Hall of Shame

Canada Goose Hall of Shame

Visits: 95

Crappy Album Covers #267 — Can you hold my pineapples for a minute?

You have to feel sorry for the model. She must feel pretty tired holding those pineapples, and I wish I could help by holding them for her, … her pineapples that is. No information exists on the album “Go with me to Hawaii” (Fahre mit mir nach Hawaii), except that it is likely from Germany, and the album title appears to come from the song “Riding in the Dreamboat of Love” (Steig In Das Traumboot Der Liebe), but maybe not.
I would like to have known when this trend started. I obviously missed this boat, for sure. WFMU has lavished more bandwidth than I will ever spend on this 1982 album, complete with presenting all of the mp3s. WFMU reminds us, it’s not just the marketer on the album cover, it’s what’s inside that counts. And we hear a guy in a fake French accent tell you what moves to make with your body over seductive classical music.

Visits: 112

Crappy Album Covers #266 — My Hero!

This is a 1976 LP of a two-part episode of Dr. Who, called “Doctor Who and the Pescatons”.Look! A fish with muscular arms and clawed hands! Are you scared? I’m scared. God, am I scared!

What else is in the picture? Castle with clock tower on the shoreline; fishy monster guy jumps out of the water with a swipe of its clawed hand, whilst Dr. Who (played by Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen) are running away … well, they don’t exactly look like they’re running … and the fishy monster thing is between them and dry land … and they don’t even look all that wet, … and the expression on their faces is less that of fear and terror and more like indigestion and boredom. I get it! The indigestion is from the fish sticks they ate earlier. The fishy monster thing is actually the mother of whatever fish went in those fish sticks! Now the pieces come together. It takes time, sometimes…

The next CAC contribution comes from a native of Antigua and Barbuda, whose name is Paul Richards. His stage name is King Obstinate, and the music is calypso. I now feel relieved, since he looks like he was going to give us one of them high-spirited Bible readings.You have to be pretty obstinate to belong to a Commonwealth nation while wearing a French fleur-de-lys on your costume. From 1632 until its independence in 1981, it was a British colony, with a one-year interruption in 1666 when it became French. Was it really that big a deal in history?

King Obstinate:

Visits: 100

(Video) Miraculously Good/Bad Luck (La Chance 3)

Here is the latest instalment:

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(Video) Miraculously Good Luck/Bad Luck (La Chance 2)

I haven’t posted anything related to this since last year. These videos just fascinate me. I can’t get enough. More to come later.

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Visits: 151

Crappy Album Covers #265 — Marketeers of Unknown Elpees

On my blog, I think it has become obvious that when I say “marketeers”, it seems to always relate to depictions of nude or semi-nude women. I am unclear as to how having a digital chastity, uh, panty, would illustrate the cover of an album entitled “Sophisticated Funk”. But actually, isn’t this in line with how women work anyway? That you have to push the right buttons to gain access? Yes, this is the eternal problem men have to deal with in picking up chicks, I believe.

Champaign, Illinois native Jack McDuff (born Eugene McDuffy) (1926-2001) was a jazz musician who released at least 53 albums between 1960 and 2001.

Modellers of thong panties have a long history on album covers, and are only becoming relatively widespread with rap and hip-hop these days. But as you can see, this indeed does go back some decades.But I think decades ago, it was only done either by heavy metal bands or by record companies with nothing racy in their music, so in a brazen attempt to attract public attention, they make a racy record cover. The reason you passed this up in your adolescence is that the cover told you booooooor-ing!, even though there was a hard-working marketer on the cover.

Visits: 62

Crappy Album Covers #264 — Album covers depicting filthy sex

Little to no information links Johnny Houston with this LP. Allmusic.com has two listings on him; but no mention of this actual recording, “Makin Bacon” (no apostrophe).
I also have no idea about this one. I think I would have noticed a microphone that big before I started to engage in “the act”.And also, it doesn’t look like much of a matress. I guess they needed just enough of a mattress to make a “Bedspring Symphony”. Now the last piece of the puzzle: is “Erotica” the band name or the title? But then you have to work “Mash Me, Baby” into it, so … uhhh … And wouldn’t it work better if the woman said “Mash me, baby”? Just askin’.

I think I can explain the portrait: guy and his wife go at it, but since the kids are in the living room (or so they believe), they do the act on the bed of their 10 year-old daughter (which explains why the bed is so small), only to find out that their 12 year-old son has hooked up a microphone underneath the bed and ran the wire to his room, where he has his headphones on and the reel-to-reel running, sitting in wide-eyed fascination as his first exposure to classical music is in the form of a symphony of the delicate bedsprings of a child’s bed creaking underneath two adult bodies.

Visits: 110

And now a word from our sponsor

3 Funny PSAs, courtesy of Jacob Maymudes. A little on the tasteless side, but if you came to my site, I suppose you weren’t expecting Little Bo Peep. Which is not to say anything negative about Bo Peep, sheep or little girls as shepherds. Miss Muffett, another nursery rhyme, though, was a little edgier, since the plot involved a spider. Whatever, … so without further doo-doo:

#1 Time Machines

#2 Robots:

#3 Use Caution with hyperspeed

Visits: 61

Schooling and Unschooling

It is not clear as to whether Dayna Leigh Martin has the lock on the market of ideas comprising the “Unschooling” movement, however, her meandering explanations, when put together, make it unclear to an onlooker such as myself as to whether this is viable, and if it is, whether it is something every family can do.

Well, Ms Martin is not even close to being the only one advocating unschooling. In fact, there are many in her company that have their own radical ideas.

I like radical ideas. I agree with her sentiments. Personally, I sucked at math until I was out of school and taught it to myself. That included calculus, also. I am also largely self-taught in computer languages, have built my own computers, and also have enough knowledge of my car and my moped to do minor to mid-size repairs. I am living proof that learning is just what humans naturally do, and it might appear that school is unnecessary.

But of course to say so, I misrepresent the facts. If we only look at my numeracy, technical, and trades knowledge, I clearly benefitted from unstructured, independent self-teaching. But without school I still would not have had the facility I have for literature, for Shakespeare, would never have bothered with Chaucer (but was glad someone had exposed me to it), for the importance of keeping up with current events, and for rounding out my literacy generally. Without my teachers in early school, I probably would not have had the confidence I had in adulthood to fill in my own gaps in math.

Self teaching is not for everyone. For one thing, as I understand it, only a teacher can grant credit, leading to graduation and a grade-12 equivalency to proceed to college. But even so, not everyone would have had my patience or persistence in teaching myself the basics of the math I failed to learn in the earlier grades.

Martin has confidence that if learning feels good to a child then that is the learning that should be facilitated. However, a child cannot see the future further than their own nose, and sometimes, if they want to become an oceanographer, for example, then that requries study in a surprising number of fields, many of which may seem unrelated to their topic as a child. Sometimes the learning experience may be unpleasant, since it may require the learning of things the child perceives as boring. There are many kinds of learning which may seem unpleasant at the time, but the rewards were delayed until later. I found this for teaching myself computer languages. You could try compiling a program literally hundreds of times before it would work, but once it did, it was a great feeling. There is a lot of learning that in this way, involves tolerating a great deal of frustration and not giving up. I am unsure if a child would see that on their own.

Children also change their minds, as well. Today’s budding oceanographer becomes tomorrow’s budding astronaut. Is a parent really going to follow the whims of the child around that much, or will there come a time when today’s lesson will be on “focus” and “persistence” (a lesson that the child may not want to hear)? A child in a public system can accomodate the changing of a child’s mind more easily than a parent.

Another problem I have is that for the most part “Unschooling” takes as its basis an assumption (not enitrely untrue) that schools act as enforcers of social norms and of a pecking order in society. Seen from this perspective, schools teach obedience, and there is an overwhelming consciousness that this is the way schools always were.

This is far, far from the case. Schools have been around in its present form for less than 200 years. Unschooling, as I see it, is a return to the days before organised schooling, when parents passed their knowledge and literacy, and skills on to their children. This was a necessity on the farm, as well as at the Blacksmith shop in town.

The family, thus, had an exceedingly important role that nowadays is being invaded by psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, counsellors, test-taking agencies, and even marketers, who have jointly acted to remove that power from the family. This saddens me, and in the past decade, the Internet, cell phones, and other electronic gizmos has further invaded their consciousness, even minimizing further the sphere of influence of parents. It is becoming apparent that nowadays, parents feel they have so little to pass on to their children that they become as disposable as cogs in an assembly line which must make way for next year’s model of car.

Also, children learn better in an environment where they are not judged. In a school they are passed, failed, diagnosed with ADD and the like; they compete for attention with 24 other children, and the teacher is somehow expected to reach all of them. But I don’t think that will even happen in the best classrooms of that size. In a family setting, they are more likely to be understood on their own terms and judged less often. Making mistakes becomes less of a public embarrassment and more a part of the learning process.

But not every parent believes that “not controlling” their children is the way to raise them. I can see many parents having a problem with that mentality. Obviously, you have to know what you are doing, and what is it exactly do you mean by “control”, anyway? Children have a kind of wisdom that is unburdened by later biases and indoctrinations; but at the same time, they do not have the gift of foresight and wisdom that allows parents to pass on worldly knowledge to the young which they could have not learned any other way. Far from merely facilitating learning, adults have something meaningful and worthwhile to pass on to children. Discipline is also something to pass on. It gives you the gift of pursuing bigger and better learning goals. The kind of goals you can’t achieve by digging things out of the dirt or by reading a book with pictures in it.

A child who is unschooled can only be as competent as his or her parents. The parents involved cannot be expected to be competent at all subjects. I don’t think I would be competent in all subjects either.

Judging by the blogs I’ve read on the subject, many which have not been updated for some years, for most parents the passion tends to burn out soon enough, and it becomes a fad. Dayna still practices un-schooling, and preaching the gospel to anyone who will listen. However, for whatever reason, one of her websites, http://unschoolamerica.com, has been taken down and its domain parked.

Visits: 104

Follow me on Twitter

This suggestion is also a test posting for Twitter. I am attempting to acquire the capcbility of my posts also becoming tweets that you can follow on handheld devices and cell phones. My url is here.

I understand that you can get updates via SMS by texting follow strider_sj to 21212 on your cell phone.

For the time being, this will only apply to postings made after today.

Visits: 90

Crappy Album Covers #263 — Answered and Un-answered questions

Timmie Rogers (? – 2007) had more class than Thaddaeus Monk. He wore a suit in his comedy performances, and also composed music for the likes of Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. He had written for television’s Sanford and Son.The dream that was a comedy routine for black comedians in the 60s and 70s is now a reality. I would imagine that the irony would be lost on today’s generation.

Now for an un-answered question: “Should lesbians be allowed to play pro football?”, a 1973 LP comedy by New Yorker Joseph Roszawikz (1914-1982).

He was a talented comedian whose career extended to Vaudeville, whose resume includes movies include Love Bug, Hong Kong Phooey, and the series Love American Style.

WFMU’s Ralph Nesteroff seems to know more about the darker side of Ross than the general population. Discussed there are his 10-plus marriages, his abrasive demeanour, and his misogynistic treatment of the opposite sex. To hear his brand of comedy, he appears to come about his jokes honestly. He also has the ability to laugh at himself.

Here is a sample.

While the title is stated at the start of the routine, he never expands on it to my knowledge.

Visits: 110

Crappy Album Covers #262 — My Babe Magnet

How to pick up chicks: Lesson 1: Tell her about your “wheels”, your “dream machine”, your “love bug”. The ladies often are attracted to a guy with a nice car, since it is a symbol of financial stability and a well-maintained car is a sign that you are conscientious, mature, and tend to take care of your belongings.This is the cover of the 1977 single, “A Real Mother For Ya” by Johnny “Guitar” Watson (1935-1996).  It’s a great funk album. E-Music calls it hip-hop (must have been a youngster that called it that). The title track can be heard below. Excellent tune. Click on the album cover to get the album from emusic.com.

He won a grammy in 1996, just before his death, and has left behind a musical style that had influenced the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. He died while performing a concert in Japan in May 1996, collapsing in the middle of a guitar solo.

“A Real Mother For Ya”:
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Surfer dudes The Lively Ones even have their own website. Jim Masoner, Tim Fitzpatrick, and Joel Willenbring still play the odd gig together in the SoCal area. The Lively Ones have been a 5-piece band since 1963, with two of the band members changing over the years. The link above tells all.

Visits: 129

An editorial about Tiger Woods

(this is a low-brow paraphrasing of the article in this month’s Notebook article in Harper’s magazine)

In this age of illegal invasions of Iraq, and the looting of the treasury and of customers by the banks, why does the press focus so much interest in the penis of a pro golfer? Did Tiger Woods steal your life savings? Did he reposess your house after convicing you that you were elegible for obscene amounts of credit? Can the deaths of thousands of Iraqis be laid at the feet of Tiger Woods? Did Tiger poison our air and our water, did he spew the greenhouse gas that will desertify America? Tiger hangs his head in shame for something that befalls all rich and famous people — the temptation of women who throw themselves at his feet. But compared with these other things, who really must be shamed?

We have made into a “problem” something that usually is common thr0ughout history for the rich and famous. Adultery is now worthy of the psychiatrist’s couch, treatment centers, and talk shows. It is OK to feel sexually aroused in a BMW showroom, but in this day and age you are not allowed to feel that way with your partner in the back seat of one. In the church of capitalism, sexual arousal is now for the purpose of closing the sale, not for procreation or pleasure.

My guess is that Tiger Woods’s real crime was that he didn’t get it.

Visits: 142

Crappy Album Covers #261 — Metal Annoyances

It’s one thing to steal a model of a skull from your high school biology lab, but it is quite another to go to auto shop at the other end of your high school, take a photo of a grinder, and then place the two images together in MS Paint. It has been discovered that the image is a fake album cover, and the mea culpas have come out.

Did you get it? Skull grind? Maybe Eric was being too subtle. Blogger Eric Meyer actually did this one in MS Paint while a student at the Universtiy of Minnesota when he should have been studying. Welcome to the CAC Blogosphere, Eric, where the other time wasters have been lurking!

No pertinent information exists on Wolf, or the artist (some guy named Arnold), except from blogs such as this one, who have already pointed out that the so-called “wolf” looks like a pointy-eared baboon with a trench coat, with vultures’ heads for fingers.

I cannot even speculate on the genre, year or country of origin.

Visits: 93

Crappy Album Covers #260 — The End of the World

Get ready for the Armageddon Experience! Are you experienced?Notice how tastefully they depict an impression of the end of the world. Notice the lettering, the flaming something-or-other that could just as well be oil soaked up on The Redneck Riviera, set in flame.
The United Nations Press?! You couldn’t possibly be talking about this press?If you have an “endgame” scenario worth discussing, is it really necessary to disguise your message in the cloak of another publication?

Visits: 105

Crappy Album Covers #259 — Recordings of Enigmatic Individuals

Lee Harvey Oswald is one of many that lived during the days of the Kennedy assassination. That is, one of many Lee Harvey Oswalds. So at any rate, who the heck knows if this is the real Oswald? Of course, one of these Oswalds were killed days after the assassination by Jack Ruby. The Oswald, whom they refer to as the “lone nut”. I suspect that this is the Oswald the album claims to deal with.

It is hard to say if this LP made it as a “hit” record, even a short 3 years after the assassination in Dealy Plaza in Dallas.

Civil Rights activist. Co-founder of the Black Panthers. Author of the book “Barbecueing with Bobby”. Spokesperson for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. This is the enigma that is Bobby Seale.

This LP likely deals with the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. You see, Lyndon Johnson announced that he had enough of trying to fit into JFK’s shoes, and would not seek a second term. That meant that the democrats had to hold a convention to see who would lead. It was slim pickin’s, what with brother RFK assassinated also.

So what unity did the Democrats have after the Tet Offensive and the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King? Not much. You got Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Edwin Muskie. None of these people were a match for the opponent, Richard Nixon, who led a united Republican party to win the Presidential election.

The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was held in what has been described as a Potemkin-style setting, in a building with bulletproofed walls, and chain-linked fences topped by concertina wire surrounding the perimeter. Demonstrators, ranging from moderate to radical, who had a myriad of special causes, but with Tet and Martin Luther King fresh in their minds, had what was intended as a peaceful demonstration, but which ended up as being violent. It has been widely accepted that the Chicago Police and the Illinois National guard were the instigators, and even journalists were getting beaten up. Among the roughed-up journalists were Dan Rather, and Mike Wallace.

Among the arrested, tried and jailed were members of what became known as The Chicago Eight, a loosely-connected bunch whose most prominent members included Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin. The latter two were founders of the “Yippie” (YIP=Youth International Party) movement. Bobby Seale was not charged, although he was sentenced to 5 years for contempt of court, due to an outburst he had toward the presiding judge Julius Hoffman. The outburst was due to Seale being denied the attorney he wanted, and being denied the opportunity to represent himself. Seale was ordered bound, gagged, and chained to a chair for the remainder of the proceedings. Hence, the record cover. Because of the contempt of court charge, his trial was never heard, and the Chicago Eight became the Chicago Seven. The four-year sentence for contempt of court was one of the longest in the history of American jurisprudence for that charge.

Visits: 106

Crappy Album Covers #258 — Georgy Porgy Puddn’ ‘n’ Pie

This is the one-hit wonder  for drummer and bandleader Rob Kuban and his In-Men, called Look Out for The Cheater, which reached #12 in 1966.

This song even made it to the Rock-And-Roll Hall of Fame’s permanent exhibit of one-hit wonders.

Kuban wasn’t the lead singer on this tune, however. That job was left for Walter Scott (1943-1983) who, in the greatest of all ironies, was murdered by James WIlliams, with the collusion of Walter’s wife JoAnn. James and JoAnn were married in 1986. The marriage must have been short-lived, however, as she got 5 years in prison, while James likely received life imprisonment.

Dick Lucas likes to live on the edge, doesn’t he? He meets a nice lady, they go out for some time, he jilts her, they break up, then he misses her and asks for her to come back.

Most songs which explore the tangled nature of love would say things like “take a chance on me”. This one is even more edgier, with the albumtitle being “Would You Take Another Chance on Me?”

The chick who is standing away from him is clearly weighing her options.

Here are The In-Men, with their only top-40 hit.

Visits: 94

Crappy Album Covers #257 — The Gay Life

Playwright and church minister Al Carmine’s (1936-2005) 1973 “Off-off-Broadway” play “Faggot”, was a play which managed to encompass all facets of gay life. The play was likely a celebration of the declassification of homosexuallity as a mental illness, being the first-ever gay musical, and likely the first-ever gay musical, period. Homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness by fiat, by the APA in 1973, the same year as the play.

Historical gay characters featured in the play were Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Catherine the Great.

George Kennedy’s 1967 spoken-word album “Homosexuality in The American Male” struggles with the “mental illness” paradigm of what we seem to accept today merely as a lifestyle choice.

A track can be heard here, courtesy of April Winchell:

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Visits: 103