Category: amusement

Search terms that did not quite make it, annotated.

On WordPress, we can see a list of search terms people used to find entries on our blogs. Here are some of the more amusing ones. These won’t lead to anything useful on my blog. While my blog has the odd bit of nudity, this is not the mainstay of the blog. All mis-spellings are from the search string used:

  • valerie bertinelli topless
    • I have only a bad drawing of VB’s face; and it appears with about 20 other celebs on the same crappy album cover (CAC).
  • naked klingon women
    • I have no klingons, klingon women, or naked klingon women. Just a fully-clothed CAC with William Shatner, and a fully-clothed g-rated vid with Leonard Nimoy.
  • topless lobsters
    • If you are looking for topless lobsters, the closest you’ll get is to go to New Brunswick. I have only the odd CAC depicting topless women (human ones). Sorry to disappoint.
  • scottish kilt organist
    • I have nothing with kilts, few to no Scots that I can think of, and maybe a few organists, but they are wearing pants.
  • beautiful naked women with their legs sp
    • This search string was cut off just as shown, but I get the point. Most of the women here are on album covers; and if they are nude, they are not spread-eagled. Frankly, if you are looking for porn, my site is the most boring place in the world to look for it. By Internet standards, what I have in terms of nudity is campy, perhaps “naughty”, but I would stop short of calling it porn. By Internet standards, far short.
  • seventies boobs
    • Seventies boobs. Not the same as eighties boobs I suppose. There is an empty-headed blog article in this one somewhere, I know it.
  • lady wrestler leg photos
    • No lady wrestlers on this blog, so no lady wrestlers legs. The only wrestler I can think of, Sweet Daddy Siki, is male, as implied by the word “Daddy”
  • guy jumping guitar album cover
    • No CACs of guys with jumping guitars, no guys jumping a guitar (WTF?), and no CACs of guitars jumping. Sorry once again.
  • topless seductive nipples
    • … As opposed to “topped” seductive nipples? or topless “ugly” nipples?
  • topless flautist
    • The only topless flautist I have is a CAC of Herbie Mann. No topless women playing flutes (musical or otherwise) on this blog.
  • topless chocolate wrestle
    • Topless women wrestling in chocolate will only make it here if it is a CAC. None have been found, so as of yet we have no chocolate wrestlers, and no topless wrestlers.
  • swedish women football women beach tople
    • No football, no beach football, and no women’s beach football, no women’s football, and certainly none with topless women, topless Swedish women, or topless Swedes.
  • artistic hair dye raccoon
    • ?

Visits: 118

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

[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 #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

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

(Adult Content) Crappy Album Covers #74 — Why sex is like chocolate in record cover design I

You have heard that some women think that chocolate is like sex. Well when designing crappy album covers, the reverse is true: sex is like chocolate.

For one thing sex sells record albums.

For another, when a food goes rancid one can cover up the rancidity by covering the food in chocolate. Similarly, nudity can be used to hide the fact that an album cover is otherwise artless.

album-cover-crap-92_lpcoverlover_com This is a rare cover for Kool and The Gang’s 1971 album, their second before there was any hint of a commercial breakthrough. The one that shows up on Wikipedia is a more “normal” album cover, with some artfulness within the realm of a “typical” disco album.I’m not sure their cover of   “Wichitaw Lineman” works as a disco tune. 

But they needed more than sex to sell, since this album was a commercial flop.
album-cover-crap-101_lpcoverlover_com You know, if you are not really The Beatles and you are making a tribute album, the only way you can make people buy this record is to put “The Beatles” in large lettering, the word “Tributing” in small lettering, and get a young lady to pose topless for the album cover and hope that no-one notices that this is not a Beatles album.What better analogy to chocolate can there be? You know this album is going to sound a bit “off” and will most likely have third-tier Beatles imitators at best, but having a semi-nude on the cover makes it palatable.

 

Visits: 135

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

album-cover-crap-97_lpcoverlover_com 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.
album-cover-crap-96_lpcoverlover_com 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.
album-cover-crap-102_lpcoverlover_com2 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.

album-cover-crap-93_lpcoverlover_com1 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.
album-cover-crap-94_lpcoverlover_com 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

album-cover-crap-98_lpcoverlover_com 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.
thismortalcoil_itllendintears_cd 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.

album-cover-crap-86_springsteen_1 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.
album-cover-crap-87_springsteen_2 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.

album-cover-crap-89_coverbrowser_comSomeone, 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.

album-cover-crap-90_coverbrowser_com“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.

album-cover-crap-85_normal_vinylcoversfreefr_00338 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.
eulenspiegel 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

album-cover-crap-88_herb_alpert1 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.
album-cover-crap-86_coverbrowser_com 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.
album-cover-crap-84_normal_vinylcoversfreefr_00338 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

album-cover-crap-76_lpcoverlover_com 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.
album-cover-crap-77_lpcoverlover_com 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.
album-cover-crap-63_badhair2 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.
album-cover-crap-73_coverbrowser_com 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

Sleeping with Martha

My wife persuaded me to sleep with Martha. She said that it will make me feel good, and that it was good to have her in bed with us. When I tried to do it with Martha I was spoiled for anything else, and my wife wasn’t even jealous. However, I noticed, that while Martha was good in bed, she kept my head up a little more than made me comfortable, and I wished it would stop. But after a while I got used to it. I told my wife that these were the best Martha Stewart pillows she ever bought, and I had to have more.

Visits: 125