The Willy Wall Trio is a group of musicians whose soft brand of jazz seems to have an appeal with many sites on the internet. I have seen titles from this album in compilations and from people reviewing the record. One of the tracks, “Cha Cha 89” does not place this record in 1989 for me, but the Winnebago motorhome depicted here places this record not much later than 1969:
It is quite good, if you like jazz. Two other tracks are “Movin & Groovin” and “Snowfall”. Many have categorized this as “lounge music”, and I would agree, but there is a strong thread of jazz to the music.
Movin’ & Groovin’:
Snowfall:
If you are in trouble, don’t care what it is, Billy Swan can help. The song has made it to K-Tel infamy, thereby commercializing and commodifying yet another song about human compassion in the 70s. You can’t blame that on Swan, though.
This Missouri native had his start hanging out with Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters in the early 60s, and later on, writing tunes with fellow Missouri native Jospeph Henry Burnette, or “T-Bone Burnette” as he is known.
One can only hope that no swans were harmed in the making of this album cover.
It is unclear to me whether this “Scottish Sing-A-Long” uses the bagpipes, but the album cover makes it clear that the reactions to bagpipes is still felt by many.This drawing was made after someone probably catheterised one of the pipes from the bagpipe to his nether region, so that every time he blew, … well, you can figure it out.
In the grand tradition of Joseph Pujol (known as Le Petomane), Mr. Methane is an expert in farting controlled anal voicing. How does he do it? Apparently, he can take in air through either end of his body, and expel it again.He would blow audiences away with his rendition of the classics.
Mr Methane plays his, uh, “instrument” on a promotional video:
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.
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?
Just before work ended, there was this explosion at the Red Rubber Coating factory, and this poor fella couldn’t escape in time. This is Tripping Daisy’s 1995 offering, called “I Am An Elastic Firecracker.”
What seems a little more worrisome is the skin tone of the fellow underneath the read paint.
This is the 1991 single from Aphex Twin, called Window Licker. Aphex Twin is the brainchild of Richard James, a Welsh artist who has been making records since 1991.
My experience with AT is that there is not much about them that is danceable, but this one has its moments. The video generally centers around the theme of picking up whores in some undisclosed location.
I couldn’t understand the first part of the video. It seems that for about the first 2-3 minutes the dilogue cosnsisted of two coloured guys in a car repeating the word motherf***er over and over with a few extra words thrown in to make it sound like they were speaking English to each other. When the prostitutes were encountered, the words varied a little more, but the hoes saw through them, and didn’t believe that they had any money.
The tranny groove on this single comes from something that happens part way thru the video where the second customer, who is of the sort that drives a stretch limo with a bazillion windows (namely, our hero Richard), gets out of the car and starts some kind of a mating dance requiring a suggestive use of an umbrella. That’s when the prostitutes start growing beards, and looking like Richard. Creepy.
They have seemed to have Cha Cha Cha albums for every occasion. Now they have one based on westerns.
For this remake of High Noon, it’s not Will and Harv in a shooting match, but Will against a topless woman in high heels. I guess it’s the only way to go, if you have to die.
Simon (“Si”) Zentner and his Dance Band makes this their second out of a string of 34 albums released over his career, which started in 1959. His last known non-compilation album was a Frank Sinatra tribute released in 1998. A compilation was released in 2007.
Liz Anderson, with her 1970 LP “Husband Hunting”, shows that she knows how to land her man. The single that bears the same title as the album, peaked at #5 on the Top 40 country and western songs that year.
First, let’s talk about trophy animals.Kind of reminds me of the 1986 college radio smash hit “All I Got Were Clothes For Christmas” by Happy Flowers.
Also, looks like the musician is getting friendly with his trophy deer.
There is no info on who this person is or why he has the logo for the American Lung Association painted upside-down on his forehead.
Everything was going romantically until Ethel noticed trophies of a beheaded blonde and redhead on the wall, and remembering she is a brunette, she concluded that George must be a collector. Things became tense after that.Yes, trophy women. That is, women’s heads as wall-mounted trophies. This should have been the album cover for Fine Young Cannibals’ “Hunters and Collectors”.
Elliot Lawrence was an American Jazz Pianist and band leader during the late 1950s. He won two Tony Awards for his compositions in TV and film in the early 1960s.
Moving Geltine Plates (MGP) was, according to this bio from progweed.net, was one of France’s finest progressive rock bands. This album, released on CBS Records in 1972, was their second album, and the critical high water mark of their career. Poor distribution was blamed for the fact that this record didn’t fare well in the stores, and the band soon folded afterward.
I would also blame the album cover which was designed for it. At the time of the first writing of this blog article, I mindlessly thought that this was the head of a cow. Problem is, how many cows are hairless? This one also has half-closed eyes. Like a pig. The ears are cone-shaped like a cow. I’m totally screwed up here.
Lookit. I’m not dumb. I know my cows. Here’s a cow:
What’s so funny?! It’s a goddamn cow! I know my cows!
Former member of White Witch, Ron Goedert recorded “Breaking All The Rules” in 1980, a couple of years after the band broke up. White Witch opened for a lot of seminal 1970s acts, includng Alice Cooper and Grand Funk Railroad.
Allmusic.com makes scant mention of them, except to simply have an entry for Goedert and his record, the only one allmusic.com mentions.
Maybe the fact that one of the members was wearing a yellow sleeveless jumpsuit on the album cover had something to do with it.
BC and Frenchy are classified by Show and Tell Music as “Hillbilly Synth Wave”. This page discusses the two musicians, Bruce (last name?) and Carroll Frenzilli. An Italian named Frenchy. Nice.
Obiously a DIY album cover.
Reverend Dexter Wise
Rapper In Disguise
Rappin’ with the boyz
Makin’ joyful noise
Is it gangsta rap?
He ain’t into that!
The title of ths blog, “By his stripes we were healed”, is the last line of verse 53:5 in the book of Isaiah.
This tells me that Stryper has come to save us from, uhh …, what? Whtever it is, they had to bring out the guns and armoured vehicles for it. Something tells me that the anwer to our interpersonal conflicts should not involve the use of military vehicles.
Clever title, Isabel. I actually like it very much. It says that I choose God for something I like, not for something other people are coercing me to like. You have to respect that.
No information exists on Isabel Baker that I could find, except that this blogger found an MP3 of her gospel singing.
This goes beyond categorizations of “Christian Rock.” She sounds more like a cross between Lydia Lunch and Diamanda Galas. While these latter two don’t qualify as Christian Rock, the resemblance between kinds of music was uncanny. I might even add Romeo Void.
By the end of that song sample, one would be led to think that she loves God just a bit more than is, uh, Christian. Where have we heard that one before?
I am unsure of the origin of the name of the group. If they got rid of the outline of the head, and enlarged the photo, there wouldn’t have been so much empty space around the album.
The last time I heard of a group name with the word “experience” in it was by a 60s guitarist who did A LOT of drugs. Maybe they should have stolen one of Jimi Hendrix’s titles: “Are You Experienced?”
When you are aiming for a minimalist design, why have humans? And why do you need clothes? Or scenery? Or limbs? Or genitalia?
Mi-Sex’s 1979 single “Computer Games” made it to #1 in Australia, and #5 in New Zealand. It was one of a string of hits for this New Zealand group that extended into 1983.
They were reported to have a hit in Canada, but checking our chart information, they do not appear to have charted in Canada.
The Jay Gordon Concert Orchestra offers the album “Strictly for Lovers” off of the TOPS label, a CAC factory which was located at one time somewhere in the southwestern U. S. which has supplied my blog with a healthy number of CACs thus far.
There’s an attractive woman, whispering something into her boyfriend’s ear. Something like “I haff zee microfilm.”
Anyone who is not a lover should stay away from this record. Turn it off! Don’t buy it! Put it back in the remainder bin!
TOPS made money actually selling radiation instruments, if readers of my blog will remember. This could make them part of the Military Industrial Complex. And while we are on the topic of war, here are the natives of Auburn, New York with their band Manowar, with their 1983 album (not found on TOPS, sorry), called “Into Glory Hole Ride”.
This cover has been fodder for many a CAC blog, mostly because of the overwhelmingly subconscious homosexual slant involving handlebar moustaches and loincloths. OK… maybe a little more than subconscious. I suppose they could have called their album “Hairway to Steven”, but the Butthole Surfers already have that album title.
Manowar is notable for owning their own label and distribution system. They are a true “Indie” band. Their label is called Magic Circle Records.
Wikipedia says that Manowar broke the longstanding record in 1994 for the world’s loudest rock band. Beating The Who by 3.5 decibels, their Hanover concert was measured at 129.5 decibels. Over the years, The Swans, Motorhead, AC/DC, Deep Purple, My Bloody Valentine, and The Rolling Stones have all surpassed this, breaking the 130 decibel mark. Manowar beat them all in 2008 with a Magic Circle Fest concert that measured 139 dB. Guiness Book has stopped making records of “loudest concerts” due to the prospect of encouraging hearing damage.
The funk/disco/R&B duo The Brothers Johnson’s 1980 recording, “Light Up The Night”, was the high water mark in their career as a duo. Rolling Stone listed this record as #48 in the top 100 records of the 1980s.Looks like George is using his Johnson to light up Louis. Probably didn’t help sales, which went to #5 on Billboard’s Top 200 despite the album cover.
The record did not release any pop hits, but likely had at least one dance club hit, “Stomp!”. The Brothers Johnson were probably best known for their mid-70s pop hit “Strawberry Letter 23” (peaked on BB as a single at #5 in 1977).
Now we have a guitar as a phallic symbol. But they always kind of were. The drummer never gets the girl. It’s always the guitarist. Lead guitarist? Even better. They are the alpha males in the group (if you want to carry the analogy to apes).Chicks also dig motorcyles. And motorcycles and guitars together? SCORE!!!! Evidently, Ray Nelson’s invention of a guitar-shaped motorcycle never quite caught on, except as novelty. Nelson rode around the country in one which he built himself in 1980.
He also recorded this record 10 years earlier with a few colleagues of his. The idea stuck in his mind to build a motorcycle that had a guitar motif, from the drawing on this album cover. If the drawing was followed exactly (it probably wasn’t), they would probably find that the fretboard was blocking the headlight.
Nelson has made several selefless contributions to society, through his “Guitars not Guns” campaign aimed at wayward youth, and also by being a foster parent.
No idea of the artist, but I guess that the lesson here is that a fascination with morbidity affects us in different ways. Some of us contemplate death; others form a heavy metal band; still others punk rock; some write about what the experience must be like, and some people, like these folks on this CAC, enjoy walking around on graveyards wondering where the heck they are.
And that is the question, isn’t it? These folks, like many of us, often have unfinished business with such people for which inconveniaces such as untimely deaths create obstacles for us. If you found such a dead person, say, sitting at a bar, wouldn’t you like to give them a piece of your mind? Or tell them you’re sorry? Or forgive them for something?
An album title which has many meanings, depending on how you emphasize the words. Such as:
This is the 1958 record which started their short career in singing, being the first of four albums for the American novelty act The Playmates. The single “Beep Beep” lasted 12 weeks on Billboard, peaking at #4. The lyrics mention a Cadillac and AMC’s Nash Rambler, which caused sales of the Rambler to skyrocket.
When the single crossed the Atlantic, the Brits had laws against product placement in the lyrics, so the British single had no mention of specific brand names in the single.
The playmates broke up in 1964.
I am not sure who recorded this or what label it was on, but, hey, does it matter? The title tells us right away that this is not a singing record.
To make picking up girls easy, life experience tells me you need to have a lot of money, job security, and looks come second. Actually, this has been proven to be true cross-culturally, and is believed to be a survival tactic of our species that choices of mates take place in this manner.
But this album came out before we knew any of that, more than likely. And someone likely made a mint off of people’s ignorance.
One idea I haven’t yet explored is a blog of belly dancer favourites; a kind of “belly dancer top 40”. I don’t know if it will catch on, though. When you buy a record, its about the music. But if a guy says that he likes belly dancing, it probably is not about the music.
However, this record could be about what the belly dancers like. They may like music that has little to do with belly dancing. This could get interesting …
Artie Barsamian currently leads the Boston Big Band and Swingtet. Barsamian is an afficionado of the Big Band sound in the tradition of Benny Goodman, and has been following that tradition for over 50 years. Very little info appears on the album “The Seventh Veil”.
This is April Fool’s Day, so I thought that it would be a good time to post albums that don’t exist. In fact, I will be doing nothing but fake albums for the month of April.If you have been an avid reader of my postings, you would have noticed that the band names depicted here were the same ones I made up in this post.Looks like any of hundreds of indie band album covers.
If you want to know how to put these things together, scroll down. And yes, these were photoshopped.
If you want to boost album sales, there’s nothing like watermarking a “Parental Advisory/Explicit Lyrics” logo on the cover so that people will ignore your artistic message and simply buy your album to listen for all the F— words. And if there aren’t any, they can’t really sue a rating system for false advertising, can they?
You can getchy’er parental advisory sticker by Googling it (there are plenty out there), then layer it in Photoshop (shrink it first if necessary), setting the opacity to under 50% so that it simply shows up as a watermark. When you’re done with inserting the title and band name, cropping the photo and so on, you then flatten the image and save it as a jpeg.
Here are the instructions for making up your own artificial crappy album cover, courtesy of emptees.com, together with my own commentary:
A Do-It-Yourself Indie Band Album Cover:
Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”, or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. Or alternatively, pick a band name using the band name generator and word of your liking at bandnamemaker.com (my preferred method). Warning: to my knowledge neither method will generate a band name such as “Jesus of Kapuskasing”. That name was pure invention. Jesus is, well, Jesus; and Kapuskasing (pronounced cap-us-KAY-sing) is a small town in northern Ontario. I used it because “Jesus of Montreal” was already taken (it is the title of an independent film). Wikipedia has that title.
Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. In both cases above, I used the Wikipedia titles from rule #1 to title the album.
Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. I threw less caution to the wind and looked a little harder.
Use photoshop or similar to put it all together. Make sure it’s a square. 500 x 500 pixels is ideal. I require a square image too, but I do not have “ideal” limits. Whatever the size, it ends up on my blog as 300 x 300.
I thought I was looking for a human when I Google’d “Maria Leonora”.
Get ready for this: Maria Leonora Theresa (I’ll just say MLT) was a 3-foot high ceramic doll with her own recording contract, television program and feature film in the Phillippines in the early 1970s. She had her own makeup, wardrobe, and jewellery.
MLT fans reportedly wrote fan letters to her, which were answered back. This may have contributed to the urban legend that she was actually a living person.
“Forsaken Doll” was likely recorded near the end of MLT’s career, when her “mommy” and “daddy” divorced (Guy and Pip [played by Nora Aunor and Tirso Cruz]). The fans turned away, then the entertainment exects wanted nothing to do with MLT. She was washed up before her fifth birthday.
She was last seen on a derilict street corner on crack, and trying to hustle herself to Ken in front of Barbie.
The British musical group The Jack Emblow Sextet played often on the BBC in the 50s and 60s. Jack Emblow himself played the accordion.
This sheds light as to why “playtime” for a housewife meant “tea time”.
This is a 2005 first official release of a 1962 recording that Dave Van Ronk helped record which had been a bootleg for decades.
Now, I have nothing against Dylan making money where he can. But does anyone agree that putting “The Times They Are A-Changing” in a bank commercial, as he agreed to do for Bank of Montreal in the last decade constituted good product placement and promotion of the “Dylan” brand? Do you want that message to be given to you by a folk singer or your bank?
This album was recorded by Dylan before he became well-known. It is done in the packaging which Starbucks approved of for their 6-month exclusive 2005 deal for which he once again became infamous as a sellout. Much ink and electrons have been spilled on this topic, and I won’t venture there. More interestingly, he was also reviled by record/CD retailers such as HMV for doing this. After all, HMV feels (somewhat rightly) that they shouldn’t be competing against a coffee shop to sell CDs.
Give Dylan a break. First of all, “Live at The Gaslight” is a bootleg, and what better way to stick it to the bootleggers than having your own authorized relase? And coffee shops are where common, ordinary, grass-roots people meet, isn’t it? That is, common people who commonly order $5 lattes and $3 biscottis in fake Italian. Near where I live, such common folk walk their 3″ tall toy poodles and wear Florsheims. These customers take about 3 minutes to say the order in a nearly operatic key; then the server takes another 3 minutes to repeat the order in-tempo to another server who works the espresso machine. Who will sing their songs? Who will sing about the time that the chashier, who has a nose ring and a Master’s degree in Anthro for his thesis on “The Impact of the Roncesvalles Streetcar Terminal on Popular Culture in Toronto”, thought he nearly got skin cancer by scanning so many fifty-dollar bills under the UV? And after the customer pays an inflated price for coffee, he leaves out that tip jar. Now, that takes real guts. And no one sings their pain like Dylan.
Here’s one way to really “stick it to the man”: Go to Starbucks, and order “instant”. That ought to throw a monkey wrench in the system. I guarantee you that because most of these people are from a generation that hasn’t heard of “instant” and don’t know how to cook their own meals, no one will know how to handle the order, but everyone will feel that they absolutely must or fear getting fired. For one thing, it’s not fake Italian, and it doesn’t take 3 minutes to say.
This is also believed to be a bootleg. Now I am beginning to believe that if Leonard Nimoy can be bootleged, anyone can. Wonder what price bootleggers were getting for this album?
Two late ’60s standards are on this single. One is Peter, Paul and Mary’s “If I Had A Hammer”, and the other is Bobby Hebb’s jazz standard “Sunny”, which quickly got covered by Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Martino, James Brown, Dusty Springfield, and just about every lounge lizard act with a pulse. My father had a James Last LP with Sunny on it. Boney M even put out a disco version of Sunny.
In case you were not alive during the 60s, I started scratching around for a You Tube video to show you. The original Bobby Hebb versions are out there, but you have to go to You Tube directly to view them. Instead, I have a double-bill: a duet with Tom Jones and Ella Fitzgerald from 1970, more than likely on Tom Jones’ own variety show:
I’ve noticed that in the past copule of posts, album covers of middle eastern music/belly dancing of the ’50s and ’60s appear to prefer redheads. Here, even the blonde has to settle for being upstaged by this redhead. If the bald fella hits the gong, the performance is over and the dancer gets escorted off the stage.
“Orienta: The Marco Polo Adventures” could have been made in the late 50s and early 60s when most blockbuster movies consisted of stories of history and exploration. But no exact information exists.
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.
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?
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.
This is a 2005 first official release of a 1962 recording that Dave Van Ronk helped record which had been a bootleg for decades.
