Tag: Popular Culture

Google Autocomplete Follies

Humans are a curious species. We like to ask the questions about why things exist/happen/not happen, and so on.

When I built my search engine questions, I began with the word “WHY”, then gradually built on that, one word at a time. Now, I pass on the list of questions to you.

If the list of Google autocomplete suggestions which is to follow is taken to be the true distillation of human thought, we seem to be very preoccupied with aches and pains, bodily functions, and weather events, and not a whole lot outside of that.

WHY

⦁ him
⦁ is the sky blue
⦁ don’t we
⦁ him cast (sic)
⦁ do whales beach
⦁ am i so tired
⦁ are you running
⦁ do cats purr
⦁ am I always tired
⦁ do we yawn

WHY DOES

⦁ my cat lick me
⦁ my dog lick me
⦁ it hurt when i pee
⦁ salt melt ice
⦁ ice float
⦁ my stomach hurt
⦁ my head hurt
⦁ my jaw hurt

WHY DOES IT

⦁ snow
⦁ snow in Canada
⦁ rain
⦁ always rain on me
⦁ hurt to swallow
⦁ hurt to poop
⦁ hurt to have sex
⦁ hurt to breathe
⦁ hurt when I cough

WHY DOES IT SEEM

⦁ like everyone is rich
⦁ impossible to lose weight
⦁ impossible to get a girlfriend
⦁ hard to breathe
⦁ hard to swallow

WHY DOES IT NEVER

⦁ work out with guys
⦁ snow in London/Manchester/Swansea/England/Florida
⦁ snow on Christmas
⦁ snow
⦁ rain in California
⦁ get dark in Alaska

WHY DOES IT ALWAYS SEEM

⦁ to be (Phil Collins lyric)
⦁ to rain at night
⦁ to rain on the weekend
⦁ to rain on Good Friday
⦁ to be my fault

[Audio] The Difficult Listening Moment: Doing Dylan worse than Dylan I

Welcome to the first episode of The Difficult Listening Moment. On today’s episode, we explore some music by Bob Dylan. Those who know the music of Bob Dylan knows that his songs had been made a whole  lot more popular by other acts such as The Byrds, The Band, Joan Baez.  In fact, nearly anyone who sung Dylan can do it better than Dylan does.

Nearly anyone. Yes, there are those in the minority, who make it into the dustbin of popular culture, who, when they attempt to sing a Dylan tune, actually sing it worse than Dylan himself, if such a thing is possible. When you think about the way Dylan sings — sort of like a cat being run over by a car that needs to be put out of its misery — you can appreciate that this is something of an achievement.

Here, then, for your perusal is the late Sebastian Cabot (1918-1977) reciting “It Ain’t Me, Babe”.

Crappy Album Covers #279 — Disco Lotion

1977 was the height of the disco invasion. And I say “invasion” rather than “revolution”, because at least revolutions are welcome in some homes.

Rod McKuen’s Disco parody “Slide Easy In … Disco” has been described as a “gay porn version of Grease”. The hit single “Amor” never made it in North America, but it was quite prominent in many European countries.
These days, if anyone looked like this at a border crossing, they would be subject to a cavity search on the spot.

That being said, many blogs remember Instant Funk’s brand of Philadelphia Soul quite fondly, in spite of their having changed record labels from TSOP to New York’s Salsoul Records prior to the release of this 1979 LP. Disco and its sub-genres had been on life support after its mega-overexposure by the Bee Gees by that time, and even the best albums of the genre were being abandoned by all but the most hard-core fans by that time.

The TSOP label was home to artists such as Lou Rawls, The Three Degrees, McFadden and Whitehead, and The O’Jays. I like these artists, and have never really associated them in my mind with Disco, except in the loosest sense of the term. They sound closer to R&B, and were grouped together with Instant Funk as part of the “Philly Soul” sound.

Crappy Album Covers #278 — Ellis Dee (LSD)

This is a 1966 reocrding produced by Alan Livingston and Lawrence Schiller. Dick Clark is uncredited for the narration, and Dr. Sidney Cohen gives some medical background on various aspects of LSD.

I wish they would have taken the record sleeve designer’s stash of LSD and flushed it down the toilet.
This is the infamous Timothy Leary (1920-1996), with his recording, also from 1966, called “LSD”. This popularizer of the hippie catch phrase “Tune in, turn on, drop out” and graduate of the University of California at Berkeley in 1950 was a Harvard lecturer but was fired amidst allegations of involvement with various psychoactive drugs.

The lecture on this record came after police raids on his Milbrook esteate, looking for drugs. Hence, it is said this recording has a bitter tone to it, compared to his other recordings.

Crappy Album Covers #277 — Pink

After your first bottle, you say “Here come the Elephants”, after about 4 or 5, you say “Here comes the twister” (see below), and the room begins to spin. The album looks at least old enough to have Johnny Bond participate in The Iraq War Drinking Game (the first one), but in reality he was never alive for it, having died of a heart attack in 1978.

Cyrus Bond (1915-1978) had a string of top-10 hits in the 1940s up until the late 50s. In 1999, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
I had agony researching this group. I ran into a freaking domain-parked website offering info on “Po Boy”, “The Boy” and “The Po”. It is painfully obvious that someone didn’t attend their RESL classes (that’s Redneck English as a Second Language).

Then there was this site. Our boyz don’t look like post-punk/hip-hop dudz, yo’. But if they were those Po’ Boys, they would have a killer logo.

I am new to Po’ Boysology, but according to my observations, any band calling themselves The Po’ Boys seems to consist of

  1. 5 or 6 guys;
  2. members who only want to be addressed by their first names.
  3. The punkers call themselves:
    • James, Micheal, Mark
    • Dave, Robert, Dom
  4. The guys in the pink suits call themselves:
    • Jimmy Sonny, Snuffy,
    • Terry, and Jim

Just what we need  … two guys in the band whose names are Jimmy and Jim. Look, guys, they don’t have to be your real names. I’m sure one of you wasn’t christened Snuffy!?! Could one of you have picked a different name?

After a couple of pages of bizarre stuff having nothing to do with this band except the name, I gave up. But there is indeed a genre out there.

There is a brass band called “The Po’ Boys” which does a killer cover of Led Zep’s 1971 hit Black Dog:

(moved or deleted by YouTube)

And as for the Twister, here are the Talking Heads, same as they ever were…

(moved or deleted by YouTube)

Crappy Album Covers #276 — My Babe Magnet II

The Calvary Boys were a traditional Southern gospel group that formed around 1970, touring around in their babe magnet, depicted on your left. They hail from the Piney Woods region of Texas, often called “East Texas” or “Deep East Texas”. “Gettin’ Ready to Leave” might bave been their first album, although it is not mentioned on their website, as far as I could tell.

They call themselves a quartet. That might be because the other 3 folks in the picture are the mechanics. In Deep East Texas, you repair your own damn touring vehicle!
Chicks dig motorcycles. Dr. Dave had a novelty hit with “Vanna, Pick Me A Letter“, sung to the  tune “The Letter” (a #1 hit in 1967 by a group from Memphis Tennessee, calling themselves The Box Tops). “Vanna” was a staple on the Dr. Demento show, having been played on 38 episodes between 1986 and 2008.

Dr. Dave (David Kolin) channels his best Cheech Marin imitation (at least that’s what it sounds like), making it a matter of debate in the song that phone is spelled F-O-N-E, and trying to convince Vanna to come to his place to play The Home Edition.

What you are looking at is the cover of their 12″EP released in 1986.

Crappy Album Covers #275 — What’s that in your pipe?

Pipes, as shown here, can be fun for both boys and girls. You can slide down the mouthpiece; stand on top of a flame coming out of the pipe and not get burnt. Just as you can smoke a pipe and not get lung cancer, or walk between the raindrops in a storm and not get wet.

Los Melodicos is the brainchild of Renato Capriles, way back in 1958, and made its debut as one of Venezuela’s foremost Latin-oriented orchestras, and have made over 100 albums.
The anthropologists knew about ‘shrooms all along. They had the jump on the hippie generation, who tried to use it under the ruse of “artistic inspiration”.

Yeah, mushroom ceremony, my arse. They were passing aruond the pipe because they couldn’t get enough of that buzz.

The Mazatec (meaning “Lords of the Deer”, which is often something you see when you are stoned) were an “Indian” (aboriginal) tribe in the south of Mexico in the state of Oaxaca to the south. Their recorded history was made up of either defensive war against the Aztecs or defensive war against the Spanish Conquistadores.

Crappy Album Covers #274 — Psychedelia

Psychedelic art is supposedly the kind of art induced by drugs such as LSD. The thinking being, that the kind of mental state induced by psychedelic drugs are a kind of artistic inspiration. Psychedelia had long died out as a fad in 1977 when Dragon released their third album, Sunshine. I have a painting below which is popular in psych textbooks. It was a painting of a cat owned by Louis Wain back in the early 20th century in the later stages of the onset of schizophrenia. He needed no drugs to turn his ordinary still life into works of psychedelia.
I wish these guys chose a better color scheme. But these are Austin Texas denizens who call themselves The 13th Floor Elevators, late 60s cult favourites.  They have been covered by bands like REM, Jesus and Mary Chain, ZZ Top, and Primal Scream.13th Floor Elevators had, among their more normal instruments, the use of a jug — an electric one, no less.

Here is a Lous Wain’s cat, after having late onset schizophrenia:

And here are the 13th Floor Elevators with one of their bigger hits “You Gonna Miss Me”

Crappy Album Covers #273 — The SJ Blind Dating Service

Jerry Hitt is a do-it-yourselfer (album cover wise) from way back, and it is difficult to pick out the year of this recording.
Joyce Drake’s stunt double, Joyce Landorf meets Jerry Hitt and they now are cozy together thanks to the SJ Blind Dating service.

Crappy Album Covers #272 — Lone Ranger References

I’ve heard it all since my childhood… The Lone Drycleaner, and others. But here is “Metal Rap” from a group called Lone Rager, released no later than 1984.

This is metal, so while it goes against my no-metal policy, it is not a shocking cover as you can see … Just stupid.

A Lone Rager vid appears below.
And here is the Lone Arranger. This 1980 LP by Ernest Gusella must have been where Russell Oliver got his ideas from (see video below).

The 10 tracks of experimental/Jazz music have titles such as “Body Art Disco”, and “Pissin’ in the Snow”. You might want to play this on your second date at the very earliest.

Here is Metal RAPsody by Lone Rager:

Ta da!!! Here is Russell Oliver, the Loan Arranger:

And here is an Air Farce satire on Russell Oliver:

Crappy Album Covers #271 — Smoking Tie-Ins

I have mentioned tie-ins before. Remeber Squirt? Now we have records by cigarette manufacturers. This brand was popular in Germany.For this posting, we have two records which tie in with tobacco. Now you can die in two languages.
… And Chesterfield Club cigarettes were popular in the States. I am not sure how I am supposed to associate cigarettes with baseball. The famous repetitive quotation by Russ Hodges (1910-1971) that makes this album title was from an historic 1951 game when player for the New York Giants Bobby Thompson hit the ball into the grandstands, known as the “shot heard around the world.” The earned the Giants 3 runs to win against the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-4 that year. I suspect that the 1951 game, now part of World Series history, is probably what the recording is about. Along with endorsing cigarettes.
What is unique about this LP is that it had to be played at 78 RPM, but was a 12-inch record. If you are familiar with 78s, they were usually all 10 inches. So, the format was exceptionally rare. Kind of like Cocteau Twin’s Victorialand, which was a full-length 12″ LP from the mid-80s which had to be played at 45 RPM.

Crappy Album Covers #270 — The Overuse of Cadillacs

After some looking about, I can’t for the life of me remember where I got the record cover from. While the name of the jpeg has the word “coverbrowser” in it, I tried “Coverbrowser.com” and several search strings, to no avail.I recall it was a jazz band, possibly one that was popular in the night clubs. I know nothing else. All evidence of the origin of this photo has disappeared into the Internet memory hole.
Guy Drake had a minor spoken-word hit with “Welfare Cadillac”, a song which poked fun of welfare recipients. Johnny Cash was asked to perform for Richard Nixon, and Welfare Cadillac was one of the songs Cash was requested to play. He refused, citing “short notice” rather than political reasons.Drake’s tune was one of a small group of “right-wing” hits; another from the same period being “Hokie From Muskokie”, a tribute to Nixon’s Silent Majority who didn’t protest the war, didn’t use recreational drugs, and didn’t listen to rock-and-roll.

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.

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.

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.

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

Here is the latest instalment:

[media id=46 width=400 height=300]

(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.

[media id=45 width=400 height=300]

Crappy Album Covers #249 — Head-Scratchingly Crappy

Out of Abbfinoosty comes this crappy album cover from 1996, called “Comes the Storm.” It’s supposed to look spooky, but it just looks like someone got a little too happy with Photoshop. This album was not listed on the official website, so I had to go to Amazon to find info on it.

I don’t list metal albums on this blog for many reasons. One big one is that you expect them to be over the top and that is what metalheads are looking for.

This looked like a metal album, and whenever I make an exception and discuss it, it is usually for good reason. See the guy on the right?

That’s Billy Joel.

A young Billy Joel, posing with drummer Jon Small, for their 1970 album, Atilla. It was reviewed on Allmusic.com as like making a musical impression of “having a hole drilled through your head.”

Great. I’ll put it on my list of things not to buy.

Crappy Album Covers #248 — De Agony of de Feet

The thing about Michael Franti, is that I like his style of music. Edgy, folky, and socially conscious, and entirely listenable.But, Michael, why did you have to ruin your latest record cover with your damn, *&#$!! foot? It’s not that pretty!
Here is what they did to Franti’s CD cover at amright.com.
Next up, Dvorak’s Slavonic Rhapsody #2 by the Vienna State Opera Orchestra.

While another classical LP we’ve featured, called “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” left clues on the cover for the Italian-challenged, there is precious little here to explain th depiction of holding one’s feet in what appears to be a nearly impossible flexibility move for many, which would relate that to the music.

Crappy Album Covers #247 — Arguing over the death of God

J. C. Crabtree questions Nietsche’s assertion that God is dead. It is likely that Crabtree didn’t read Frederich Nietsche when he made this record, but who knows?

There is no information I could find on this person, although a search turned up this J. C. Crabtree, but makes no mention of a ministry or of making records.
Here is Gertrude Behanna for the second time, here to just show up J. C. Crabtree with her assertion that God is in fact not dead. Heck, with her it’s not even a question.

This album was already discussed here.

To finally settle Nietsche’s question, well, I was talking to God the other day, and He told me Nietsche was dead. That final assertion is much more provable.