SMASH-UP DERBY

You are all hereby directed to meet me this Sat. night July 1 at BootieLA in Los Angeles. It's the first anniversary of the all-mashup club, one of the few legal (for now) outlets of illegal music. No matter how controversial other forms of music have been, they've rarely been illegal (except for the 2 Live Crew). Hey, it's like the good old days of Communism! Remember the illicit thrill of listening to that smuggled-in Beatles album?

To celebrate, they've got alot lined up, such as drag-queen Princess Kennedy singing Kelis' "Milkshake" while handing out real milkshakes. And Smash-up Derby , America's only live mash-up band, will be playing a set. They have mp3s on their site, but of course they can't quite adequately convey lead singer (and Bootie dj) Adrian's glam persona.

Smash-up Derby: Talking Franz - The Head's "Burning Down The House" sounds great when sung over Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out"

So go. You can tell your astonished friends, "I drank a drag-queen's milkshake."

HOLOPHONIC SOUND

You've heard how stereophonic sound moves from left to right, but nothing can prepare you for the creepy phenomenon known as holophonic sound. Wear headphones as you listen to:

Holophonic test: Someone's shaking a box of matches not only to your left and right, but up and down, behind you and in front of you...

Now they're cutting your hair...

...now they're blow-drying it...

Science gone too far?!?

MENSTER PHIP AND THE PHIPSTERS

Not to be lazy, but Trouser Press's description is so succinct I'll just, er, borrow, their description:

"In their parents' basement in suburban Fairlawn, New Jersey, during the early '60s, Kenny Collins, his brother Richie and various friends and relatives pounded out rudimentary but undeniably infectious rock with their loosely constructed "band," Menster Phip and the Phipsters, recording delirious originals...surreal-to-the-point-of-unrecognizability covers ("Land of 1000 Dances")...and even a bogus commercial for Great Shakes (remember them?) on a two-track reel-to-reel deck for their own amusement. Though the group never performed publicly or released any recordings in its lifetime, tapes eventually found their way to Hoboken's Telstar label, which redressed history's injustice by releasing a 20-song collection as Phip City!."

Menster Phip and the Phipsters "Angels Up In The Sky" - Is this wonderful tune an original? If so, it's a pity we never heard more from the Phipsters.

Thanks to The Hound!

No, Thank YOU

In a ghastly display of David Lynch-ian surreal horror, newcaster Connie Chung "sings" Bob Hope's old theme song "Thanks for the Memories" while astride a piano on the final episode of her MSNBC show she co-hosted with her hubbie Maury Povich. She tunelessly wails sarcastic, bitter new parody lyrics, clumsily tries to dismount from the piano, and generally discards any remaining traces of respect the American public has for her as a journalist. Hard to believe she once co-anchored the evening news with Dan Rather. Would anyone at the BBC ever do something like this?

Connie Chung "Thanks for the Memories" (video) - Gee, I wonder why her show was cancelled?

I know not everyone has the software to record audio from videos to mp3 so here's some iPod-melting monstrosities from our recent YouTube posts: Annoy your friends! Torture your neighbors! Get fired from your DJ gig!

David Lee Roth: "Jump" bluegrass version, live on the "Tonight" show - mp3
Connie Chung: "Thanks for the Memories" - mp3

JOHN NORTH WRIGHT THINKS THEY'RE OUTASIGHT

In 1995, The Phoeniz (AZ) New Times received a demo tape from one John North Wright. The tape began with the growly voice of a middle-to-senior aged man announcing, ""Hi, I'm John Wright. Uh . . . all these songs are copyrighted 1985, words and music by myself. Uh, conceptually, they form the songs for a, uh, rock video opera I have written in my mind. It's set mostly in Hawaii and the Orient. It's called Teenage Volleyballers." What follows is an interminable tuneless guitar & voice meditation on, yup, teenage volleyballers, with little to say about them except that they're "out of sight."

Obsolete slang, hilariously inept music, and a generally creepy pedophile-ish aura all come to together to create the stuff of outside-music legend. A Phoenix musician who read the article asked for a copy of the tape and announced he would actually learn and perform all the songs, while the New Times attempted to track down the mysterious Mr Wright. As this article reveals, however, Wright was not to be found. This fan site even transcribed the lyrics and figured out the chords (such as they are) to "Teenage Volleyballers" so you can play and sing it yourself.

UPDATE: go here for the music (Sorry, didn't realize that Angelfire doesn't allow direct linking to mp3s)

Mr. Wright, please come forward - the world waits your "rock video opera."

Well, at least I do.

UPDATE 7/18/06: Great to get a comment from the New Times editor who helped discover Wright. Turns out Wright was from Michigan and sadly passed away a few years ago. But here's his web page, chock-full of psychotic ranting. Unfortunately, the song is off line. Anyone got it?

DAVID LEE ROTH GOES BLUEGRASS

Music Video For Maniacs: David Lee Roth performed a bluegrass version of his old band Van Halen's '80s hit "Jump" on the "Tonight" show recently. I don't know why.

David Lee Roth "Jump."

His sense of pitch is all over the map, his radio show was cancelled, he was considering quitting music to work as a paramedic. Watching his continued attempts to maintain a show-biz career should be fascinating, in that car-wreck sorta way.

MUSIC FOR DOGS

No, not music about dogs - there have been plenty of classics in that catagory, from Elvis' historic "Old Shep" to George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" - but music for dogs. Dogs have been man's companions for millenia. Since when did we decided that they needed music? Well, according to Thai dog groomer and trainer Anupan Boonchuen, "music improve(s) the mood of dogs he grooms." And so he launched:

DogRadioThailand.com - "...The programming on dogradiothailand.com is mainly Thai pop music, but Boonchuen plans to expand offerings in which the disc jockey will "talk to the dogs in Thai," and canine listeners will be encouraged to respond. "If we play a slow song, we may have the DJ howl," he said, "because dogs howl, too, when they hear sad sounds."

Get with it, Thailand! You're way behind the kooky New Age crowd here in Los Angeles: "Songs To Make Dogs Happy" (listen here) "is the first qualitatively and quantitatively researched musical CD, based upon 200 canine participants' responses to what THEY would like to hear in songs! The Laurel Canyon Animal Company and Dr. Kim Ogden, a nationally known Intuitive Animal Communicator, worked together to create music dogs love to listen to!"

Scroll down The Laurel Canyon Animal Company's website and you'll also find music by, and for, parrots, cats, Koko the gorilla ("Most of the song lyrics are taken from conversations with Koko. She personally reviewed versions of each song before the recordings were finalized"), and...pink dolphins of the Amazon? "Music of the Pink Dolphins" required no less then three animal "communicators": "...a musical adventure directed and guided by the the Dolphins themselves...People who spend time with Dolphins experience an amplified sense of intuition, wisdom, compassion, peace and higher guidance." Ya think, say, eminem's music has ever been able to "attune your intuition"? Arf.

THE FIRST REMIX?

Excellent new weird-music blog Dinosaur Gardens (contributers include Mr Evolution Control Committee, and the guy from the great local (L.A.) Space Age theremin-a-go-go combo Seksu Roba) posted a 1968 recording by the father of Minimalist composition, Terry Riley, that just might be considered the first remix of a pop song: "...the proprietor of a local discotheque asked Riley to compose a piece to be played in his club, and Riley obliged  —  but with a version of Harvey Averne's "You're No Good", a single off Averne’s 1968 Atlantic LP Viva Soul..."

The result is 12 minutes of tape-looped lunacy, with sine-wave and Moogs thrown in here and there as well. Was this actually played at the disco? And did anyone dance?

And who knew there was a soul-man named "Harvey"?

Terry Riley "You're Nogood"