It's amazing how many books, videos, and audio tapes were rushed into print before the year 2000 to cash in on the Y2K fears. And I was also surprised to see how many were from a Christian perspective. I'm not sure how the fact that some computer programs only had space for two digits instead of four meant that the End Times were nigh, and I even listened to all of the two-cassette audio book I've posted here. But some of the most prominent Christian leaders in America such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson released Y2K merchandise.
These audio tapes feature dramatic! action! scenes! straight out of a disaster movie, as well as discussions on surviving the mayhem, and how YOU as a Christian can help in the coming crises.
Y2k: The Millennium Bug part 1
Y2k: The Millennium Bug part 2
Sadly, I do not have an audio version of this book - I just love the title: 
"Glorious" Gloria Parker is a veteran of the Big Band era who is not only still alive and well, but plays, among other instruments, musical glasses - wetting one's finger and running it around the rims of a set of wine glasses to play melodies. She's quite amazing, a real virtuoso on her obscure instrument. I esp. dig the cool funk of "God Bless You Merry Gentlemen" from her album "A Toast To Christmas".
And that'd be cool enough. But it gets better. Much, much better.
A series of legal mishaps has led the still-feisty New Yorker to write a book entitled "Corruption Reigns in the Courtroom." Not only that, she has released, and is selling thru her website, a musical album of the same name. In a theatrical voice, accompanying herself on piano playing showtune-y music, Parker sings her chirpy, upbeat original songs. All her lyrics deal with how much she hates the American court system. Every song.
Don't have the album yet, but the four mp3s on her site (scroll to bottom of page) range from absolutely wonderful to absolutely wonderful. Haven't read her book, but I know of at least one of the legal setbacks that has caused this obsession - her co-authorship of this song:
Alan Holmes & His New Tones "Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus"
Incredibly, she lost her suit against Disney for it's use of the Sherman Brothers tune featured in "Mary Poppins." I'd be pissed, too. (Actually, Dick Van Dyke's gawd-awful Cockney accent is grounds enough for a legal action.)
She appeared performing on her glasses in the '80s Woody Allen film "Broadway Danny Rose," about a talent agent whose clients are all overlooked hard-luck novelty performers. Guess that makes me the Broadway Danny Rose of music bloggers.
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This might be the strangest music I've ever heard. It might not even be music.
David Rothenberg plays music with whales. Actual, living-in-the-sea whales. No, this isn't one of those corny '70s New Age albums with whale song sound effects dropped in. He actually traveled around the world, went out on boats, dropped a speaker and a mic into the ocean so he could hear the whales and the whales could hear him, and played clarinet along with their songs.
He may be crazy. He's the first to admit that. Since no-one knows what whale songs are for, he could be interfering with some important function they may have, like navigation. Plus, it's illegal. This possibly irresponsible activity led to the occasional confrontation, even shouting matches, with whale lovers he encountered on this scientific/artistic voyage.
His fascinating book/CD from last year, Thousand Mile Song, recounts his travels from the Pacific Northwest, to the Caribbean, to sub-Arctic northern Russia, listening to whale songs, playing along with them, and seeing what happened. Along the way we learn many fun-to-know facts about whales and their songs, e.g.: they have structure. They are not random noises. And these songs change - a whale will "write" a new tune, which will sometimes catch on with other whales, and they ditch the old songs. And different kinds of whales have different styles. Killer whale and beluga songs are as different as, say, punk and r'n'b.
So there's a scientific component to all this as well - to see what happens when an interloper drops in with his music. Occasionally, as in the case with today's mp3, it seems like the whales might be responding. This track, named after the boat Rothenberg was riding on when he made this recording, could be abstract electronica, or maybe a free jazz improvisation by someone like Sun Ra or Albert Ayler. But it really doesn't sound like anything you've heard before.
David Rothenberg + whales: "Never Satisfied"
I read this book last summer whilst listening to the cd on a hotel balcony overlooking the ocean, as seals were barking on the beach. You should try it!
Yma Sumac, the Diva Exotica, the Celine of strange, the Barbra of the bizarre, passed away recently, thus ending the original exotica era - she was the last surviving member of the Mount Rushmore of exotic music after Les Baxter, Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman had all moved on to that big tiki bar in the sky.Sumac was one of 
my favorite singers. I don't mean favorite exotic or ethnic or '50s singers, I mean favorite singers, period. She possessed an otherworldly, technically astounding multi-octave instrument that moved from death-metal growl to operatic ecstasy - sometimes within one song. She often didn't even seem to sing lyrics, but created animal sounds and other indescribable special effects with her voice.Hailing from Peru, South America, she lived here in Los Angeles and was a fixture in LA's jazz/cabaret clubs throughout the '80s and early '90s, though her reputation rested almost solely on a handful of '50s releases, beginning with the Les Baxter produced classic "The Voice of the Xtabay" (pronounced "SHTA-bay") in 1950 for Capital Records. The mixture of lush orchestrations, energetic Latin/ethnic percussion, weird atmosphere, and Yma's whooping, swirling, alien voice produced some of the most remarkable albums of the '50s.Yma Sumac "Kuyaway (Inca Love Song)" from "Legend of the Sun Virgin"Yma Sumac "Five Bottles Mambo" (yes, actual bottles are used as percussion)from "Mambo!"Yma Sumac "Dale Que Dale! (The Workers Song)" (almost a surf/twist-rock beat to this one)from "Fuego del Ande"Yma Sumac "Jivaro"from "Legend of the Jivaro"And that was about it. She toured throughout the '60s, from whence comes an obscure live album released in the early '90s of a performance in the Soviet Union (how she pulled that off during the Cold War I do not know.) On this song, twice as long as the original version on "The Voice of the Xtabay," she really dumps everything out of her bag of sonic tricks, vocally imitating the wildlife of the Amazon. Yma Sumac "Chuncho"
from "Live in Concert 1961"
She returned for one last album, "Miracles," in 1971, reuniting with Baxter for...wait for it...a psychedelic rock album. She still sang the way she always did, only this time over heavy guitars. Take that, hippies!Yma Sumac "Medicine Man"
She made one last recording in 1988, a surprisingly normal version of a Disney song for a various artists comp.Yma Sumac "I Wonder" (from "Sleeping Beauty") from "Stay Awake"The '90s lounge revival produced this excellent remix. I'm not usually too crazy about marketing-driven remixes of old classics, but I did really like this one:Yma Sumac "Gopher (Mambo) [Qburns' Abstract Message remix]" from "Electro Lounge"From Poland of all places came this mashup from a few years ago:El Barto & Liam B "Planet Mambo" (Yma vs Afrika Bambatta)
See Yma in action! From the 1954 Charleton Heston film "Secret of the Incas."THIS JUST IN! Just got a note from Nick Limansky, author of the new book Yma Sumac: The Art Behind the Legend . He's a classically trained singer, and, incredibly, has been working on this project since 1980. It looks to be an essential part of any Maniac's library.
A recent ad running on Colorado radio by the conservative religious group Focus on the Family is the funniest thing I've heard lately. Apparently, a law was recently passed in that state to allow trans-gendered people to use public bathrooms, resulting in this bit of unintentional hilarity:
Focus on the Family ad
Could John Waters have done any better?
This actually dovetails quite nicely into my current interest in the literary and biographical side of the film world's most famous trannie, Edward D. Wood, Jr, pictured here starring in his own cinematic plea for cross-dress tolerance, "Glen or Glenda." I've been a fan of his films for ages, but never read any of his books until recently. I whole-heartedly recommend his novel "Killer in Drag," an outl
andish bit of pulp brilliance that's easily as entertaining as any of his films. His non-fiction movie-world expose "Hollywood Rat-Race" is also quite wonderful. Check these quotes:
"Actually, there is no Hollywood any longer. It's become a kaleidoscope of meaningless ectoplasms which abound between reality and the unreality."
On writing: "...why don't you give up before you get started? And that's not sour grapes! That's good, sound advice, which few of you will take...but sound advice all the same."
"You'd be surprised how many of the boys prefer girls' clothes and the girls who prefer boy's clothes! And I mean big stars, directors, producers, and writers!"
"Nothing is stranger then the strange itself."
And thanks to the definitive biography, "Nightmare of Ecstasy" and The Church Of Ed Wood website I've been able to compile a tour of...(drum roll please)...Ed Wood's Los Angeles!
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4477 HOLLYWOOD BLVD. (Wood's office from 1947- ?)
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5271 Bakman Ave., North Hollywood (His World War II play "
Casual Company" was performed here, but it's an office building now; I live around the corner.)
- Santa Monica Boulevard near Western: "Plan 9 From Outer Space" shot at Quality Studios. (The entranceway is located next to the Harvey Hotel.)
- KFWB/Ted Allan studios, Yucca & Argyle: where "Bride of the Monster" shot
- 6136 Bonner St, North Hollywood 91606: apartment from 1965 to 1970
- Yucca @ Cahuenga: apartment of his final years
- 5636 Laurel Canyon Blvd, #4: apartment he died in 12/10/78 (also around the corner from my house - I didn't realize I lived on hallowed ground.)
- Criswell's apartment: Selma Ave. and Cassil Place, Hollywood, CA
- Criswell's Burial Spot: 10621 VICTORY BLVD. NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA. Valhallah Memorial Park
- Tor Johnson's Burial Spot: 23287 SIERRA HWY. NEWHALL, CA. 91321
- Bela Lugosi's Home: 5620 HAROLD WAY, L.A.
- Bela Lugosi burial spot: HOLY CROSS CEMETARY, 5835 W. SLAUSON AVE, CULVER CITY, CA 90230
As you make your tour, listen to some choice excerpts from Ed Woods' films, featuring the great performer Criswell:
Orgy of the Dead - opening
Night Things
Furs and Fluff
Ghouls Feast
Orgy of the Dead - End
POSTSCRIPT (6/02/08): Just saw the greatest thing: in a drugstore downtown the ugliest drag queen you've ever seen - tall, gawky, badly dyed hair, hideous lip liner - in a heated discussion with a ghetto sista - short, fat, cornrows. Imagine Herman Munster in drag arguing with Shirley from "What's Happenin'?" God, I love LA.
By now I'm sure you've heard the sad news of the death of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. If he wrote it I read it, with "Cat's Cradle" being the fave book of my teen years. I devoured it several times, but I never heard The Man himself reading from it until today's post on CrudCrud:Kurt Connegut, Jr: reads from "Cat's Cradle" ,
or sings calypso, in the case of the first track; for a very different reading of those same lyrics, see the Ambrosia post below.Classic quotes: "History - read it and weep!"One of the holy calypsos of the Caribbean religous leader Bokonon in "Cat's Cradle":
"Fish got to swim, bird got to fly
Man got to sit and wonder why why why""If flying-saucer creatures or angels or whatever were to come here in a hundred years, say, and find us gone like the dinosaurs, what might be a good message for humanity to leave for them, maybe carved in big letters on a Grand Canyon wall? We probably could have saved ourselves, but were too damn lazy to try very hard... and too damn cheap." "I've had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different."Vonnegut subscribed to the athiest/skeptic philosophy of Humanism. When addressing a Humanists convention he said about deceased science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, "Isaac's in Heaven now." It got a big laugh.From WFMU's blog:Two songs from Dave Soldier's Ice-9 Ballads (another "Cat's Cradle" reference, doncha know) album, with voiceover by Mr. Vonnegut:
"Duo For Clarinet And Meade Lux" "Annihilation Life" And big thanks to Idolator for posting a couple of Vonnegut-related tunes,including one from Ambrosia. Yup, the schlock-meisters famed for such '70s atrocities as "How Much I Feel" actually started off as a kind of laid-back L.A. prog band (soft-prog?) - their 1975 self-titled debut features a song with lyrics taken from another one of Bokonon's calypsos, complete with goofy fake Caribbean accent, though the music owes more to Gabriel-era Genesis then, say, Mighty Sparrow.Ambrosia: "Nice, Nice, Very Nice" It ain't gonna happen of course, but it sure would be great if Vonnegut is buried, like Bokonon at the end of "Cat's Cradle," frozen on his back, eternally "...thumbing his nose at You Know Who."
