We Wish You A Wild Xmas

I'm probably outta here 'til sometime in January. Thanks to all my wonderful readers and contributors. You-all make it happen.

Reader Eric writes to us to requesting what sounds like a pretty amazing bit of Christmas darkness and sick humor, Noah Quisenberry's "Daddy Came Home On Christmas," in which a boy murders his sexually abusive father. It's the merriest Christmas ever!  I don't have it. Anyone? Snippets of it can be hear in the last minute or so of this vid, from a series about outsider music that we've covered here before.  This one's an all-xmas special.

As long as we're searching for lost records, Brian from AZ is desperately seeking the b-side to that lovable old coot Walter Brennan's "Space Mice," called "Thievin' Stranger," another one I don't have. See folks, I really don't have every weird record ever made.  Not even close. Make their Christmas wishes come true!

Someone who does have a lot of strange/bad/outsider/unusual Christmas record is Bomarr, who's back with his latest collection:

"Wild Xmas Vol. 8"

featuring goodies like a Rodd Keith (under the name Rodd Rogers) song-poem, R. Stevie Moore, a Brazilian nugget from Caetano Veloso, the video-game bloopiness of 8-Bit Synthtown, and some Staxx soul from Carla Thomas. 

 And I had to put my nomination for the Worst Christmas Record back on-line, just because.

Need a last-minte gift suggestion? Darryl Bullock's book "The World's Worst Records," from the stellar blog of the same name. Get a 16-song download wth it, too.  I'm gonna sit on Santa's lap and ask for a copy. Or at least I'll try, until security rousts me out again. DAMN them. 

And nothing says "Christmas spirit" like sappy music from an irate right-wing talk-radio host: Glenn Beck's "Believe Again."  He claims it will have you dancing and crying at the same time.  Isn't that what goths and Morrisey fans do?

Jaymz Bee & The Royal Jelly Orchestra - "A Christmas Cocktail"

I had a request for the Ridiculous Trio Plays the Stooges album, but I can't find a couple of songs: "Scene Of The Crime/Death Trip" and "We Will Fall." Anyone, anyone? Thanks! re: the "Merry Chrismash" collection I posted a few days ago - I bring you glad tidings of an improved bitrate version of that most glorious bit of irritainment, "All Your Christmases," thanks to Adrian of Satan's Little Helper who personally sent it our way, available via divshare here: Satan's Little Helper: "All Your Christmases" And now our musical sleigh ride moves on to the snazzy sounds of Jaymz Bee & The Royal Jelly Orchestra. We've posted several albums by this most entertaining Canadian lounge parodist, and if you've been diggin' them, then you'll want to throw back this potent potable, what with it's finger-snappin' Rat Pack-ready versions of "Rudolph" and "Jingle Bells," bossa nova versions of "The Christmas Song" and "Let It Snow," the Andrews Sisters-like close harmony vox of The Beehive Singers, a '70s action theme wah-wah guitar "Sleigh Ride," and the Esquivel-esque "White Christmas", complete with Latin percussion and "zoo-zoo-POW!" vocals.  There's a few original songs here as well, inc. the smooth title track, and one called "Space Age Santa" that you can add to the collection. Jaymz Bee & The Royal Jelly Orchestra - "A Christmas Cocktail" (1997) UPDATE: Track 1 somehow got left out of the original folder. The above zippyshare link now includes it, and here's the divshare link of just "Jingle Bells" for those of you who already dl-ed the album:  "Jingle Bells"  1. Jingle Bells

2. Rudolph The Red Nosed Raindeer

3. It's Christmas Time (Oh Yeah)

4. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

5. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

6. White Christmas

7. Winter Wonderland

8. The Christmas Song

9. Christmas Cocktail

10. Sleigh Ride

11. Space Age Santa

12. Carol Of The Bells

13. The Little Drummer Boy

MERRY CHRISMASH (AND A SOUND COLLAGE-Y NEW YEAR)

Word has it that some of you Maniacs have been looking for Wayne Butane's hilariously profane kooky kristmas kut-up in the handy popular mp3 format in all it's 12-minute glory. I figgured, well, if I'm going to post it, might as well post a whole mess of other holiday themed sound collages. These are some of the must-haves, the classics, mostly from the Golden Age of Mashups, the 2000s. Not included: anything featured on djBC's series of "Santastic" comps (number 8 just came out) since they are all still available. "A Mutated Christmas", likewise is also still in print, thru illegalart. And don't forget People Like Us' "Sounds of Christmas."  But that still leaves plenty. Many of the "biggest" names in the field are featured here, but the ultimate just might be "All Your Christmases" which is nothing more than 7-and-a-half minutes of the word "christmas" taken from inumerable old xmas records artfully strung together, courtesy of Australia's Alias Frequencies. It's so great, and so annoyingly evil, bwa ha ha!

MERRY CHRISMASH

01 cassetteboy - xxxxmas
02 Voicedude - Here Comes Santa Claus In Black (Elvis Presley Vs. AC/DC )
03 The Kleptones - Bling Crosby
04 The Bran Flakes - Lovely Sleigh Ride
05 Satan's Little Helper - All your Xmases
06 Evolution Control Committee - The Christmas Wrong
07 My Favorite Things (PISs covering Negativland)
08 A Very Special Wayne Butane Christmas
09 V/Vm (Michael Jackson vs Paul McCartney) - Simply
10 The Bran Flakes - Here Comes Santa
11 cuechamp - 942003 (Nutcracker vs Daft Punk)
12 BigBadBaz - Christmas in Compton
13 Jima vs George W. Bush - The Night Before Christmas
14 JoolsMF (BuenaVista vs Beatles vs DrDre) - Havana Good Christmas
15 Gordyboy - bam bam the Cavalry (Toots and the Maytalls vs Jonie Lewis)
16 BuG - 12 boots of xmasx
17 Culturcide - Depressed Christmas
18 BRAT Productions - Chemical Christmas
19 fukjamum - Hankys Park Minimix
20 rx - Happy RxMas & a Whole Lotta Love
21 John Oswald - White
(plus: hideous bonus track!)

Behold! The Wheelharp

I love the creepy, creaky sound of the Wheelharp, a newly invented instrument developed and sold thru L.A.'s Antiquity Music company. But rummaging thru the sofa cushions for spare change will probably still leave me a bit short of the $10,000 needed to buy one.

It would be great to own one, tho - playing it's keyboard (a very strange-looking round keyboard) rubs the strings like a violin bow, so it's like having a string quartet at your fingertips. A scant 3 1/2 minutes of music on Wheelharp has all that's been recorded so far, but it is very nice indeed:

https://soundcloud.com/antiquitymusic/sets/wheelharp-audio-samples

Apparently it was used in the soundtrack for a recent film called "Devil May Call," but there does not appear to be a recording available.

The Strangest Album Ever Made?!

"Trout Mask Replica"..."Eskimo"...The Shaggs...any such list is now incomplete without a mention of Five Starcle Men's  "Gomba Reject Ward Japan." Coherent biographical info on this band is hard to come by, but apparently Five Starcle Men were two nuts in the '90s making low-fi (presumably) home recordings out in the desert town of Lancaster, CA.  Or maybe they were from Austin, Texas. Or maybe they heard the works of those two town's most famous loonies, Capt Beefheart, and The Butthole Surfers, and said: "That's nuthin; get a load of this," and proceeded to lay down 28 tracks over the course of a few years that in comparison makes Ween sound like Journey.

At first, it may come off as a couple of stoners' self-indulgent mucking about on a Teac four-track, and there may be some truth to that, but keep listening, and one starts to wonder if there may be some genuine insanity at work here (apparently, one of the members killed himself, thus ending this band's "career.")  Every sound is warped beyond recognition, lyrics range from unintelligible jabbering to surreal nonsense, samples and tapes loop themselves into delirium, unnatural rhythms pound away, all adding up to a mind-melting experience. Some "songs" sound like they were made up on the spot, many are less than 30 seconds long, and a surprisingly high amount of the tracks are really quite good. Play this for over 99% of the population (even those who consider themselves "alternative"), and they will probably will scrunch up their face and say, "What are you listening to?!"

Free listening/download here:

Five Starcle Men  "Gomba Reject Ward Japan"

courtesy of 'net-label Lost Frog, who have also blessed us with releases by R. Stevie Moore, The Happy Flowers, Animals Within Animals, Big City Orchestra, and some people who make noise music out of bicycles.

Old Friends in the Zither Sound

Yeah, yeah, I know: everybody plays air-zither along with their favorite 'zither heroes,' they even play the Zither Hero video game, the zither-bass-drum lineup has been the standard for decades, and yet here we are again, posting another zither album.  We're so damn trendy. I apologize, because I realize that our culture's obsessions with the zither has made so many other stringed instruments unfairly obscure. Perhaps other instruments have potential, but no-one knows because they're considered uncool? Like the "guitar," a six-stringed instrument of Spanish origin, whose strings are strummed or plucked by hand. Since it's held in the hands instead of being laid out on a table like the zither, it's sure to draw guffaws from the too-hip. Who knows, maybe in some bizarro-world alternate universe, it's the guitar that's the most popular. Nevertheless, this album of fun, peppy, all-instrumental Euro-cheese is another example of why all peoples of the world hail the zither as the King of All Instruments. Zesty percussion, accordion, sleazy electric organ and cool vibraphones add to the belated Oktoberfest (Decemberfest?) festivities.

Peter Schwarz - "Alte Bekannte im Zither-Klang"

A1 Ramona
A2 Down By the Riverside - the familiar hand-clappin' American gospel song
A3 Schöner Gigolo - hey, it's that Louis Prima song, "Just A Gigolo"
A4 Tanze mit mir in den Morgen - love this Latin-a-gogo groover
A5 Bye Bye Blues - one of my fave ol' Tin Pan Alley standards
A6 Estrellita
A7 Wochenend und Sonnenschein
B1 Winke winke
B2 In einer Nacht im Mai
B3 La Paloma
B4 Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein
B5 Das machen nur die Beine von Dolores - Great hotel lounge psuedo-calypso
B6 Das alte Spinnrad
B7 Du schwarzer Zigeuner
B8 Good Night, Ladies

Danke to herr Gene M!