IT IS TO LAFF

"It Is To Laff" is an outrageous, gleefully tasteless various-artists free download album not for the easily offended. The guilty parties are all using pseudonyms, and for good reason. There's actually some well-produced stuff here, and some serious songs thrown in (as anti-comedic relief?) I wonder if people writing "LOL" really are laughing out loud, but I actually did with some of this stuff, like:

DJ M.Aynot Feed "Get Ur Typewriter On" - Leroy Anderson's "The Typewriter," one of the great '50s sound-effects novelty records, goes ghetto. The opening seconds really did give me involuntary guffaws.

DJ LOL "Voicemail This Way" features a hysterical phone message; Is this for real? If so, where's it from?

SoulWacker "Smells Like Your Muddah" - Allan Sherman goes grunge.

"Turd Night!" deserves special notice as the most over-the-top insanely filthy piece of musical excrement to be flushed down the internet in recent memory, as Gwen Stefani and the formerly wholesome Bay City Rollers find their lyrics chopped up and re-arranged for scatological effect, amidst a flurry of rude sounds, song parodies, and deranged conversation. A messy masterpiece.

DJ Breakfast Burrito: "Turd Night!"

"It Is To Laff" (also available here.)

Download it, print out the artwork, and makes copies for your loved ones - your holiday shopping problems solved!

YULETIDE ZEPPELIN

"Yuletide Zeppelin" is a medley of Led Zeppelin songs played Christmas stylee by a guy I'd never heard of before but am now a big fan. This track is ingenious. Mojochronic is a dude from Berkeley, CA who sez: "I happened to be playing a family heirloom glockenspiel when Zep's "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" came on the TV...God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen was a something I had learned as a boy. It fit like hand in glove with Jimmy Page's guitar playing. That got the ball rolling..." And I believe this marks the first appearance of glockenspiels on these pages.

mojochronic: "Yuletide Zeppelin"


From the excellent new various-artists download album "Santastic III," compiled by djBC.

EVIL, EVIL, EVEL KNIEVEL

Another boyhood idol rides off into the sunset: daredevil stuntman Evel Knievel, a name uttered in hushed awe on the playgrounds of my youth. Well, among the boys at least: when I was gushing over Evel to my too-cool big sister, she said she didn't really care for him. "Wha...what?," I gulpled. "Why don't you like Evel Knievel...?" "Too flashy." Pshh. Girls.

Years later, when I was interning at a company that sold videos of Evel documentary footage, I, as well as my boss and other interns, forged his autograph for the 8 x 10 glossy pictures of Evel we gave away if you joined the "Evel Knievel Fan Club" set up to promote the videos. Wonder how much those are going for on eBay..?

As this site proves, there's been a lot of Evel-inspired music. Here's some cheezy '70s vinyl I ripped last night by an utterly unknown singer:

Eddie Carr: "Evil, Evil, Evel Knievel" "He's not a bird, he's not a plane/Is he a fool who's gone insane?"

The Bran Flakes: "Evil Knievel" Expertly samples words of wisdom from the man himself. Next year we should be hearing the first new album from the Bran Flakes in 5 years. Woo-hoo!

HUNG UP ON MADONNA

I just love it when an over-exposed pop star gets put through the meat grinder. Not literally, of course (though I've had my fantasies). And that's what happens to Madonna in today's tune. The executioner of this lovely bit of electronic chaos is solcofn, a Washington DC radio show host, composer of soundtrack-y instrumentals, dj, and masher-upper. Sez he: "I tripled up her vocal and had one pitched way high, the other a little low and then the third has all kinds of effects on it."

Good news: when I asked sol if we can expect more of this kind of madness from him in the future, he replied, "indeed my friend...indeed!"

Solcofn: Halos and Hang ups

I knew a guy who used to work at a media company who used to have to answer the phone when Princess Ciccone herself would call. Demanding to speak to someone, she would hiss "Do you know who I am?!" Ha, classy! I'd put her on hold and play this as the on-hold music. Over and over.

RUSSIAN DOLL THEREMIN ORCHESTRA

It's hard enough to get one person playing the theremin in tune, but nine? This group even harmonizes with each other. As Bill and Ted would say, "MOST unprecedented." This achievement is made even more unusual by the fact that the theremins everyone's playing are inside what appear to be Russian nesting dolls. Which might make sense if they were playing the works of a Russian composer, but this video shows Japan's Masami Takeuchi and company performing music from Czech composer Dvořák, so I don't know what's going on. It's pretty great, tho. From Dvořák's The Symphony No. 9, in E Minor "From the New World" (Op. 95):

Masami Takeuchi: video
Masami Takeuchi: mp3

He calls the instrument the "matryomin" - a matrioshka-shaped theremin. Here's a lovely duet for matryomin and ukulele, covering The King:

Masami Takeuchi & Akiyo Hmaguchi: "Love Me Tender" video
Masami Takeuchi & Akiyo Hmaguchi: "Love Me Tender" mp3




Thanks to DJ Earlybird!

LES IS MORE

Les Paul is truly a man who needs no introduction. But, although his electric guitar and multi-track recording innovations have made him a living legend, his music is rarely heard. And that's a shame - a casual listen to his late '40s and '50s hits reveal a true mad genius at work. There's a whacked-out, almost Spike Jones or Carl Stalling-like level of lunacy to some of his records, often done with no-one else but Les, his guitars, and gadgets performing. Years before the Chipmunks, he was playing guitar solos at half-speed, then speeding them up for novel effect. Building his own studio, creating his own guitar effects, playing proto-rockabilly years before Elvis - this was pretty avant-garde stuff, yet he played everything with a light touch that made it accessible to mainstream America.

He was never really pegged as a novelty or experimental artist because he always made sure his wife, singer Mary Ford, was on hand to lend a smooth, romantic sheen to many of his records. Indeed, they were one of the biggest selling artists of their day. Ask any older relative who remembers America in the '40s and '50s. Believe me, they've heard of Les Paul and Mary Ford, and could probably sing a bit of "High High The Moon" or "Vaya Con Dios" to you.

These two records are Les at his intrumental best. "Lover" starts off low-key, (if eccentric with those Chipmunk guitars) then after a minute, explodes into Esquivel-like lunacy. And "Brazil" almost sounds like glitchy electronica played over an exotica rhythm section. It's hard to believe that these were recorded by one man, and in 1948.

Les Paul: "Lover"
Les Paul: "Brazil"

Les and Mary had a radio show in 1949-50 that allowed them to stretch out beyond pop song formula and into surreal humor, as this short excerpt demonstrates:

The Les Paul Show "The Case Of The Missing Les Paulverizer"

The above tracks are taken from the excellent collection The Best of the Capitol Masters: 90th Birthday Edition. Mary Ford died in 1977. Les Paul is 92 years old, and still performs weekly in New York City.

TESLA COIL TUNES

Tesla Coils do more then just look cool shooting up electrical arcs in mad scientist's laboratories. The Austin, TX based science society known as The Geek Group can actually get them to play music. As this video demonstrates, output from two towering Teslas have been modulated from a control unit in order to generate the tones you hear. All that means is you get a light show and sounds from the same instrument. The buzzy music is kinda what you'd expect from a giant electrical gadget.

The Geek Group: Super Mario Theme

More Tesla music from another group of enthusiasts:

Steve Ward: video
Steve Ward: music

Now if only these guys would get together and jam with the 1-bit and tape-record folks...

MUSIC FOR (AND BY) ROBOTS

Calling DJ HickoryDickoryDoc and Strictly Kev's two hour-long robot-themed extravaganzas "dj mixes" doesn't really do justice to them. At times they're really densely-layered sound collages as much as anything. Kev (of DJ Food fame) and DJHDD mine the fertile field of '50s/'60s Space Age records, layering spoken-word/comedy, movie/tv clips, children's records, Dictionaraoke, old new wave, sound effects, '70s funk, and other recorded ephemera over the likes of Jean-Jacques Perrey, Bruce Haack, and Frank Comstock. On HDD's "Robots R Computers" some modern beats hold it all together, but Kev's is more strictly retro-licious.

Robot mixes - Downloads and tracklisting (which don't begin to list everything used) available here.

ONE-BIT MUSIC

You've heard the rinky-dink sounds of 8-bit video game music? Howzabout one-bit music?

Tristan Perich is an artist and composer from New York who takes the most primitive Radio Shack-type electronics imaginable and packages them in empty cd cases, which can then be listened to with heaphones. One would think it would be too primitive to be musical. One would be wrong. He's posted some mp3s on his site, like this thoroughly danceable cover of a Fischer-Spooner song:

Tristan Perich: "Just Let Go"

The One-Bit Groovebox crew from the Boston area can actually tell you how to make one-bit music of your own. Too bad there's not much music on their site because the one mp3 sample they did provide is wild:

One-Bit Groovebox: demo


Thanks to J-Unit 1!

JALTARANG: BOWLING FOR MUSIC

Jaltarang, one of the world's most obscure musical instruments, is a collection of 16 bowls filled with varying amounts of water that are struck with sticks. It's sound is delicate, but rhythmically propulsive. Really quite lovely.

Indian tabla percussion-driven ragas are commonly performed on jaltarang, but so are Indonesian influenced gamelon-style sounds. I can't really figure out where it comes from, actually - it's so ancient, we may never know.

India's Milind Tulankar is one of the few virtuosos still playing jaltarang and has a number of cds but, fittingly for such an esoteric tradition, I'll be darned if I can figure out how to order them. At least he provides a number of samples and video clips on his "Sounds" page. Listen to:

Puriya Kalyan: Exciting, fast, hypnotic; and that tabla player's going nuts...

365 PROJECT: DISCO SICKNESS

Only two months left in Otis Fodder's 365 Project! I contributed todays' post, an album's worth of "Disco Sickness." Lounge singers, ethnic acts, rock'n'rollers, easy-listening band leaders, children's music makers - everyone went disco in the late '70s, and this is my bottom-feeding collection of the best of the worst.

SATAN'S TOY PIANO

One more for Halloween: Twink, The Toy Piano Band, has posted a version of the "Theme To Rosemary's Baby" on his site, and it's a treat, not a trick. Krzysztof Komeda (as Christopher Komida) composed the score to the classic 1968 shocker and died a year later. Coincidence?!

A toy piano might seem an odd choice for a spooky soundtrack theme, but children's instruments have been used in horror scores before, e.g.: a wind-up children's music box set against slightly atonal music = creepy.

And while you're on his "MUSIC" page, be sure to check out the other bonus songs on the bottom of the page: covers of Devo's all-time classic "Beautiful World," and Harold Faltomeyer's "Axel F."

It's a limited-time offer, probably coming down sometime in early November, so grab it now.

Twink: "Theme To Rosemary's Baby"

IT'S MONSTER SURFING TIME

There are those little things that make life worth living, things that make you want to drop down onto your knees and thanks your lucky stars that you're alive. Things like knowing that there's an actual '60s rock record called "It's Monster Surfing Time."

Ah, yes, how I love early rock - think Coldplay could come up with a title that cool? Monsters, surfing, that's all you need to rock 'n' roll. It's been kinda awful lately here in southern California, so let's celebrate Halloween with one of Los Angeles' great gifts to the world, surf music, and listen to all the greatest songs ever recorded with both "monster" and "surf" in the title.

Deadly Ones - It's Monster Surfing Time
Gene Moss And The Monsters - Surf Monster
The Phantom Surfers - Monster From The Surf
Sex With Lurch - Monster Surf Party
Don Hinson & The Rigamorticians - Monster Surf Stomp
The Abominable Surfmen - Monster Surfer

DIGITAL DEBRIS

Tim from RadioClash has a new podcast that's right up our alley: "It's a new eclectic experimental music & art podcast...orphan audio and charity shop/thriftstore finds, outsider art and podsafe music. And intermixed is various finds from the Internet and elsewhere - YouTube, performance, spoken word records, radio and TV, stories and poetry."

The first show is up and it's quite properly mental. No playlist up yet, but I recognized some things from the 365Project like a school marimba version of "Popcorn," Ken Nordine, Al Tijuana & His Jewish Brass (Ha! I actually have that one on vinyl) and some home recordings. Also: an electronically processed version of that "leave Britney alone" rant, some hilariously awful Japanese pop, Ergo Phizmiz (I think), hissy old 78s - you get the idea. Weee! My head is swimming.

Digital Debris

VIDEO GAME SYMPHONY

Bob Ostertag has been an avant-garde composer and improviser for over a quarter-century, but he has just released what might be my fave piece of his yet - w00t, a 50-minute recording using only sampled sounds and music from some 20-odd video games. Non-geeks, take note - even if you don't recognize any of it, it's still an amazing bit of utterly mental madcap 'tard-tronica. Impatient? Then fast-forward to around 26 minutes in for a real fun glitchy noise-pop blowout.

Sez Bob: "The w00t music began as the sound for Special Forces, a live cinematic performance by Living Cinema (Pierre Hébert and Bob Ostertag), which addressed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006." Huh?!

Bob Ostertag: w00t


Thanks again to solcofn!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPUTNIK pt2

"Space Songs" is an absolutely wonderful late '50s album that was part of a series of "Singing Science" records that a very nice chap named Jef Poskanzer has put on-line for your downloading pleasure. Thank God(zilla) for the internet - my big sis had this album when I was a kid and I was thrilled to find it again.

Tom Glazer (the guy who wrote "On Top of Spaghetti") and Dottie Evans sing such swell songs as "Why Does the Sun Shine," a song that should sound familiar to you They Might Be Giants fans. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of (as the Russians pronounced it) Shpootnik, I recommend listening to "Beep Beep."

The Vinyl Frontier: Mashups from Outer Space is an excellent various-artists collection of sci-fi themed toe-tappers that includes a tune that samples one of Glazer & Evans' "Space Songs."

Juxtaposeur: Space Dictation

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SPUTNIK pt1

Yep, it's been exactly a half-century since the first spacecraft was launched. The Soviet Sputnik satellite not only kicked off the space race, it also inspired a San Francisco newspaper columnist to dub members of the Beat Generation "beatniks." And where would we be without beatniks, dad?

The Duece Project, an awesome radio show that specializes in sounds of the Space-Age, wrote us requesting some hi-fi sci-fi (we love requests, by the way) so let's blast off, space cadets.

We'll turn first to the astounding 6-disk collection of '50/'60s Cold Era era artifacts "Atomic Platters." Among the songs about nuclear war and those dastardly Commies are a few tunes about our birthday boy:

Jerry Engler and the Four Ekkos: Sputnik (Satellite Girl) - Rockabilly! Squares beware.
Roosevelt Sykes: Sputnik Baby - Solid r'n'b, baby.
Al Barkle with the Tri-Tones: Sputnik II - Another rocker for space-age greasers.
Ray Anderson and the Homefolks: Sputniks And Mutniks - I don't know what a "Mutnik" is, but I do know this hillbilly country toe-tapper features the least correct use of the word "ironic" until Alanis Morrisette came along.

To be continued...

ELVIS LIVES! (UNLESS HE DOESN'T...)

Back on Elvis Death Day (August 16), I posted a dead-Elvis tribute album on WFMU's Beware of the Blog, which yesterday prompted a nice Maniac to point out an Elvis song-poem written by one N. Ruth Mills, who posts her poems on a site called Whispering Pines Poetry. From what I gather by reading her poems, she's a grandma, likes eagles, and is presumably Southern, since a Nashville cat named Buddy Sherriff sang it for her.

There were a million dead-Elvis songs, but this is one of the few that suggests he might still be alive: "Elvis oh Elvis/You have been seen here and there/In a crowd on a street/A glimpse of you most anywhere"

Buddy Sherriff/N. Ruth Mills: "Elvis Is The King"

HOW TO PLAY CASSETTES ON YOUR TURNTABLE

Michael Oster is mental. And good for him. We need more visionaries like him with perhaps more then a few screws loose.

Whilst looking for some sound effects, I came across Oster's website F7Sound which does, in fact, sell sound effects CDs, but what caught my eye was a page on his invention, the tape-record, and how to make one:

- Unspool some of your old cassettes (come on, you're never gonna play that Nu Shooz cassingle anymore, are you?)
- Glue this big random mess onto a piece of cardboard - this is your "tape-record."
- Replace your turntable needle with a cassette deck head.
- Put tape-record on turntable and play.

Don't you want to know what it sounds like? I thought you did.

Michael Oster: Tape-Record #2

So what are you waiting for, people? I expect a full tape-record compilation album in a year. Get going!

PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ

Singing original lyrics over sampled music is routine in the rap/r'n'b world, but, strangely enough, not elsewhere. Well, imagine a band of circus dwarfs breaking into an antique store, playing 78s on all the Victrolas, and singing whimsical lyrics about monkeys ringing the dinner bell and one's granny being on fire.

Okay, that was a pretty silly description. But, hey you try to describe "Perpetuum Mobile," a full-length album collaboration by two singular British eccentrics - People Like Us (who we first wrote about here), and Ergo Phizmiz. Despite the state-of-the-art computer recording/editing techniques used to make this album, there's a timeless feel to the music, as banjos plink and plonk, accordions wheeze, and Hawaiian guitars sway in the breeze. The mashup world may favor modern dance beats, but polka and chacha rhythms are more likely to be heard here. The density of these collages rewards numerous and careful listens - there is a lot of stuff going on here.

A few of these tracks are available on a free download EP, "Honeysuckle Boulevard," where you can hear such peculiarly catchy ditties as:

"Fat Henry's Mambo"

But otherwise you have to get the CD, and well you should - the packaging (printed in India) is as handsome and unique as the music.

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz: "Air Hostess" - snatches of "Suspicion" and Nelson Riddle's "Lolita" theme give this one somewhat of a '60s go-go feel. Irresistible.