Various Artists: The Uproar Tapes Volume 1

On the Island Records offshoot Antilles came this 1986 compilation of monologues from a half-dozen NYC writer/performers just breaking out on the Downtown scene. The mood and subject matter is all over the place, from goofy and sweet to take-no-prisoners satirical to dramatic to balls-out scary. Everything's worth a listen, with Bogosian and Magnuson the standouts. Don't miss the furious accordion-powered vocal beltings of the late Ethyl (aka drag performer James Roy) Eichelberger, who prefigured Hedwig in many ways (not just the wig and makeup but also the ancient Greek subject matter).

Eric Bogosian: Sitcom
Eric Bogosian: The Specialist
Ann Magnuson: Made for Radio
David Cale: Excerpt from "Smooch Music"
Ethyl Eichelberger: Jocasta (Boy Crazy), or She Married Her Son
Richard Price: A Christmas Carol
Karen Finley: I'm an Ass Man

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Doodles Weaver: Feetlebaum Returns!

For the absolute beginner, getting a taxidermy kit is probably the easiest way to learn on one's own. These kits come with guides in book or video form that go through every step, from skinning to mounting, and can be an invaluable help to a beginner who doesn’t have the benefit of an experienced taxidermist to learn from. Videos, in particular, are helpful because they can be set up as the taxidermist is beginning the project, and stopped, rewound, or restarted as necessary. Unfortunately, most kits are fairly specific to what animal they are appropriate for, and those that aren’t will still require purchasing the right mannequin and eyes to create a finished project. Most hobbyists, particularly those new to taxidermy, don’t have the money or space to invest in keeping a wide range of mammal mannequins on-hand. Therefore, knowing what species, age, and even gender of mammal that is going to be worked with can be a big help when it comes time to pick out supplies. (From taxidermyhobbyist.com)

Thank you Tim Maloney for bringing this 1974 LP into my ken. May "Ode to a Loquat Tree" bring you and Hae-Jin daily inspiration in the garden.

The Great Horse Race
Music Goes Round and Round
Eleanor Rigby
Interview with the World's Smartest Idiot
Ode to a Loquat Tree
Dance of the Hours
Gentry's Gin
Row, Row, Row, On Up the River
Moe, the Baby Hummingbird
Home, Home on the Range
Roll a Silver Dollar

Album audio & artwork

P.S. Here's how this particular copy of the LP looked with its inscription by Doodles Weaver before I Photoshopped it out:

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Dick Sherman & Milt Larsen / The Crown City Four: Sing a Song of Sickness

Here's the 1960 follow-up to Sherman & Larsen's Smash Flops, again on the PIP label (this must have been S&L's own vanity label because this and the previous LP are the only two PIP titles for which I can find evidence). This time the pickup ensemble doing the singing is another quartet from the casino circuit, The Crown City Four. I first heard cuts from this LP while listening to an old aircheck of Nightsounds, the ur-freeform radio show hosted by John Leonard syndicated from KPFA in the early 1960s. The album's side 1 cut "Fifty Million Commies Can't Be Wrong" became something of an underground hit, especially with the Birchers. This isn't a classic collection ("Watch World War Three on Pay TV" and "Oh What We Grow in Old Mexico" only bring to mind better songs on the same subject matter by Tom Lehrer), but I'm in love with "I Saw Adolph Today", a ballad in the spirit of inspirational folk songs like "Joe Hill" wherein everyone's favorite 20th century dictator is spotted alive and well and slinging kosher meat at the deli.

This LP was later reissued as Twelve Delightful Ways to Roast a Sacred Cow in 1962.

Watch World War Three (On Pay TV)
Fill Out The Policies, Mother
The Annual Get-Together (of the KKK and the NAACP)
Guillotine Days
Fifty Million Commies Can't Be Wrong
That Big Sporting House in the Sky
It's Fun To Be Hazed
Oh What We Grow (In Old Mexico)
Send the Girls Over There
I Saw Adolph Today
The Richer They Are (The Slower I Cure Them)
Leave the Slums Alone

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Dick Sherman & Milt Larsen / The Characters: Smash Flops

From 1959, two TV comedy writers, Dick Sherman & Milt Larsen, present a cycle of novelty songs in the "spectacularly inappropriate" milieu: peppy tunes to welcome Amelia Earhart home, congratulate the Hindenburg on a safe landing, wish good luck to General Custer, etc. With jokes about the all-American goodness of Little Rock and the peaceful hush of Cape Canaveral, these are polite chuckle-fests squarely in the bag of early-1960s satire; but "Congratulations Tom Dewey" is a subtle unexploded time bomb that, should it survive into the unknown digital future of millenia to come, will play hell with historians who think they've found a true musical artifact of the Truman election upset of 1948. Featuring The Characters, a close harmony group then popular on the casino circuit. And of course, dig that crazy cover art by the immortal Virgil "VIP" Partch.

Congratulations, Tom Dewey
I Wish I Was In Chicago
We're Depending On You, General Custer
When the Hindenburg Lands Today
Confederate Victory Song
Forty-Eight States in the U.S.A.
When Amelia Earhart Flies Home
Little Rock, That All American Town
Good Job, Well Done, Neville Chamberlain
Sleepy Cape Canaveral Moon
Columbus, You Big Bag of Steam
Bon Voyage Titanic

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Spike Milligan / Peter Cook / Jonathan Miller / Peter Sellers: Bridge on the River Wye

One guess which popular movie is being satirized here. This Spike Milligan script was originally a Goon Show in 1957, and was then re-recorded as this 1962 LP with Milligan and Sellers and two up-and-coming talents from the Beyond the Fringe team, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook. A classic piece of anarchy as always from Milligan, and great production values courtesy future Beatles producer George Martin. Milligan's underlying colonialist racism really comes to the fore here, though, in his performance as General Itchikutchi, and the way the cast wait on their laughs as they would in a live performance setting drains some of the energy from the comedy.

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.