Temple City Kazoo Orchestra: Some Kazoos

From 1978, the very first EP from Rhino Records. Big. Bold. Brassy. Epic. Epochal. A pop culture cyclone. A demarcation point for classical music. The record that redefined New Wave. Everyone who bought this record may not have formed a band, but they bought this record. A game-changer in the history of motion pictures. The 800-pound gorilla in the basement of every indie-pop songwriter’s mind. One hell of a nice guy, a real mensch, my best and greatest friend. Makers of the finest steak I’ve ever tasted. They lived the dream. They tasted the big rock candy sandwich. They ate the purple pea. They ingested the microdot of fame. We looked on the breadth of their empire and wept. We listened to their message of love – and bought a small colored plastic tube with two sheets of wax paper inside.

2001 Sprach Kazoostra
Stayin’ Alive
Miss You
Whole Lotta Love

EP audio & art

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.

Totem Pole of Losers: Jesus, I Am Loving You / My Compromise

Here’s a favorite 7-inch from college: Before he was America’s Funnyman Neil Hambuger, Gregg Turkington founded his own San Francisco-based label, Amarillo Records, and was co-conspirator in a number of bands including The Easy Goings and The Zip Code Rapists. Totem Pole of Losers was one of his projects, and the two songs on this 7-inch represent 66% of the band’s total recorded output (I only see evidence of one other TPOL song, “Look What You’ve Done”, released on a Japanese various artists comp in 2005). Like the best avant-snot-rock of 1993, it’s sludgy and drolly hilarious at the same time. The A-side, “Jesus I Am Loving You”, features vocalist Lizzy Kate Gray detailing her maybe-too-intimate relationship with her saviour. The B-side, “My Compromise”, is a real anvil-beater with vocals by Turkington sung from the point of view of a commercial composer who’s about to remove his lover’s name from a song before submitting it as the jingle for a frozen chocolate-covered waffle. Included with the artwork is the original lyric sheet plus the enclosed Amarillo / Nuf Sed mail order catalogs.

Jesus, I Am Loving You
My Compromise

7-inch 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.

An unidentified Egyptian mix tape, circa 1989

In 1989, Mom was President of The 99s, an international organization of women pilots, and she introduced me to an Egyptian pilot who handed me this mix tape. It includes 14 cuts of Middle Eastern pop music. I can’t read the J-card and I don’t know what I’m listening to. If you can help, please post a comment!

Cassette 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.

Dion McGregor: The Dream World of Dion McGregor (He Talks In His Sleep)

Lyricist and somnologuist Dion McGregor (pronounced “Dyin”) remains the only recorded example of someone who riffed in his sleep. In the 1960s, his best-known professional gig was a collaboration with his roommate Michael Barr: the song “Where Is the Love”, which Barbra Streisand recorded in 1965. But his best-known gig overall was an unpaid one, also with his roommate Michael Barr: a giant archive of open-reel recordings of McGregor talking in his sleep. Barr captured McGregor on tape as he sleep-talked hilarious, frightening, surreal, sometimes very dirty monologues, while car horns and white noise drifted in from the open windows of their New York City apartment. As word of Dion’s dream tapes got around, eventually they reached the ear of producer Jules Green, who pitched Decca on the idea of an LP, and helped compile this series of (safe-for-work) cuts that Decca released in 1964 replete with artwork by Edward Gorey. The voice you hear on this LP – and the several CD compilations that followed in the years to come, including this one, this one, and this one coming soon – is sometimes the voice of a made-up character (as in the amazing “The Mogul”), but most of the time it’s just Dion narrating what he sees in the cadence of a child talking to his toys: patiently expositional, gossipy, and slightly scandalized by all the bizarre goings-on. Some of this comes off today as camp, but in fact a lot of this material remains deeply subversive and full of deathless one-liners. I finally scored a copy of this LP recently after a long search, but the record was badly scratched and practically unplayable. Fortunately others have digitized this out-of-print LP for your enjoyment. In the meantime, here’s a nice high-res, cleaned-up copy of the album artwork.

LP 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.

Quincy Jones: The Hot Rock - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and More

Quincy Jones delivers a sultry jazz score to the greatest caper film ever made. This baby has been sampled a lot in the last four decades, and it's not hard to see why - I mean, damn, look at his house band: Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, Grady Tate, Ray Brown. The perfect soundtrack to waiting out that trance state you get into every time someone says "Afghanistan banana stand." This LP was designed with a gatefold sleeve cut down to a 3.5-inch flap that folded down over the cast photo when closed.

Listen to the Melody
Main Title
Talking Drums
Seldom Seen Sam
Parole Party
When You Believe
Hot Rock Theme
Miasmo
Sahara Stone
Slam City
Listen to the Melody / Dixie Tag
End Title

LP audio & art

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.

ドリフターズ (The Drifters): ドリフのズンドコ節 (Drif No Zundokobushi) b/w 大変うたい込み (Taihen Utaikomi)

Zun-zun-zun-zun-zun-zun-Doko! The Drifters, Japan's answer to the "Laugh-In" crew, were pop tunesters and sketch comedians with their own hit network TV show in 1969, The A-side of this 7-inch, "Zundoko Bushi", was their theme song, an actually quite melancholy tune about an all-too-brief wartime affair (Pink Martini talk about it here, and you can find the lyrics here, although you're on your own for a good English translation). The B-side, "Taihen Utaikomi", is about, um, maybe something Navy-related, maybe something laundry-related (lyrics available here).

7-inch audio & art

Lenny & Squiggy: Lenny and the Squigtones

Michael McKean and David L. Lander do Lenny & Squiggy do really good comedy pop that mines the pop trends of their 1950s childhoods, in this live/studio album from 1979 on the Casablanca label. (Which reminds me, I've got an out-of-print Big Daddy album that needs to go up here soon.) Also features Chris "Nigel Tufnel" Guest.

Vamp On
Night After Night
Creature Without a Head
King of the Cars
Squiggy's Wedding Day
Love Is a Terrible Thing
Babyland (For Eva Squigmann)
(If Only I Had Listened To) Mama
So's Your Old Testament
Sister-In-Law
Honor Farm
Starcrossed
Only Women Cry
Foreign Legion of Love
Vamp Off

LP audio & art

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.