History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
This
was a band from the former German Democratic Republic called Keks
(Cookie). Totally unknown outside the GDR, it's been suggested they
started out as more of a mainstream pop group before going punk in the
early '80s. Didn't last long, they were banned by the East German
government by 1985.
Here's what probably sent the East German
officials over the edge. A track from 1983 called "Hasch mich Madchen"
("Catch Me Girl"), a strange tune that sounds like a bad rehearsal (they
stop and start several times.) Besides, the title (which is repeated
throughout the song), it's hard to figure out what they're talking about
From the guitars, you can also pretty much hear how Rammstein
and every other German industrial metal band got started on this track:
They
later became Knorkator, which was Germany's answer to Ministry. They
broke up in 2008 after one of the members decided to start a new life in
Thailand......
One other act was Nina Hagen. She came to America in the '70s and quickly established herself as one of the STRANGEST acts in the New Wave era of the early '80s.
She existed just outside of the mainstream in New Wave (but never too far away.) She's probably best known for her song "New York New York", which was featured in the bizarre 2003 Macaulay Culkin film Party Monster.
She appeared on Adamski's 1991 hit and video "Get Your Body". But this would be her last US hit. She's still performing today.
BEFORE Joan Jett made it a
rock n' roll national anthem in 1982 (and kept the songwriters set for
life in sheer royalties), here's the 1975 ORIGINAL by the UK band
Arrows.....
If you watched the classic '70s sitcom Rhoda, you will no doubt remember
Carlton The Doorman (the heard-but-never-seen doorman to Rhoda's
apartment building.)
The voice of Carlton the Doorman was the late Lorenzo Music.
You might better recognize his voice as the original voice of
Garfield.
I found this record a long time ago. I've played this before to other people in the apartment building I managed
and they all said this song reminds them of ME!
Here is a lost rock n' roll gem from Lemmy
Kilmister and his early band The Rockin' Vickers from 1966 (LONG before he became the leather lunged lead singer of
Motorhead.)
This is the end product of crass over commercialization of a fantastically successful movie franchise (and crass over commercialization is something new Star Wars franchise owner Disney has made a fucking SCIENCE of.) A totally useless and crummy knockoff of itself.
This was among the last releases from the dying RSO Records label. RSO was still smarting from the massive failure of their first and only entry in the movie business, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Which costed the company millions to produce and millions more to promote and barely drew flies, let alone an audience at the time of it's release.
Like another upstart '70s record label and their biggest rival, Casablanca Records, RSO was a wildly successful record label gone horribly wrong. They both made a serious error on betting far too much on disco and when disco died, they were both left with massive image problems and a massive portion of their rosters of once platinum artists who suddenly couldn't sell cardboard.
On top of that, the Bee Gees had filed a $200 million lawsuit against RSO and were forced to settle out of court and the band stayed with the label until it dissolved
In fact, the only album RSO released that sold anything decently in 1980 was the Irene Cara-heavy soundtrack to the movie Fame. But RSO was still drowning in red ink.
In 1981, RSO finally yelled uncle and sold out to it's distributor, Polydor Records, who promptly dissolved the label and save the always lucrative Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees (who both had the advantage of the upper hand over their former label, which Polydor inherited, But they were also still platinum sellers outside the US), sent everyone else packing.
This record was part of a deal to distribute soundtrack albums for the Star Wars franchise. Christmas In The Stars actually sold fairly well and a second printing was planned, But RSO was so deep in debt, they couldn't even raise the capital for that.
But the REAL kicker on this album is the last track on Side 1, "R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas", sung by a young lad named John Bongiovi (You may know him better as Jon Bon Jovi.) In his first professional recording.......
And I'd STILL take Chuck Barris
anyday over Ryan Seacrest. The Gong Show wasn't about sappy wannabes
singing lame Whitney Houston or John Mayer covers, The Gong Show had
talent....and REAL (future) stars. Like this little unknown act called
The Mystic Knights of The Oingo Boingo.
And if you're any fan of classic alternative rock.....well, you knew who this group became:
This was from 1976, LONG before Oingo Boingo went New Wave, they were a performance artist troupe from L.A......
When I was a little kid, this song's opening used to scare the crap out of me.
Long before Insane Clown Posse, before Marilyn Manson, before King Diamond, before Twisted Sister, before Motley Crue.
Before Kiss, before David Bowie and even before Alice Cooper, there was Arthur Brown in 1968. He originated the kabuki makeup look in rock n' roll - LONG before everyone else.
Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J....Meet your GRANDDADDY!
With the scary makeup and declaration at the beginning of this song, as corny as this song is, it still got banned off many radio stations in the Bible Belt.
Arthur Brown also has the distinction of being the first rock artist to explore fear as a main topic of his albums, also LONG before all the other kabuki-coated imitators that followed him.....
The single was originally released on this Starday label. It has also appeared on COUNTLESS trucker music compilation albums on Starday sister labels Gusto and Power Pak in the '70s
"Phantom 309" went to #9 on the country charts in 1967-68. It was also re-released in 1975 shortly after C.W. McCall's "Convoy" launched the CB radio/trucker craze
Red Sovine was a journeyman country singer who recorded for several labels, including RCA Victor and Decca with little success. But he soon became best known for his sentimental spoken word stories, mostly focused around long haul truckers and their families. It's with this niche did Sovine (and Starday/Gusto/Power Pak Records) find their greatest fan base.
In 1976, he released his best known single "Teddy Bear" It was also Sovine's only pop Top 40 hit, just entering for one week at #40.
"Phantom 309" is also parodied by an act called Red Bovine, who released "The Phantom Wind Breaker" in 1977 and was featured heavily on Dr. Demento's radio program and a few of Dr. Demento's album compilations..
Red Sovine died in 1980 while suffering a massive heart attack that caused him to swerve off the road and crash into a tree. He was 61.
Without a doubt, "Timothy" The Buoys is one of the CREEPIEST songs to EVER make the Top 40.
The Buoys were a pop group fronted by Rupert Holmes (you might know Rupert Holmes better for the super smash at the end of 1979, "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" and it's follow-up single, the lesser charting lost pop classic "Him".) In 1971 however, Holmes was a struggling 20 year old songwriter desperate for a hit.
Scepter Records (then label home of Dionne Warwick and B.J. Thomas) offered him a deal. They would release a song from him. But they wouldn't promote it. Holmes was a house songwriter for Scepter and this might have been way for Scepter to release a song from one of their house songwriters without any hint of payola.
Top 40 records need a LOT of promotion. Hundreds of new pop songs glut the airwaves every year and the ones that become the BIGGEST hits usually have a full blown record company promotional campaign behind them. No (or little) promotion means no hit and the kiss of death behind countless failed pop acts.
Rupert Holmes knew this nightmare scenario. But he happened upon a brilliant idea: Make a song that WILL intentionally get banned off the radio. Following the old saying "There is no such thing as bad publicity", Holmes wrote the lyrics of this song:
Trapped in a mine that had caved in
And everyone knows the only ones left
Was Joe and me and Tim
When they broke through to pull us free
The only ones left to tell the tale
Was Joe and me
Timothy, Timothy, where on earth did you go?
Timothy, Timothy, God why don't I know?
Hungry as hell no food to eat
And Joe said that he would sell his soul
For just a piece of meat
Water enough to drink for two
And Joe said to me, "I'll take a swig
And then there's some for you."
Timothy, Timothy, Joe was looking at you
Timothy, Timothy, God what did we do?
I must have blacked out just around then
'Cause the very next thing that I could see
Was the light of the day again
My stomach was full as it could be
And nobody ever got around
To finding Timothy
Timothy, Timothy, where on earth did you go?
Timothy, Timothy, God why don't I know?
Timothy...
Well, you get the idea of what happened to poor old Timothy.....
The song was wrapped in a nice, bubblegum coated Osmonds-like musical arrangement and the song was sent out to radio. And radio began playing the song.
At the same time, Scepter Records was promoting their new star, Beverly Bremers who had a new single "Don't Say You Don't Remember" Yet somehow, this strange song the label never promoted was getting an awful lot of airplay. And a lot of requests from young males at a time when such songs were requested mainly by young females.
The story from here takes a fork in the road. It's been said a Scepter A&R guy desperate to get the Beverly Bremers hit on the radio pulled a radio programmer aside, and mentioned what the "Timothy" song was actually about. Another goes the programmer tried to figure out what was the buzz behind this song and almost crapped himself when he heard the lyrics.
The song however was still selling briskly as a 45 RPM single, so not wanting to upset that applecart, Scepter quickly released a press statement claiming the Timothy in the song was actually a mule.
NOBODY bought that one.
Regardless, the song was quickly removed off many Top 40 playlists (and replaced with the more genteel Beverly Bremers song.)
Nevertheless, this song became one of the biggest hits of 1971. And the radio hasn't played it since....
Here's a nifty little compilation of some of Bob Marley & The
Wailer's earliest recordings (with Peter Tosh.) Released in 1977 as Bob
Marley was making his mark on American FM rock stations and people
everywhere were discovering this strange new music called "reggae".
Whereas back then, punk was loud, fast and snotty, reggae was the
mellow, laid back stuff your stoner next door neighbour played loudly on his stereo every
Sunday morning.
While on the surface, this might look like your
typical major label budget compilation (Calla was the hard
funk/Caribbean music imprint of CBS Records) to cash in on a big trend
by reissuing a current superstar's early material, this album is
surprisingly well mastered with some instantly catchy tunes ("Wings Of A
Dove", "I'm Still Waiting") and excellent liner notes on the back
cover.
On this one, you hear more of a '60s soul influence (these
sessions were recorded in the late '60s, before Marley's more
rock-influenced Island albums in the '70s that made him a superstar) and
Bob Marley could have easily scored a few '60s US hits if CBS were
actively looking in Jamaica for exciting new music. Which they weren't
(NOBODY outside of Island and a few specialty labels were doing that.)
These recordings are reissued material Bob Marley & The Wailers
recorded for New World Disc Records. It's a necessary companion to Bob
Marley's greatest hits album Legend.
And the perfect soundtrack for a Sunday morning.....
Ahhh......the long and odd sounding history of the wrongly mastered record....
Nothing
new really. Countless early recordings since the days of the very first
hand wound cylinder recordings have had various pitch and speed
anomalies until the earliest standard was set when electrical recordings
were introduced in 1925, mandating 78.26 RPM as the universal speed for
recordings on disc records in North America from 1925 until the end of the 78 RPM record (slighty less, 77.94 RPM for European recordings.).
And
all was well...for the most part. There are some who beg to differ.
Many Glenn Miller fans had issues with some of his recordings, namely
this classic:
But considering there was only so much recording time on one side of a
78 RPM record, if it sounded a tad rushed, it probably was. Just like
many other 78 RPM direct to disc mastered recordings. But everything
seems to be on the right key here.
However, when tape began to be
used as a standard of mastering albums, an old problem reared it's ugly
head. Some of the earliest tape mastered albums of the '40s had
something called "wow and flutter", very noticeable on analog piano
recordings when the player plays a sustained note. (Play a sustained C
major note on a piano and record it on an average analog tape deck, then
play back the tape and you'll hear the difference.) Technology improved
to reduce that artifact dramatically over the years. But analog tape
still had that problem, no matter how top quality the tape and recording
machine was. But the technology was refined enough on better tape decks
to make it much less noticeable. Digital recording virtually
eliminated that problem, but at the expense of everything else in the
recording. Namely high-hat and cymbals on the early digital recordings.
Tape and record players themselves always had pitch
and speed control problems. Until the '60s when better audiophile
technology came of age and pitch controls were a feature of better made
turntables, there was not much you could do about the problem.
However
in the mastering process of many recordings, either deliberately or by
accident, some tracks in the studio tapes were mastered at the wrong
speed. The most infamous example was the original Family Production's
label 1971 release of Billy Joel's Cold Spring Harbor LP.
The instrumental tracks sounded fine, but Joel's voice was speeded up
and sounded far too high pitched. It's been said
Joel himself went around to New England record stores to buy up as many
copies of Cold Spring Harbor as he could (luckily, it never fully
went into national release at the time. But the 1971 release never sold many copies to begin with.) Some of the 1971 originals sold then and they are prized collector's
items today.
The original copies of Billy Joel's Cold Spring Harbor album did not have a Columbia label.
Here is a sample of that original recording (note the pitch difference in Joel's vocals):
It was re-released by Columbia in 1983 with the vocals restored to
normal pitch, but also remixed with slightly different instrumental arrangements
on some tracks.)
But the crux of
this particular biscuit is Robert Johnson's blues recordings of 1936 and
1937, which have been featured on countless compilations. In 1990, Sony
re-released these historic sessions on CD, faithfully remastered from
original acetate master discs.
However recently, it's been discovered that the pitch of the original
recordings may have been exaggerated. When the recordings were slowed
down by 20%, some say they had a more "natural" sound to them than the
more frenzied tempo we are used to hearing Johnson's recordings at. The
sound that many claim started rock 'n roll.
And if that's the
case, how many other classic blues recordings from everybody from Bessie
Smith to Blind Lemon Jefferson are mastered at the wrong speed?
Well
first, being direct to disc, it's hard to deliberately master the disc
at the wrong speed. But on a portable recorder/cutter being battery
powered (likely), as used in those San Antonio and Dallas hotel rooms
when Johnson cut these sessions, it COULD make a slower initial
recording and when the recording was played back at AC powered 78 RPM,
it can sound faster than the actual recording was.
It's debatable amongst blues fans, but it IS a plausible scenario.....read more here
When you mention The Cars to some people, they, by some primeval
instinct or something, quietly sing "Shake it up....ooh-ooh.....shake it
up....". Never mind The Cars racked up quite a few hits and "Shake It
Up" wasn't even their biggest.
But
even more bizarre was the fact that before Richard Otcasek and Benjamin
Orzechowski found superstardom (and less surname baggage) as The Cars,
they were in a folky pop group called Milkwood and released an album.
The album was titled How's The Weather.
You might wanna loosen up your skinny tie for this one......
Recorded and released in 1972 on the Paramount Records subsidiary of the
ABC Records conglomerate (The Paramount imprint is better known for
it's soundtracks and albums from The Brady Bunch and Commander Cody)
How's The Weather didn't get very much airplay. Probably because nobody outside of Boston ever heard of these guysand How's The Weather
was one of the most generic album titles in history (it wasn't even printed
on the label!) and most likely, it was 1972 and there were literally
THOUSANDS of albums released that year ALONE that sounded very similar
to Milkwood's first and only album.
So it was pretty obvious how
it all got lost in the shuffle. But if you stumble across an excellent to near mint
original vinyl copy, you might want to hang on to it. It's worth a bit.
Here's
the entire first side of that album for your listening and dancing
pleasure. BE WARNED: You won't hear the synthesizers or Ric Ocasek's stifled
hiccup that made The Cars records so famous. This is more like Jim Croce
meets Crosby, Stills & Nash meets America.
I could have put the cheesy Brasil '66 samba version of the Beatles
classic up here, but I wanted SHEER mozzarella. So here's Bjork - yes,
the one and only, at age 11 singing "The Fool On The Hill" - in Icelandic
- from her first album....
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