Before They Were Stars: Billy Joel

In 1970, just three years before his solo commercial breakthrough with Piano Man, Billy Joel released a psychedelic hard rock album on Epic Records with partner Jon Smalls under the name Attila.

With Joel on Hammond organ and Smalls on drums (there were no guitarists or bassists on this album) and everything cranked to 12, nothing could possibly go wrong.

Besides everything.

 

Attila was not only a massive flop, going nowhere on the charts. Billy Joel himself hated the record, calling it "psychedelic bullshit". AllMusic even called it the "worst record ever made".

Accolades like that make this an automatic classic here at History's Dumpster.

Alas, we would never see a follow up to Attila, Billy Joel ran off with Jon Smalls' wife, whom he later married (which usually puts a wrinkle in things, creatively.) But the two later made up and Smalls produced two of Joel's later concert albums.

Furr (Magna-Glide, 1977)

Who was Furr?

We still don't know. But from the knee-high go-go boots, coloured spandex pants, sequined trench coats and bad face makeup. I'm guessing we're dealing with a "If Peter Criss can do it, we can too!" kind of band.

And from the look and sound of them, that wouldn't be too far off the mark.



Furr comes off like one of those Chinese knockoffs of a famous Western name brand product. And considering 1977 was when Kiss was at the height of their careers and the similarities of Kiss and Furr's logos, it only made one wonder.

This album was produced by legendary bubblegum pop producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffery Katz (Ohio Express, The Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus, etc.) for the New York based label Magna-Glide. Not much is known about Magna-Glide either except they did sign '60s R&B singer J.J. Jackson to the label in the mid-'70s and they were distributed by London Records.

But there was just simply no way Furr could ever compete with the stratospheric popularity of Kiss at that time. And this was Furr's only known album.

A Gallery of North Korean Vinyl Records

Sample track from the above album: "Our Red Blood Means Victory" The Monsudae Art Troupe (1962) 

1921 Kurtzmann Glass Phonograph

The 1921 Kurtzmann Glass Phonograph was the hipster audio freak's must-have long before Bang & Olufsen. It played vertical cut discs of the Edison/Pathe variety. But could be modified to play lateral cut gramophone records with the use of an attachment to the tone arm.

And they're still very classy looking.

And in the days before electrical recording, vertical cut discs were sonically best for acoustic recording than conventional lateral cut gramophone records. A suddenly loud passage could cut through the wall of a lateral cut groove, so the singer had to stand back from the recording horn or the horn had to be muffled to protect the groove wall of the record being recorded. On a vertical cut groove, it only makes a deeper groove.

The teak horn inside was perfect for acoustically recorded records, Not brassy or tinnier than it had to be with conventional gramophone horns. Or boxy like Victrolas.  

They're extremely rare today.

Rickie Tickie Stickies

Rickie Tickie Stickies, in spite of their long association with hippies and flower power were actually a creation of ad man Don Kracke in 1967. These reusable plastic flower decals adorned many a Volkswagon and girls bedroom in the late 1960s/early '70s. By 1968, some 90 million had been sold.

They were expanded to include other designs in the '70s and even moms started adding them to windows and cupboards.

The Lunch Man and Lunch Tunes Lunch Boxes (1986)

The Lunch Man and Lunch Tunes lunch boxes were basic kids lunch boxes with one striking difference; They had built-in radios and headphones.

Unfortunately, they were AM radios at a time when Top 40 radio in the US had largely moved to FM. (They still had several AM Top 40s in Canada until the early 1990s.)

And it's doubtful many teachers or school lunch ladies thought these were a good idea either...

Building Mind Power - The Ben Sweetland System (Nocturnal Education/RCA Custom, 1956)

Ben Sweetland was a motivational speaker. Similar to Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar and the late Robert Schuller. He was a godfather to the self-help craze that continues to lure in desperate people to this day.

A pioneer in "sleep training", he published this 22 record ‘system’ as a way for average people to improve themselves via conscious and subconscious education.

These records look like 45 RPM discs. But they actually played at 16 RPM with an average playing time of 20-30 minutes per side.

Are you sure this is something that ought to be played during daytime hours?

On top of this MAMMOTH 22 record set, Sweetland also offered a special phonograph changer with a timer. So users of the program can select when certain talks were to be heard during the night or day.

"The Rock & Roll Doctor" Travesty Ltd. (1980)

As heard on Dr. Demento back in the day.....

Forgotten Cigarette Brands Part II

Wow.

If there is one post on this blog that has gotten indisputably the most views of all, it is the Forgotten Cigarette Brands post, scoring nearly 27,000 views (and the most comments ever) in the two years it's been published.

For those who enjoyed that post, I'm happy to inform you I've only scratched the surface. It's a smoker's goldmine out there and I had been planning some sequels.

So back to the cigarette aisle of yesteryear.......

Magna (Late 1980s) - Magna as I remember was pretty harsh tasting discount brand (we used to call it "Magma") targeted to young men. They were the brand you bought when you didn't have enough to buy Marlboro or Camel. But didn't want to be seen with a generic brand cigarette.

Mapleton (1970s?) - This one was a "flavoured" cigarette, blending maple and rum with tobacco to give it a taste I shudder to think. This wouldn't be the only one - or the most extreme. There was also...

Twist (1970s) Twist was - brace yourself, a LEMON flavored MENTHOL. Gives "pucker up" a brand new meaning.

Cambridge (1980s) Cambridge was a discount brand that tasted like a Merit clone. I actually liked Cambridge. But they vanished by the early '90s.

Now (1980s) A low tar brand.

Bucks (1990s) was a '90s discount brand. Not the greatest smoke. But it worked when you needed the nicotine.....

Free (Early 1980s) - To quote Dorothy Parker "What fresh hell is THIS?"A NON-TOBACCO cigarette? Yup, Free was the brand you sought when Carlton was simply too much. I tried a Free back in 1981 and I gagged. I mean upchuck gagged. They were the worst EVER. Free didn't last long (obviously), first, they were horrible. Second, they got shoplifted a lot by unsuspecting smokers ("But officer, it says it's 'Free'!" If I were a cop, I'd have let the shoplifter go and let karma do it's job.) And having no nicotine and questionable ingredients was a total buzzkill. And finally, you could legally sell these to kids, as it contained no tobacco and nicotine (therefore, no warning label either.) This upset a lot of parents. And Free vanished.

Go To Hell! (1983) - Go To Hell! (There, that settles it) was a novelty brand for pissed off smokers. In the early '80s, legislation in more and more states began limiting where you could or could not smoke. Up to then, it wasn't uncommon to see ashtrays in stores, hotels, beauty salons, city buses, airplanes, restaurants and virtually everywhere - even in doctor's officers and hospitals, you saw smokers everywhere happily puffing away. Well the non smokers began putting the kibosh on that in earnest. Starting with airplanes and little by little, the stores, buses, hotels, hospitals, everywhere became off-limits to the cigarette puffers, first in designated areas, and finally outdoors, then 25 feet away from building doors/windows. Then the restaurants and bars fell and today, it's against most apartment leases to smoke inside your own home. Well in 1983, some big tobacco companies smokers weren't going to take it. And they rebelled with a campaign for smokers to begin demanding their rights. And nothing brings about a friendly, intelligent, civil discourse like "Go To Hell!". Unfortunately for the smokers, the tide was turning irrevocably and now it's getting nearly impossible to smoke anywhere (In Seattle, they've recently began banning smoking in public parks.) Even though smokers are running out of places to smoke, I don't think tobacco will ever be made illegal. We're slowly ending one black market over one plant (marijuana) and quite successfully. We don't need to be creating another.

 
Campaign Cigarettes - Yes, you could even vote with your lungs as late as 1988. Even at that time, these weren't anything new, they were used in campaigns going back to Eisenhower/Stevenson. Nixon also freely handed them to his campaign workers.

More to come.....