History's Dumpster

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Baby Lu-Lu: The SCARIEST Record Ever Made

This is a TRUE story.

Some time in the late '60s or early '70s, a strange record appeared

I see a fence back there and I'm really hoping this cover shot was taken at a state hospital.

It gets worse. Look at the back cover. Click on it to enlarge. Read it.

You read this correctly. This was a middle aged woman, (allegedly) channeling a three year old.

How a woman like this is loose on the streets (let alone allowed anywhere near children. Or a recording studio) is beyond me. But it takes "Born-Again Christian" to a brand new low (instead of being "born again", why don't they just GROW UP.)

I honestly don't know what it is with evangelist women and big hair, geological layers of makeup and poodles, I just don't.

But it's not just this woman who scares me like crazy. It's her enablers. Jay W. Turney, Steve Chandler, Eddie Crook and the entire staff of Electric Arts Studio of Madisonville, KY.

Mr. Turney is also this woman's husband. Whom she also refers to as "Daddy". And the oozing disgust about this record only BEGINS there.

There's nothing I can say that can illustrate this horror better than LISTENING to this record itself.

The 4 Stages of Christmas

The 4 Stages of Christmas:

1 - You believe in Santa Claus.

2 - You don't believe in Santa Claus.

3 - You ARE Santa Claus.

4 - You look like Santa Claus....

Christmas In The Stars

Uh-oh.......

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.......