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...
One of the greatest fads of the '60s, Philco/Ford's Hip Pocket
Record machine (1966-68) wasn't the SMALLEST of the tiny phonographs of
the '60s. But it was the most commercially promoted.
The shoebox
sized player had a built in AM radio (as it's many imitators did) and
played 4" records made of the same material as (and most likely made by)
Eva-Tone Soundsheets (the makers of those thin square promotional
records you found in magazines and junk mail back in the day.)
They
didn't warp in the sun as badly as traditional vinyl and the gimmick
was you could store them in your hip pocket without damage (let's see
the person who came up with that novel little suggestion actually TRY
it!) The Hip Pocket record player could also play standard 45 RPM and
12" 33 1/3 LP records (believe it or not!)
Otherwise known as the cruel "Nellie Oleson" of Little House On The
Prairie fame, Alison took a stab at comedy records in the late '70s,
releasing this rare album, a spoof of then First Daughter Amy Carter on
the Laff label (and unlike Laff's usual album covers, which were pretty X
rated, this one was one of the few Laff albums that could be found in
the racks and not behind the counter.)
It's pretty campy - OK,
it was stupid (hey, it was amateur topical comedy from 1977. What did
you expect from a 15 year old?) Also with the star of a
family TV series, it was pretty obvious her range of material then also
had it's limits.
But this record is one of those obscure '70s chestnuts a lot people don't know about.......
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....
In seventeenth-century Massachusetts, smoking was legal only at a
distance of five miles from any town.
In Vermont, USA, it is illegal for women to wear false teeth
without the written permission of their husbands.
A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in
South Bend, Indiana.
Acting was once considered to be evil, and the actors in the first
English play to be performed in America were arrested.
It's illegal to buy ice cream after 6 pm in Newark, NJ. unless you
have a written note from your doctor.
In Texas, it is illegal to curse in front of or indecently expose
a corpse.
In Michigan, USA, a man legally owns his wife's hair.
As late as 1932, jail-breaking in Texas was not a crime if the
prisoner escaped without using a gun.
It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.
In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket.
In Boston, it is illegal to take a bath unless one has been
ordered to by a physician.
An old law in Bellingham, Wash., made it illegal for a woman to
take more than steps backwards while dancing.
In Idaho, USA, the law states that all boxes of candy given as
romantic gifts must weigh more than 50 pounds.
Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the US since 1916
when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high
freight rates.
In Texas it's legal for a chicken to have sex with you, but it's
illegal to reciprocate.
In Tennessee, USA, a man must walk in front of any car driven by a
women, while waving a red flag as a warning.
In Louisiana, USA, a man may legally beat his wife with a leather strap,
as long as it is less than 2 inches wide.
In Texas, it's illegal to put graffiti on someone else's cow.
In Vermont, USA, it is illegal for women to wear false teeth
without the written permission of their husbands.
French Lick Springs, Indiana once passed a law requiring all black
cats to wear bells on Friday the 13th.
Playboy Records was one of the most promising new record labels of the
'70s. With the nudge-nudge, wink-wink, backing of Hugh Hefner's empire
and finances, what could possibly go wrong?
Well first,
everything.
What Playboy knew in what guys want in everything else
didn't translate quite so well for it's record company. Playboy albums
usually flopped on the charts, most never even appeared. The company did
very little to promote it's artists, thinking the Playboy name would
sell itself. It sold magazines and a softcore porn cable TV channel, but
not records.
Another problem was much of Playboy's roster had
only a few recognizable names and the rest were unknowns. Add to the
little promotion of their albums and it was a recipe for disaster.
There
was also the fact that some independent record stores (namely in the
Bible belt) refused to stock Playboy Records - possibly out fear of
being accused of smut peddling by clueless church ladies. In reality,
Playboy Records had an artist catalog so clean and genteel, it made Mike
Curb's uber-conservative management of MGM Records in the early '70s
look downright sleazy by comparison and that was the biggest problem of
all.
For example, Playboy Records' biggest selling artists were
Mickey Gilley and Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds. There was no punk,
heavy metal or hard funk on Playboy Records (Even MGM had Elf, Ronnie
James Dio's pre-Rainbow band.)
This was the biggest hit on Playboy Records:
With a name like Playboy Records, people were naturally EXPECTING
something a little more provocative than soft rock ballads and
urban-cowboy country. Perhaps Playboy Records was making the BIG mistake
in trying so hard to be a respected major independent label, they had
completely forgotten the value of it's own name (a lesson that was not
lost on Virgin Records, which - ironically - released albums that were
far edgier than anything Playboy Records offered.)
But one #1 hit
just doesn't keep a record company going and soon, even Hefner lost
interest. The label was soon distributed by Epic Records and was quickly
folded into Epic by 1978......
