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.

"Merry Christmas You Suckers" Paddy Roberts (1962)

Yes, it's the same Paddy Roberts who gave us this..

The Tiki Cha Cha Club

If you LOVE classic lounge/mood  music of the 1950s and early '60s....

Then join The Tiki Cha Cha Club! Each week, your host, DJ Chintzy Schmaltz brings you the finest in classic exotica, lounge and other orchestral delights. And all from vinyl!

The Tiki Cha Cha Club airs Monday nights/Early Tuesday mornings at Midnight (12:00am) Pacific, 3:00am Eastern on KBOO 90.7 FM Portland, OR. You can listen directly here.

Look for updated episodes to listen or download every Tuesday evening on The Tiki Cha Cha Club's Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/tikichachaclubclub/

And an interview with your host: http://kboo.fm/content/betterknowakbooprogramtikichachaclubandloungeworld

Merry Christmas From History's Dumpster!

The Disco Duck

In the end.....nobody was spared.

"Disco Duck" Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots (1976)

"Disco Duck" Paul Vincent (1976, French Version)

"Silly Love Songs" Irwin The Disco Duck & The Wibble-Wabble Singers And Orchestra (1977)

"Macho Duck" Donald Duck (1979)

Colonel Sanders' Tijuana Picnic

I didn't know where to categorize this. Under Food, Restaurants or Music. Well, it's a little of all of the above.

Could you think of two things that could be more further apart than Herb Alpert-like brass music and Kentucky Fried Chicken?

Before these unholy Taco Bell/KFC combo restaurants started popping up everywhere (do these corporations even know that when you're really in the mood for Original Recipe, the LAST thing you want to smell is greasy tacos and vice-versa?) and bizarre things like chipotle started showing up on KFC's menus, such a union meant automatic BANKRUPTCY to whoever was serving it. And rightly so. Leave the fried chicken and the faux Mexican food to the specialists. And keep them separate.

Of course some whiny corporate suck-up will say "But think about it; let's say mom and dad wanted KFC food and the kids wanted Taco Bell food. Wouldn't it be great if they could each have what they want under one roof?"

And then people wonder why kids are so spoiled today. Because when I was growing up, eating out was a TREAT. And a RARE treat at that. We NEVER argued or complained about where we were going to eat because ANYTHING was better than ANOTHER night of meatloaf.

I could sympathize with the Colonel when he said two years before his death in 1980 that he wished he never sold Kentucky Fried Chicken. I wish he hadn't either. You just don't know heartburn until you had just eaten strips of Extra Crispy and chipotle sauce in a gummy tortilla, no matter how much lettuce and cheddar cheese shreds they put in it.

But let's go back to the late '60s and this vinyl gem. I don't know how exactly it was distributed, but seeing as it was on Mark 56 Records (a company that specialized in producing custom albums for businesses to be sold cheaply or just given away as a loss leader for another product) it was probably given away with a bucket of chicken or sold for 98¢.

It's a generic album of trendy Tijuana Brass knockoffs (that sound was HUGE in the '60s) that corporate America was pushing on every supermarket sound system and FM radio station they could for middle class suburban moms of the late '60s who wanted to be hip, but didn't want anything to do with pot (and ended up alcoholic instead.)

I especially love the liner notes the Good Colonel wrote on the back of this album. Who would've known he was as much an expert on Latin-tinged pop jazz as he was pressure cooking chicken?

Actually, he wasn't. They were ghost-written. But he sure knew how to sell Kentucky Fried Chicken.....

Here's a sample:

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 Hi-Lo's In Stereo

If you don't know who The Hi-Lo's were, you really....OK, I don't know who they were either. And since they recorded for Omega Disk Records, they are guaranteed to forever remain in obscurity. Omega Disk was a budget record label in the late '50s, back when anything with the word "Stereophonic" sold records, no matter how unknown or talented (or lack thereof) the performers were

Not sure what is going on here, we have four guys, three appear to be talking about something that's way out of the league of the little guy on their left. Not that he cares. He's just happily gaping his mouth wide open and that's maybe why the other three decided to keep what they were talking about to themselves. Smart move.

On the other hand, perhaps these three guys are just standing around, slacking off while the other guy was doing the actual singing on the record........

Lopin' Along Through The Cosmos

 Seasoned astronauts will tell you one thing about the cosmos - it's a place you just don't go "lopin'" through (or "gallivanting" or "traipsing" either.)

The cosmos has no atmosphere. The human potential is zip without super high tech gear for survival in space. Oxygen tanks are mandatory as well as suits that can deflect dangerous cosmic rays from solar flares. The cosmos is also a vacuum. 

And this cover sucks too.

Ginni Clemmens - who passed away in 2005, was pretty much unknown outside the "women's music" folk scene of the '70s (one of the richest known sources of WTF album covers ever) At first glance, you might think you're getting one of those weird self-help records. But it's very much a folky album.

It's an album cover that seems to be inspired by a lot of hippie babble. And maybe peyote.

Yet ANOTHER Gallery Of STRANGE Record/CD Covers

ANOTHER Gallery Of STRANGE Record/CD Covers