Alienating the Audience Again

I'm making pot roast. It's good weather for it.

It's also a good day for some novelty 45s

I like novelty 45s

The Mummy (1959)

Ok, there's a lot to unpack here.

This single has a lot of threads and various things going for it.

First off it was penned by poet, composer, singer with a voice reminiscent of a cut rate Kermit the Frog impersonator and all around sensitive guy Rod McKuen.
(He's a bit of a running gag among several of my oldest friends.) He made a name and bank on writing the English lyrics to the miserable tearjerking dreck "Seasons in the Sun" originally by Frenchman Jacques Brel. Even worse it somehow became a big one hit wonder for Terry Jacks in 1974. AM radio was fucking awful back then.

However back in the late 50s before his dreadful sappy poetry caught the hippie peace and love zeitgeist he tried to carve a place with novelty songs. For this one he teamed up with voice actor extraordinaire Bob McFadden as "Bob McFadden & Dor" (It's Rod backwards. How clever.) Rod lends his comedic touch as foil and commentator throughout.

The A side is "The Mummy" which is rife with contemporary references including another novelty hit "Kookie Lend Me Your Comb". What really makes this special though is that our heroes the Fall found this obscure novelty number worthy of being covered as "I'm a Mummy"
That's all the recommendation I might otherwise need.

But wait there's more!

The flip side is also a wonderful bit of wonderful bits, "The Beat Generation".
(At some point I have to relocate and digitize the wonder that is Rod's spoken word "Hippie" record "Rod McKuen Takes a San Francisco Hippie Trip" which is actually a repackaging of his square's eye view of beatniks. Fucking hilarious.)

But the real gold is that how familiar the song might sound to a certain 1977 NYC punk classic "Blank Generation" by Richard Hell & the Voidoids... hmmm..

Shake, Rattle and Roll (1959)

Hoping to capitalize on the something that the previous record did or didn't generate , their shenanigans continued with a follow up version of the classic rhythm and blues number "Shake Rattle and Roll" in the voice of the Mummy.
Flip is a song called "Bingo" as penned by Rod.

Perfect fodder for annoying those you love.



As an added bonus I'll give you a Rod McKuen original novelty single.

Oliver Twist (1962)

Here in 1962 our boy Rod is trying his best to cash in on the Twist Fad with a double dose of Twist novelty numbers.
Enjoy?

The Homer & Jethro Project #39

#39

At long last.
We are at the tipping point, people.
We can finally make the switch to an alternating day format for the posts which when I think about it doesn't really mean squat for me since I'm typing this stuff up like six months ago and whether it is set to post on one or the other day doesn't really change anything, but you know. It is what it is.

You simply have an extra day to digest the previous day's musical selections.

Lucky you.

March 1959 - RCA 47-7493 - Middle-Aged Teenager / Don't Sing Along (On Top of Old Smoky)

A side is something I can relate to whenever I go out and realize I could be the parent of most of the people cluttering up the fucking place taking selfies and pictures of their food as if anybody gives a shit what they ate. I just don't feel old until I move.

B side. Old old folk song. You know it. You have your own alternate lyrics. They may or may not be an improvement on those provided by  H & J.

August 1959 - RCA 47-7585 - Battle of Kookamonga / Waterloo


A side began life as an historical song by Jimmy Driftwood (also responsible for "Monkey and the Baboon" in the previous post) about "The Battle of New Orleans" which was a hit for Johnny Horton. (He'd die in a motor vehicle accident a couple years later.)

As for the single in question here:

A full four years before nebbish shmuck Allan Sherman would strike novelty song gold with the Summer Camp classic "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" Homer and Jethro remade the Johnny Horton hit into their own lesser known Summer Camp Classic which they featured in a movie called "Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar" in 1965 to little or no success.


B side is a take on Stonewall Jackson's song "Waterloo" which predates the much more enjoyable song of the same name by Swedish musical juggernaut ABBA. Perhaps Stonewall needed a nice sparkly lame' jumpsuit to really push it over the top. Something really ballsnug to make a definitive statement.

For their part Homer and Jethro understand the song is about hubris.
They have enough to spare and have met their Waterloo many times before us. Everybody has to meet theirs. You too someday.

Amen.

The Homer & Jethro Project #38

#38

Stand back boys.

It's Long Player time again and this time it's in Living Stereo

January 1959 - LSP-1880 - Life Can Be Miserable

It's 1959 at last and RCA had discovered stereo. Lots of wide stereo pans and instruments in one channel and music in the other. Enjoy the sound of 1959.

So...
To  cut down on my typing, which even I'm sure enough that you're not really reading anyway. (and why would you. It's dribble.) I'm just going to link to the originals without comment where applicable in the list.
 Does that work for you?

Oh Lonesome Me
Life Can Be Miserable
There's an Empty Hanger in my Closet Tonight
The Drafted Volunteer
Don't Monkey Around My Widder
She Went and Gone Away
Love is the Craziest Thing
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You
Oh That's Terrible
I Don't Think My Gal Loves Me Anymore
I'll Go on a Diet Tomorrow
The Monkey and the Baboon

Thanksgiving

So today for this festive Thanksgiving holiday I give you the Five Blobs with a delightful and entirely culturally insensitive novelty song entitled "Rockin' Pow Wow". The 50's truly were a magical time.

  the Five Blobs (1959)



For me however the b side is the clear winner here. "From the Top of Your Guggle (to the Bottom of Your Zooch)" just sounds delightfully raunchy provided you don't pay too much attention to it. I'd totally guggle your mama's zooch.




To make matters up to the more culturally enlightened who feel grievously wronged by the previous musical selection allow me to present the Plagal Grind ep.



Plagal Grind (1990)

This was a sort of underground New Zealand supergroup with each band member coming from some other well considered NZ band. It was pressed once by Xpressway in some kind of really low quantity. (the number 200 comes to mind for some reason) and I only have a copy because I bought the second to last copy from Peter Jefferies at the Uptown Bar & Grill the night he and Alastair Galbraith played. I'm pretty sure that most of these songs have been rereleased on various other things over the years, but I'm also pretty sure most of that shit's out of print as well by now. Besides there's folks looking to get 300 clams for this little slab on Discogs. I think that's kind of silly.