WFMU's Beware of the Blog

A Pair of Fun Female Vocal Demo Reels (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 56) (MP3's)

Somewhere along the collecting path, I managed to acquire a stack of tapes labeled "JW", and containing a variety of singing performances by a woman who presumably has (or had) those initials. 

These are a bit unusual in the world of demo tapes. Virtually all demo reels I've heard have a single purpose, usually one of three. They are either to display someone's singing talent, perhaps to sell him or her as a performer worthy of signing or hiring to perform live, to demonstrate the songs themselves for someone who might want to perform them, or to market the commercial voice-over (or singing) potential of the performer, in order to seel him or her as a commercial voice artist. 

The JW tapes seem to combine the first and third of these purposes, with song excerpts alternating with full commercials  that the singer had done (the selling of the songs themselves seems unlikely, given that no complete songs are heard, and that at least one of these is a very familiar (former hit) song). 

The songs are generally nothing to get worked up about, although a few of them have promise. My guess is that it is the commercials here (most of which are complete) which will be the attraction. A lot of them are quite fun. One thing that's interesting to me about the commercials selected is that "JW" is not always a solo start on them, or even clearly discernible from other vocalists. 

The first of the two tapes heard here is labeled circa 1967, runs about six minutes, and contains the following tracks, as labeled on the box: 

1.) Must Be Love (song excerpt)  

2.) Out of Love (song excerpt)  

3.) Junket (ad for Fudge)

4.) WELM (38 second Elmira station ID jingle) 

5.) 'Cause I Was Mad (song excerpt - my favorite one on either tape - love the echo!)

6.) Polka Dot Pigs (Crispy Critters cereal ad)

7.) I Hear a Melody (song excerpt)

8.) Losin' Heart (song excerpt)

9.) KLRD ("here's the time" radio jingle)

JW - JW Sing Reel Circa 1967 (MP3)

JW 1967 Sing Reel Tape Box (JPG)

The second tape is labeled 1975, runs about 9 1/2 minutes, and contains the following tracks, as labeled on the box: 

1 & 2.) Cougar (two ads: A. Final, and B. Fever (i.e. in the style of the song "Fever"))

3.) Hunts (sauce ad)

4.) Oo La La (Air France ad? - can't make out if that's what she says or not!)

5.) Little Blue Star (song excerpt)

6.) I Knew (song excerpt)

7.) Wedding Bell Blues (song excerpt)

8.) Please Stay (song excerpt)

9.) Pokla Dot Pigs (same track as on the 1967 tape)

10.) (Title is Illegible on Box) (song excerpt)

11.) Sky Bar (candy bar ad - and it's great to hear an ad for the mighty Sky Bar - haven't had one in YEARS!)

12.) When I Am With You (song excerpt)

13.) Munch (Post Toasties ad)

14.) Sugar Pops (cereal ad)

15.) Are You Early (the same jingle identified as "KLRD" on the earlier tape, minus the final stinger)

JW - JW Sing Reel Circa 1975 (MP3)

JW 1975 Sing Reel Tape Box (JPG)

Incidentally, I do have more of these tapes - these are labeled # 2 and # 6. If there is interest, I can post them. Assuming, that is, that I can find them in the catacombs - these two got separated from the bunch, and I'm not sure where the others are. 

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Imps, Pixies and Surrealism (1947-48)

Today brings one of my annual preparing-for-vacation-trip posts, with a dash of comics for kids (we'll get back to the second part of our Music Master series next time). First, some Pixies, from their fourth comic book, issued in 1947. This one caught my eye recently because of a mention I read about a scene from this book that was censored in a later reprinting. Well, that had to be something worth a look, and we'll see a couple of highlights from this odd comic book to open our post, followed by a really nutty Captain Marvel story from 1948 that also tickled my fancy. Just some light reading today, to break up the 'harder' stuff that I have lined up for future posts.  Join me for some surrealism and insect fun after the jump!

The Most Repulsive Album I've Ever Heard (MP3's)

Here’s an album with virtually no redeeming qualities. I say “virtually” because there is a argument to be made for making this sort of thing known, in an historical context, the same way we can use the written and filmed records of prior atrocities to be more aware of similar threats in our midst going forward.

Without that – or even with that “value” taken into consideration – this album is simply repugnant and vile. It came to its original owner, who lived in the deep south, in the early 1960’s, when it was produced. The people behind it called themselves the “Christian Votes and Buyers League”, but most people buying the album would likely have known that this was a front for the Ku Klux Klan.

 

Essentially, the first side of the record is a twenty minute screed, telling listeners how Kosher rules cause the price of your grocery items to become more expensive, and how to make sure to avoid these products and grocers. Along the way, you’ll hear that Dr. King’s activities were being directed behind the scenes by a Jewish cabal, among other obnoxious lies, the rest of which I’ll let you hear for yourself – although please be aware of just how creepy this entire endeavor is.

 

The album is narrated by Wally Butterworth, who was at one time a well known radio announcer and quiz show host. According to the brief outline on his Wikipedia page, it would appear that, like so many others, when things didn’t go his way (he lost a lawsuit and his radio platform) he seems to have made a hard turn to the right wing and joined organizations that supported his (and many other people’s) ideas that everything was someone else’s fault, especially the fault of those who didn’t look or think like him.

 

I’d like to think that this sort of thinking – and the more general group mindset behind it that led to these albums (and much more) would be behind us as a country, but sadly, that’s clearly not the case. 

 

Rather than repeat anything else Wally has to say, I'll let him speak for himself: 

 

Wally Butterworth - Kosher Food Blackmail of American Housewives (MP3)

 

Record Label

 

That folksy “Goodbye, all” at the end, following nearly twenty minutes of hate, is, in context, among the creepiest things on the album.

 

I’m admittedly not as familiar with the issues that Butterworth gets into on the flip side of this album, but a quick web search indicates that it was about the move towards “one man, one vote”, in that era. Essentially, small towns and rural areas, at least in the south, were getting far more representation in Congress than the number of residents should have allowed. Some congressional districts had literally just hundreds of votes, while those in big cities might have had in the tens of thousands, meaning that the issues of the rural votes had much more pull than all of those other people in the big cities. Around the time of this album, some court decisions had resulted in that imbalanced system having been thrown out.

 

Now, it seems to me that changing extremely unbalanced representation into something approaching equal representation would be a no-brainer, but Wally Butterworth and his pals seem to see it as an assault on Apple Pie, Mom, Baseball, and the very center of their way of life. At one point, he makes it clear what the concern was: all of those minorities (racial and religious) that live in the cities would suddenly have electoral power that had been denied them, due to the God-given rights of the Rural White Protestants.

 

Nearly the sum and total of his “solution” seems to be for local jurisdictions to refuse to follow the courts’ decrees, and a cry to his fellow white southern men to rise up and resist the Gum’int’s evil plans to make sure everyone has an equal vote. Sheesh. 

 

Again, here's Wally:

 

Wally Butterworth - How to Deliver the Knockout Punch to Federal Judges (MP3)

Record Label

The record sleeve that the album came in is a piece of work, too: 

Record Sleeve

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The Adventures of 'Music Master', 1942-1945 - Part One

"Flung into a series of amazing adventures by his impetuous nature, and intense hatred of injustice, John Wallace finds himself the possessor of the wonderful Pipes of Death and becomes the Music Master, matching long forgotten secrets of the ancients against the marvels of modern science..."

So begins the nearly three year run of a character high on the list of "Most Oddball and Bizarre" comic book characters from the Golden Age, our pal the Music Master, who needs only a note of music, or at least a burst of sound approximating a musical note, to perform strange and fantastic feats. Even though studying weirdo comic book character ideas is a long-time obsession of mine, I had only recently learned about this fella while trolling through old issues of Famous Funnies, one of the early magazines published in the comic magazine format. In the later issues of FF they began to introduce original in-house characters (in addition to their standard fare of newspaper strip reprints), and also promote new ones from their sister magazine Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics. In one of these colorful in-house ads I noticed a new character being promoted named 'Music Master', who sounded like a shoe-in for a WFMU blog post, or at least worth a closer look. Luckily, these magazines are in public domain, so I downloaded the entire run of Music Man stories to study.

In his first yarn our protagonist is quickly stabbed in the chest and mortally wounded with a violin bow. Well, now, this had me going right off! I certainly haven't seen any comic book crooks deal out violence that way before. Thanks to the musical ministrations of Antonini the famed violin maker he is not only revived (using an 'ancient Egyptian instrument') but his body has become "...attuned to the frequency of musical sound waves, and that he can identify himself with any musical note so that his body will react and cling to the waves of sound, and he will be transported with the speed of sound to the source of the music.". As time passes the writer of the series, Stephen A. Douglas, also the editor of the magazine, develops many more unusual things to do with hero 'John Wallace's' audio-based powers, often venturing into surreal territory.

While not one of the most amazingly weird hero characters from the early 1940s (and there are a lot of VERY strange concepts that were tried), he has his moments, along with some lovely art here and there by various hands. Come along and join our long-haired composer/player/super-hero as he battles crime right after the jump!

Don Adams, Joey Bishop and the Steve Allen Scandal: Television Comedy in the Early 60s by Kliph Nesteroff

This article is a composite of deleted sections from the forthcoming Grove Atlantic release Drunks, Thieves and Scoundrels: American Comedians 1915-2015 by Kliph Nesteroff

If you weren’t conforming to the television homogeny of early 60s comedy, you were out of luck. Fanciful, childlike sitcoms controlled the landscape: The Addams Family, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, Gilligan’s Island, Mister Ed, The Munsters, My Favorite Martian. In an environment where laughtracks told you what was funny, anything highbrow was doomed.

Get Smart was a cut above the others with a joke driven narrative created by Mel Brooks, Buck Henry and Leonard Stern. It was produced by Talent Associates, the David Susskind production company founded in 1952. They had an early hit with the Wally Cox sitcom Mister Peepers, but ten years later Susskind’s production company had lost its relevancy. Producers Dan Melnick and Leonard Stern were hired to revitalize the company with a plan to bring television production back to New York City. Writers with a Manhattan sensibility were hired to develop shows. Among the pilots were The Laughmakers created by Woody Allen and Inside Danny Baker created by Mel Brooks (neither were picked up). The success of James Bond at the box office created a secret agent craze in popular culture. Susskind wanted to cash-in and asked Mike Nichols to develop Get Smart. Nichols turned him down. Second choices Mel Brooks and Buck Henry got the job.

The early 1960s were frustrating for Mel Brooks. He wrote a screenplay for Jerry Lewis called The Ladies Man, but none of his work was accepted. “That didn’t go well. I gave him the material and he and another writer took it and went on a boat and rewrote it. I’d always had that privlege with Sid Caesar of being consulted. My work was highly respected. So I was incensed. I didn’t get along with him too well.”

Lucky Lager: The 1964 Radio Ad Campaign (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 55) (MP3's)

Hot on the heels of the three-part series of Bob Hahn radio jingles from earlier this year, here's another reel full of fun ads. Produced by one of the most famous advertising agencies in the world, Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - better known as BBDO, it's a series of ten ads (well, maybe just eight) for Lucky Lager, dating to March of 1964. 

To my ears, the first two ads ("Hootenanny - Regular") are identical, and the box suggests this, as well. The last two ads ("Hootenanny - Northwest") also seem to be identical. In addition, these two sets of ads only differ from each other in that a couple of lines are changed near the end of the respective ads. This is why, although I have ten tracks posted, I'm pretty sure there are only eight ads here. But in case I'm wrong, I've included all of them.

And all of the ads are based on the same music, and, with one exception (the "Lift Top" ad), on the same basic lyric. There is ad heard in Spanish, but it still seems to contain essentially the same text, albeit in another language. There are also two ads featuring famed bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon. One features his own take on the material, at the standard 60 seconds. The other, though (track 8), while the other is, surprisingly, two minutes and 45 seconds long (the tape box claims it's four minutes long!). It's not clear to me where this would have been aired or under what circumstances. 

Also of interest is the "Roaring Twenties" ad, which does a particularly bad job, in my hearing, of capturing the sound and feel of that era, and "Lift Top", which appears to describe a very early attempt to get around the problem of sharp pull tabs. 

1.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Hootenanny Regular Ad 1 (MP3)

2.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Hootenanny Regular Ad 2 (MP3)

3.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Roaring Twenties Ad (MP3)

4.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Twist Ad (MP3)

5.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Witherspoon Ad (MP3)

6.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Spanish Ad (MP3)

7.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Lift Top Ad (MP3)

8.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Jimmys Jam Ad (MP3)

9.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Hootenanny Northwest Ad 1 (MP3)

10.) Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - Lucky Lager Hootenanny Northwest Ad 2 (MP3)

Lucky Lager Tape Box (JPG)

Pretzel Bill in a Witch's Blood Sauce...; Grasshopper on My Castle of Quiet, 28th May 2014

Ah, Grasshopper! A mainstay of My Castle of Quiet playlists from the very beginning. This Brooklyn duo has traversed the most-eerie of improvised / otherworldly territories, and come out the other end, as outstanding soloists and collaborators, in many projects outside of Ghop. Their musicianship remains expert, the sheer quality of them "knowing what they're doing," and choosing to do THIS, is one of the great charms / inspirations of Grasshopper, still very much the "mothership" for Josh and Jesse.

Fans will find the band largely in familiar territory here, painting a slow-burn garden of creeping dread and pulsation, cradled by ethereal long tones. "Witch's Blood in a Sauce" finds them especially "on," adding unanticipated horror-dressing to their usual array of mesmerizing sound evolution. Always good, and always at home on MCoQ.

Grasshopper have new work out or coming soon, on various formats / labels. The new, full-length Grasshopper LP (their third 12" on vinyl), Dark Sabbath: Symbols of Evil is coming soon on Hausu Mountain. Jesse and Josh also have a solo / split tape, Josh Millrod / Shingles, also on Hausu, there's a full Shingles cassette, First God Planted a Garden (2AM Tapes) ,and a Josh Millrod solo cassette, Seeking the Millenary Kingdom, on Solid Melts. (MCoQ archive links: Josh | Shingles)

Grasshopper on My Castle of Quiet, v.1 (2009; our second live-musical guests, ever!)

Thanks as always to audio engineer Juan Aboites, for his professionalism and talent, and to Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting, for continuing to immortalize my crappy iPhone band captures. (This one is especially good, recalling the hippie-photo-collage covers of Amon Düül and their ilk.)