WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Rabbits, Pussycats, and Dreamy Romance

"The jam session was like a strange, new world to me! The savage, rhythmic beat of the drums had us all in a dreamy hypnotic trance! But the beating of my heart rose above the drums as Guy's arm stole around me!"

(from "My Jazz-Time Romance")

Today we have a pretty varied assortment of treats for you, everything from some pretty silly funny-animal and kid's comics, to a very wordy adult romance book; and all dealing with some facet of music or other. Stay tuned after the JUMP for four short stories sure to make you bop!

Hollywood's First Comedy Club by Kliph Nesteroff

For fifteen years the corner of Beverly and Fairfax in Los Angeles had a comedy club before the phrase existed. Billy Gray's Band Box was many things to many people; a watering hole to Billy Wilder, a nuisance to the librettists of My Fair Lady, and a source of evidence for the FBI's case against mobster Mickey Cohen. It was also where showbiz insiders went to see an unconventional gimmick: multiple stand-up comedians on one show. In the opulent era of American supperclubs - the 1930s through the 1950s - a comedian shared the bill with a singer, a dance team and an orchestra. Billy Gray's Band Box broke the rule. As many as five comedians performed on the same show at the Band Box, something that had never been done before.

Comedian Billy Gray hosted every show at the Band Box. He frequently delivered punchlines in Yiddish just to annoy those who didn't comprehend. Elderly comedian Dick Curtis says, "Billy was a funny little guy with a bald head and the star of the evening. The place was jam packed every show. Billy Gray's Band Box was this whole other world." The Band Box line-ups are mostly rosters of obscure and forgotten names: impressionists Dave Barry, Don Corey and Arnold Dover; comic novelties Billy Barty, Mickey Katz and Bert 'the Mad Russian' Gordon; future stars Dick Van Dyke, Shecky Greene and Buddy Hackett. Comedians did twenty minute sets, the headliners forty-five and the patrons were passionate comedy snobs. Variety called it “one of the country’s heppest comedy crowds.” Comedian Leo DeLyon played it. “Ah, man, you talk about a hot room! It was small, but that’s what made it. You’d just wiggle a pinkie and you’d be getting screams. Billy Gray was hysterical. He was a riot as the host and emcee - and it was a great club.”

By 1966 Billy Gray's Band Box was an empty relic of showbiz past. The entertainment industry was changing like everything else in the 1960s and old school nightclubs were dying. In its final year Billy Gray stepped down and the hosting duties were taken over by a beleaguered road comic named Sammy Shore. He took note of Gray's multiple-comedian idea and decided to implement the concept at a nightclub of his own called The Comedy Store.  

Can We Have a Do-Over? (MP3's)

I 'm just kicking myself that I didn't come across this record prior to the elections last week, because I think this record could have turned the tide and resulted in something much better than what ended up happening last Tuesday. 

This is a record out of Rockford, Illinois, apparently dating from 1968. This date is based on the introduction on side one of the single, by Samuel Shapiro, who introduces himself as the Governor of Illinois, a position he held for just under eight months, nearly all of that term in 1968.

The performer is Pete Quinto, and he certainly is gung-ho in his get-out-the-vote performance, particularly in the last chorus, when both he and the trombone player behind him get quite stirred up and exuberant.

I've also included the flip side, which is lacking the spoken introduction, and which appears to be an instrumental, until that final chorus, when the vocal comes in again.

Pete Quinto: Mister Democrat (With Spoken Introduction) (MP3)

Pete Quinto: Mister Democrat (Largely Instrumental Version) (MP3)

A-side Record Label (JPG)  | B-side Record Label (JPG)

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"Death Song" and Other Delights (1940 - 1953)

"The desire to gain retribution is one of the strongest of human passions,  actually capable of transcending the grave itself! As it did when Henri Marleau heard a murdered man play his ... Death Song!"

Teaser #2:

"Dr. Hormone, world's greatest scientist, goes to Washington to defend his country against imminent invasion by Nazia. With him are his his granddaughter, Jane, and his bodyguard - the Five Fleamen."

Just two samples of some of the timeless prose that we have to serve you today in the WFMU Comic Supplement!  We will kick off with two short pre-comics-code horror tales from the early 1950s, and then hop in the WABAC machine to visit early 1941 and some very peculiar characters from the title Popular Comics.

Feast your eyes on some choice four-color madness, right after the jump!

An Advertising Sample Reel from the Mid-'70's (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 58) (MP3)

Here's a nice little five inch reel of tape, containing some of the work by the William D. Cunningham & Associates, Inc., Company, whose promo reel for voice talent I featured four years ago. The dates for these various ads, based on some of the products featured (and the presence of a Bicentennial ad) would appear to be in the 1974-1977 range. 

In many places, this reel has the ads literally back to back, with one starting as the previous one ends, so I haven't attempted to separate them out - you can hear them below as they were intended to be presented - a blast of 18 examples of the "Producer's Music Service" (as it's called on the box), in just under 15 minutes.

Some ads are just music beds, others have introductory and closing vocals with music beds in between, and others are full singing ads. Some are brief, others don't conform to the typical 60-minutes-at-most rule (the Jet Ski ad runs over 90 seconds).

The individual tracks are listed in the scan to the right. 

Producer's Music Service - 18 Ads (MP3)

Tape Box Front Cover (JPG)  |  Tape Box Back Cover (JPG)

I wish I could get some of that Carbonated Kool-Aid. 

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"Music Master" The Sound-Powered Crimefighter / Part Two of Two

"Yeow! He's no ordinary fiddler! He knows the destructive power of certain musical notes!"

Today brings us back to a peculiar super-hero who operated from 1942 to 1945, and was handled by such great talents as Bill Everett and Jimmy Thompson. Due to the application of a strange Egyptian flute, he can use any sound vibration (and particularly musical vibrations) to travel at the speed of sound to the scene of crime and nefarious activity, and also occasionally fashion weapons from sound.  His first 14 stories were covered in a previous post here: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2014/08/the-adventures-of-music-master-1942-1945.html and now we'll be looking over the final five stories (there are actually six, but one is not available), beginning in September 1944.

Join us for the finale of this oddball character from the Golden Age - right after the jump!

Lexington, Home of Elm Hill Meats (MP3's)

In the early 1960's, the PAMS company, famous for (among other things) radio jingles, offered up the "My Home Town" project. For a fee, a business could purchase the PAMS track "My Home Town", with lyrics written about the purchaser's town, perhaps containing a plug for the company paying for the song. Dozens of these songs were produced, mostly for radio stations, but I know of at least a few (including today's example) produced for other local businesses. Most were the exact same, 1:35 or so version (although a few have an extra, looped verse in the backing track), most were sung by a singer variously identified as Terry Lee, Terry Lee Jenkins, Claire Stewart and other names, and most featured an instrumental big band styled version of the tune on the flip side.

You can find dozens of examples of the song posted all over the place, including one version I particularly enjoy (due to some funny lyrics) that was posted to the original 365 days project in 2003.

Finding another one of these My Home Town records is hardly enough reason to post it - they're nearly all quite similar. But this one has a fun and interesting difference that I think makes it worth sharing. This record, "Lexington, My Home Town", is one of the few which was not produced on behalf of a radio station. Instead, local meat producers Elm Hill Meats paid for the record. But the difference here is that after the PAMS tune fades out, it is followed on the A side by a song called "Elm Hill Bill". The first-person aspect of this song is sort of destroyed by the fact that the singer is identified as George Morgan (a member of the Grand Ole Opry). The fact that it runs about 57 seconds makes me wonder if this was also a radio commercial.

The singer is NOT identified on this record, and she sounds a bit different to me than the standard singer (Terry Lee) heard on most of the My Home Town records). Because she's not named, I've just identified the artist as PAMS, and have also included the ubiquitous instrumental b-side. 

Incidentally, Elm Hill Meats also paid for the My Home Town record representing Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the song was again paired with the Elm Hill Bill jingle. Can one have two home towns, and feel that both are the best place in the world? 

PAMS - Lexington, My Home Town (Vocal) (MP3)

George Morgan - Elm Hill Meats (MP3)

PAMS - Lexington, My Home Town (Instrumental) (MP3)

Single A-Side Label (JPG) | Sing B-Side Label (JPG)

Elm Hill Meats, by the way, eventually merged with another company to form Family Brands, and has since become but one named brand owned by a larger corporation. You can read about that here.

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A Record-Breaking Affair (Redux) June 1952

"Sally loved working in a radio station, and she loved Hugh Clancy, the stations leading disc jockey, until that fateful day when her hopes for a career and a beautiful romance crashed and shattered at her feet..."

You'll thrill, you'll cry, you'll rock to the beat of today's two nutty music-influenced comic book tales. We'll prove again that radio and romance don't mix!

Well, I goofed up last time and didn't get my post for the blog completed on schedule, so here we go with another try!

First up, we'll warm up with a short tale of the Vigilante from December 1950, which involves a "ballad about an imaginary buckaroo" and the radio broadcasts thereof, followed by a romance tale based at a radio station, along with all of the heartache that that naturally entails!  

Some very tight and slick 1950s comic book art on display this week - right after the jump!

An Audio Letter From a Sailor in Vietnam, to His Girl Back Home, Circa 1968 (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 57) (MP3)

Here's a fascinating little piece of recording tape. It is a recording made by a man coming to the end of his service in Vietnam, to his sweetheart in America. I've dated it as 1968, which is the earliest date possible, but it could be from a bit later. 

I initially copied this into my computer as "Letter from a Soldier", but since his only reference to his actual service is to the Navy, I've referred to the speaker as a Sailor. 

Much of the tape consists of expressing potential plans for the future, words of love to his darling, praise and inspirational thoughts for her, and these are the things that I think make this tape such a find, and such a fascinating (and sweet) listen. 

But it actually seems to start mid thought, regarding his upcoming honorable discharge. While it sounds like perhaps the beginning of the tape has been lost, that doesn't appear to be the case, as the material you hear here actually begins about two minutes into the start of the tape. He mentions having contracted something called "Vericolor" (anyone know what this is???), and that this is leading to his discharge. He then mentions his plan to attend college in Colorado. 

Then, about three minutes into this 16 minute tape, he turns his attention to his girl, their relationship, and their future. Aside from a few comments, I'll let you discover the charms and surprises of this tape yourself, but I did get a kick out of how the language he uses, flowery at times, slang-filled at others, just screams out "Late 1960's". 

And that's clearly the case. He mentions having recently seen the film "Charly", which was released in 1968, and briefly sings a bit of "Dedicated to the One I Love", in a style closer to the 1967 version by the Mamas and Papas, than to the Shirelles original. Oddly, he does mention having just heard the 1965 hit "Eve of Destruction" for what seems to have been the first time, and I can't quite reconcile that with the rest of the dating here, but "Charly" clearly places this at 1968 or later.

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Unknown - Audio Letter From a Sailor in Vietnam Circa 1968 (MP3)

Sounds of Senn High School, 1960 (MP3's)

Senn High School, in the Edgewater Community of Chicago, is an imposing building that looks every moment of its 101 years old. As you drive through the surrounding area, which is filled with apartments and condos seemingly filling every available space, coming to an intersection and seeing this huge school come into sight for the first time can be quite an experience, something akin to drving through ten blocks of nearly identical bungalows, turning a corner, and finding yourself in front of the White House.

For the 1959-1960, a group of students - perhaps those involved in the Yearbook, put together an audio documentary of the school year. Other schools were, of course, starting to do the same thing around this time, and I own several of these, most of which were on 10" LP's - by the mid '60's, they tended to be full 12" LP's. But the folks at Senn limited themselves (or were limited for other reasons) to a seven inch, 33 1/3 RPM release, with five-plus minutes on one side, and seven minutes on the other. 

The record hits most of the high points featured on those longer versions produced by other schools, just in more abridged fashion - the sports teams (team final records not mentioned), band performances, prom, graduation, and, in this case, the talent show. Listening to the Talent Show highlights, it's not clear to me why they didn't, instead, just mount a full production of "West Side Story". 

Travel back in time with me now, to the school year of 1959-1960 at Senn High School!

Sounds of Senn, 1960, Side One (MP3)

Sounds of Senn, 1960, Side Two (MP3)

Record Label A-side (JPG)  | Record Label B-side (JPG)

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"A Record-Breaking Affair" (1952)

"Sally loved working in a radio station, and she loved Hugh Clancy, the station's leading disc jockey, until that fateful day when her hopes for a career and a beautiful romance crashed and shattered at her feet..."  (Sha-do-be / Shattered Shattered)

Thus spins the drama and the records in one of our three 1950s comic book offerings today, two from the 1950 comic Exciting Life Stories of Famous Stars, and the wonderfully radio-centric tale above from an issue of Cinderella Love.

A tasty trio of beautifully-drawn and romantic musical yarns on display for you right after the jump!

 

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.)

"Placenta Preview", with The Green County Boys (MP3's)

Back in April of 2007, during the second 365 project, The ToD was nice enough to share an interesting album by a group of doctors from the Ozarks, who called themselves The Greene County Boys. Some time later, I was able to acquire copies of the two other albums by this group. One of them, titled "Borborygmi", was also part of 365 days, by the equally nice Mr. Fab, and that can be found here. To round out the set, I thought I'd let everyone in on the wonders of the Green County Boys album "Placenta Preview". 

Everything I know about this album, which isn't much, comes from the paper insert which was included in the sleeve (a scan is below). The sleeve itself (also scanned, below), is just a generic blue through and through, and the album label has nothing more than the album title and side markings. 

The songs, by the way, run virtually right into the next track in most cases. This is why most tracks stop abruptly, with very little time for empty surface noise before the next track (a la "Sgt. Pepper", an album this collection will never again be compared with). And a few tracks (such as "Halitosis") seem to start mid-phrase from the pianist.

To my ears, the album is hit and miss, more miss than hit, with a few truly cringeworthy bits of singing, as well. For example, although I am pleased to have been introduced to the term "Aciphidity Bag" (also known as an Acifidity Bag), the last note sung on that song is amazingly awful. My favorite here, by a wide margin - most likely because of the peppy calypso setting - is "Pass-a No Gas". 

1.) The Greene County Boys – A Toast to the Doctors (MP3)

2.) The Greene County Boys – A Doctor Ain’t Got a Friend (MP3)

3.) The Greene County Boys – It Must Be a Virus (MP3)

4.) The Greene County Boys – Thanks for the Referral (MP3)

5.) The Greene County Boys – AFL-CIO-AMA (MP3)

6.) The Greene County Boys – T he Doctors’ PR Man (MP3)

7.) The Greene County Boys – I Married an Aciphidity Bag (MP3)

8.) The Greene County Boys – Halitosis Beats No Breath At All (MP3)

9.) The Greene County Boys – Pass-a No Gas (MP3)

10.) The Greene County Boys – A Doctor Needs a Wife (MP3)

11.) The Greene County Boys – Here’s to the Doctor (MP3)

Album Cover (JPG)  |  Album Label (JPG)  |  Album Insert (JPG)

"Tee & Vee Crosley in Television-Land Comics" (1951)

"In the following pages,  you will learn of the exciting adventures of two typical American youngsters, TEE and VEE CROSLEY in "Television-Land". We hope you will enjoy them but only as a prelude to the even more exciting and fascinating adventures you will enjoy when you have Crosley Television and Crosley Kitchen Appliances."

Indeed - what red-blooded American youngster could resist that pitch? Thus begins today's comic book excavation into a particularly dark and strange corner of 'corporate' comics, usually free magazines designed to instruct or sell products or both. This book is a really messed-up example of this type of advertising and goes deeper in the confidence in its own power of persuasion than anyone who reads it now will believe. The pitch within is not just HARD sell - it goes many an extra mile to hammer its points home over and over in the context of a cute funny animal kiddie comic book world populated with an excess of appliances and characters obsessed with gadgets and features of same.

Herein is a confusing mixture - were the children this was apparently aimed at really expected to be interested in the relentless intrusions of Crosley products for their post-war suburban home? Enough that they would nag Mom and Pop about said merchandise, using the comic book as a spiced-up candy-coated catalog / script to convince them and soften them up to the virtues of all things CROSLEY? It is indeed a very sick and desperate ploy, and one which I doubt really worked very well. On the plus side, though, the art and package itself is professional and attractive, clearly by a studio that already knew how to produce slick kiddie comics; and the interactive 'game / toy' feature pages are particularly well-done and look like they would be a lot of fun to actually cut out and assemble and play with.

Come along with Tee and Vee, our brother and sister protagonists, as they explore the excitement (and not in a dream sequence, either!) of the magical world built by Crosley. It's all right after the jump!