I found the clip on YouTube below a few months ago and couldn’t get it out of my head! Here it is in all its 45-rpm single glory.

I don’t speak German, but I’m pretty sure dude introduces her as “Mademoiselle 86,000 volts.”

Apparently, she was also known as “The Crazy Chicken.”

Who’s up for a nine-piece Christian 80s power-rock ensemble?

Fun facts about The Channels:
• Six of the band members have moustaches
• Seven band members sport the “dry look”
• Two band members have a “Farrah Fawcett”
• Rainbows are awesome!

This is exactly the sort of record that some creepy recently-divorced guy at our church would have forced upon my mother after Wednesday night Bible study.

From Northport, Long Island, it’s… Marie and the Vagabonds!  Marie is the “self-imposed” leader of the group, rocking hard on Hammond Organ and a voice rich in “quality and emotion.”  Brother Joey’s “unique” style, “greatly influenced by Elvis Presley,” “conquers ballads or rock.”  Together, they’re a “rare musical experience”!  But don’t forget cousin Johnny, who contribues no less than 25% of the group’s charisma.  He always “generates excitement”!  If you have ever wondered what a drunken regrettable hook-up in a suburban Long Island cocktail lounge in the nineteen-seventies would be like, this is the album for you!

I honestly cannot think of anything snarky to say about this album– any joke I might crack would pale in comparison to the sheer horror of it all.  The track below starts out fairly mild, but give it a few and I guarantee it won’t disappoint.

Get it here…

Based on Dan Greenburg’s book of the same name, this record enacts some of the finer points of being a Jewish Mother (at least during the Nixon era). Gertrude Berg, star of radio and television, supplies the Jewish Mother part.The Jewish Mother’s Guide to Food Distribution Still pretty funny and spot-on today, it will make you alternately laugh and cringe… just like your real mother does.

Originally known as the Bagelman Sisters, Claire and Myrna Barry were the queens of the postwar Yiddish swing scene.  Here they are covering Fiddler on the Roof from 1964.

Get it here…

It’s JFK’s birthday!  In honor of this occasion I present you with a gem from WFMU’s archives:

I’m a big fan of sound effects albums, and also a giant Doctor Who nerd, so this find was particularly joyous for me! It has 30 tracks, some 3 or 4 minutes, while others are mere seconds. This record will transport you to a universe where every alien has a British accent, every turn ends up in an abandoned quarry, and where each machine hums and pulsates with Moog-ish rhythms. The humming and pulsating is what is caught best on this record,

For example, The Mandragora Helix. I can’t exactly remember what it was, but this is what it sounded like.

The Daleks’ Control Room is another exercise in pulsating electronic noises. The Daleks are salt-shaker-shaped robots who are the self-proclaimed “superior beings of the universe,” for all you non-Doctor Who fans out there. If I had to listen to this sound all day, I’d surrender my planet to them in an instant just to make it stop!

I remember this episode: the Zygons were a race of brownish creatures covered with suction cups. The inside of their ship was filled with controls that looked like dried up rubber cement globs with Christmas lights inside. Here’s what it sounded like:

The last one is a collection of sounds: the TARDIS observation screen is lowered, the TARDIS doors open, a sonic screwdriver, a fission gun from the Ark in Space, the Tesh gun from The Face of Evil, and finally a Gallifreyan staser gun:

The album’s liner notes give a helpful tip:
Time-Lord Note: A source of jelly-babies is recommended to complete the illusion of time travel.

This record is a journey back to a simpler time. The needle on the grooves transports you to a time when the word “gay” meant “frolicsome,” racism was quaint and funny, and 6-foot orange kangaroos wearing green eye shadow on ice skates were entertaining, instead of just mildly disturbing.

For your enjoyment is the story of one man who is “Little Brave Sambo” on the cover of the album, but reverts to his original name of “Little Black Sambo” once you hear the actual story.

Squaw: “This record heap big pile of buffalo dung. Maybe we save it.”
Brave: “HOW?” (har har har)

Ostriches never struck me as being very feminine or graceful. I guess I was wrong.

::shudder:: This is going to give me nightmares.

I was fascinated by the fact that this one record boasts *80* musical stories, games, and songs. 80 seemed like an awful lot. Then I realized, it takes about 10 seconds to sing “London Bridge,” so it makes sense that each cut on this record contains 3-4 songs. Anyway, probably because of the short attention spans, Uncle Tom (though he always introduces himself as Uncle DON), introduces every track by saying something like “hello there, this is Uncle Don. Let’s sing a song today, shall we”? Maybe Mom played only one track for Timmy every day. Or, maybe kids forget what they’re doing over the course of 3 minutes. Who knows?

The thing that makes this entire record the aural equivalent of a giant “bad touch” to me, though, is how Uncle Tom/Don giggles semi-maniacally throughout and after each track. I can’t decide if he’s being held at gunpoint and trying really really hard to sound jovial, or if he’s just totally insane. I completely dig his use of the word “humdinger,” though. Plus, there’s a song called “I Love My Pussy,” but unfortunately, my record is way too warped to record it. This record is so warped, in fact, that I can’t play side 2 at all because the warping is so high the record doesn’t even touch the spindle on that side.

So, put yourself in the shoes of a child on a rainy day who enjoys reading books in your perfectly-styled hair and pajamas, surrounded by candelabras and sinister looking sock puppets. The scary thing is that I have the very book that the children are so intently looking at– it the ~some company you wouldn’t expect~’s (Firestone tires?) Treasury of Folk Songs. He’s on the page that’s “Joy To the World.” I know because we used to sing from that book all the time when I was a kid, and I was obsessed with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” probably because of its images of trampling grapes and its verse about “John Brown’s Body lies a mould’ring in the grave” (I was a morbid kid).

Look at the lower left-hand corner of the album cover. Santa Claus is embarassed by the fact that they say “cock”, “ass”, “gay” and “pussy” on this record more than on a whole season of South Park!

This track contains a fun little ditty about a man who gouged his eyes out on a thorn bush (Uncle Tom/Don explains why it’s funny at the end), a lesson in how domestic violence can be hilarious (as Punch and Judy have been demonstrating for hundreds of years), as well as a lengthy “This is the House that Jack Built”

the Queen of Hearts tells children that stealing is wrong (“I Wouldn’t do that either, would you?”), while “The Sixpence” is a lesson in the joys of consumerism, matrimony, and fiscal responsiblity. Lastly, “The Vegetable Song” celebrates our unsung heroes– vegetables.

This song is about “a funny little king” who lives on “Cannibal Isle.”

A cool thing about this record is that each cut is *exactly* the same length: