Somewhere, a hungry wolf howls. A bolt of lightning shatters a tree at the side of the road. In panic, you urge the coachman to hurry, and he snaps the whip on the terrified horses. Just then, you see a light. It's safety at last. You have reached the castle of Dr Schlockenstein. You hurry up the steps, bang on the door, and are admitted. Dr Schlockenstein welcomes you to his parlor, where some sort of entertainment is already in progress. But what is that sound? A cat being twisted into knots? Who are those aging, no-talent ghouls, writhing and moaning insipid lyrics? You try to rise from your chair, to escape with your sanity, but a velvet rope has already secured you. It's show time!
Yes, it's true! Your demented DJ of jejune junk has gone to the inexhaustible bubbling tar pit of bad music, and drawn up another whopping bucketful of unbearable oldies but baddies.
The shocking evidence contained on this tape shows that the virus of flat footed phonography has spread its tentacles into every area of popular music. We found specimens of Broadway showtunes (OK, it was just "Hair"), disco music (Grace Jones in the early years of her struggle to be famous), and country music, from the likes of Telly Savalas AND Joey Bishop (two points if you remember him!).
My original collection of records was fairly easy to assemble. For one thing, I had the inspiration of "Golden Throats", which also gave me a list of LP's to hunt for. Secondly, I visited Jerry's Fine Used Records store every day, and hunted through the bins obsessively, managing to find the albums associated with eight of the eleven songs.
But now things have become harder. I can't get to Jerry's any more, and have to rely on a much smaller store in Blacksburg with a tiny collection of LP's that wouldn't fill a closet. I've had to become more resourceful, searching for records on my vacations, and sending away for 45's and LP's that are advertised in magazines. I think CD's cannot begin to offer even a hint of the vast treasure of bad music that is slowly sinking into oblivion with vinyl. However, I am glad to report that one of our selections ("American Pie" by the Brady Bunch) did come from a recently released CD.
If it's hard to understand why I made the effort to produce this tape, it's surely a profound mystery why anyone would want to listen to a copy of it! Perhaps all I can say is, if you're the kind of person who hates this kind of music, then this is the kind of music you're going to hate.
Telly has a short spoken introduction to his song, to remind us that he was born on the streets of New York (accounting for the grit in his personality?) where "country" meant New Jersey. But since then, he's come to know and love that "country" kind of music, ladies and gentlemen, and while everyone else calls it "Country and Western", he calls it "totally, totally beautiful".
In some of his other recordings, Telly has tried the standard ploy of hiring a chorus to sing all the hard (i.e., musical) parts of the song, which only served to make his flat monotonous delivery stand out. This time he's gotten smart. He hired some loony with a harmonica to "improvise" during the song. Who can laugh at Telly when we're getting buzzed by a low flying harmonicopter?
In a dramatic example of the need to tighten up child labor laws, Kristy McNichol tries dressing up like the grown ups and singing their songs. You can tell that this song is in trouble from the very first lines, which Kristy tries to deliver with a sneer:
"He went away,It's all downhill from here. You can see why Kristy had to wait for her boyfriend to get back, since she can't even deliver a line properly, let alone fend off an unwanted admirer.
and you hung around,
and bothered me every night.
When I wouldn't go out with you,
you said things that weren't very nice!"
Root beer and ice, Scarlett and Rhett, are just a few examples of perfect combinations. Who can blame a producer for trying to come up with another one. And what more natural combination than to hand over the sedate, ironic, and wistful lyrics of Steven Sondheim to the musical stylings of Miss Grace Jones? And let's just take the mopey edge off Mr Sondheim's song by jazzing it up with a disco beat. Now THAT will send some clowns out onto the dance floor!
You're actually only getting about a third of this song. Remember, this was in the days of disco, and the beat that never stopped. After the end of the song you hear, there's about six minutes more, including an instrumental section, and then some more yowlings from Grace, "Isn't it rich...". I decided that there were limits to everything, and that even I couldn't imagine listening to the entire song again. So I bent my principles, and cut off the tail end.
What possessed Moms Mabley to cut a record? She was doing fine as a comedian, but perhaps that didn't seem fulfilling or serious enough for her. She must have started by throwing in a song or two at the end of her act, to judge the audience's reaction. But she mistook the stunned silence that greeted her singing as reverence or awe, and decided she was ready to do a whole album of her favorites. The fact that her voice isn't pleasant to listen to didn't stop her.
The beginning of this song isn't too challenging, and even a weak, nasal singer like Leonard Nimoy can manage it. But as we go into the chorus, and things start to get lively, poor Leonard's flat voice just can't be coaxed to follow the tune.
"OK, Bunch. Everyone got their song sheet? Know how to pronounce all the words? Remember, the most important thing is to make each word understandable, and to all sing exactly the same note at the same time. Forget about that acting and expressing stuff. We've only got enough tape for one take, OK? So get ready, three, two, one..."
Yes, this is the same Davey Jones who went on to be 1/4 of the Monkees. Because his name was already registered, another singer who came along later with the same name had to sing professionally under the name David Bowie.
Davey Jones manages to get through this song almost entirely on the sound, with little thought to the words. He gives a light-hearted, bouncy performance that is almost a perfect opposite of Sebastian Cabot's. Cabot, whose version is available on "Golden Throats", doesn't even bother trying to sing, but tries to spit out the words as though he were a gangster rather than the best friend of Buffie and Jodie. I think if you played both versions of this song at the same time, they would cause a matter-anti-matter explosion.
The song opens with a ponderous clock tower chiming away, pretending to be Big Ben. This warns you that the following song is A) serious and B) English. Then we hear Joel Grey, singing in a voice so reedy you've got to think that Godzilla is slowly crushing his Adam's apple.
Tiny Tim is certainly in a different category from most of the other singers on this tape, and not just for the obvious reasons. He and Mrs Miller aren't famous for any other reason than their singing. The first few seconds of his song should give you an idea of the looney, joyous abandon with which Tiny Tim attacks the song, or is possessed by it.
I think I've discovered an untouched gold mine of bad music in all the Cher albums from the sixties. She seems to have tried to prove her credentials by including at least one Dylan song, or other standard, on each album. And they're mostly pretty bad. With Cher, it's usually not that she's singing poorly, but that she has no idea how to arrange the songs musically.
Cher sings "Hey, Joe" as though she couldn't afford to buy a Jimi Hendrix album, and only had a copy of the sheet music. She chants the lyrics without a trace of emotion. The drum beats monotonously in the back as she moans out each word, one word to a beat, almost as though she were singing as she was falling down the stairs, getting out a word every time her head got thwacked on a tread.
I suspect Ken Berry sang this song while in a coma. He's turned a lively rocking song into a lounge variety tune. Maybe this was his audition to be Wayne Newton's understudy. I just don't know.
Chad lurches through this song like a drunkard trying to run along the top of a fence. You hold your breath with every note he takes, watching him stagger, start a little too high, go low, lose his balance and almost fall. Oh my God, he's gonna fall into the flower bed. But no, he recovers and moves on to the next note, with no more accuracy than before.
Poor Lorne. It was only after he became obscenely wealthy and famous that he discovered his real desire: to be a swingin' lounge singer with a big band. He takes this modest song from "Casablanca", fills it up with a full tank of super leaded, and puts the pedal to the metal. This jazzy interpretation is so overdone that you're unlikely to find anything in common with the romantic original.
I have a theory that Joey Bishop was kidnapped by an unscrupulous record company, held at gunpoint, and forced to record this album. His voice sounds about that willing.
Apparently, Joey didn't think he'd need to learn how to sing to produce this album. Just by talking in a normal voice, and sort of "humming" lightly, he must have expected to "pass" for a singer.
I'm actually annoyed that Joey has pulled off this fraud on the public. He clearly isn't putting his heart into the song, or giving us a fair share. Compare this namby-pamby milk-toast singing to someone who's also a clown, but who clearly gives us everything he's got - and I mean Tiny Tim! Seriously!
You know, now that I've made this tape, Eddie Albert almost seems like a GOOD singer. I can't think of anything nasty to say about him. Will someone please write back to me, and bring me to my senses?
Everyone knows that Bob Dylan's lyrics don't exactly make much sense. You don't notice so much when you're hearing one of his songs, because his delivery and the music keep you occupied enough that you don't worry too much about the fine details.
Sebastian Cabot seemed to think that there was a profound message hidden in those lyrics, one that could only be improved by cutting out the insistent singing delivery, and by replacing Bob's guitar with an elevator music band.
This version of the song also wins the award for the most unusual opening. Every time that I've heard the beginning of this song, I can't recall what I'm hearing. The shock of recognition at hearing Sebastian open his mouth is like realizing you didn't put on your seatbelt as you fly head first through the windshield.
I have to love Mrs Miller. As an artist, she has the courage to show not just the beauty of her singing, but also the occasional imperfection which an overscrupulous recording engineer might be tempted to remove.
Such tiny flaws include the point where Mrs Miller seems to have forgotten the lyrics, and mutters for a while, in time, while waiting to think of something to say. There's also the time (or two) where, by chance, all the instruments in the orchestra simultaneously get out of rhythm with Mrs Miller, and she has to try a few different tempos before finding one that the orchestra can catch up with.
Leonard Nimoy must have been going through his "downer" phase when he recorded this song. Perhaps the latest cosmetic surgery on his ears had failed again. Or maybe he was still depressed that he hadn't been asked to open at Woodstock. For whatever reason, Leonard almost puts you into the mood of the song, until he has to go for a couple of notes he can't reach, and then you're just listening to a frog complain about how flies have lost their taste!
Ouch! The first chords of this song warn you that another helpless song is about to be flogged before your ears. And it takes a supreme act of self control not to fling the tape player out the window when the lead singer says "I'm hairy noon and night" and the backups go "Nightie-night-night!" But of course, this is only the beginning of the butchery.
The Cowsills actually did a nationwide touring production of the whole play "Hair". Since the Cowsills are the singing family upon whom the "Partridge Family" show was based, the choice of "Hair" as their star vehicle is more than a trifle bizarre. Imagine YOUR family sitting around the dining room table and arguing about who's going to get to be in the nude scene!
However, on that long, lonely nationwide tour, the inventive singers must have gotten tired of singing the songs the ordinary way. They've had lots of time to think up jazzy variations to the song, to "liven it up."
I had my doubts, when I bought this album, that it would cheer me up. I listened to a number of songs that were OK, or passable, or unremarkable. I'm happy to say that when they began singing "Hair" I laughed out loud.
The only thing that could make my happiness complete is for the Partridge Family to get back together and do a cover version!
("Hey, look, it's not just your voice changing!")
The sophisticated, jazzy opening for this song doesn't prepare us for the sound of an eight year old child, possibly male, worrying about having fallen asleep with Susie.
Little Susie's reputation has nothing to fear no matter how late she stayed with little Donny!
I paid a lot of money for the double album that this little extract comes from. I had a fair hope that he would open his mouth and sing, but all I got was a taping of a show he did for a college, during which he talked and gave "dramatic readings". Nonetheless, I copied a few seconds of Shatner being silly, just to remind us all of why the official bad music awards are called the "Willies".
Because, however, there are no international standards for the length of a 60 minute tape (Now how could they get THAT wrong?) you'll probably only get a snippet of this monolog, which ends with William laughing like a loon.