I'm Still Bringing Weirdness Back...

Last year, I reported on the latest sightings of sicko songsters in our society. Not only are they still at it, but some serious competition has joined them. Maniacs rejoice!

Bretts Milk "Daddy's Breath" (release date: Oct. 15) is creepy electronic "pop", like '80s New Wave gone evil. At its most subtly atmospheric, it suggests the darker side of Barnes and Barnes. Upbeat tracks resemble dance music that no-one in their right mind would ever actually dance to. Vocals, sometimes distorted, sound like the Singing Resident in need of a psychiatrist. Or an exorcist. Great fun!

That Ostrich Von Nipple album was probably my fave new release of last year, so am thrilled  to hear him guesting on this equally brilliant album. Occasional guitarist for The Residents, Nolan Cook, who also appeared on Von Nipple's LP, applies his twisted 6-string shenanigans here as well.

Bretts Milk "Milky Nipps"

Perhaps an even stronger contender for album-of-the-year (so far) is Macula Dog's self-titled release. Someone on their Bandcamp page says "It's like the Residents performing covers of Oh, No!-era Devo inside the universe of Pee Wee's Playhouse," thus saving me the trouble of writing a review - I was going to compare this great band to those very same folks, including Pee Wee!

Macula Dog [listen for free, Name-Your-Price download]

If your head isnt caving in yet from all this elegant eccentricity, it very well may after witnessing this stupendous 9 minute video from another avant-tarde veteran, Petunia-Liebling MacPumpkin and her Electric Phantom posse. So impressed was I by the surreal hallucinations and audio manifestations of the vid that I just had to subject Ms. MacPumpkin to a brief interrogation.

Petunia-Liebling MacPumpkin - "Veggie Medley": the vegetables will get you if you don't watch out!

- Do you do all the visual effects/photography yourself? If not, would you like to give a shout-out to your collaborators?
Melody McGinn the caretaker at Electric Phantom does the majority of the visual effects/photography/editing. In this particular story however, Jimmy L. Wright made all of the veggies, Alien and Halbert (the dog). Jodie Lowther created the "set" for part 4, and Frederick Barr the "set" for part 2. 

- Where do you shoot your videos? Do you have a studio?
We shoot the videos on greenscreen at Electric Phantom.

- You are in Florida, correct? Is there any strange/experimental art/music scene near you?
Yes! From Orlando originally and now in Gibsonton. hahha I believe there is a noise scene around here, but I don't go out much.

- Do you plan on releasing this music, or is it only the soundtrack to the video?
Oh it's already been released..One more video to go and the album has been completely visualized.  http://www.electric-phantom.com/merch.html

- Do you (like me) not really like vegetables, and this vid expresses your fear/guilt having been raised by your mother always trying to get you to EAT YOUR VEGETABLES?! 

Actually Im a vegetarian but I had the same exact experience with meat. Maybe this is revenge. 

- Do you perform live?
No. I'm sorry. :(

BETTY BOOP "Boop-Boop-Be-Doop!"

Yes, I'm alive and well! This blog ain't dead yet. I've just been spending my free time on other pursuits.

You don't need me to tell you who Betty Boop is. But there's more to this perennially popular cartoon character than her famous flapper look and squeaky voice exclaiming her "boop boop be doop" catchphrase. Women in the Victorian era had to endure not just social/political restrictions (no swimming allowed!), but physical ones as well. I recently saw a museum exhibit of the almost bondage-like garb of the day: tight corsets, thick layers of clothes and padding, long skirts that killed thousands of women by getting caught in machinery, wheels, etc. By the 1920s, the fun-loving young women known as "flappers" threw all that mess out the window and started jitterbugging to the new sounds of hot jazz, smoking and drinking and engaging in other such un-lady-like activities, all while wearing little more than short dresses. They had one of the first extensively chronicled slang-uages, even preceding the jazz hep-cat culture. I would wager to say that the flapper was the first hipster.

The Fleischer Brothers studio wouldn't introduce Betty Boop to the silver screen until the 1930s, when the Great Depression was throwing a wet blanket over the flapper culture of the Roaring 20s. But Miss Boop kept the indomitable flapper spirit going, providing a link, via appearances by novelty jazz legend Cab Calloway, to the emerging Harlem hipster era that would come to define mid-century cool culture. In the pre-Code era, this risque, adult cartoon was often built around musical sequences, and this wonderful collection presents not just songs and musical segments from the cartoons, but even a couple of songs from Helen Kane, the original squeaky-voiced singer with the New Yawk accent that inspired the Boop character. Totally essential.

A helpful Amazon reviewer notes "not all tracks are Betty herself (voiced by Mae Questel). But, many of the non-Betty tracks are from Fleischer Studios cartoons. Her “hot” theme song, sung by male vocals, began several Betty Boop cartoons... Fanny Brice singing, “I’m An Indian,” plus Maurice Chevalier’s “Hello Beautiful”  from the cartoon “Betty Boop’s Rise to Fame” (1934) wherein Betty imitates those stars on those songs. That soundtrack is also included...there are two Helen Kane songs (“That’s My Weakness Now”, “Do Something”)...Cab Calloway’s two songs from “The Old Man of the Mountain” (1933) that finish this CD... I find the Fleischer versions better than Calloway’s official studio recordings for 78 rpm. The other Calloway recordings on this CD are also from Betty Boop cartoons..."

Plus, you get Louis Armstrong, and Calloway's signature hit "Minnie The Moocher," a version of which was just featured in the "Forbidden Zone" soundtrack we posted recently. In the song, Calloway references "kicking the gong around," meaning smoking opium. Did I mention that "Betty Boop" was originally an adult's cartoon?

And I'm still waiting for Cyndi Lauper to fulfill her destiny by making a Betty Boop-type record...

 BETTY BOOP "Boop-Boop-Be-Doop!"

Tracklist 

1	Betty Boop Theme	0:35
2	Sweet Betty/Don't Take My Boop-Boop-A-Doop Away/The Girl In The Little Green Hat	6:15
3	Highlight From 'Betty Boop's Little Pal'	1:28
4	Helen Kane: That's My Weakness Now	3:35
5	Fanny Brice: I'm An Indian	2:52
6	Maurice Chevalier: Hello Beautiful	2:19
7	Stopping The Show	3:15
8	Arthur Jarrett: Sweet Betty Theme	0:36
9	Cab Calloway: Minnie The Moocher	3:28
10	Betty Boop's Trial	5:44
11	Arthur Jarrett: Sweet Betty Theme	0:35
12	I'll be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You (with Louis Armstrong)	2:27
13	Music Goes "Round And Around	2:38
14	St. James Infirmary Blues	1:42
15	Helen Kane: Do Something	2:37
16	Chant Of The Weed (instrumental)	1:23
17	Highlights From 'I Heard'	4:18
18	Betty Boop Theme	0:47
19	The Broken Record	2:36
20	Hell's Bells (instrumental)	2:29
21	Cab Calloway: The Old Man Of The Mountain	3:00
22	Cab Calloway: You Gotta Hi-De-Ho	2:40
23	Betty Boop	2:31

BEHOLD! THE ANARCHESTRA

Alex Ferris is quite obviously a genius, a 62-year-old inventor/composer who lives in the desert with his large array of giant, weird, hand-built musical instruments tuned to microtonal scales. It all sounds so impossibly obscure, esoteric, and outsider-y, but the music is beautiful. Even with it's lack of conventional instruments and standard Western "do-re-mi" scales, it's compulsively listenable. It helps that The Anarchestra (which could mean anything from Ferris solo to a large group) has a very tight rhythmic sense. His earlier pieces, performed in 4/4 time, have almost an Afro-Cuban level of funkiness. Not the sort of thing that gets play in discos, but it should.

Tho these are all instrumentals, with no noisy guitars or shouted vocals, the punk influence is clear, not just in the band name, but in the economy of the compositions. There's no long intros, drawn-out endings, or endless noodling. A piece begins with most of the instruments playing at once, all locked in, then a few minutes later, it stops. All that's missing is Dee Dee Ramone shouting "1, 2, 3, 4" between each track. There's a lot of albums, but it doesn't take hours of wading thu it all to find something good. You'll know right away. And what could be more DIY than building your own instruments?

Ferris' instruments don't create too many harsh noises. Percussion, strings, winds...it's all  so musical - the heir to the Harry Partch/Moondog legacy of eccentric visionaries. More recent albums have an almost meditative calm to them, but it's more "In A Silent Way"-era Miles Davis than New Age. Too much banging-and-clanging for the yoga set.

I actively seek out both invented instrument and microtonal music, so I'm amazed that I haven't heard of this guy before, but he seems to have made little effort to connect to the music world, even the avant-garde scene. He has been coming aboveground lately, releasing an enormous amount of music on his

Bandcamp page.

It's all very consistent. From what I've heard, I'd say that you could jump in anywhere, the water's fine. I happen to be listening to the "KLEKT" album as I write this, and it's probably as good a place to start as any. Highlights include the wonderfully spooky "klekt 12," and the all-too-brief 1 minute long "klekt 7." Some tracks could be "Rain Dogs"-era Tom Waits instrumentals.

Dig this 67-minute documentary:

Speaking of Harry Partch, I was amazed to read that Paul Simon is using some of Partch's instruments on his latest album. Oh great. He'll probably ruin microtonal music the way "Graceland" drove people away from the glory and wonder of African music, which sadly, to this day, still has yet to shake the hippie/urban trendy/"World Music" tag. Still, I am a little curious. Not curious to have actually listened to it yet, tho. Have any of you? Is outsider music made on homemade instruments the new NPR fad?

Here's something you most certainly will like listening to: that wonder from Down Under, Buttress O'Kneel, who's the one who hepped us to the Anarchestra in the first place. Thanks, BOK! And dig the latest release from the mistress of mad mashup madness and berserk break-core:

"Lemons": made entirely from 2 recent Beyoncé songs, chopped and sliced like, well, lemons.



THE WORLD'S TALLEST MUSIC: Joseph Bertolozzi's "Tower Music"

An entire album made solely from the sounds of someone banging on the Eiffel Tower?! Now that is the kind of thing to warm the cockles of a Maniac's heart, and to thoroughly confuse, if not annoy, mainstream music consumers: "Wha..? Why doesn't he use real musical instruments?" Because, my poor, brainwashed Normals, there is a universe of unused sounds out there that cannot be conjured up with pianos, guitars, even synthesizers. Music is all around us, as John Cage would say, and sampling those sounds and using them as the raw stuff of compositions is an excellent way to make us aware of that. 

The album actually sounds like you think it would, dominated by metallic plinky pongy tones. But even tho these songs are indeed produced only by Bertolozzi's molesting of a great Parisian structure, they are not just random banging. They are structured, highly rhythmic, even weirdly melodic, with each track having it's own peculiar flavor. In other words: musical. Here's one particularly toe-tappin' sample:

Joseph Bertolozzi "Continuum" from "Tower Music"

"THE BANYAN TREE": Groovy '60s Soundtrack to A Lost Film

Hello, and welcome to another episode of "Mysteries...of the Mysterious." I am your host Mr. E. Train. Today, we shall explore the baffling riddle of a film from the late 1960s entitled the "The Banyan Tree." A film so obscure that it is not mentioned on IMDB, or anywhere else on the internet. Indeed, the only proof of its' existence is three curious 45 rpm records, six songs total. 

Alex Burton of Dallas' KRLD radio

And what swell, swingin' sides they are indeed. Up-beat go-go beats, snappy horn charts, Beach Boys harmonies, sitars...the Now Sound for the "Now Generation." How could anyone not love a band called The Pickle Platter doing "Chant of the Dead Temples." (What the hell was this film about anyway?!). Or the absurd title song: "Hey hey hey, Mr Holy Man!...send me on a trip, around my mind!"  It's safe to say that The Apple Corps, the Puget Sound and The Pickle Platter were not real bands, but studio concoctions.

If YOU have any idea who are the forgotten talents behind this music, let us know. Because the daughter of Dallas, TX radio man Alex Burton inherited these historical oddities from her fur-coat clad father, was suitably impressed, and put them all up on the youtubes in the hopes that maybe someone out there knows something about the film and these records and can fill us in.

The only clue is in on the record label: "Marty Young Productions." Apparently they were a small Dallas TX film production house formed in 1967 that made religious films, educational shorts, etc. The film probably had something to do with India.

"The Banyan Tree" (6 songs)

Not everything is on the internet. There are still things we do not, perhaps were not meant to know. Is this yet another mystery...of the mysterious?

Calvin B. Rhone: "He Came On Me"

I'm just gonna stick with the facts on this one.  No comment necessary. Calvin B. Rhone is a still-active Los Angeles gospel singer who recorded this private-press sanctified soul album in 1983. Some tracks have a lot more to do with Earth Wind and Fire or Stevie Wonder than with robe-clad, hand-clapping choirs. Enjoy! 

 P.S.: One of the songs is called "He Came On Me." The title phrase is indeed sung by Rhone. Repeatedly.

Calvin B. Rhone has an "Intimate Friend"

A1 We've Come To Praise Him
A2 Intimate Friend
A3 Lord!
B1 Believe
B2 He Came On Me
B3 I LoveTheLord
B4Bless The Name Of Jesus

I just discovered this album last week and - Why look! Someone else posted a YouTube of said song just a month ago. Coincidence? Or perhaps the universe just wasn't ready for this record until now..?

A1 We've Come To Praise Him A2 Intimate Friend A3 Lord! B1 I Believe B2 He Came On Me B3 I Love The Lord B4 Bless The Name Of Jesus Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu

Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu

A1 We've Come To Praise Him A2 Intimate Friend A3 Lord! B1 I Believe B2 He Came On Me B3 I Love The Lord B4 Bless The Name Of Jesus Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu

Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu

A1 We've Come To Praise Him A2 Intimate Friend A3 Lord! B1 I Believe B2 He Came On Me B3 I Love The Lord B4 Bless The Name Of Jesus Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu

Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu

I'm Bringing Weirdness Back...

If you feel like genuine musical weirdness died with Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart, take heed!  We have some 

stone-cold freakazoids in our midst even today. To whit:

- The Everyday Film is raising funds for his next album. Judging by the excerpts of works in progress in the video 

below, it's the veteran outsider's most ambitious project yet, as it moves beyond his usual industrial nightmares 

into some realms of sound that actually resemble, well, music. Y'know, that some people will like to listen

 to? So give, brothers and sister, give 'til it hurts:

The Everyday Film - "Bleed Over" (GoFundMe site)

- Ostrich Von Nipple is such a great name that I thought there was no way that their music could measure up to it, 

but their latest album is an absolutely awesome acid-bathed assemblage of spazz-jazz-tronica, weirded-out lyrics, 

and a guest guitarist who has played with the Residents, no less. Songs like "Mad Martian Beach Party" actually

sound like their titles. One 10-minute track suggests prog, but prog is rarely this humorous and surreal.  Originally

released last year in hard copy formats thru Psychofon Records, including a very limited vinyl run, it's now available

digitally thru outlets like Amazon and iTunes. In Maniac-universe, this album would sweep the Grammys.

"Ostrich von Nipple Quantifies Absurdity" album Amazon page 

Ostrich Von Nipple "Upright Jerker" (mp3)

- Petunia-Liebling MacPumpkin, the gal who's so cray-cray she makes Kate Bush look like Barbra Streisand, is the

 one who hipped us to the Nipple. Her own latest video "Picked Fences" (see below) is another outlandish mixture of 

live action, animation, puppets, toys, video effects, and art-song.   

- Womb Pals' brief (13 minutes) name-your-price download EP "Baby Spinach" is mostly pleasantly low-key

piano ambience, but is notable for the track "perfection," which ingeniously samples the sounds of coughing and 

throat-clearing. No other instruments. Exactly the kind of thing that Maniacs might find clever and funny, and 

Normals might respond to by running away, hands over ears. That's irri-tainment! 

http://wombpals.bandcamp.com/releases 

- The Chewers are the twisted Southerners whose two previous albums got rave reviews from Yours Truly on these 

here virtual pages. They're still spewing out their inbred hell-billy guitar rock primitivism, but with seemingly

a bigger budget. More instrumental sounds, cleaner production, guests vocalists - they sound better

than ever, tho the songs are not sticking with me the way their earlier work did. One track, however, the utterly

over-the-top "Misanthropic Bones," just might be the greatest thing they've ever done. It's a kind of rap song, 

with a clenched-teeth Chewer sptting out rhymes like "I don't get enough sun or sleep/I'm a hollow, distorted 

creep."

Well, aren't we all?

The Chewers "Dead Dads" album Bandcamp page

The Chewers  "Misanthropic Bones" (mp3)

T.V.O.D.: 2015

I have obviously fallen off my new-post-every-few-days schedule, but yes, I'm still alive (and well), and have been receiving your always-appreciated emails, musics, DVDs, etc. There's no shortage of material for this here web-log. Guess I've been too busy watching TV...

How did I not see this before?! A recent live version of the greatest song ever about animal homosexuality is up on Vimeo: 

Tom Wilson Weinberg - "Lesbian Seagull" / interview

You know that Mr. Will Grove-White is the right kind of people since he's a member of the mighty Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. But brilliantly performing the Beach Boys on nose flutes, and no other instruments?! One can only bow down: "We're not worthy!"

And here's your WTF? of the day: a nine-minute long concert, also on Vimeo, by an 
Odd-stralian named, er, Dumbshit: 

DUMBSHIT live 4/24/15

Our source for all good things Down Under, Buttress O'Kneel, has played with Mr. Dumbshit a few times, and even after having been an acquaintance of him for a good decade or so, is still a bit perplexed by his, shall we say, lack of regard for traditional musical standards. How self-aware is he? One wonders "...if he is and just doesn't care, or if he's kidding, or if he's doing some kinda meta-kidding-outsider combo...  he normally plays some weird indian stringed instrument, this is the first time i've seen him play a casio - adds a whole other element.  with classic songs like "my housemate's a fuckwit" and "exposing myself to the moon", he's always fun to watch."

This guy's gotta make some recordings.

We'll Be Right Back After These Brief Messages...

Let's get commercial...

Back in 2008 we posted a hilarious radio spot from the conservative religious group Focus on the Family responding to a law passed in Colorado that allowed trans-gendered people to use public bathrooms. Recently we received this fairly genius bit of animation that illustrates the ad, making it even funnier. It comes to us courtesy of Mutant Lab, who are clearly doing the Lord's work. Work it, girl!

A clever, amusing new music video by Los Angeles rocker Taylor Locke finds the artist tooling around town in a motorized easy chair, the comfy kind one might find in a living room. The video makes it look like a cheesy tv commercial for what I thought couldn't possibly be a real product, but upon further investigation, the website appears to be real. Ok...What could one possible do with one of these things? I doubt that they're street-legal. It certainly does make music videos more interesting (along with the nekkid lady!) The catchy power-pop music is quite good, too.

Sound collagist I Cut People have a mordantly funny new on-line album that slices and dices innumerable American media sound bites, revealing the existential angst, neuroses, and anxieties contained in bland public service announcements, cheerful commercials for medications, news broadcasts, and chat shows. The tracks are brief and the whole thing flies by fairly quickly, but it's not background music. Attention must be paid to catch the rapid-fire edits in such wickedly surreal cut-ups as "Ebola Vacation" and the lewd, rude "Watch Me, Innocence." Listen for free, buy for cheap:

I Cut People: "Miserable Day"
Bandcamp page

We now return you to our usual programming...

HELLavision

I could give some background on these videos...but why bother? They won't make any more sense if I did. So I'm just gonna hit you with three of the greatest, most incredibly WTF-iest things I've seen/heard lately. Prepare to question your sanity! 

#1: 



#2 (thanks to maniac Francis C for passing this one on to us): 

 

and, perhaps most disturbingly, #3: 

Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO's Mutated Christmas Album

This 1999 collection of eccentric electronic instrumental Christmas music by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh doesn't sound much like Devo, or, for that matter, Christmas music. It does sound really nice, tho. As the song titles indicate, the tunes suggest famous Xmas carols, and sometimes just barely at that, e.g.: the cartoonish "Midnight Windup Toy". And isn't "Soylent Night" the greatest title?

Mark Mothersbaugh - Joyeux Mutato

01 Jingle$, Jingle$, Jingle$
02 Blue Joy

03 Midnight Wind-Up Toy
04 Bell Boy
05 Happy Woodchopper
06 Only 12 Shopping Days Left
07 Peace And Goodwill
08 Enough Xmas For All
09 You Better Watch Out...
10 Let There Be Snow
11 I Don't Have A Christmas Tree (Soylent Night)
BONUS: Devo - Merry Something To You [a barely minute long jingle from a 2010 Warner Bros xmas comp]

I was reminded of this album after li'l bro Paul Fab told me about the big ol' Mark Mothersbaugh exhibit he saw recently at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. (That's Paul at the exhibit, above.) It's a career retrospective of Devo memorabilia and Mothersbaugh's prodigious visual art output. Check the short (exclusive! not on YouTube!) video below Paul shot of some crazy contraptions: "I believe he calls them Orchestrions. It's a gallery (his kooky rugs on one wall) with four Orchestrions which all play together. They're mostly old organ pipes, but also many bird calls, whistles, metal bells and other noisy things. They're cobbled together with visible electric (and barely electronic) controls all left out and taped into whatever position they're supposed to be in. Every 5 minutes they start playing. What a cool sound."

The song is acapella - let the mashups begin!

The Story of the First Voice Synthesizer, The SONOVOX

By request, now back up:
- Strange novelty songs collection "Fun Music"
- Zoogz Rift "Murdering Hells Happy Cretins"

Long before Peter Frampton's talk-box, the Vocoder, or Autotune, there was the Sonovox, demonstrated here in what must surely be the strangest "pop" music of the 1940s: