Had a request to re-up Tony "The Cool Casanova" Fabbri. Sometime after I wrote that post in 2013 I acquired a full-length CD by the man, which I just posted in its' entirety. HIGHLY recommended for outsider music enthusiasts. France's super-swell toy-pop maestro Carton Sonore remixed acapella tracks from one of outsider music's founding texts, Daniel Johnson's "Hi, How Are You?" album, adding his trademark ukulele/musical saw/ocarina sound. Only complaint: too short! More, s'il vous plait.
Carton Sonore - Mini Orchestre Pour Daniel Johnston(By the way, the latest Cartone Sonore release is 4 bits of spacey loveliness, like Joe Meek on Casios.) And in other outsider music news:
Ms Marilyn Miles sez: "I am a 64 year old grandmother with no music background that likes to write anointed poems." She's put up a short album entitled "Welcome Marilyn To Area 19" on every conceivable platform, and you can listen to most of it HERE. It's a kind of concept album about the UFO/Marilyn Monroe connection, or something like that. She doesn't sing, but recites clunky verse over r'n'b loops that are only a small step above Wesley Willis' pre-set beats. A couple songs about her encounters with space aliens are certainly interesting, but the real gem here is "Nice Man," a tale of an encounter with a different kind: a weirdo pervert. Gets me laffin' out loud every time. Her prim, schoolteacher-esque vocal delivery is the icing on the cake. And remember: "My spoken words are from a real experience direct and indirect."For individual songs, I used to use DivShare, but as it is now apparently kaput, I'll try using Box.com. You can listen, or download by clicking on the downward-pointing arrow in the upper right. Let me know if it works or not, gang!MsMarilyn Miles "Nice Man"
And who doesn't like experimental electronic psychedelia by 7 year old girls? Stinky Picnic, an old favorite of ours, returns with another name-your-price download album, and once again li'l Ponky Pie Pea (as she is now known) is joined by dad to discuss such crucial matters as hamsters, doggies, rainbows and "A Fungus And A Mungus And A Wungus."
"Hamster World"PIck Hit: the doo-woppin' "No, It's A Smiley Love Heart." The family that plays together, stays together.
Was just gonna re-up both sides of the outsider oddity that is Ah-Ah Allen's "Kick The IRS" single, but why stop there? Behold!A wee Taxday Mix
Ah-Ah Allen - Kick The IRSAh-Ah Allen -Montana I'm So Proud of YouF.U.2 - Tax Exile (late '70s fake-punk)Lenlow - To the Taxmobile! (classic mashup from 2004: Beatles vs Surfaris vs "Batman" theme)rx - Taxman Obama (The Prez "sings" the Beatles)
My fellow Americans! Remember, April 15 is the day to show Uncle Sam your love.
Back up by request: Roky Erickson's kids party, and "Carnival in Paradise."Seeing as how our previous collection of mid-century sleazy-listening music is, by a wide margin, the most popular post of the year so far, I guess I'd better keep feeding you cool cats and crazy kitties more rarities and vinyl obscurities from the Golden Age of Bad Taste:In the heydey of burlesque, dancin' goils twirled their tassels and bumped their rumps to live bands, not to a dj playing Salt n Pepa or Motley Crue. MCs, specialty acts, and comedy teams were also on the bill if for no other reason than to keep up the pretense that these were "variety shows" - something for everyone! - and not just lewd displays of wanton flesh. Tho the burlesque show format may have been created to skirt (so to speak) the censors, it ended up working quite well as an all-around entertainment package, surviving to this day. There's probably a 'burly-q' revival show near you now.But this stuff is from the original era, the 1940s - 1960s (I'm aware that burlesque preceeds the '40s, I just don't know of any earlier music). The first track is apparently recorded live "in the field" from an album called "Burlesque Uncensored." I was gonna post the whole album, but it's actually in print thru Smithsonian Folkways (your tax dollars at work?)
Apart from the expected bump-and-grind jazz, there's also some wild early rock n roll, exploitation movie radio ads and dialogue, low-budget lounge combos, and show-tunes (e.g. Natalie Wood in "Gypsy," the Gyspy Rose Lee biopic, and another version of the "Take it off the E-string" song that was featured on vol 1). And then there's the one musical moment from the infamous '60s S&M sound-effects album, "Tortura!"I also recorded some burlesque film soundtrack music off videos, performed by anonymous sleaze-meisters. This was some years ago when I recorded these, and I can't find most of those films on the YouTubes now. Too bad, the "Snakes" one in particular was great: a campy guy shouting "Snakes!" and running off camera, followed by a girl dancing with an actual, live enormous boa constrictor-type beastie. Towards the end, she even starts to put the snakes' head unto her mouth. A search for "snakes + burlesque" didn't come up with anything, but if any of you-all know this one, send us the links, pleeze!And for some great reading whilst listening to this music, check out our pals at Decadent History for a plethora of fascinating articles. Learn your history, kids! Lowbrow Vol.3 Hubba Hubba! - A MusicForManiacs Collection01 "Burlesque Uncensored" - lobby talker-chorus line-strip tease02 Natalie Wood-Let Me Entertain You [from "Gypsy," 1962]03 "Angels Wild Women"04 Perez Prado - Exotic Suite of the Americans (excerpt)05 Kay Kyser His Orchestra - Strip Polka [The Andrews Sisters also recorded this popular '40s Big Band number]06 Dick Dale & His Del-Tones - Take It Off07 "Varietease" - Betty Page, Bobby Shields [video soundtrack]08 "The Naughty Stewardesses"09 Dick Contino & Eddie Layton - Blues in the Night [accordionist Contino isn't just a James Ellroy character; in fact, he's real, alive, and still performs] 10 Barbara Stanwyck - The G-String Song [from the 1943 film "Lady of Burlesque", recorded off video]11 Big Jay McNeely - Striptease Swing [sax wildman, veteran of LA's legendary Central Ave scene, is also still alive and blowin']12 Eddie Wayne [actually surf/session guitarist Jerry Cole] - Dig Ye Deep13 Jayne Mansfield - Suey [the great blond bombshell is backed here by a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix!]14 Ricky Vale & The Surfers - Ghost Surfin' 15 "Nurses for Sale"16 John Barry - The Stripper [nope, not the David Rose hit (see below); yep, the James Bond soundtrack guy]17 Ernie Freeman - The Stripper [Freeman's the man who brought Sinatra into the r'n'b scene with "That's Life"]18 "Porno Photos"19 "Tortura" - untitled (Track 21)20 "Snakes"21 Snakes! [burlesque film soundtrack]22 The Knight Beats - Going To Town23 Hal Blaine & The Young Cougars - Gear Stripper [Blaine is possibly the most recorded drummer in history; he's certainly one of the few to record a drag-race/burlesque fusion song]24 The Bangers - Baby Let Me Bang Your Box, Part 1 [this r'n'b shouter is, of course, referring to the lady's piano]25 John Buzon Trio - Ill Wind26 Voodoo Virgin - [burlesque film soundtrack] 27 Stan Kenton - Blues In Burlesque [No, that's not Tom Waits singing, it's drummer Shelly Mann, with Maynard Ferguson blowin', from 1951]All tracks safe for work! We like wholesome sleaze around here.
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 pageWe now return you to our usual programming...
Does anybody still dance the limbo? You know, you bend over backwards to shimmy under an ever-lowering pole, to the catchy strains of calypso music. Don't know if any actual Caribbean peoples did the limbo, but plenty of post-war suburbanites who'd sipped a bit too much rum sure did. And this has to be one of the strangest artifacts of the limbo craze - a instrumental version of the hit Chubby Checker song "Limbo Rock" stretched out for the length of an entire album. Hollywood session vet Billy Strange (that's his guitar on Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang," among a million other credits) and his crew keep things interesting throughout, with funky percussion breaks, and exotica-like atmospheric interludes featuring grown men a-whoopin' and a-hollerin'. There's plenty of soloing, ranging from cool jazzy to almost rock 'n' roll. 
Exotica music is fine and dandy for polite cocktail sipping, but when the drinks kick in, what are you gonna dance to, eh, eh? I'll tell you what: "Limbo Rock pt 1" and "Limbo Rock, pt 2". For those moments when you want to, quite literally, drink someone under the table.Billy Strange and Telstars - Limbo RockNow if only a band called Billy Strange and the Limbo Rock did an album-length version of "Telstar"...
If you think sampling in music means MC Hammer looping "Super Freak," you gotta another think coming: Los Angeles legend Carl Stone has been using custom software to spin complex, beautiful webs out of found sounds since before most people even owned a computer. The closest comparison to another composer one might make would be to John Oswald and his Plunderphonics, but Oswald often hits with an ADD-addled aggressiveness. Stone takes a more trance-inducing path that sometimes approaches Minimalism, but the results are still too thorny to ever function as yoga music.
Track #1 "Wall Me Do" is not, as the title suggests, a Pink Floyd/Beatles mash-up. The title, like most of Stones' titles, comes from an LA area Asian restaurant. It's glitchy electronica, not unlike Aphex Twin, but years before the fact. #2 is pretty funny, slicing and dicing that classical classic "Pictures at an Exhibition" into an increasingly unrecognizable delirium. #3 ("Shing Kee") from 1986 hypnotically loops unidentified sounds (inc female vocals) into dreamy gorgeousness; tho reminiscent of Frippertronics and Steve Reich's early tape-loop works, the gradually unfolding patterns bear the stamp of Stone's original style. Play this with the lights out, glass of red wine in hand. Aaahhh... And #4 is Stone sampling himself, in this case remixing #1. I actually prefer it to #1 - it's all Minimalistic grooviness, but with no predictable looping and phasing.
Carl Stone - Four Pieces (1986-1989)
I was happy to see that Stone is performing live this March 22 with LA Free Music Society vets Tom Recchion and Joseph Hammer. Those two have been using extreme turntablism and tape-loop tomfoolery to great effect for as long as Stones' been tweaking his Macs. Don't think Stone was ever actually a member of the LAFMS, but note that Recchion designed the insert to this album. And the two used to rule the KPFK airwaves in the 1980s with back-to-back (Tuesday night?) shows, Stone with "Imaginary Landscapes" and Recchion's "Soundings II, aka the Tom and Tony Show." Between Stone's alt classical-to-Yma Sumac approach and Tom 'n' Tony's avant-tarde mix of free noise, kitschy thrift-store records, and live antics (e.g. playing the entirety of "Sgt Pepper" on fast-forward when the CD was first released), Young Master Fab's mind was suitably re-aligned. Tom Waits said he wept when he first heard Gavin Bryars' "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet" (which Waits would later sing) on LA radio in the '80s. 'Twas on "Imaginary Landscapes" - I was listening that night, too.
By request, Phantascist is back on-line.
As today is March 4th, let's march forth once again with the Now Sounds of alternative marching/brass bands with a sampler of releases from recent years from bands that you won't see parading onto a sporting events field, or serenading politicians. A sterling example of 'antique-garde' music - new, experimental sounds using pre-rock, antique instruments and methods.
I don't know how mobile they all are. I did see Mucca Pazza live a year or two ago, so I can vouch for them- they went marching all over the place before they finally hit the stage.
March Forth 2015
1. 9th Ward Marching Band - Halloween Beat [covering John Carpenter, and a bit of Mike Oldfield]2. 9th Ward Marching Band - Slowride [a couple of classic rock covers, from this krewe that features the king and queen of New Orleans high weirdness, Quintron and Miss Pussycat]3. 9th Ward Marching Band - The Letter4. Duk - Bilbo [from the excellent Bandcamp release "Early Worm Gets The Bird"]5. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - Moments [cover of Art of Noise's "Moments in Love"]6. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble & Tony Allen - Marcus Garvey [w/Fela Kuti's master drummer Allen]7. Mucca Pazza - Chick Habit [two songs from their super album "A Little Marching Band"; this wild take on the France Gall/April March classic features a rarity in this field: vocals]8. Mucca Pazza - Dirge [doesn't get any less traditional than this: a creepy circus waltz for accordion and musical saw]9. No BS! Brass Band - Take on Me [A Ha cover; always amazing to hear a great take on a song I'd never given the slightest thought to before]10. Youngblood Brass Band - Human Nature, Pt. 2 [quite an improvement on Michael Jackson's original]11. Youngblood Brass Band - Nate Mccarish Handbills For No Man [can't quite determine what strange sounds are featured here]
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