Dido - Don't Believe In Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9v4ckXyrU

Tom Lehrer - The Vatican Rag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvhYqeGp_Do

over to some educational music,
Tom Lehrer - The Elements
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM

Tom Lehrer! I was able to find reissues of his albums several years back at a local record store. I had the original vinyl albums I bought when they first came out, but someone borrowed them and I never saw them again. I wonder if that freelance hitman I used to know is still around...

Good pull on a much overlooked performer!...


<O>

My childhood mate had the first LP (kids now look at those letters and wonder :har:) and we used to listen to that record so many times I knew most of the songs by heart for years later. Lucky to find An Evening Wasted... much later, 2nd press I believe but it doesn't matter. Pure genius.

New Retro Wave: Waveshaper - The Space Hero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEW7Rg6UEFM

Tom Lehrer was actually a very interesting person. He was a mathematician, a professor, and a participant in some of the projects carried out in Los Alamos and worked with the NSA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer

One thing in the article I did not know about him is he was the inventor of the Jello-Shot; we must all now bow our heads in thanks to this true visionary...


<O>

One of the real cool things, I think was he focused on teaching maths among other things after leaving the touring business. Only in recent years did I learn about his songwriting for Electric Company.

The Tom Lehrer post brought to mind the period in my youth of the late 50s and early 60s when there were a lot of novelty records on the radio charts. Some of them are classics in their own right:

Larry Verne - Please Mr. Custer (I Don't Want To Go)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z9ntoTwQfc

Sheb Wooley - Purple People Eater

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL1ZH0Ke92A

David Seville and The Chipmunks - Witch Doctor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjrTcYMqBM

Charlie Drake - My Boomerang Won't Come Back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_prtbj4MtDU

They're Coming To Take Away, Ha!, Ha! - Napoleon XIV (Kim Fowley)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fn36l_z3WY

Alley Oop - The Hollywood Argyles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz6IpmmYSXA

The Rivingtons - Papa Oom Mow Mow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFv-uc90-FM

The Clovers - Love Potion No. 9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-sruIbd3c

The Playmates - Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enqNl7tdLR4

Alan Sherman - Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1wFQRKBa6Y


<O>

:har:
They're Coming To Take Away, Ha!, Ha! - Napoleon XIV (Kim Fowley)

That one! Surely one of the most bizarre recorded songs I ever heard. Weirdly enough it was covered by the band LARD but even weirder, on that album it did actually work, bizarre as it was.

If you really want to hear weird, the flip side of the single was the same song...backwards!...

Kim Fowley was also reputed to have done the lead vocal on "Alley Oop". I used to work at a rock club in the early to mid 70s and Fowley was a friend of one of the owners and a very regular customer. I asked him if he really did the vocal, but he became very evasive. He was a rather weird guy and was known to be a bit on the violent side, so I didn't press the question. Incidentally, The Hollywood Argyles were really never a group, but just an assemblage of studio musicians and record company types; the name Hollywood Argyles comes from the intersection of Hollywood Blvd. and Argyle St., in central Hollywood, and was the location of one of Capitol Records outpost recording facilities; the famed Capitol Record Tower and main recording facilities were a block up and a block over from Hollywood and Argyle...

EDIT:

I found the B side on YouTube (Note the backwards Label):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gbvcEkuFFI

A full album of Napoleon XIV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x88EUR9VKc


<O>

If I really want the bizarre, I also have some gold nuggets :haha:
Florence Foster Jenkins, King Uszniewicz & His Uszniewicztones, 3 albums of the Wavy Gravy series, Incredibly Strange Music collection cassette, Real Gone Garbage collection LP, trying to track down the notorious recordings of Portsmouth Sinfonia but little luck so far.

Florence though, she is definitely in a category literally of her own. I must admire her steelfaced pianist who managed to surpress his horror and laughter.
It is rather horrible if you are not in the mood and are unprepared but hysterically funny if you are up for vocal disasters.

King U (really Cub Koda et al having a loud laugh at it all) Warning, this is seriously bad musicianship but the completeness of the joke gets me every time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJi7at9E5wE

Florence. Can you believe she performed in Carnegie Hall, and it was sold out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtf2Q4yyuJ0
Truly one of a kind and thank goodness for that.

From Real Gone Garbage: Don & Mark - Fidel and Raul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWtt33tfTLo

From Wavy Gravy I: Moses Longpiece - Slide Her Under The Door
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcDc...ErWNWv&index=6
I have no idea how many times I have played this record, and it has a killer version of "Bo Diddley" played by the Juveniles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjs_...ErWNWv&index=1

I've heard of several of those you list if only because there was a local radio show that ran for a couple of decades here in Los Angeles hosted by a fellow who called himself Dr. Demento. He played some of the strangest, weirdest, 'wotdahell' numbers ever heard; he was also the guy who broke Weird Al into the public consciousness. Go to YouTube and search for "Dr. Demento"; you might find some nuggets to add to your collection...


<O>

Dr Demento is a legend!

Dido - Don't think of me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T0Gpy7nHiM

Tonight in a show performed several songs of ABBA
Whenever I think of them, in my mind surfaced this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKnuiWCageQ