The SUBSIM Music Thread

[Jimbuna]

Dido - Don't Believe In Love

[Von Due]

Tom Lehrer - The Vatican Rag


over to some educational music,
Tom Lehrer - The Elements

[vienna]

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>

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by vienna

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 ) 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.

[Rhodes]

New Retro Wave: Waveshaper - The Space Hero

[vienna]

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>

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by vienna

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.

[vienna]

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)



Sheb Wooley - Purple People Eater



David Seville and The Chipmunks - Witch Doctor



Charlie Drake - My Boomerang Won't Come Back



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



Alley Oop - The Hollywood Argyles



The Rivingtons - Papa Oom Mow Mow



The Clovers - Love Potion No. 9



The Playmates - Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler)



Alan Sherman - Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah




<O>

[Von Due]

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.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Von Due

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):



A full album of Napoleon XIV:




<O>

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by vienna

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

If I really want the bizarre, I also have some gold nuggets
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.


Florence. Can you believe she performed in Carnegie Hall, and it was sold out!

Truly one of a kind and thank goodness for that.

From Real Gone Garbage: Don & Mark - Fidel and Raul


From Wavy Gravy I: Moses Longpiece - Slide Her Under The Door

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

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Von Due

If I really want the bizarre, I also have some gold nuggets
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.

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>

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by vienna

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!

[Jimbuna]

Dido - Don't think of me

[ivanov.ruslan]

Tonight in a show performed several songs of ABBA
Whenever I think of them, in my mind surfaced this song