Sunday, November 30, 2008

78 RPM Goodness

When I think about 78 RPM records, I generally think about what kind of music is on them. It's usually big band stuff that 90 year old women listen to. I'm generally not fond of things like "Harry Palms and his Orchestra play The Sweaty Balls Waltz." When I browse thrift stores, I usually ignore the 78s as a general rule since there's usually nothing of interest.

I had a whole box of these things given to me. Most of the records suck, but the most interesting items in the box were paper bags that people used to carry home their brand new records. Check them out:


Winnipeg Piano Company - Paper Bag circa 1950


National Radex (419 Portage Ave, Winnipeg) Paper Bag circa 1950

Last summer I finally found a nifty little record player to play my 78s. The stylus was destroyed, but believe it or not, I had a spare in my collection of junk which has been sitting around for about 15 years in case I ever needed it.

I quickly got bored listening to the box of 78s, and started skipping anything that had any of the following in the title: "...and his Orchestra", "Bing Crosby", and "Ella Fitzgerald". Oh yeah, and any comedy records. While they may have been funny in 1950, they're quite bland by today's standards.

Yesterday, I actually took a browse through the pile of 78s in the thrift store. They were all put into home made record folders. At first I was finding the same old shit. But I came across a couple of records that were finally worthy of putting on my record player. Here's one of them, oddly classified under the genre "Fox Trot":



If you want to hear the A-side (yes, you read that right), someone else already put it up on Youtube. The other record I found was The Platters' "Twilight Time", with a rockin' B-side called "Out Of My Mind".

Record companies generally quit manufacturing 78 RPM records around 1958 which explains why it's tough to find good music on them. A few countries manufactured them until the mid-1960s, but prepare to pay a small fortune for them on ebay.

I can guarantee you that I'll be picking up more 50's Rock n Roll 78s and ditching all the boring Big Band Numbers and Waltzes from my collection ....and the 5 copies of Bing Crosby's "White Christmas".

Monday, November 24, 2008

Found: Grocery List (08-11-23)

Found this grocery list while shopping...



Now, I've been shopping at Superstore for years, and I have NEVER seen shelves stocked with "Goose".

Check out the lipstick stain at the top :)

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Answering Machine Tape: July 2001

I Finally finished making the video for this answering machine tape. Here's the story behind it...

On June 24th, 2001, my fiance of almost 4 years decided that she needed to move on with her life. So she left me. I was pretty messed up from the whole thing, and took the week off work.

That Friday, my brother came into town. His exact words were "I know what you need... you need to get drunk and laid!" So we ventured out to the bar. We both got hammered and he ended up helping this girl named Shawna hook up with me. I went along with it mostly because I was lonely and sad.

We went out for three days. During that time, we went and watched the fireworks for Canada day. When I dropped her off that night, she had left her sweater in my truck.

On the third day, I ended up telling her that I wasn't ready for a relationship. She asked if we could still be friends, and I agreed. Now, I talk to my friends maybe once a week. Apparently, once a week wasn't enough for Shawna.

Here's the video, broken into two parts. I've included some of the outgoing messages here which will explain some of the bizarre and hilarious messages I recieved on this tape. I also edited out all the hangups, and there were plenty of them. (Guess who was hanging up.) You'll also get to follow my life for this one-month period, up to the time when I had my phone service disconnected the day before I moved.

Part One:


Part Two:

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Album Review: The Hits of Elvis Presley (Vol. 1) as Performed by Bucky Dee James & The Nashville Explosion

I haven't written an album review in a while, so I figured I'd do one. I also want to start giving my albums a rating using a scale of 1 to 10 (1=shit, 10=kick ass)

Anyway, here is another offering from the Springboard label which I came across about a month or two ago. You may remember the first album I reviewed from the Springboard label, The Complete Music from the Movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as Performed by Abbey Road '78. Springboard seems to be notorious for their long-ass album titles.

This time around, we have The Hits of Elvis Presley Vol. 1 as performed by Bucky Dee James and a bunch of Hoopy Drunken Yokels from Nashville. If you look at the unofficial Springboard discography, you'll see that Vol.2 does indeed exist. This is by no stretch the first Elvis tribute album in existence. Many people are aware of the "popular" Golden Ring Elvis tribute albums that likely graced the K-Mart bargain bins at some point in history.



Poor Bucky and his gang aren't the stars of this album, as their band name is put into fine print on the album cover, and Elvis Presley gets all the credit. Of course, Springboard is hoping nobody reads the fine print and buys this 1977 bargain bin 8-track thinking that it's full of genuine Elvis tunes.

The album is around 15 minutes long, since Elvis didn't bother writing songs much longer than two minutes, and Springboard milked the consumer by releasing a 30 minute collection of Elvis songs as two seperate volumes. Here's what we get in Volume one:

- Heartbreak Hotel
- Love Me Tender
- Blue Suede Shoes
- Don't Be Cruel
- Hound Dog
- All Shook Up
- Teddy Bear
- Jailhouse Rock
- Stuck On You

I must say that Bucky and his Nashville Explosion perform the songs quite well... I mean well enough for a crappy Elvis impersonator and a bunch of studio musicians. The vibrato in Bucky's voice on "Love Me Tender" sounds like it was created electronically. If I warbled like that, I would take myself in for repair. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

I give the album a rating of 4/10

Here's where it lost points:

- The shitty performance of "Love Me Tender"
- Bucky's name in fine print (1/2 point)
- Boring album cover (1/2 point)
- It's not real Elvis
- Bucky tries too hard to sound like Elvis
- It's only 15 minutes long
- Incorrect lyrics sung in "Don't Be Cruel"

Other than that, it's the best not-Elvis collection that ever graced the earth. Okay, so I lied... The Golden Ring series is probably the best not-Elvis collection that ever graced the earth and Bucky's album, in comparison, is a piece of shit.

Believe it or not, Bucky also released another album on Springboard where he does nothing but Glen Campbell impressions. If I ever come across it, you bet I'll be writing about it.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Minor Update

Here's a minor update, just to let you know that I haven't died or anything. I'm working on a new video that I should be posting in this blog sometime this month (hopefully). It's a video to go along with an answering machine tape that I have from 2001. It's freakin' hilarious! I'm doing the video in Linux using Alpha software, so I'm hoping that it works. I've almost entirely given up on Windows, as it crashes too much and too frequently. The alpha video software crashes too, but at least I don't have to reboot my computer to get it started again.

Second, I got a new job that will probably allow me to take more candid pics! You'll likely see a nice steady flow of them starting in about a month or two.