So, we've got three lovely cassettes to look at. It simply HAS to be cassettes because they've taken over my bin. Did I mention I'm still looking for another person in the Winnipeg area to take on some of the load of writing about all this shit I collect? I'll even supply the equipment for transferring! Oh yeah, and you have to be funny.
Well regardless of my backlog, let's see what kind of crap is going to swirl its way into my blog archive. I plan on burying my blog archives for future civilizations to find and conclude that we were a totally fucked society.
Skallie Macdougal - ...But Is It Art
This is a great tape! I have an unhealthy fondness for ska music because it's so goddam catchy, but the singer is so fucking spastic on the first song, it makes me want to jump around like a retarded kangaroo and snort pixie sticks up into my brain. The entire cassette insert is a fantastic piece of work on its own, and the silver paint pen used to write on the otherwise blank cassette shell really makes this home-made tape a nice little treasure! If even HALF the artists I review on this site put the same artistic effort into their album as these guys did, this would be a much, happier blog to read. Unfortunately, I review miserable shit, and therefore my blog is miserable shit.
Listen to "Talk To Me"
Arnie - Oldies But Goodies
I figured I should finally put this one up so it can happily snuggle on my blog with this and this and this. Arnie yet again leaves his plunger at home and decides to sing some crappy old songs. He sounds way better on here than he did on the Hank Williams tribute.
Sadly, Arnie passed away back on May 28th 2011, so he will no longer be recording what seems like an endless stream of albums, nor will he scrape the handle of his plunger with a coat hanger. Rest in peace Arnie, you are one of the stars of Classical Gas Emissions, although I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Perhaps, the realization that he was a star here may have been what killed him.
And now, here's a song about Arnie shining down on us from heaven. I shed a tear every time I grab the plunger to de-clog another one of the toys my kid tried to flush down the shitter.
Listen to "You Are My Sunshine"
A Night With Jimmy Mills
This one is bad. VERY VERY BAD. I found a copy of this while I was in Ashern one year with a slightly different cover. Jimmy claims that he was in The Platters and The Ink Spots. A quick search on the internet turned up NOTHING to verify this claim which leads me to believe he was nothing more than MAYBE a bartender where both of these groups had performed. Not only does his name have NOTHING to do with either of these groups, he sounds like a half-dead rhinoceros taking his last shit.
This tape was still sealed when I bought it, probably because the last person who owned it KNEW it was a turd. Putting the dedication right on the album cover is a good way to piss off the girl you have a crush on. Poor Liz. She ended up being permanently associated with some amateur asshole who can't sing.
Jimmy Mills butchers all your favorite classics here: Twilight Time, Stand By Me, Moon River, and many others he should have left alone.
This tape was duplicated by 'Canadian Cassette Services & Mfg LTD' who made all of Side B sound as if it was recorded on a tape deck buried under a pack of wet mud. Unfortunately, this technical handicap still doesn't hide how awful Jimmy sounds. Here's his atrocious version of "Twilight Time" (which, likely according to him, was single-handedly written by him... and for Liz, nonetheless.)
Listen to him kill my favorite Platters song
There. I tackled three more cassettes. As it stands, there's only 47 more for me to listen to, select songs from, scan the covers, and write shitty little paragraphs about how much they suck. Well, I guess not all of them suck. I mean, the Skallie tape isn't bad and Arnie's nasally vocals are sorta growing on me. Other than that, I think I deserve an addiction to anti-depressants.
4 comments:
Jimmy Mills sings "Twilight Time" like a Bill Cosby on Quaaludes (!)
thank you
Honestly, I'm so grateful that I found this blog because I was able to download the copy that you have of my uncle (Jimmy Mills) singing and can give it to my grandmother (his younger sister). Even though you pulled no punches with your review, you have no idea how much it will mean to her to have this because the original tape he gave her years ago was lost in a flood. He died in 2008. He definitely wasn't the greatest singer, in my opinion, but he was the sweetest person I knew; very soft spoken. Liz was his wife and they were married until he passed. I'm going to give the recording you posted to my grandmother because I know it'll make her day. I'm so glad you hated it enough to put it on blast, otherwise, we'd never have been able to even get this one song back, lol. So, thank you for this. I really mean that!
No hard feelings. For the record, my grandmother has always been the better singer in my opinion! ;)
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