Avenue of America 8-tracks

At 4:00pm on August 15, 2012, I will be featured on Kent Davies' "Amateur Hour" on CKUW 95.9 FM which is the radio station at the University of Winnipeg.

I've never been on the radio, so I might sound like some clueless asshole Kent found on the street (although I wouldn't be surprised if that's the kind of fun he's aiming for!) If by some chance you cannot tune in due to your forgetfulness or suffer the unfortunate handicap of NOT living in Winnipeg, you will be able to download the show here.

So now that I've officially sold out, you can expect the blog entries to suffer and become a much lower quality than before. Wait... is that even possible????

Kent mentioned to me that he was interested in my collection of 8-tracks, so for this entry I figured I'd dig out three more and post them. Without further ado, here's some shitty 8-tracks by a shitty Canadian company called "Avenue of America". Not only are these shitty cover songs, the cartridge shells are shitty too. Each of them cracked or broke while I was trying to get the shitty things apart to repair them.

I think I've just set a new record for the number of times I used the word "shitty" in a paragraph.

The redeeming thing about this run of 8-tracks is the actual sound quality is surprisingly good. Whoever mastered these did a decent job, so you'll be able to hear stellar crap for a change instead of the usual crappy crap.

Avenue of America presents The Magnificent Groups
(8X AVE-3802 A)


"8X AVE-3802 A" is rock star lingo for "Cheap Imitations of The Rolling Stones"

I didn't find this tape to be all that horrible since the singer vaguely sounds like Mick Jagger. Unfortunately, the poor bastard has trouble trying to hit the high notes in "Tumblin' Dice" and the back up singers don't come close to what's on the original recording. I actually had problems identifying this song since it sounds almost nothing like what the Rolling Stones did.

Listen to Tumblin' Dice



Avenue of America presents The Magnificent Groups
(8X AVE-3802 B)


"8X AVE-3802 B" is rock star lingo for "This isn't REALLY Creedence Clearwater Revival - Haa Haa, We Fooled You!"

The Mick Jagger singer is back at it, and he's singing CCR this time around. Actually, it sounds like they got a couple of different singers to perform on this tape. It's atrocious on many levels, but there's nothing as bad as this version of Proud Mary. In my opinion, if you can't get the lyrics right, then you have no fucking business covering the song!

Listen to Proud Mary



Avenue of America presents Grammy Awards 1972
(8X AVE-3702B)


By looking at the catalog number of this tape, I'm only assuming there's another volume. But we wouldn't know that by the incredibly descriptive title, would we?

This isn't really the soundtrack to the 1972 Grammy Awards. This is a bunch of assholes who will never win a Grammy in their lives, but I'll bet the album title gave them a nice ego boost.

Anyway, I checked Wikipedia for how accurate this tape was with regards to songs that won awards. Well, there's a few of them, but I don't see anything by Simon & Garfunkel, The Band nor Neil Diamond. Not only that, they put the Creedence Clearwater Revival rendition of "Proud Mary" on this tape while it was the Ike & Tina version that won the Grammy. Therefore I call bullshit on this one. It was all just an ego boost and an excuse to make money off some dumbass who thought he was getting a kick ass compilation of his favorite songs.

We already covered the Proud Mary song on the not-CCR 8-track (and it's the same stupid recording here), so I decided to pick on the song "Homeward Bound". Honestly, I was actually enjoying this slightly oddball version of the song until I heard the drummer make a mistake, and then repeatedly make the same mistake over and over again until the song was over. Sometimes I have to wonder if these recordings were done in one take. I could imagine the producer say "Ah fuck it, that's good enough! We need to rush this tape to the factory before 1972 is over."

Listen to Homeward Bound

...and that is certainly enough for this entry. I've got tons of stuff to get done before Summer ends, so the entries will be a bit spaced apart. But don't worry, I'll be back to torture you again.

Three Awful Cassettes

I figured I'd take a break from this hot, sweaty, stinky summer to bring you a blog entry. Here are three cassettes that have been sitting in my queue box for god knows how long. I don't remember where I bought or found them, but all three are terrible to some degree.


Douglas


Yup, that's all that's on the label. Who in hell's fuck is Douglas? What was the purpose of his existence? Why is his name on this cassette?

Anyway, this cassette seems to contain audio from an old record which was likely a home recording. This is not a professional recording, nor did "Sounds Great Tape Supply" do a very professional transfer. There's audio glitches in it for some odd reason and at the end of the cassette, you can hear the Microsoft Windows error noise! It threw me for a loop because I hadn't heard it in years, and I've been running Linux since 2006. If you ask me, the  tape company should be called "Sounds Like We Fucked It Up Again Tape Supply"

The recording is of someone playing a piano, and some woman howling at the moon, all blanketed in the glorious scratchy goodness that acetate records bring to make sure you don't preserve your precious memories all that well.

Listen to Douglas


Grandma Ferne Sings Sunday School Choruses For The Children


Yes! We have yet another mystery guest which fills us full of curious questions. Who is Grandma Ferne? Who's grandma is Grandma Ferne? Why is she trying to sing? Why is she in a Sunday School? Why isn't she in a personal care home wetting herself instead? Why do the children sing better than she does? Why the fuck did I buy this tape?

The whole tape is full of Granny croaking along to shitty three-second-long religious songs. Most people can have orgasms that last longer than these songs, so what's the pleasure in listening to this tape? The answer is: NONE.

Hear Granny Ferne sing about reading your bible.


Jenna Crispin - First Time Around


Girls always bleed the first time around.

I must say that the company who mastered this cassette (who chose to remain anonymous) did a fantastic job. It's the cleanest thing I've heard since the Rex Benson album, and I was actually able to turn on the dolby noise reduction without having the recording sound like mud.

I'm guessing Jenna is around six years old. She seems to be partial to country music which is very unfortunate for all of us. I did a search for her on Google and it appears that there's other people who hate her music more than I do. She's not as bad as that blind girl I reviewed which just goes to show that children with disabilities have slightly less talent than children without disabilities. Hell, my album is better than this piece of shit, and since I wrote most of my own songs, you can't tell me I did a shitty job with them. They're supposed to sound shitty!

Okay, enough about my awesome music career when I was a preteen, let's get back to the album. If there's one thing that most people have in common (including those who like country music) it's that most think the song "Daddy's Hands" is perverted and disgusting. But nobody discouraged Jenna from recording it! So now, I'm going to make you the reader feel like you're listening to a disgusting Gary Glitter-ish fantasy, and you're going to need a shower after this one.

Hear Jenna sing about the love from Daddy's Hands

Now I'm off to go cry about my troubled, sexually abused childhood. Perhaps I'll get therapy, record my sessions, and let you listen to them.