Another visit to the expensive Brandon thrift store! Well, at least the CDs are expensive, and I honestly never see any that are worth more than 50 cents. It's all crap, but I hand-picked a few titles for us to try and enjoy...
Bob King - What Can You Sing
Bob King likes to pop up on the blog every once in a while, and I honestly never know what I'm going to get from him. This album actually has some very good songs on it! They're actually good enough that I'm putting this one into my personal collection.
The song "It's Fun To Be Ukrainian" is absolutely marvellous. My background is Ukrainian, and this could certainly be my theme song.
The Winkler Song is also fantastic. Everyone in Manitoba has been shitting on the town of Winkler for their avoidance of vaccines and not co-operating with all the lockdown stuff. This song brings some much needed respect back to the people of Winkler. It's also catchy as hell.
The Dance of Ecstasy is one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard, even though it's not really about anything. It's sung by Bob's daughters, and I'm glad Bob made the choice to hand the vocal duties over to them. It's easily the best song on the album.
Now don't get me wrong, this album is far from perfect. There's some mundane crap on here, but the good songs really made this one worth more than fifty cents. I've passively reviewed Bob before, but this one makes him stand out a bit more. Good job, Bob!
The back of the insert states that I'll have a curse put on me for putting any of these songs up for download and that I'm not a very nice person for doing so. I already know I'm an asshole, so I welcome the curse for openly promoting a decent album by some guy named Bob.
Listen to It's Fun To Be Ukrainian
Listen to The Winkler Song
Listen to The Dance of Ecstasy
Country Blend - Remembering Country Women
It's Joan McKay! She makes her usual Junq Tour appearance with the usual group of old hacks. The other old bags singing are mediocre at best, but Joan's piano banging always makes me happier than a woman who's done menopause. I'm giving you a couple of the most upbeat songs on this tape to bring a little joy to this entry. I guarantee that won't last.
The most fucked up thing about this tape is that it was released by Silver Streams. Everything else I've reviewed on Silver Streams has been complete garbage. Joan McKay deserves to be on a better record label. The audio quality is kinda crummy, but I'd boil that down to Silver Streams trying to avoid making this the best album in their catalog.
Listen to Blue Moon of Kentucky
Listen to Alabama Jubilee
Arnie - Plunging In Again
After ten years or so, I'm back with an actual copy of Arnie's "Plunging In Again" where he plays his polkas and waltzes with a toilet plunger and coat hanger, and it's just as well because the sound quality on this album sounds like a toilet clogged with shit. Most of the songs sound the same on here, so I just picked one at random.
Chinese Breakdown
Ian R. Johnstone - Dear Mr. Johnstone
Give a man a fishing pole and he'll eat for a day. Give an idiot a banjo and he'll automatically think he's a children's entertainer. Mr. Johnstone (featuring Abbey Yo Yo!) is obviously very proud that he made an album because he boasted about it on the back. Also, Abbey Yo Yo isn't a person, but a story written by Pete Seeger. Also, Abbey Yo Yo is supposed to be spelled "Abiyoyo". Everything is kind of a mess, just like the album cover.
There's a fucking rant in the middle of "Puff The Magic Dragon" (another story written by another guy named Pete). The rant is about growing up and not wanting to playing with dragons. I wish that Mr. Johnstone would realize that sometimes leaving songs in their original form actually benefits the listeners, like he did with the song "Take Me Home Country Roads" which I found surprisingly decent.
My mother used to sing the song "I Know An Old Lady" to me when I was a kid. Listening to it now, it's an absolutely morbid song. However, Mr. Johnstupid adds in some laughing, sound effects and over-enthusiasm to try making it less morbid. It doesn't work. The old lady still dies at the end.
Listen to I Know An Old Lady
Papa John's Musical Garden
We have a really nice Christian children's cassette to review. You'd think that the Lord would want to preserve the works of his faithful followers, but this cassette has gone sticky and is quite unplayable. My Pioneer deck made it sound like the work of Satan. This is one of the many reasons why I hate cassettes, especially ones made in the early 1980s. I saw a vinyl copy of this during the Junq Tour, but passed on picking it up because I had already purchased this copy which is stickier than a child's hands after finding grandma's collection of expired candy. Luckily, I was able to get a decent copy from my Jana deck which I had done a full restoration on. The motor had enough torque to drag the tape past the playback heads.
Anyway, this tape is really annoying and I can't really blame the Pioneer deck for not wanting to play it. There appears to be a really bad splice in the theme song which is on the master recording and not the cassette. They would have been better off leaving the whole fucking thing on the cutting room floor.
Listen to Garden Song - Theme
Listen to my Pioneer deck struggle with the tape
Counterpoint
Every go by someone's counter and hurt yourself on the corner? That's why this band is named "Counterpoint". Your first encounter with it is painful.
There is a fine line between acapella music and barber shop music. I've discovered that I'd rather listen to a whole album of acapella music instead of this shit. The barber needs to aim his blade a little lower and cut out some vocal cords.
Listen to Old Man River
Sing-A-Long Golden Oldies
Aaaah!! It's blindingly yellow!
Ever listen to an album and wonder if there was actually a human involved in making it? This is one of those albums. I swear all of this shit is just pre-programmed garbage sitting on the microchips of a Kawai organ. Push a button, it plays, everybody is miserable.
The musical arrangements are by Doreen Stapleton. That's it. Nobody else. She probably pressed the play button on the Kawai, recorded it to tape, and called it a day. How lazy can you get?
Listen to Five Foot Two
The Fugitives - Music at Heart
Hey! I know these guys! I reviewed them 12 years ago on this lemon of an album:
It's sad that I've been listening to the worst music ever created for the past 12 years. Anyway...
One side has of this album has instrumentals, and the other side has vocals performances which would have been better left as instrumentals. They still can't sing.
While Mr. Johnstone was able to make a decent performance of "Country Roads", The Fugitives decided to take a shit all over it. They're just as crappy as I remembered them from 12 years ago.
Listen to Country Roads
Book: Rainbow Garden
Initially, this book appeared to have no dialogue in it. It just seemed to be a collection of strange drawings that made you wonder what the fuck was going on. I found the dialogue in the very back of the book. I honestly tried to read it, but flipping from the dialogue to the pictures (and back again) only made me as angry as this girl:
So I figured I'd do what any sane human would do... I wrote my own story and glued all the dialogue into the pictures. I couldn't glue together a coherent story keeping the images in the correct order, so I rearranged them in an order that made sense to me.
So I am proud to present a really fucked up story book for your enjoyment!
Download my masterpiece here!
There's even worse stuff from the next location. I've been very excited to get to it because of how down right awful it is. Fasten your seat belt because you're going for a ride to the bottom of the dumpster....
But first, we need to take care of Halloween! Sorry...