I have a new feature on this site... New Artists! I've signed up with a website who distributes new artists to websites and blogs for review. In other words, all the audio digitizing, MP3 tagging and artwork scanning is all done by the artist. All I have to do is listen to it and figure out if I want to review it. Easy!
These poor guys don't know what hit them. This isn't Rolling Stone magazine, it's Classical Gas Emissions. All my loyal readers know what's coming, so I should probably quit typing all this intro crap and get to the artists who are desperately waiting for me to feature their content...
We all knew this was coming. It was inevitable that I would be featuring a Christian artist with my new-found source of blogging badness.
The band plays perfectly fine. Phil sounds perfectly fine. The backup singers sound extremely sexy. But the lyrics and the production are EXTREMELY CORNY.
I'm bringing you the song "America Needs To Pray". Why does America need to pray? Because fuck all those other countries. They don't need God's help. America does! We don't worship Buddha, Allah, Zeus, or any of those other bullshit Gods. We worship Christ, because he's the only one that matters, right? RIGHT! So America rules, and everybody else drools.
Vangueety apparently has degrees in music performance and music production. Perhaps I'm fucking retarded and deaf, but I'm just not hearing any professionalism in the recording. Vangueety is also visually impared which proves my point for the umpteenth time... Just because you have a disability, it doesn't mean you're a talented musician.
The album cover (if that actually is an album cover) shows Vangueety holding an electric guitar. The only thing I heard that even REMOTELY resembles a guitar in his music is a Sitar. Now, I may not have a professional degree in music like Vangueety does, but the last time I played my electric guitar, it didn't sound like it came from India. But you need to remember, this opinion is coming from an UNEDUCATED musician. My guitar might actually sound like a Sitar, but I may be just too stupid to realize it.
So please feel free to enjoy the music of a REAL musician!
Ahmed El-Motassem - This Song May Be Monitored For Your Protection
Well, I monitored the song, and I've decided to ignore protection. You guys are gonna suffer along with me on this one.
According to the press release,
"Fans of Lou Reed, Kate Bush, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen ... are likely to find something to love about this record."
I enjoy all those artists just fine, but this record sucks. Perhaps if you play the songs "Lisa Says", "Wuthering Heights", "Hang On St. Christopher", "Because The Night", and "Everybody Knows" all at the same time, you might get something that sounds almost as bad as this Ahmed record.
I could have plucked any of Ahmed's songs because they all sit on the same level of sub-par, but I got his permission to re-upload one of his music videos! Yay! The video is just as fucked up as the music, so I guess it works. The video stars Mickey Mouse. The video was also produced by Mickey Mouse.
Enjoy wasting the next 3 1/2 minutes of your life:
Well that was fun and easy! Be sure to watch for some more kick ass new releases coming your way soon from Classical Gas Emissions! Also, I'm currently working on plans for another appearance on Amateur Hour, so stay tuned for that!
Christmas is coming, so you're gonna want some super Christmas-tastic music for the giant piss-ups you're going to have during the holidays. Look no further than classicalgasemissions.com for all your Christmas music needs! We have songs by drunken irishmen, child slaves, and people who are almost dead! So sit back, get drunk, and enjoy these great songs as you pass out by the fireplace waiting for the jolly red thing to come belching out of your fallopian chimney!
After noticing the copyright year of 1935 listed on the cassette, I did a Google search on the song. Turns out it's a pretty common song, but I've never heard it in my life. The song itself (especially the ending) reminds me of the song "E.T. I Love You" which is fitting since Jesus is basically an extra-terrestrial anyway.
Nevertheless, the song is terrible and the lyrics leave me desiring to go home with E.T. to avoid mankind's desire to record such atrocious Christian music. That's why I made it available for you to hear!
Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a drunken Irishman who decides to record his own album. How do I know he's Irish? Well first of all, his accent. Second, he's singing about Christmas in the town of Killarney. As I recall, Killarney does NOT have their own thrift store which is a damn shame because I could have found this gem years ago. Third, look at him. He LOOKS like he's ready to barf all over that mandolin.
There are two original Christmas songs on this tape, but the only one worth mentioning is "Pork Up Your Christmas". Seriously. He wrote that. The single most noteworthy line of George's writing career is contained in the lyric, "His sack is all greasy with pickle and pork." Sounds like George had a love affair with a drunken pig.
I've written about many presumably drunk artists on Classical Gas Emissions, but this one is pretty damn obvious. Let's have a little more Christmas cheer for George! Maybe he'll pass out half way through side 2 and let me have some silence!
This album was recorded in Brandon, Manitoba, which immediately explains why it sound like it was sung by a bunch of retired wheat farmers. This album will bring warbly-voiced joy to your home, filling it with delightful odours of mothballs and old, dried, spilled Ensure meal supplements. Everyone on this album is surely 55+ and I recommend they go back to making wall pictures out of jigsaw puzzles as opposed to recording "music".
This Christmas album would have been better if they had turned on the radio pictured on the cover photo, and recorded THAT onto a CD. They could re-name the album "The Musical Expressions listen to Christmas Classics on the Radio" and it immediately eliminates the need for them to muster up their prune-filled energy to sing, nor use their Tylenol-coated joints to play instruments. Not only that, they get the recognition they want, and get to deliver quality music to their audience!
The song I'm featuring brings out everything that is awful about the album. We have a geriatric saxophone player who's embouchure is drooping as badly as his testicles, making the saxophone sound much flatter than the rest of the synthesized music. Oh, that vibrato you hear him playing? That's not intentional, he's just having a seizure from losing precious oxygen to play the damn thing. The singers come in a little over half way, and ruin the fuck out of the rest of the song. I hope they all get coal enemas for Christmas.
I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but my boss has cut back our out-of-town trips, so there won't be as many installations of the Junq Tour in the coming years. But I'll certainly be taking advantage of the ones that come my way!
For the past few trips to Brandon, I was stumped when it came to the thrift stores. It seemed that nobody knew if or where they existed. This time, I was pointed in the right direction. Besides the crappy Value Village, there are two other thrift stores - the Nearly New Shop and the MCC (which I forgot to take a picture of) being the goldmine. As a side note, I ran across yet another copy of Teo Mance's "Inday" album. The guy probably spent an entire year, traveling the country to donate copies of his album to every Thrift Store known to mankind.
This entry is a bit long, so feel free to bite in small chunks to avoid choking and death.
Bruce Innes - Brandon Centennial Song (Yesterday's Dream - Tomorrow's Future)
The greatest way to begin this Junq Tour entry is to feature a song from the city I visited. This charmful duet will have you deleting the file from your hard drive in no time. This special collector's edition 45 RPM record is so rare that there were only three other copies at the Thrift Store. Side 2 has a guy with a very noticeable French accent talking about his experiences in the city of Brandon. REALLY EXCITING SHIT HERE!!! Why don't we have more talent coming out of Brandon, Manitoba? (Probably because many are inbred wheat farmers.)
The Consumer Goods - Happy Bidet -or- A Scientific Inquiry Into The Non-Denominational Same-Sex Marriage of Social Justice and Scatological Deflectors
There's so much about this album that made it prime blogging material, regardless of how good the content was. First of all, the album title is way too long. It's in competition with Tyrannosaurus Rex's "My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair, But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows" as one of the longest album titles in existence.
Second, look at the cover. The guy is sitting on a bidet, blasting the crunchies that are swinging from his ass hairs. So what could go wrong with purchasing this album? Well, for one, I'm big on judging a compact disc by it's cover. This album was either going to be magnificent, or it was going to be as awful as a protate examination.
Unfortunately, these guys are talented. The melodies are actually quite nice, they play their instruments well, but the lyrics.... Well, it's mostly frustration and sarcasm rooted in politics. We're presented with songs such as "Happy Bidet (Let The Balled Eagle Soar)", "The Kiss Army", "Eat A Dick, Cheney", "Mafeking Shithouse", and a tribute to our lousy Winnipeg mayor, "And the Final Word is Yours, Sam Katz". The song "Let's Have Another Round Of Applause For The American Empire!" is actually 29 seconds of nothing. Absolutely brilliant.
I wasn't going to post anything from this album, but with the recent news of our mayor Sam Katz fucking things up again, I posted the song about him...
Please use a click track next time you decide to record an album. Your multiple guitar tracks are all over the bloody place like a kid who got hit by a semi truck.
I like how you put a picture of yourself in the fireplace. Please consider putting the master tapes from your album in there too.
Thanks for autographing your CD. I'll bet the ego boost made you feel good enough to record another album.
Sincerely,
The author of classicalgasemissions.com on behalf of the readers of classicalgasemissions.com
Normally I would leave cassettes like this alone, but this one is narrated by Pat Boone. Yes! PAT FUCKING BOONE! You may remember him from his hits "No More Mr. Nice Guy", "Enter Sandman" and "Crazy Train". Before Pat Boone entered into the heavy metal scene, he narrated children's cassettes. After listening to this tape, I ultimately realized that there is absolutely no limit to Pat Boone's talents. The guy is absolutely magnificent in everything he touches as an artist.
So where is Pat Boone these days? Well, he's doing infomercials, selling walk-in bathtubs to old people. So much fucking talent! Pat Boone should be Knighted and inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.
So, this is supposed to be some kind of benefit song. You'd think with all the money that Manitoba Lotteries makes from old ladies stuffing their grandchildren's inheritance into slot machines, they would hire someone who could record something remotely professional. This shit sounds like it was recorded in a mothball-filled basement closet and was mixed in 12 minutes. After such an extensive production job, it was then sent off to the lottery corporation to inspire billions of Manitobans to think about dying from Cancer as opposed to hearing this CD again.
As a side note, the CDDB identifies this CD as "Kissing Willie" by Jethro Tull. I really do wish this was a Jethro Tull CD. At least they were talented.
This one's autographed too! With all the autographed albums I've acquired in my blogging career, I should be able to sell them on ebay for $5000 each and take a nice early retirement.
There's been another Kenny Parrott album sitting in my "in queue" box for about three to four years now. I did try getting around to writing about it at one point, but never completed it. Now that dear Kenny has weaseled his way into the Junq Tour (and into my ever-growing list of oddball discographies to collect), I'll make it a point to review it in the next few months.
Kenny tackles many songs that have been covered on many other albums I've featured on Classical Gas Emissions. Songs like "Are You Lonesome Tonight" and "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" have been done to death by everyone. However, Kenny does grace us with a few songs that nobody else has touched. His covers are extremely bland and he just carbon copies every original that he touches. Seriously, what's the purpose of this album? To think that Volume One exists makes me dread the day when I'll no doubt find it in the thrift store and have to review it as well.
I've decided to let you hear Kenny Parrot and the Fucked Edition do a lousy version of a Kenny Rogers and the First Edition song. If Kenny really did lose his limbs in that crazy Asian war, we wouldn't be listening to this crap.
This cassette did not come with an inlay card. There's something to be said about a band who doesn't put their name on the cassette label.... "We're not important enough to be credited, so we'll just let Classical Gas Emissions christen us with a band name - yes that "Christ" pun was intended!" So from this point on, we'll refer to this Christian band as "Creamin' and The Bible"
Creamin' and The Bible appear to be made up of a musical family who pleases us with Christian songs such as "Christian Cowgirl", "Kid Talk", and "The Lord's Prayer". All of them seem to take turns at singing, and their voices range from mediocre to pavement-scraping awful. The album sounds as if it were recorded on a piece of plywood, and then mastered with a layer of lead paint and holy-water. The lyrics were obviously written by the children in the family who were dropped on their heads while being baptized.
My cassette player has a music search feature, but it has great difficulty finding the spaces between songs because there's some other audio bleeding through. My guess is that Creamin' and The Bible recorded over cassettes that contained Satanic messages, thereby corrupting the minds of anybody listening to this album. While you listen to it, I'm going to burn some crosses and sing Judas Priest songs backwards.
Remember The Mini Pops? They were great. Licking on the boot-heels of the Mini Pops are The Little Birds. It's a band made up entirely of children, and even I can feel the shame that their parents must feel. Ever hear a 4 year old kid sing? It's cute isn't it? The only reason it's cute is because it's short-lived. Take that 4 year old kid, stick him in a recording studio, make an album, and then figure out the best way to end your life, because you'll need to after you listen to the entire thing.
The Little Turds tackle songs such as "Stupid Cupid", "Rockin' Robin", the Ike & Tina version of "Proud Mary", "Smoke On The Water", a sloppy dogging version of "Wipe-Out" which you swear is going to fall apart into a million pieces at any second, and the shittiest cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that I've ever heard in my entire life.
I really thought that Courtney Smith album was the worst one I'd ever heard done by a child, but this one completely takes over the number one spot. Every cover song on this album is terrible to extreme degrees, but I've narrowed it down to the two worst...
Anybody left out there??? Anybody??? The content of this entry was painful to listen to. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the next entry as much as I'll enjoy the brief silence after making this one.
It feels like forever since I've written a proper entry! The warm weather is here and there's stuff to do outside. Not only that, I've been hard at work on an entry for a songwriting contest. You'll be able to hear it sometime after June 15th, so stay tuned for that!
This time around, I dived into my "in queue" box and plucked these four CDs. They looked interesting enough, and interesting they were! So sit back, light up a cigar, and prepare to choke on the smoke in disbelief of the goods I've brought you...
Graham Leathers - Reality Check!
After listening to this album, I hoped the dog chewed him up into little bits because the world does not need a "Reality Check Vol. 2." I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a children's album or just a terrible Barenaked-Ladies-inspired piece of crap. Graham's voice really gets on my nerves, and it's pretty obvious that this was a home-recorded album.
I was really hoping that the song "Beautiful Legs" was going to be about Graham drooling over some woman's sexy figure and then getting beaned with a purse full of tampons and lipstick. Unfortunately, it's about bugs. Graham: you are NOT Alice Cooper. This song is terrible.
Look at this old lady. She looks so lovely with her black beaded necklace, ugly broach, and happy potted plant in the background. This album cover sets the mood for romance in a nursing home. I was really excited about this album solely because of the album cover, and the first song I listened to based on it's promise to deliver something fantastic was "I Sing Because I'm Happy". Guess what? It's an instrumental song. In fact, the whole album is instrumental. How deceiving! Fuck you, Joy!
She can certainly play piano, but this album has absolutely no charm without Joy's amazing vocals - which we never get to hear. What a let down. No track posted because it's boring.
Skye Sterling - Moonlight & Roses / Memory Lane / Thank You For Sharing The Love
You know you're in for a treat when the person making the album can't decide on a definitive album title. One is on the front cover, one is on the back cover, and one is on the CD. A tip for those of you making your own album: be sure to use ALL your album title ideas to completely confuse your two fans.
This guy's pretty full of himself. He had the balls to put a total of 8 pictures of himself on the album cover. Skye performs all his favorite songs on here. It's really too bad that he did such a shitty job on every one of them. The Jim Henson company should hire this guy because he has a very Muppet-esque voice, and I'm pretty sure they could surround him by some genuinely TALENTED musicians.
I was really torn between posting "Always On My Mind" or "Ring Of Fire". In the end, I figured I'd give Willie Nelson a reason to smash his old-ass guitar over someone's head.
My first question when I saw this album was, "Why is there a comma at the end of the album title?" The inlay card provides a perfectly good explanation:
Oct. 2000 - Loss of eyesight in right eye due to possible "optic neuritis".
June 2001 - Loss of eyesight in left eye due to probable "ischemic optic neuropathy...
...and there you go. Randy most likely designed the album cover himself and didn't see the comma he accidentally put there because he's fucking blind.
I've said it on this blog before and I'll say it again: just because you have a disability, it doesn't mean you should record an album. This also wasn't just a one-time CD pressing either, there were about 12 copies of this hunk of shit at the thrift store. When you see that, you can't help but think "Wow! There's 12 fucking copies here! This guy MUST be AWESOME!!!"
He's not. He's extremely annoying. Randy moans through seven badly written songs about praising God. Don't believe me? Have fun cringing....
I've been sick on and off for the last three weeks. I'm fucking tired of it and pretty miserable about being cooped up in the house, nursing my now skinny ass back to health. It's a perfectly ideal excuse to write a blog entry!
Here's some cassettes I picked up at one of my favorite thrift stores a while back. I went in there with a walkman, previewed a bunch of their tapes, and bought the most interesting ones. Here's what I walked out with...
The Welfare Starlets
This song suits me perfectly as I'm bleeding from my rectum from having constant diarrhea over the past three days. This band actually released one album in their lifetime, but this song isn't on it. It's a great song and I'm sure it conveys my painful rectal feelings onto you, the reader and listener. But unlike the songs says, I can't eat taco chips or squiggly candies because I'll just barf 'em back out. Women have it easy.
My dick can't sing, and maybe that's a good thing. If it did, I'd have to castrate myself and become celibate, and knowing my libido I'd have to kill myself along with my singing wang. This cassette is actually an adorable recording of a child (around three years old) singing nursery rhymes, the alphabet, and anything other songs he can mess up in his own cute way.
I can't sing because I'm still recovering from having laryngitis last week. I don't have to sing to be slim because I've been puking up everything I eat. I've lost a total of 6 lbs just by not eating. Fuck you Tom Monkman! Your weight loss program isn't as effective as the one I've been on! I'm suing you for the fifty cents I spent on your shitty cassette! Oh wait, I can't because the cassette says "for educational purposes only."
On the subject of the actual content of this tape, it's another religious weight-loss program. Apparently singing praises to the Lord will make you shit out the pounds.
Sometimes the best way to get the Lord's message across is to scream it so hard that nobody understands what your problem is. This is some fine Christian death metal that makes you appreciate the fact that you can't understand any of it. Luckily they provide a lyric sheet so you can scream along at home! The singer sounds a lot like I did last week when I had laryngitis.
I really have to wonder where people get their ideas from. "Hey, The Beatles suck wombat balls! Maybe we could make them more tolerable if we take some of their songs and turn them into smooth jazz renditions!"
I think I've officially gone crazy by being cooped up for days and listening to a cassette of jazzy Beatles songs. Please send the mobile crisis unit to my house so they can lock me up in a rubber cell when I can no longer be tortured. Or send me some nice morphine so I can sleep through the nights.
Welcome to another pooperiffic installation of the Junq Tour! We may have entered 2013, but there's nothing like taking the time traveling machine back to the year 2012 to revisit some of the garbage that has robbed me of my money, tortured my soul, and cluttered the dungeon from which I am locked in to write these blog entries for all of eternity. I'm certain that none of you feel pity for me, and rightly so because I bring all this torture upon myself. YOU are a sick person for allowing me to suffer like this and subscribe to this blog.
So, let's commence with the suffering!
Ricky King - Die 20 Schonsten Welthits im Gitarren-Sound
Tell me this album does NOT look interesting. You've got covers of Neil Diamond, The Beatles, Hot Butter, Boney M, and Simon & Garfunkel (although it's NOT Bridge Over Troubled Water this time.) Look at the guy on the cover. He's a dork with bad teeth and an awful suit. The strangest thing about this album is it was released on Epic records.
This album is absolutely full of Gitarren-Soundy goodness! The arrangements aren't all that bad, and this album is reminiscent of The Ventures, and The Ventures kicked ass. The only one I don't like is the shitty cover of Popcorn. Everyone who has tried to cover that song has fucked it up. LEAVE IT ALONE!!!! You can't improve on that song. It's perfect only in its original form.
So here is a Duane Eddy-ish sounding cover of Boney M's Rivers of Babylon.
Sound sheets are always interesting to find. They put all kinds of shit on them, and this is pretty shitty! It follows in the same spirit of the birthday cassettes made by Kidselebration except this one was made by ABC Records and Tape Sales Corp - probably another hole in the wall recording studio set out to make a few bucks. If the record slips while it's playing, you're supposed to put coins on the stars. Since I'm poor from paying for my lawyer, I had to use rocks instead of coins.
The song is just as cornball as the Kidselebration songs, and you get ripped off because there's only on song on this thing. Once the novelty wears off, you can run this sound sheet through a paper shredder. Can't do that with a cassette!
I've seen Marcy albums all over the place - in thrift stores and on websites featuring oddball records. Marcy seems to be a Christian puppet (much better than those asshole Atheist puppets) who sings religious children's songs. Whoever is voicing Marcy needs her neck surgically removed from her body because Marcy is the most annoying thing I've ever heard.
A search on the internet revealed that Marcy has released about fifty fucking billion albums. Feel free to browse the "known" discography here (my favorite is "Marcy sings to $1.98 Children")
This one is nine minutes long, so feel free to listen to it while you're sitting on the can. It will help pass the time and move the bowel.
This is a record for a film strip or slide show about Jesus (not included - it has likely gone to a better place). There is supposed to be an inaudible signal that changes the frame, but the low frequency noise is loud and clear on my stereo. If you have sub-woofers, it's going to piss you off. I guess it's inaudible when you listen to it on a piece of shit.
The stories are boring and stupid. Here's one for you to listen to about a guy who gets ripped off, just like Jesus rips me off by having his followers put out all these terrible Christian records.
Die Puppy is a spoken word cassette containing stories about bald, creepy dolls who persuade a mob of hungry children to join them in the brutal killing of baby dogs. Die Puppy is an intensely graphic, disgusting recording which holds the potential power to make animal rights activists explode upon listening. Since the entire cassette is in German, I can only assume that this is what the contents of the cassette are. Germans are evil, and their dolls are REALLY REALLY evil.
Kris Kenemy - Christ My Love
First of all, let's look at the cover. Kris looks like he's going to cry. Why is he crying? Well, two people are running away from him, probably because he smells bad. Why does he smell bad? Well, nobody is wearing shoes, so it's entirely possible that Kris stepped in dog shit and had the brown mush squish up from between his toes, kinda like Playdoh when you press it with a fork. Poor Kris. But I'm sure the shit coming up from the bottom of his foot gave him the divine inspiration to record this album.
It's pretty bad. The piano player and drummer are desperately wanting to go off and play whatever the fuck they want, and Kris is just singing a bunch of crappy lyrics he came up with while he was bored in church.
The first song consists of six minutes of him singing about how Jesus makes him cream his panties. The second song is spelled incorrectly (It's spelled "Yahweh", not "Yahwey" - even I know that dumbass, what the fuck kind of Christian are you?) Don't worry people, only Kris's panties were creamed during the recording of this album. Everyone else went home dry and promptly indulged themselves in music made by TALENTED people to get the bad taste out of their ears.
This album was recorded onto Chromium Dioxide tape in Dolby HX Pro. Despite these fantastic enhancements in recording technology which can render a crisp high quality recording, you'll end up with a shitty product when you record your album on an answering machine. It also doesn't help when you play your keyboard after drinking three bottles of cheap gin. Despite Jim & Helen's attempt to accurately cover The Beatles, I certainly wouldn't have known it was a famous Beatles song had I not interpreted the inlay card. Not only does it sound NOTHING like Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, the title is written on the inlay as if it's about someone chewing on the food they're vomiting up.
American Pick Hit Artists - Top Ten Rock 1977 Vol.3
This isn't my first entry from these guys. I reviewed Vol.6 in this entry. What the fuck is it with these guys and their desire to ruin perfectly good Boston songs? Perhaps volumes 1,2,4 and 5 all have other tracks off Boston's debut album. I'd love to come up with a Boston tribute album out of all this, but finding these closet-produced 8-tracks isn't as easy as finding albums by Eddy Arnold and Lawrence Welk. Ever walk into a thrift store and look at the 8-track shelf? It's fucking LOADED with Lawrence Welk albums! Some people just put out too many albums, and too many idiots buy EVERY SINGLE ONE of them.
There's a lot of crap on this 8-track that I'm not familiar with. It's mainly stuff that's on-the-verge-of-disco music and mellow 70s junk that I couldn't be bothered with. But this Boston cover is really bad. It's also cut short so the suffering doesn't extend to the seven minutes of the original version.
And now, I welcome you back to the year 2013 - at least for a brief period of time. I still may have another one or two Junq Tours to catch up on - unless the stuff I bought is all recordings of talented musicians playing really good music (and how likely is that?)
Yes! I'm back on tour to collect thrift store garbage from all over Manitoba. The Southern part of the province is covered mainly by the Christian Wheat Belt, so the thrift stores are naturally packed to the tits with Christian albums, Christian videos, Christian books, and Hutterites. I'm really trying to remember to take pictures of the thrift stores I visit, and I actually remembered this time.
So, fire up those horses and plows and we'll take a trip through Southern Manitoba's thrilling thrift store goodies...
George Staerkel - The Signature Collection
Hooray for photoshop! You know, George could do anything he wanted in photoshop for his greatest hits CD. My suggestion would have been to put some hair on him, but instead he left it bald, and the glare makes it a very obvious photoshop disaster. He could have trimmed his head down too which might have helped make it less photochopped.
Now then, onto the CD. I cannot deny that George is very talented. The guy can sing very well, and he can also play a nice array of instruments such as the trumpet, the saxophone, the piano, and a few others that I don't feel like mentioning. Although George can span a few octaves with his voice, he seems to prefer squeezing his balls and singing songs of a falsetto nature. Included are the songs "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Cara Mia", "Stay", and he also yodels through a few. He pulls it off very well, considering the pain he puts up with his balls squished in what is likely the hand of his wife Barbara.
The downside to this CD is the production. There's way too much reverb on everything, and the entire recording is run through a compressor, making it sound like compressed echoey crap.
All production values aside, it's very difficult to pick a song when there's so much talent to be found. But not all was lost... The song "The Lonely Bull" has George doing some very lovely trumpet work in it. Unfortunately, the trumpet is the only real instrument in the song. Everything else is synthesized. BADLY. The star of the show is the mandolin which, instead of sounding like a mandolin, sounds a lot like the "Mario got squished by an elevator" sound from the Colecovision version of Donkey Kong.
The Humorous Gospel Songs of Bob Larson
I had a bitch of a time getting this record to play on my turntable. A little known fact: Atheist turntables have a much larger spindle in order to avoid playing garbage like this. I had to hammer this stubborn whore into submission because it was so tight.
The subtitle for this album is "Compatible Stereo". What the hell is compatible stereo? What would incompatible stereo sound like? Mono? Silence? Help me out here...
All the songs on this album sound pretty much the same with the exception of the lyrics. Bob Larson isn't much of a singer, so instead he does some kind of half-assed rapping. Mind you, this album came out before rap music was invented, so I guess Bobby is a pioneer when it comes to rap music. As for the songs being humorous, well, they're not. Well, maybe except for the song "Grumbling Christians". Lyrically, it's absolutely miserable but musically, it's happy as fuck. It's like listening to a 1950's version of The Police.
The Bibleman Adventure
This video looked too terrible to pass up, and it certainly was. I honestly couldn't be bothered to watch it past the exciting theme song because it was so head-bangingly retarded. The intro itself gave me enough excitement to fulfill 7 years worth of Sunday sermons.
By the way, I played the title screen in slow motion to see what all the moving computer text was. It appears to be some sort of video routine taking place in an OSX terminal. At least we know Jesus approves of Apple products.
Check out this totally fucking epic action scene where Bibleman stops a group of bible thieves by ... uhhh... waving his arms at them?
We need more superheroes based on old books. My two suggestions are "Moby Dick Man" and "Playful Pussy Woman"
There's plenty more Junq Tour entries on the way! Unfortunately, it's because we're short-staffed at work and I have to fill in with extra trips. Might as well make the best of them!
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.
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.
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.
This is a really, really long entry which is why it took so long to post. Not only that, spring is in the air and I've been mating like rabbits. I've also been doing a major cleaning of my garage and working overtime. It's just been a very busy period for me, and you know what busy periods mean... lots of messy cleanup!
I bought a ton of stuff when I passed through Dauphin. The thrift stores were overloaded with goodies, and I've filtered out the crap I wasted my money on so I could bring you the best of the worst and the worst of the best!
Bob Brown's Orchestra (revisited)
I found two more of these! I picked up three of them last year when I visited the Hodge Podge in Dauphin. They've been added to the archive which you can get here.
Nebula 9 - Scream - A Collection of Modern-Gothic Works
There was a whole series of these books, but this was the only interesting one. This book contains poetry and short stories, some of which are kind of fucked up. Whoever wrote these desperately needs therapy because a perfectly sane person like myself would NEVER write anything this messed up!
Desiree Fox
I don't know why, but I always have a soft spot for girls with a rounder face. So yeah, I picked up this tape because I liked her face. Her clothes are kinda ugly though. I was really hoping this girl's voice was as nice as her face, but she sounds like a less talented version of Tiffany.
Anyway, this cassette of covers is extremely underwhelming and not worth posting a clip. Perhaps if she had covered "All This Time" or "I'm Not Sleeping" I could've been more forgiving.
Kevin & Marg Harcourt - Our Gospel Favorites
When I started this blog, I never thought I'd be collecting entire discographies of artists that nobody gave a shit about. This is my third entry for "Weird Kevin" Harcourt, and it's his shittiest album yet (others here and here). There's nothing remotely interesting on here except Kevin's Kermitty voice, so I'm not putting up a sound clip.
Emerson Stone
I like it! I think that's the first time I've ever written that on this blog. Seriously, it's decent music and it's catchy enough for me to enjoy.
The Glendys - Third Time's A Charm
Oh my fucking god! If you're looking for a singer (I wasn't) who sounds like he's got a nose full of snot and a mouth full of chewing tobacco, then you've gotta get The Glendys "Third Time's A Charm" album. After their previous albums "First Time We Were Drunk" and "Second Time We Ever Picked Up A Guitar" failed like a busted condom, they finally hit a home run. Unfortunately, they tripped and fell while running home, smashing their noses into their faces which is why the album sounds like it was recorded in 'nasal-round-sound'
So here's a Kenny Rogers cover. Poor Kenny. First the facelift, now this...
Aerobic Praise
Why must these Christian groups keep enforcing the thought that exercising and praising God go together well? This tape is a nightmare! In the right channel, we have the worst Christian music ever recorded. In the left channel, we have some bitch commanding us to move all over the goddam place. If one of your speakers isn't working, this cassette isn't going to be effective. You'll either be moving around the house like an idiot, or you'll kill yourself to stop the pain from this shitty praise music.
Apparently this is a second volume. The reasoning for making more than one of these albums is beyond me. Volume one probably isn't any better.
Buryl Red & Grace Hawthorne - It's Cool In The Furnace
This is apparently a pretty popular Christian musical about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (I can't believe I remembered how to spell those fucked up names.) The production is nice, the children can sing, and it's an all-around decent album for Christian kids. I wouldn't however recommend it to those of you who are raising your children to be Satanists. It will contradict all the values that took years to instill into your children.
Anyway, the biggest problem I have with this album is the title track. The smooth-jazz song is way too fucking long, it has minimal content for lyrics, and ends every line with the word "man" (kinda like a certain guy I know). So if you like boring and lengthy repetitive songs, this one is for you!
The Brothers In Law Strike Again
Another 'fine' release on the Arc label. As a side note, I bought Anne Murray's first album which was released on Arc. It's actually a really good folk album! Too bad she turned to crappy country music after such a great start.
Anyway, The Brothers In Law play bluegrass music and sing tongue-in-cheek lyrics about political and historical Canadian issues. I'm not too fond of bluegrass nor Canadian history, so this album doesn't have much to offer me. However, "Lullaby to a Spoiled Brat" is pretty funny, so I've put it up for you rich folk who don't understand why I buy old junk in the thrift stores. Hey, I can't understand why you buy hardwood flooring and then are afraid of scratching it. You've got the money to install it, so you MUST have the money to fix it!
Candle - The Music Machine
I bought this because it looked like someone recorded over it, so I thought it would be interesting to spend the 25 cents and find out what was on it. Unfortunately, nobody recorded over this awful Christian tape, but fear not! It doesn't play worth a damn in my machine which makes it sound like Satan is taking over their souls.
Celebrate Saskatchewan with The Panio Brothers
I very recently mentioned these guys in the Neepawa entry. I didn't think they put out any albums, but here it is in all it's 8-trackky glory. Guess what? They still suck. This album is worse than the lowly 45 I picked up. I'm pretty sure the entire band was intoxicated while they recorded this album. Musically, it sounds like a drunken slopfest. I can certainly appreciate this music when it's played well, but Christ you'd think they would at least ATTEMPT to stay sober while recording!
How bad is it? Well, this is absolutely the WORST version of "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" I've ever heard in my life. The band doesn't hold it together, and the singing drunk sounds like he's going to puke while crying in the rain. You can literally hear the room spinning in his voice!
Our Father Played & Sung by Fr. Ray Guimond
I have a great debate when I find shitty looking Christian albums. I've bought many of them and most of them are very mediocre. Every time I pick one up in the thrift store, I think to myself "is this going to be as crummy as it looks?" Most of the time I put the album down and keep going. I'm not sure why I grabbed this one, but it's probably the second-worst album I've ever featured on this blog. Think of the Steve Wilson album, but a bit more talented. ONLY A BIT.
The music is very smooth pop, the mix is bad, and Ray's voice makes him sounds like he's got parkinsons disease and is singing on his death bed. All the songs are at various stages of bad, so it was tough choosing a song off here. I decided to just go with the title track, because that's the song that should represent the whole album, and it REALLY sets it up for failure.
Oak Bank Pride - 2004 Oak Bank Elementary School Music Performances
This one was still sealed. Albums made by elementary schools are always weird, terrible, or both. The music is quite well produced and sounds almost professional. Then an entire class of tone-deaf children ruin the whole fucking thing. Not only do you get children singing badly, the CD also includes a video file containing clips of the recording sessions. So this time you can actually pinpoint the children who are ruining the songs you're listening to!
I've graciously included a Youtube video of the song "Jubilation". The kid on the cowbell got fired from Blue Oyster Cult because her sense of rhythm is about as good as a quadriplegic having a seizure. One of the drunken Panio Brothers bashing a trashcan could do a better job.
Video: Learn to Discern
Christian videos that slam mainstream music are always fun. This one has a lot of boring fodder, but right in the middle they did a piece on Kurt Cobain and how he has influenced kids to kill themselves. Since I was a fan of Nirvana, I decided to kill myself as well. I blew my head off with a shotgun at age 16 and my religious mother (who warned me that Nirvana was satanic) felt absolutely no remorse over my death.
I love how this segment of the video was prefaced by a video clip of the highly controversial heavy metal band Nelson. When I wanna get my Satan on, Nelson is the first thing I grab off my CD shelf.
Whew! That's a lot of stuff! I think I spent about 2-3 hours in Dauphin collecting it all. I've got a nice trip to Thompson coming up which means I'll probably be hitting the thrift store in Ashern on the way back.
I've got tons more stuff that I'm just dying to post, but I've been lacking the time. Summer is here (okay, it's Spring, but it's a really nice spring) and I'm enjoying getting outside and doing things. Not only that, every two years I re-vamp my computers (and this spring is the deadline for me) so I need to do massive backups, formatting, installing, and all that other fun shit. However, I'm in the process of building myself a nice file server (which I've named Jehovah) so things should be a little more smooth with transition in the years to come.
Until the next entry, keep your eyes on the skies!
