Album Review: Ben Century - Unwanted

There's one major difference between this album and every other album I've reviewed on Classical Gas Emissions.... I made this one! Well, I sorta made this one too, but "Unwanted" is a more serious attempt at musicianship than that other piece of junk which is a compilation of songs I recorded as a kid.

Speaking of which, it's been a dream of mine to record and release an album since I was about 7 years old. This was my first attempt:



It sold a total of one copy! In those days, I didn't have a dual tape deck so I just played and sang the songs every time I wanted to make a copy. I even spliced the cassette myself to eliminate all the dead space! Each song is about 30 seconds long, and there's even a couple of instrumentals!

So what was the main motivation for finally recording and releasing my own album? It was actually the last band I was in. This band constantly teedered and toddered between the names "Apathy" and "Tone Deaf". We actually recorded an "album", but I was at the mercy of the guitar player who wanted to remain in control. To him, I was just a mere vocalist and occasional lyricist. My attempts to have more input on the songs and mixing of the album were turned down like a blister-covered hooker. Because of my lack of input, we ended up with classic songs such as "Fred The Mouse" and the entire album was mixed in mono.

I had more input in my previous band Proper Motion - who's name came from us making fun of the drummer, and a fictitious story of him sitting in the corner masturbating. I wrote a good half of the songs, most of the lyrics, and had some input from the other members to fine-craft our songs into the excellent compositions they were. I still enjoy those songs today, and I'm quite proud of the accomplishments we had as a band.

Anyway, let's get back to the Apathy/Tone Deaf story. The drummer and myself were frustrated with the guitar player and bass player (who were brothers) because they didn't want to go out and play live. Instead, they preferred to sit in the basement and record more albums in mono. The drummer and I came to a point where we'd had enough of the bullshit and quit the band. I still get negative feelings when I listen to those recordings, and I think I actually hate the majority of the songs.

From the day I quit that band, I decided I'd had enough of dealing with shithead band members, their stupid songs, and their shitty mixing jobs. I decided I wanted to record an album all by myself. I started in 2004 and finished last weekend. Yes, it took ten years, although there was a 4 year break in there to focus on raising my son (because his dumbass mother couldn't be bothered). I wrote all the songs, played all the instruments, and sang all the vocals (with two minor exceptions).

So, do I have songs called "Fred the Mouse" that are recorded in mono? HELL NO. I've seen enough bad examples of what NOT to do which I've posted on this blog over the last 7 years. I was able to figure out how to do things BETTER. So the album sounds good, and the songs aren't stupid. One of the songs was written when I was 18 years old. You can tell which one it is because of the dated lyric "I was sitting alone, waiting by the phone". Nobody waits by their phones anymore because we have this new technology called CELL PHONES!!! Just put it into your pocket and wait for it to vibrate pleasure into your pelvis.

Some of you may be saying, "HEY! That album cover looks familiar!" Yes it does, because I originally posted it here. I stole from my own blog! Not only did I steal the cover from my own blog, the liner notes read like one of my blog entries! I should probably sue myself into the depths of my own rectum!



Just look at that fucking craftsmanship!

You can listen to a generous sampling of it here!

It's supposed to be popping up on Amazon any day, and I'll be putting the links up when it does. Until then, you can order a copy directly from createspace. Besides, if you order from createspace, I get more royalty.

Buy it from createspace! Buy it now! You'll love it!

As for touring, I'm not doing it because I don't have the means to. I have a son to raise, but I get a few days off here and there, so I may go out and play a bit for publicity. Even if I don't sell 500 copies, it's an accomplishment that I've dreamed about for decades, and I finally did it. It's a great sense of accomplishment for me, and I'm glad I followed through on it even though it took so long.

In other news, I'll be once again appearing on Kent Davies' Amateur Hour On September 24th. So all you Winnipeggers be sure to tune in to 95.9 FM at 5:00 PM. And for those who don't live in Winnipeg, you'll just have to wait for the podcast version. Poor you.

New Album: Polished Turds

When you throw away your computer, you should probably format the hard drive first. If you don't, your contents are likely to end up on Classical Gas Emissions, and that's exactly what's happening in this entry.

First, I must tell you that in the 7 years I've been writing this blog, I've never had more fun putting together an entry than I did with this one. Every bit of putting this content together was fun and enjoyable!

So what did I find?



This computer belonged to a guy named Kellen Guilbault, who I may add is a fantastic guitar player. Kellen recorded a whole bunch of songs, many of them being classic rock covers. These were all multitrack recordings that were made with a piece of software called Cubase.



I initially found a handful of poorly mixed songs that were in various stages of completeness. After the excitement of finding these, I dug around in the .wav files sitting in the software's default recording folder and found more hidden gems, totalling over 80 minutes of "music".

Now although Kellen is a damn good guitar player, that's pretty much all that's enjoyable about these recordings with a few exceptions. The timing is off, many of the tracks were recorded with a cheap microphone, and Kellen isn't a very good singer. For a couple of songs, he sought out the aid of a female singer (name unknown) who does a better job. I also believe that Kellen's brother Marc is the one playing the drums.

After gathering up the songs, I transferred them to my own PC and put them into my preferred choice of multitrack software: Multitrack Studio. I remixed them and put some much-needed effects on the tracks. I could have fixed many of them with extensive editing, but editing is tedious and I would have to send Kellen a bill for my time (I found his address on his resume). Plus, the songs are extremely entertaining in their original sloppy, out-of-sync form.

We've got a bunch of Led Zeppelin covers, a couple of Stones and Beatles songs, and a handfull of other well-known classic rockers. There's also a few of Kellen's originals in this collection. The quality of the songs is all over the place, ranging from excellent to down-right-fucking-awful.

The best ones here are Kellen's "Song Zero", Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done" and The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" which lacked vocal tracks, so I sang them all and mixed them in. This is the only song I did editing on, since there was a bar missing which rendered the song useless for recording the second verse of vocals.

The worst ones are "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "House of the Rising Sun". They're absolutely atrocious renditions.

Since I did such a fantastic job remixing these songs, I Christened the collection with the name "Polished Turds" and made a nice album cover using a couple of photos I found on the hard drive.



Here's some options for your enjoyment:

Download the entire collection! (You WON'T be sorry)
Listen to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Listen to "The Wind Cries Mary"

If you're wanting to know how much I improved the sound, feel free to hear the original mix of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

And that's pretty much it!

On September 24th, I'll be making another appearance on Amateur Hour. In the next couple of weeks, I'm also planning on releasing the album I recorded, so there's lots of exciting things coming up! Stay tuned...

Merry Christmas from a Bunch of People with a Health Problem

I don't remember where I found this tape, but it's bizarre as fuck. A group of people who meet together to discuss a health problem decided to record a cassette, wishing some guy named Terry a Merry Christmas. Since they don't state what their health problem is, I'm just going to assume that it's Athlete's Foot.

Hey, 'tis the season to catch it! Your toes get all dry and cracked, and the next thing you know you've got fungus growing in there after you stomped that bug to death. But it wasn't a bug. It was a piece of dog poop. You should really let him outside more frequently! Now you must suffer.

So, Have a Merry Christmas from a bunch of people suffering from what is presumptuously Athlete's foot. I hope they're all still alive and in good health.

Listen to it here!

The Family Stuff Tape

Someone recently used one of my audio clips in their podcast (specifically the Nirvana interview with my mom) and it reminded me that I haven't posted anything from my personal collection in quite some time. So, let me introduce a cassette that I created 21 years ago:



There's all kinds of scraps of stuff on here ranging from school concerts to my dad arguing on the phone with my drunken uncle. It's all here, preserved in living mono.

As a child and a teenager, I recorded damn near everything. If I had a video camera, I probably would have recorded even more. However, that didn't happen until I was about 17 years old, and my fascination with recording everything only lasted for about a year after that.

My recording obsession as a teenager got to a point where I had blank cassettes loaded up in various recorders all around the house. I even wired up a concealed microphone in the kitchen to record various stuff my parents said and argued about. Some of the more funny moments were preserved on the "Family Stuff" tape. My mother eventually found the microphone and angrily ripped it off the wires.

When I was about 13 years old, I hacked an old answering machine and modified it to play regular cassettes over the phone line. I also hacked it to be a telephone recorder. It gave birth to a whole new dimension of recording things, and I recorded a LOT of things. I have cassettes full of conversations with girls I had crushes on, prank phone calls me and my best friend made, and of course conversations my parents had with other people.

I'm bringing you one of the more interesting and funny moments from the Family Stuff tape. Most of it is clips of my mother conversing with her screwball friend Kim (you can read her journal here.) There's one collection of snippets here where I added my own stupid commentary. I think I was about 14 years at the time.

Anyway, enjoy the sample of the Family Stuff tape.

Listen to it here!

My Entry for a Song Writing Contest

Someone posted a song writing contest on Facebook, so I decided to enter. Here's the criteria for the song:

We’re looking for original songs that lyrically not only enlighten us about young people’s issues, but also inspire and challenge us to make things better. Musically (if you’re choosing to send a musical performance too), the song can really take any form, from rap to classical to country and everything in between. So go ahead and make it your mission to move us – evoke tears, joy, laughter, sorrow, make us think – through your words, melodies, or both!

So I went to work and created something that I thought was at least worthy of competing in a contest. The result of my creation bears the title "You Can't Solve These Problems (With Just a Song)" which I think is the greatest title out of all the entries in the contest. If by some chance I don't win, I'll at least have another creation under my belt.

Over the next month, the songs are open to public voting (upon registering on the website) and the top ten entries will go through a round of judges. The winner gets to record their song professionally and be in a music video.

So without further ado, here's my entry. Feel free to vote for it!

You Can't Solve These Problems (with just a song)

I had to alter one lyric because they couldn't accept the line "You can't cure disease with a rubber on your dick." I hate censorship.

I'm Sick, So Let's Listen to Some Pukey Recordings!

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.

Listen to Menstrual Blues


Dick Singing



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.

Listen to Dick sing


Tom Monkman - Singing to Slimness



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.

Lose some fat with this asshole


Figure 4 - Demo '98



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.

Listen to Hollow Religion


Brian Browne - Beatles



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!"

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?

Listen to I Want To Hold Your Hand


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.

Christmas with Dad

So here's a little update with what's been going on. I have a few things to wrap up with all the problems that have been happening in my personal life (and I had another major new one pop up) but regular blog postings are going to be returning to your lives! Unfortunately, there's no money for Christmas this year, so I've been trying to figure out how to put peace, love, health, goodwill, and Christmas Cheer under the tree, let alone figure out how to wrap the fucking things.

Regardless, I'm back to posting and your perfect lives are once again going to be tarnished with horrible singers, bad music, and dreadful youtube videos that nobody should be watching.

But for this post, I'm bringing you an absolutely adorable recording.



I can't remember where I found this tape, but if I ever find out who threw it away, I'm going to personally kick their ass because this recording should have been cherished. It's a recording of a father singing Christmas carols with his two kids. It's a nice break from the garbage I usually post.

Listen here

Cooking with Chef Perry

I'm being a bit tardy with this Halloween entry, but work has been keeping me busy again. Anyway, I've assembled a collection of audio clips I recorded from The Scruff Show back in the mid-90s, hosted by the one and only Scruff Connors. These were short comedy clips called "Quick Food Tips with Chef Perry". The guy isn't much of a cook, but he's really good at drinking beer. The clips are pretty funny, and because it's Halloween, I've started off this collection with the Halloween episode.

They're all packed conveniently into one audio file, including my shitty editing job, and varying qualities as they were taped over a period of about two years or so.

Anyway, enjoy cooking with Chef Perry!

LISTEN HERE!

One More Time...

It's one thing to find really bad cover songs out in the wild, but it's another to record one yourself...

A few years back, I recorded myself singing to a bunch of karaoke recordings. Most of them were actually serious attempts to make them sound good. But just for the heck of it, I recorded a couple purely for fun.

To make up for the lack of entries over the last while, I'm letting you in on something that could be potentially embarassing. But honestly, this is probably my most favorite recording out of the batch that I did. So without further ado, here is me singing Britney Spears' 'Baby One More Time'.

CLICK HERE!!! 

Iron Maiden Is Coming To Town!

Hey all, figured I'd get in a quick blog entry. I'm having some surgery on Saturday, so this weekend is going to be royally fucked.

Anyway, Iron Maiden is coming to town! Not sure if I'll get to see them this time around, but I did a couple years ago. They were pretty damn good. Here's a bizarre radio promo for the band which I recorded off The Scruff Show back in the mid-90s. Enjoy!

CLICK HERE!

See you all in about a week. I should have something more substantial by next weekend.

A Boy Named Shoes

Gather around children, and I'll tell you a story.

A long time ago, back when I was in high school, I was dating the girl of my dreams. Yeah, mushy mushy. Anyway, just before Christmas, we met this guy named Darren.



Darren was kind of weird. He seemed to end every sentence with the word 'man'. "Let's go have a smoke, man!" or "I like my hair, man!" On the way home on the bus, he took down both me and my girlfriend's phone numbers and said he was gonna invite us over to groove to some Pink Floyd, man!

I fucking don't like Pink Floyd.

Over the Christmas break, he called my girlfriend numerous times. He called me zero times. I knew what was going on - he was after my woman! That's a no-no.

Here's another picture of the guy:


I'm flying man! Wheeeeeeee!!!!

Darren lived in a one-room shithole with a toilet that EVERYBODY in the building had to share. He loves Pink Floyd, likes to drink, loves to smoke, does miscellaneous drugs, makes toast by putting bread on a coat hanger and holding it over an oven element, and uses a piece of telephone wire for a belt. He also claims to look exactly like Jim Morrison. In my opinion, he looks more like a horse who lost a fight with nitro glycerine.

He also has a big brown stain on his teeth from smoking too much hash (or eating too much shit):


Sexy, man!

Darren was also a poet. Here's a piece of Darren's work which was written on one of his sexy pictures:



Anyway, when my girlfriend told him that we were engaged, he professed his love to her. "But, I love you, man!" Of course, my fiance gave him the "we're just friends" line. Poor Darren. He hated my guts.


How He Got The Name "Shoes"

One day, Darren was obsessed with getting himself a nickname. Of course, they were mostly Pink Floyd themed names. "How about 'Bricks'?... Naah, too heavy man. How about D.D. The P.F. Man?... Naaah, too long, man."

Anyway, I was telling my friends the story about Darren's adventure in choosing a nickname. Just for fun, I threw in something totally absurd. "How about 'SHOES'? Naah, too much sole, man."

....and we laughed... and laughed... and the name stuck. 'Shoes' it was!

After me and my fiance moved into our own place, Shoes got back in contact with her. He continued to tell her how much he loved her. I was getting fed up with Shoes. It was time for me to put an end to this nonsense.

While my fiance was at work, I called Shoes. When he answered, I hung up. I relied on Caller ID to inform him that it was the girl of his dreams calling him, and maybe she had come to her senses and discovered she really DID love him! When he called back, not me, nor any human answered the phone. I had set up my PC to answer every call that came in. So when he called, all he heard was a squealing noise, much like a fax machine. He called, and called, and called, and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed!

After about two hours of him repeatedly phoning, I figured enough was enough. The guy couldn't get a clue if it was written into a Pink Floyd song. So I answered. Through the magic of an old answering machine I hacked, the call was recorded:

CLICK HERE!

He never called back.

Happy Fag In Shower

I've had this cassette kicking around for a while, but never looked at the label. I think it was in the same box as the Unicity Taxi video.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out why it was given this title. Maybe it really did have a recording of a happy fag in the shower, but someone recorded over it. Or maybe the person singing IS the happy fag in the shower. Maybe the song is called "Happy Fag in Shower". I really can't tell you. I'll just have to leave you to draw your own conclusion from the recording.

Listen to Happy Fag In Shower!

It's My Birthday!!!

It's blog-entry Sunday, and my birthday has magically fallen upon it. I was trying to figure out what to do for this entry, and then I figured I'd write about important things that happened in my life which led up to me creating this goofy blog.

I was a huge music junkie, even when I was five years old. I still own a cassette of "music" which I recorded on my parents' floor-model stereo system (yes, I knew how to work a tape recorder at that age). The tape was probably a K-Mart brand (green label) 90 minute low-noise compact cassette. The tape has seen many better days. It's been eaten a few times and the tape is twisted in some spots which have been permanently pressed for well over 20 years. While I was cueing up the tape to create this MP3, the tape deck decided to wound it yet again by eating it. I carefully unwound it from the capstan and performed yet another surgery on it. I won't let this tape die after having it for some 25 years! Regardless, here's a really irritating children's song (and the portion that I pulled out of my deck's throat):

Listen to a stupid animal song!

The first computer I owned was a TRS-80 Model I. I got my first taste of programming on this thing, and ironically it gave me a jumpstart into working with electronics, trying to find (and repair) a reliable shoebox tape recorder which could save and load programs reliably. This computer cost me a whole ten dollars, and a few years later I stupidly re-sold it for ten dollars. It's worth more on Ebay these days:

 

The first computer program I ever wrote was on the Commodore Vic-20. It was called "Dot Junk", a really stupid math game which didn't really make any sense. Regardless, it was my first venture into programming my own stuff. The original version I programmed needed a RAM expansion since it didn't fit into the generous 3.5K of RAM the Vic leaves for the user. About a year or two later when my programming got more efficient, I made a slimmed down version. Here's a couple of screenshots:



I can't believe it was 20 years ago that I wrote this thing!

If you have a Vic-20 emulator, you can download 'Dot Junk' and try it out!


The bulk of my teenage years in the 1990s included programming on my Vic-20 and later my Commodore 64. Also eating up my time was creating mashups and medleys (under the name Canned Peaches) on my reel 2 reel machines and whatever other analog stereo equipment I owned. Here's a picture of the setup I had in my bedroom:



Now that I have webspace, I'm planning on making all my Canned Peaches albums available for downloading in the (hopefully) near future. Here's just one of the masterpieces I created during my depressing, sheltered teenage life... and what an appropriate song it is! It's my goofy, messed up birthday medley (unfortunately, I'm not turning 16 this year):

Click Here for "Happy 16th Birthday" 


I believe it was in 1996 when my brother got me started on playing guitar. My mother bought me a really cheap acoustic guitar from Consumers Distributing. I played the shit out of that thing. Eventually, my uncle sent me an electric guitar which I still have to this day. One of the greatest feelings I've ever experienced is writing a song and hearing it come alive on stage. I'll put up some of my songs (including video footage) in the future. I just don't have the time to transfer and edit any video today.

In the year 1999, I entered into the already dying BBS scene. I loved BBSing with a passion, and decided to pay for a separate phone line and run my own BBS. I had around 50 door games (including X-rated ones), Fidonet, and a file base full of pr0n. Here's the ANSI graphic people saw when they logged in:



All this stuff (and more) has contributed to my love for music, old technology, and all things bizarre. A lot of people tell me I have no life. The thing is, this IS my life, and I find it to be a very satisfying one. Happy birthday to me, and all the oddball things in life I enjoy!

Middle Finger Man

Back in the early to mid 90s, Ziploc did a series of ads that featured fingers telling you how great Ziploc bags were. In case you don't remember, here's one of the ads:



A few spoofed versions of these ads were aired on the Scruff Connors morning show featuring the middle finger promoting the bags. Here's four of these spoofed commercials. Enjoy!

For freshness you can count on, click here and listen to Middle Finger Man!

On The Road Again

Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief that I actually paid for something. This is one of those things. I paid a whole 25 cents for this stupid tape. 25 cents bought me a minute and thirty seven seconds worth of dread.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

It's amazing how much this cassette tells me about the people who recorded it. First of all, it was recorded in Singing Sensations Recording Studio in Branson, Missouri, as the label states. Second, the artist "Embassy Tours" is a travel agency here in Winnipeg. Third, the group name "The Singing Sexagenarians"; a sexagenarians is someone between the age of 60 and 70 years old.

So there you have it. This is a recording by a group of tone-deaf, crusty old people who went on a cruise to Branson, Missouri to make this recording, only to have it chucked into a box of shitty tapes at a yard sale.

And of course, I'm the one who got suckered out of a quarter.

Radio Prank Played Out: Superbowl in Miami (Manitoba)

Way back in January 1995, a selected group of people had won a trip to see the Superbowl in Miami. No, not Miami, Florida where the game was actually held, but in Miami, Manitoba where the game was shown on a TV in a bar.

Scruff Connors and Larry Updike who were radio DJs here in Winnipeg hosted this contest, and yours truly caught everything on tape. I faithfully listened to Scruff every morning, and would set up my reel to reel tape recorder to record the remainder of the show that I would miss while I took the bus to school. When I got back from school, I would playback the tape, and listen to everything I had missed.

Reel to reel tape was the only available media in the 1990s which could record hours of non-stop programming, maintenance free - well at least until the tape ran out. I had a few four hour tapes I used for this sole purpose.

Anyway, back to the prank. Here are two sound clips of Scruff and Larry going through the faxes that were submitted into the contest:

Faxes Part 1
Faxes Part 2

Pretty harmless, isn't it? After the 15 winners (and their guests) had gone to Miami to watch the Superbowl, a couple of them got together and complained to the media about what had really happened. Here is the recording of Scruff getting pulled off the air:

Scruff Gets Suspended

And here's the newspaper article (the next day) regarding the incident:



An investigation was conducted, where over 40 hours of recorded broadcast would be gone through, just to see if Scruff or Larry had at anytime mentioned that the winners were going to Miami, Florida. If they had, they would be deemed guilty and have the plug pulled on their morning show.

After the recordings had been gone through and the word "Florida" was never mentioned, Scruff was allowed to return to air. He didn't show up:

Scruff Calls The Station

And finally, here's the recording of him returning to work, dedicating a song to those who helped in pulling him off the air:

Scruff Returns!

This was not the first time Scruff had pulled radio gags. According to Wikipedia, Scruff held a contest in 1990 for listeners to see "New Kids". Limousines pulled up, and out walked mothers with newborns!

Now tell me that's not funny!

Ken & Barbie

I guess it was inevitable that I would eventually write about the famous doll series from Mattel. Here, I have two completely unrelated items, brought together solely by the fate created by my blog.



The first item is this Barbie cassette which came with the Barbie Cassette Recorder. Mattel has merchandised as much shit as it can with the Barbie name.

I found the cassette inside the tape recorder at a thrift store. Of course I removed the cassette and purchased it for 25 cents, leaving the fugly pink tape recorder behind. I love how the copyright is on the cassette label, so anything you record is automatically owned by Mattel. Click Here to listen to a clip of what's on this tape.



Next is this 45 i bought for ten cents. It's Ken singing his hit song, "A Little Bit of That Sky" (karaoke version on the flipside.) I've never seen Barbie music on any other format besides cassette tapes, so it was a real treat to find this 45 which was released in 1970. It took me a bit of searching on the internet, but I did find the doll that this 45 came with. Click Here to see it. Gotta love those tassles and the psychedelic shirt!

And of course, we're all dying to hear what kind of music Ken was making in 1970. Let's see, who was popular in 1970?

- Led Zeppelin
- The Doors
- Jimi Hendrix
- Three Dog Night
- Creedence Clearwater Revival

Those are great bands! Let's hope Ken lives up to his competition.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!



Wow, that guitar solo in the middle will give Jimmy Page a run for his money!

Okay, I forgot to mention a few others who were popular in 1970:

- James Taylor
- Bobby Sherman
- B.J. Thomas
- The Carpenters
- Bread
- Donny Osmond

I guess we can add Ken to the 'not so cool' list.

Junq Tour 2009: Neepawa

Welcome To



This is a new piece I've decided to start called the "Junq Tour". Basically, whenever I get sent to a different town or city on business, I make it my goal to find some nifty treasures! I got the "rubbers" sign from the abandoned personal care home I was working in. I could have taken home a bedpan, but I decided that was probably a dumb idea.

Neepawa is a little town. Not tiny, but not huge. It's apparently the Lily capital of the world, although the only Lillies I saw were the cardboard ones stapled to the telephone posts. Neepawa has a few cool places to visit though. I had the privilege of staying there for a week while on business. Here's my crappy 1970s hotel room. The rug was a trip!



I checked out the Thrift store while I was there, but didn't find much. Just the usual Thrift store crap - clothes, toys, etc. No interesting treasures. However, there was one store that I spent quite a bit of time browsing for treasures:


This place is chok full of the kinda crap that heaven is made out of! Well, maybe not heaven. There were too many Eddy Arnold LPs and too many home-recorded video tapes of Little House on the Prarie.

But here's the treasures that I did manage to find:



Anne Kraichy - Musical Gems


Ah! Here's a great album full of Ukrainian polkas. Just for the hell of it, I Googled Anne's name. Lo and behold, the third link that popped up was my blog. It appears that Anne Kraichy played violin on Roy Mykytyshyn's albums. No wonder I'm enjoying this tape so much! It's a shame that I don't have a track listing for it though. Click here to listen to the first song!


Evelyn Broadfoot - Must I Go Empty Handed?


What the..??? Okay, it's obviously a lady and her guitar. Singing in Cree... at least that's what it says on the inlay. She could be singing in Norwegian for all I know. She's not irritating, but I can't understand what the hell she's singing about. This tape also has no track listing.


Larry Novak's Latest and Greatest


Latest and greatest what? Considering this album was released on cassette only (as far as I can tell) I'm guessing 'latest and greatest' isn't referring to technology. The songs on this tape were sung by different people, at least that's what the piece of paper Scotch-taped to the back of the case tells me. The first song "Good Bye, Lady Di" not only sucks ass, it's fucking country music. The sound quality of the tape sounds like someone wiped their ass with the master tape, which is pretty bad since it's a professionally produced hunk of plastic. The Evelyn Broadfoot album (which was probably recorded on a shoebox tape recorder) sounds less shitty than this thing.

I can imagine Larry's art direction for the cover....
**flipping through photo album of a trip to Winnipeg** "Aahhh! There's a nice picture of... scenery! We'll use that."

Good job, Larry.

And finally, here's a great video tape I picked up....



It's a wonderfully entertaining Sex Education video tape! I'd post some content from it, but I've still got that strike against my Youtube account. It should be clearing up sometime soon, and I'm not risking having my account nuked on account of one video. I'll risk it when the strike is cleared up.

Now, just because I can't post video, it doesn't mean I can't post questionable content on the free webspace that I get from my ISP. Here's a screenshot of this dude who seems to not only be unalarmed, but is in fact HAPPY to see a flock of penises flying by:



There's lots of great stuff on this video that I'm just dying to post. But alas, we wait.



If you're in Neepawa, you need to check out the little restaurant across the street from the book & tape shop. It's called Wilson's Place, and you'll get a great meal, fantastic pie, and be surrounded by cool junk on the wall. They also have the best clock in the world:



So, there's my trip to Neepawa in a nutshell. It's a damn good thing I brought my guitar and my laptop, because the whole town pretty much goes to bed at 6:00 PM. I did some songwriting and on my last day in the Personal Care home (when nobody showed up), I did a bit of recording. It sounded great in that big echoey building. Perhaps when I get some time, I'll finish mixing it and upload it. But don't count on it ;)

Small Furry Animals

I finally found this damn tape. Last time I went looking for it, I made the "Christian Death Metal" entry.

Anyway, this is a recording of me and my friend Myles going around our high school (back in the mid-90s) asking people what their thoughts were on the molestation of small furry animals. The first person I interviewed was my girlfriend's sister Jenn, who ended up joining us in our venture to find people's opinions and feelings on the subject. Enjoy!

Click Here to Listen!

I have no clue what prompted me to do this, but it was fun nevertheless.

The Miscarriage

Oh Brian. Stupid, stupid Brian. You could have chosen any woman in the world, but you had to choose her.

This is an answering machine tape I picked up for a nickel. It's unfortunate that there's only snippits of this argument on the tape rather than the whole thing, but I put them all together into one audio file.

From the way she rubs it in, I'm pretty sure she's lying about it. Have a listen for yourself by CLICKING HERE!