Junq Tour 2013: Brandon

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.)

Listen to the Brandon Centennial Song


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...

Listen to "And The Final Word Is Yours, Sam Katz"


Gerry Perkin - All Strung Out



Dear Gerry,

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

Listen to All Strung Out


Stories That Live - Adam & Eve



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.

Listen to Pat Boone tell the story of Adam & Eve


Ed Stozek - Light a Candle Tonight



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.

Listen to Light A Candle Tonight


Kenny Parrott - Volume Two



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.

Listen to Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town


????? - ??????



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.

Listen to Kid Talk


The Little Birds



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...

Listen to Wipe Out
Listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit


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.

Halloween 2013

Ninety percent of the stuff on this blog is enough to scare the shit out of people, but I figured I'd pack in a Halloween entry anyway. I don't remember the last time I did a Halloween entry, but blog-worthy Halloween-based stuff is pretty hard to come by. This year, I'm able to remove three items from my in-queue pile, which will allow room for three more items and ultimately invite two more items that will add to the overflow. I'm a slave to the landslide of CDs, Cassettes, 8-tracks, and various other crap that invades my home.

Two out of three of these items were in their original cellophane, until I decided to lower their value, open them, and bring them here to potentially entertain you.

Stereo Dynamics To Scare Hell Out Of Your Neighbors



In a period of transition from my last entry, here's another demo record that I don't like. They decided to give this one a scary theme, but the music is mostly boring orchestral pieces.

We have songs like "Adolf Hitler", "La Paloma" and "Flamenco Candido" that will leave shit in your underwear, mainly because you've ultimately fallen into a coma from being bored as hell listening to this thing. They figured this album was good enough to press on 180 gram vinyl. You can beat someone into a coma with the record itself.

Let's move on.


McDonalds - Scary Sound Effects



In 1995, McDonalds put out a series of these cassettes. I'm guessing they came in a happy meal. I would've been fucking mad if I got cassette full of annoying Ronald McDonald dialogue instead of a toy. There's another one of these tapes buried in my in-queue box somewhere.

This cassette is made of the cheapest possible parts available. It squeaks like a mouse caught in the springs of a bed with two fat lesbians making love on top of it.

In the spirit of keeping it creepy, here's side one of the cassette. It's really REALLY awful, and it's mostly just a plug for you to buy a full-length Ronald McDonald album. Does any child in their right mind actually have the desire to buy an entire album featuring this ass-clown? Thank God this clip is only five minutes long. On the upside, the full length album looks like it has some really terrible parodies on it. I'll buy it if I ever see it.

Side two of this cassette was stolen from some cheapo sound effects album, so I'm gonna skip it.

Listen to I Like To Scare Myself


Drew's Famous Trick or Treat



Yes! Drew has weaseled his way back onto my blog with another one of his shitty albums. If you look at the logo for "Drew's Famous", the fancy-dancy letter F looks like a letter L. "Drew's Lamous" is much more fitting.

Anyway, Drew makes it sound like he does mankind a favor by including a "free spooky sounds CD" and wishes the foolish owner 'a great party' on the back of the album. Thanks Drew, you just made my Halloween extra fucking special. After listening to both of these discs, I'm thinking that the "Spooky Sounds CD" is the one with all the crappy cover songs on it.

After removing the cellophane and trying to peel off the anti-theft sticker (HAHAHAHAHA like ANYBODY would want to steal this) I am greeted by a horrible cover of Pink's "Get The Party Started". Ironically, Pink was supposed to be playing a concert in Winnipeg this weekend, but she postponed it to January 14th due to health issues. Apparently, she downloaded this version of her song and immediately began having chest pains and puking her guts out. I genuinely hope she makes a full recovery and forgives me for posting it.

We've got a cover of Ray Parker Jr's "Ghostbusters" where the guy inserts the "I ain't afraid of no ghost" lyric off beat every single time. I have to question why the fucking Bird Dance is on here too. It's played by a bunch of drunken Ukrainians. Ukrainians aren't scary, even when they're drunk.

Then we get to The Monster Mash. The intro is taken directly from the original song - mind you it sounds like it was taken from a cassette that was run over by 40 cars, then filtered through a speaker buried under a pillow. Afterwards, the Casio drum machine kicks in, and your typical lame ass studio musicians start singing the song. It's by far the biggest fly-feeding hunk of shit on the album.

Why is The Time Warp on here? Isn't this album aimed at children? I'd comment on the quality of this rendition, but I hate Rocky's Horrible Picture Show (starring Meat Loaf whom I also hate) so I make every effort to avoid anything remotely related to it.

Listen to Monster Mash
Listen to Get The Party Started

We get a couple more irrelevant songs (Men In Black, Hands Up (Give Me Your Heart)) and we move onto the bonus disc full of sound effects. Some tracks are hilariously bad, and some are psychopathically fucked up. It's probably the best thing that Drew has ever released! Throw disc one away! It sucks!

There appears to be some Satanic backwards messages on this CD. God is going to destroy Drew with fire-breathing lightning, which might be good for all of mankind. No more shitty Drew's Famous CDs because God hates them!

Listen to "Fires of Hell" forwards
Listen to "Fires of Hell" backwards

And that's it for this very scary entry. My life has recently been altered a bit time-wise, and it looks like I may have some extra time to be blogging. I may try and get back to having one day a week (Thursday) dedicated to posting something, but don't staple me to the wall on that. In fact, don't staple me anywhere. I get enough pain from listening to Drew's Famous pieces of crap.

Demo Records 2013

Life has been very, very busy, so my many apologies for such a late return to writing an entry. If Google Adsense would pay me $50,000 per click, I would be writing entries every day. Perhaps I should sit down and draft a letter, proposing a raise from Google. Perhaps I'll mail them a sock too.

Now, onto other business. If you missed my third appearance on Amateur Hour, you can get it here. I played a lot of stuff on the show that I haven't posted here, so listening to it is a great idea if you want a brain aneurysm! The show was a lot of fun, and there were many great laughs to be had!

Now, I desperately need to tackle the ever-growing stack of records that have been collecting in my in-queue boxes (yes, there's two of them now) and I picked up three more at a garage sale the other weekend. So with this entry, I hoped to cut down a huge chunk of them, but I only had the time to analyze four of them. My dungeon will eventually be full of shit to blog about, and there won't be any path for me to get to the computer, and my blog will eventually fade into oblivion, and the world will rejoice because one less person is putting stupid shit on the internet to occupy people's work hours when they should be doing actual work, and you're probably tired of reading this extremely long sentence now so I'm going to put a period at the end so your brain can finally move on to the next paragraph which you have so desperately been waiting for.

So this time around, I've decided to tackle some demonstration records. Every time I see one, I buy it. I probably have more kicking around, but these are the first four I found. I'm not sure what the purpose of these were since I grew up in the era of cassettes. However, when I was five years old, my parents bought me a brand-new Sanyo cassette player from Zellers which came with a free cassette. This was it:



You can download it here if you so desire. For a five year old kid, getting a free cassette was the greatest thing in the world, and dare I say I even enjoyed the two songs on it. Side two was blank so you could record your own crappy instrumental songs on it!

The cassette was recorded in stereo which was a stupid thing to package with a mono cassette player with one speaker. Nevertheless, I enjoyed and loved the hell out of that cassette player until my uncle bought me one that played TWO cassettes and had TWO speakers. Unfortunately, that one did not come with a free cassette.

I'm guessing some of these records may have come with turntables, or perhaps they were used in stores to demonstrate stereo systems to convince the sucker that he should buy a record player made by some extremely reputable and well-known brand like "Morse" or "Garrara".


Grand Award - Stereophonic Spectacular Demonstration Record Limited Edition



The back of the record boasts "The most spectacular full stereophonic sound ever achieved". Fuck you, the Beatles achieved spectacular stereophonic sound by putting vocals on one channel, music on the other channel, and absolutely nothing in the center. If you only have one speaker, you've got a perfectly good karaoke record or an acapella record, depending on which speaker you didn't have.

Do you know why this record is a limited edition? Because they couldn't sell these circular plastic discs of garbage. I listened to the entire thing while I was searching for that Sanyo Demonstration Cassette. On the back of the record, they brag about the technical details and the love and care they used to bring you this collection of shitty old songs which knaw a good hour's life off your stylus. Songs like "Volare", "Sunrise Serenade" and "La Comparsa" are guaranteed to have you skipping over the download link, so I'm not going to bother posting anything off this one. Let's move on...


Shure - Audio obstacle course - era III




This isn't really a demonstration record, but a record to make sure your stereo system is capable of making noise. This thing was more enjoyable than the last record, although side two has some crappy music that I didn't bother listening to. If you want to make sure your computer system is capable of making noise, feel free to play this MP3...

Listen to Level, Balance and Phasing Tests

Since this record helped verify that my turntable is indeed in good working order, we can proceed to the next record.


The Sheffield Track Record - Rock Instrumental Tracks for Audio Component Testing and Evaluation



Well, that title is a mouth full! This one is quite a wonder though. This company put together a band, wrote some original songs, practiced the hell out of them, went into a studio, and recorded them in one take onto the master disc for pressing. So instead of getting 3rd, 4th or lower generation copies of the recording with additional tape hiss, you're getting a 2nd generation recording with the only potential defects being in the master disc or some idiot musician who messed up on the only possible take.

To really push the limits of the technology, they used maximum groove spacing. Because of that, there's only four songs on the entire record. It does sound phenomenal, but I had to go and fuck it up by encoding it into a shitty MP3. The worst thing about this record is it sounds exactly like the year it was recorded in: 1982. So, feel free to re-live this moment in 1982 where all the musicians and producers who put their efforts into making this record were sweating, shitting, and pissing themselves, hoping that nobody would make a mistake and ruin the entire master disc.

I chose this particular song because it has some groovy super funk bass on it.

Listen to "The Higher You Rise"


Audio Fidelity - Stereo Spectacular Demonstration & Sound Effects



This is by far my favorite. The narrator tells the story about the concept of sound and then throws in sound effects to make it all that much more corny. It sounds like the soundtrack to a shitty documentary that you would be forced to watch in a high school health class. I have included all of side one because the whole thing is entertaining. If you have a bit of time to kill, you may actually enjoy listening to this one. SPOILER: the narrator gets temporarily killed during a game of Russian Roulette.

Listen to Stereo Spectacular Demonstration & Sound Effects Part 1

And we've come to the end of another memorable blog entry which is always more fun than kicking Mickey Mouse in the balls at Disneyworld. If you would like video of how your family can put together a Disney package so you can all kick some mouse testes, write to Disney. I'm sure they'll accommodate you with a free DVD and a child molester in a creepy Winnie-The-Pooh costume.

Elvis Tribute Albums - Part One

If there's one thing that's been consistent over the years of my thrift store shopping, it's been Elvis Presley tribute albums. There's tons of them!

So here's how a tribute album works... A bunch of half-talented studio musicians get together, record a bunch of songs, throw it on an album with deceiving artwork (and sometimes no artwork at all), and use fine print to warn the buyer that they are not buying a real album - and that's if they put fine print on the album at all. Lots of people have been duped into buying tribute albums all the way from the 1960s up to the present day.

Judging from the sheer amount of Elvis tribute albums, it seems to me that at one point EVERYONE wanted to be Elvis. NEWS FLASH: You are not Elvis. I am not Elvis. You don't sound like Elvis. You don't smell like Elvis. However, I'm in favor of you DYING like Elvis.

The Golden Ring - Tribute to Elvis Vol 1 & 2



Believe it or not, these two tribute albums sold incredibly well. I run across them very frequently. My guess is they came out right around the time that Elvis died. Combine that with the real picture of Elvis on the cover and a somewhat successful hole-in-the-ground record label (thanks to Anne Murray) and you've got a hit album. I was duped into buying these when I was around 7 years old, and I've seen at least a hundred copies of them.

The Golden Ring didn't just stick with Elvis tributes though. I have a few albums by them singing songs by other artists, including Glen Campbell. For some reason, bands who try to sound like Elvis also like to try sounding like Glen Campbell which I've proven once before.

So here a song from each volume.

Listen to Jailhouse Rock

What the hell is the drummer doing on this one? He puts lots of extra beats in there. There's also no electric guitar. The guitar was the coolest thing about the original version. Instead, the song has turned into a drunken piano ragtime piece of shit.

Listen to I Just Can't Help Believing

Oh, listen to that crowd applause that's faded in and out! It sounds like there's a concert hall full of people enjoying the balls out of a Golden Ring concert. I personally don't believe that The Golden Ring has ever played a live show, and I don't believe that ANYBODY would ever attend one based on their tribute albums. Thankfully for them, there's a large selection of Sound Effects records out there to help boost their egos and make them sound like they've successfully played in front of hundreds of excited fans. Then they woke up and found their penises cum-glued to their bed sheets.


Ronnie McDowell - The Original Soundtrack from the New Motion Picture: "Elvis"



This is apparently the soundtrack for a NEW movie called "Elvis". When you print the word "new" on your album, you automatically look like an asshole. In this case, 8-tracks haven't been mass produced in about 30 years, so I highly doubt that this is a new movie anymore. It's not even a fucking classic because nobody has ever heard of it. I don't think the movie is even available on DVD, VHS, Laserdisc, CED, Betamax, or 16mm. If by some chance I'm wrong, I'll most certainly have the machine to play it on since I own all of those formats.

However, I need to give Ronnie McDougall credit. He duplicates Elvis Presley VERY well.

Listen to Are You Lonesome Tonight


Various Artists - A Tribute to Elvis Presley



Up until this point, we've focused on releases on the Arc label. Now we move onto one of the most celebrated and shitty tribute album labels on Classical Gas Emissions... Sound Alike Music! The phony sticker says it's performed by various artists, but every single tribute album I have by them (with the exception of the compilations) have each been performed by a single band, whether it be The Chancellors, Phil Shields, or Cabbage.

Sound Alike Music is also notorious for doing paintings of original album covers (with the exception of the Grand Funk one which uses the real artwork). So I searched the net and found the original one here.

This is the worst of the four. Not only does the singer NOT sound like Elvis, the band doesn't even try to duplicate the arrangements to be remotely similar to the originals. Even the arrangements they came up with are stupider than a group of retarded children licking ant hills. Heartbrake Hotel (yes, that's how it's fucking spelled on the album) has too many trumpets, an organ, and a guitar player who thinks he's way cooler than the rest of the band by going off and doing something that isn't even part of the song. Have you ever eaten a microwaved peanut butter and cheese sandwich? That's how well these guys work together, and you're going to taste the fail of an album that should have never reached your ears.

There were so many bad ones to pick from, and Heartbrake Hotel ended up being just a little less bad than Blue Suede Shoes. The band is most obviously made up of deaf musicians who can't hear each other play. Poor fake Elvis has to try and make them look better by calling them "cats" as if they're the coolest backing band an Elvis Impersonator could ask for. After the recording, he went and took a shit because it felt better than the entire recording session. Then he died of a heart attack, realizing that taking a shit was more satisfying than being an Elvis Impersonator working at Sound Alike Music.

Listen to Blue Suede Shoes

And that's it for the first installment. I have at least four more Elvis tribute albums to tackle, and I'll most likely own more than that when I finally get around to reviewing them.

Speaking of which, I'm going to be featured on Amateur Hour again by Kent Davies. If you live in Winnipeg, that's 95.9 FM. The show is on August 21 at 5:00 pm. I'll be featuring some stuff that I've previously posted along with stuff that I've haven't got around to posting as of yet. It will be enjoyable for everybody!

Organ Grinding and Humper Dincking

Before we get on to the albums, I'd like to share the inspiration for this entry. I received an interesting email from a reader named Mike who shared his thoughts on the idea of the electric organ as a musical instrument:

At least someone hates the electric organ (both theater with "tabs," how retarded, and drawbar) as much as I do. You mentioned that somewhere on your site (I forgot where). I will not start on some of the "gospel" music that is on Classical Gas Emissions either.

I don't even consider any kind of organ to be a musical instrument because it makes nothing noise and sound effects. Anything that requires nothing but classical music training, extensive use of the feet, an attitude reminiscent of a bitchy person, expensive, black dress clothes, very complicated process (construction), and a Halloween state of mind...is not, and should not be a musical instrument. 

I knew a few goths that loved such gibberish like this, and not surprisingly, they are very mentally insane people. They are in awe with the "talent" and devotion required to play such irate, livid, and disgusting garbage. That's the number one reason why I don't go to church. I worship God in the comfort of my own home, in comfort, not in fear. I never understood why church has to involve such rubbish like that. Good old Eurotrash started it (i.e. Bach, Handel, and other composers that goths worship like idols).

I can't discern or hear actual, musical notes on any organ either. There's always "growling," "ringing, or other kinds of noises that obscure the "music" being played. No matter how loud or soft it's played at, it always sounds as delusion as a mental home resident, or as retarded as my some of my brother's friends.  

So, let's see how well these recordings compare to Mike's evaluation of the electric organ...

Don Thompson - The Organ Grinder Live!



Maclean & Maclean defined an "organ grinder" as a cocksucker with a chipped tooth. Given that, I'm assuming that Don Thompson isn't very fond of visits to the dentist.

The album as a whole is a very interesting find. First of all, it has no company markings with the exception of "Pipe Organ Presentations" on the label, which is probably something that the asshole making the record label came up with on the spot. I very much doubt that this is part of a series of organ recordings. However, it seems they made more than one, although it has a confusing catalog number: It's got OP-003 on the cover and OP-002 on the label. Typical when you hire alcoholics to work in your record plant.

Second, the album is autographed by Don Thompson himself to someone named Isobel.



Whenever I find albums that are autographed (and I've come across a lot of them) I automatically deem them as worthless pieces of shit. For big name artists, an autograph adds value to the album. For musical nobodies, it's just an ego boost.

Third, the album came with a menu:




Apparently, The Organ Grinder was a pizza place in Ontario which was shut down in 1996. Pizza selections consisted of stupid names such as "The Opening Number", "The Mighty Wurlitzer", and the "Piper's Delight". Don Thompson played there from 1976-1982 and cut this album somewhere in that time period.

Fourth, the album was very much recorded live with two microphones, probably one at each side of the organ. It has a nice "tape recorder sound", very much like the recordings my mom makes when she plays her organ.

So with this album being such a masterpiece, let's listen to a song off it. Wait... my mistake. When people play the organ, they never play entire songs. They play medleys. There's no point in playing one song on the organ because it usually sounds boring, so you have to play a shit load of songs in a small time frame to keep it interesting. This is a children's medley which consists of the theme from Sesame Street, the Rubber Duckie song, the Mickey Mouse song, It's a Small World, the Popeye song, and the theme from The Lone Ranger (I'm only guessing it's the theme because I never watched the show)

Listen to The Children's Medley


Hans Martens - Do You Like Humperdinck? Engelbert's 30 Biggest Hits at the Organ



Look at the cover. I'll bet these hotties like Humperdinck!

This is a fucking terrible recording. Remember what I said about organ players playing medleys? Well, we're seeing the trend continue on this record. You get three songs in each medley. Hans seems to have an obsession with the damned foot pedal volume control. His performance consists of very quiet spots where he's drowned out by the shitty rhythm section, and very loud spots where he's drowning out the rhythm section. I suppose organ players do this to give their music "feeling", but they just make their music sound like a screaming psych patient speeding up and down the hallway of a mental institution in their electric wheelchair.

The guy who produced the album (who wisely chose to remain anonymous) could have fixed Hans's performance if he compressed the hell out of the organ track. Instead, he decided to simply not give a shit about the end product and left Hans's retarded wavering volume control as is. The end result is the listener fucking around with his stereo hookup because it sounds like there's a bad connection causing the sound to go loud and quiet.

Listen to The Last Waltz / Les Bicyclettes De Belsize / There Goes My Everything


The Cosmopolitans

I had to throw this one in for fun. The Cosmopolitans were an elderly duo from Winnipeg- one on the drums and one on the organ & vocals. I used to have a video cassette with some of their performances, but it was lost throughout my many moves during my 20s. The only existing recording I have is this audio recording of a song which was originally penned by Paul McCartney.

I have this song on my Save The Jets Fundraiser, but I figured I'd bring it back here since it prominently features organ playing. If you want to see The Cosmopolitans perform, someone lovingly uploaded them to youtube.

Listen to A World Without Love

So, does Mike have a point? Quite possibly. Personally, I think the electric organ has one useful purpose: playing music at a funeral home. It has such a miserable, dreadful sound that you can't help but weep upon hearing it's depressing noise. What I would love to find is an album of classic rock songs played on the organ, but I somehow doubt it exists. It's just a really stupid idea.