Albums You've Never Heard Of: Part 4

With all the commotion going on in my personal life right now, I'm still making an effort to pump out the occasional blog entry. Yay! I'm also currently suffering the mid-winter slump, which is pretty good considering it's April and once the weather is behaving somewhat reliably, garage sales will be upon us and treasures will flow from every orifice of Winnipeg.

But for now, here's three more albums from the teetering stack of albums nobody has ever heard of, nor wants to buy - and for very good reason. I have yet to come across one that screams "I'm awesome! put me into your regular music rotation!" Instead, these albums are like smelly fruit that's been sitting in the fridge for a few months. They make your face wrinkle up, much like what that fruit will look like once you finally locate it.

This is also the Cover Version special, and all of these songs are on CD, so quality attempts to grace your ears!


The HADDs - Never Mind The Re-Org, Here's The HADDs


I had high hopes for this one. The name is obviously a parody of the first album by The Sex Pistols which I enjoyed immensely. However, all relation to the Pistols is lost when you press play and hear an extremely bland and shitty version of "Blue Suede Shoes". Here's the track listing on the disc, all covers:

1) Blue Suede Shoes
2) Jukebox In My Mind
3) The Dance
4) Heartbreak Hotel
5) Knockin' On Heaven's Door
6) Wonderful Tonight
7) Poncho & Lefty
8) Just A Matter Of Time
9) Ruby Baby
10) Love Will Keep Us Alive
11) A Fool Such As I
12) Stand By Me
13) Brown Eyed Girl

The drummer is a synthesizer. The singer is some average guy (nicknamed 'da Soulman) who shouldn't give up his day job. Also, whoever decided to put The Fucking Dance by Garth Brooks on this album should have their teeth flossed with their guitar strings. I hate that goddam song.

Also, I have no clue what "Re-Org" nor a "HADD" is. From the cover, I'm guessing HADD stands for "Horny Asshole's Droopy Dick"

But if you like bland rock covers, you'll enjoy this uninteresting version of Brown Eyed Girl:

Click Here To Listen


Tonia & Donna - Insieme


Here's two old ladies who put together a collection of boring piano-backed cover songs. They look pretty happy considering how depressing the song selection is. I had to ask myself, why would ANYBODY put together a CD of such miserable music? Then I looked at the back cover...



Yes! Of course! The music is depressing because this wonderful album was funded by the good people at Wojcik's, Winnipeg's finest funeral chapel! There is actually a third member to this group, but he was unable to get out from his coffin to play the guitar which is noticeably missing from the recordings. Wojcik's put on a nice service for him and played this fine recording which enhanced the bawling and sadness of the family and friends who attended. May the third member rest in peace.

Please take home a piece of this funeral by listening to Tonia & Donna's painful rendition of "The Rose". CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

Yvette - Love, Light and Blue


This album borderlines on driving me insane. When Yvette Rochon hits some of those high notes, it makes me want to drive my index finger through my skull. Don't get me wrong, with the right song, this singing style can be quite enjoyable and a few of these songs are. I'd love to hear Yvette do a version of Pineapple Rag. Speaking of which, if anyone knows who did this version of Pineapple Rag, please let me know. I'd love to find a complete copy instead of this hacked up cassette I recorded off the radio back in 1984.

Anyway, this trio perfoms songs that aren't as irritating as the garbage on the Kathie Lee Gifford album, which is a good thing. However, calling this a "trio" is somewhat a mistake. It's mostly Yvette singing and a lady named Jo Ann playing the piano. Whenever the guitar player actually plays, he is totally fucking useless. While Yvette and Jo Ann are doing their thing, the guitar player just starts dicking around with the strings, playing NOTHING of ANY relevance to the rest of the performance. The occasional "plunk", "plink" and random chord pulls a somewhat decent performance down to the bottom of a three month old outhouse, where bad musical groups live and munch on human feces. His guitar playing sucks, and he should be fired from "Yvette".

Click Here to listen to "Things Are Looking Up"

And another round of "Garbage Albums from Inner Winnipeg" has come and gone. As the pile grows, I'll get around to more of them. If you see an album in this list or any of the previous ones that you would like made available for download, please don't hesitate to ask. I have lots of webspace just dying to be used!

Video Game: Kentris

Quite a few years ago, I picked up this CD-ROM for five bucks at a used book & CD store (check out the original price - yikes!!!). It's got a ton of old DOS games on it. I was hoping for some text adventures, but I didn't seem to luck out here. However, it did get me on a Commander Keen kick for quite some time.

I put a pile of these games onto my BBS while I was running it. I tried most of them, and came across an extremely weird game called Kentris. It's a Tetris clone written by a guy named.... get this.... KEN! Pretty original, huh?

Kentris is amusing for one reason: the audio. Ken's nasally nerdy voice fills your gameplay with action-packed excitement! Here's a video:



And if you would like to download your very own copy of Kentris, you can visit Ken Silverman's Website. Not only do you get Kentris, but you also get the source code so you can fuck around with it and make the gameplay better!

For those of you without programming abilities, you can replace Ken's audio files with your own and actually make it sound like a REAL game!

Candid Pics: 10/03/22

My deepest apologies for the lack of updates, but there's been a lot of stuff going on in my personal life. I won't lie, it's going to affect the frequency of the postings over the next little bit, but things will hopefully be back to normal shortly. I've got lots of blog fodder in queue, and garage sale season is right around the corner. There's no shortage of things to write about!

For now, here's some pictures I've taken in the past month or so:

Happy Art? 


Crime Spree at Old Folks Complex


It's Still Halloween!

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.