Music for Moving, Praising, Pumping and Thrusting

Well it's about bloody time I made another blog entry, isn't it? I guess I shall explain myself... I've been in the process of selling my current house and buying a new one. I'd forgotten how stressful all of this was, but I found myself a nice piece of land that I just had to have. The only drawback is the new house is about the same size as my current one, but I should have enough money to build a decent addition onto it. In other words, I'm going to get a new space to do my blogging and my videos. It became evident that it was needed as well. I get possession at the beginning of September.

This is probably going to be the year that I've blogged the least. Go figure that it's Classical Gas Emissions' 10th anniversary year, and I wanted to pour a lot more content into it. However, the good news is that I'm eventually going to have some new and much-needed space for blogging and videos. Unfortunately, that new space won't happen until late 2018, but that's not to say I won't be able to do it in the space that I'm going to have. It'll just be a bit cramped until next summer when I can get the addition built onto my house. So over the next few months, updates will continue to be slow as I pack all my shit for moving.

However, blogging has never been easier since I have pre-selected items for entries! This time around, I've plucked some exercise tapes. We've got some pumping, thrusting, and contracting to get your balls and tits all sweaty! Let's get down to business...


Integrity Music Fitness - Praise Workout 1



The luscious blonde on the cover can work me out anytime she wants! Too bad she probably believes in keeping her virginity until marriage.

I'm not really sure why these cassettes even exist. I mean, can't Christians just pray to God and ask for their fat to fall off their body? I suppose that's not how it works. They just have to ask God for the dedication to exercise and play this tape every day. That's probably not how it works either though.

This is all over-the-top gospel music that is supposed to help get your halo in shape and exercise your faith. We have exciting song titles such as "Give Unto The Lord" , "Bless The Lord", "Blessed Be The Lord", "Jesus Christ Is Lord" and "For The Lord He Is Great". Lyrical creativity is at an all time high as you can see.

This cassette doesn't come with a poster or instructions or anything, so I'm guessing your workout consists of fainting to the ground and getting back up repeatedly, for the Lord He is great.

Listen to "All Of My Life"


Get In Shape Girl - Pump'n Run



This cassette was released by Hasbro sometime in the 1980s. In other words, it was directed at parents who had fat daughters. She would open it up at Christmas as a message from Santa that she was a tubby little donut, and it would be a contrast to the box of milk chocolates that she ended up pigging out on regardless because her feelings were hurt. Like Santa isn't a fat fuck himself.

The title of the cassette was derived from an overweight girl's fate as a teenager. If she doesn't get in shape (girl), her destiny is dating boys who'll just pump and run.

As you can see, the chubby little princess who owned this cassette put tape over the record-protect holes, and she recorded some songs from the radio, probably while eating a bag of potato chips. Nevertheless, she didn't fill the tape, so I was able to get some of the original recording digitized.

Side B is in French for those girls who ate too many french fries, and Hasbro used a horrible duplication plant which left the French side bleeding through to the English side. So if you're French and into Satanism, you'll have no problem hearing all the backwards messages.

Listen to Get In Shape Girl



Fitness Fun For Everyone K-3



I bought this at a yard sale, solely for the interesting titles listed on the tape. It's a workout program for school-aged children and was obviously recorded from an LP, probably using an old Califone record player and tape deck. I'd love to get a set of those just for the notalgia.

The "songs" or "workouts" are very short, and I've included the ones with the most amusing titles for your enjoyment.

Listen to Abdominal Pumping
Listen to Abdominal Contractions
Listen to Leg Thrust



Body Break - Get Movin'... Keep Movin'!



For those of you who aren't in Canada, allow me to introduce Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod. These two dominated the PSA spots during Canadian daytime TV in the late 1980s and early 1990s with their exercise and dieting tips. This was usually the time when you would go take a shit while waiting for your favourite TV show to start.

For your enjoyment, nostalgia, or even torture, I scoured Youtube and found an episode with the version of their original theme song which has that fucking overdubbed goof saying "body break" in a pseudo-baritone voice at very mis-placed moments in the song. I believe this was the only time this stupid version was used, and it had glued itself to my brain for the last 20 years. You can watch it here.

Unfortunately, the original theme is not included with this cassette. Instead, you get the new-fangled Body Break theme song called "Keep Movin'" by The Body Break Team which is at the beginning of side 2. You also get songs by Canadian techno band BKS mixed in who had a hit in the 1990s with the song "Living In Ecstacy", although you don't even get that song on here. There's also a couple songs from The Urban Cookie Collective, and a group I've never heard of called Full Intention.

To be fair, the commercially released songs are decent, but because this is Classical Gas Emissions, I'm focusing entirely on all the songs created by The Body Break Team. The lyrics were written by a retarded donkey:

Havin' Fun:

Feel the Beat
Down The Street
Move Your Feet
Dancin' Dancin'

Having Fun
There's A Party Going On
Having Fun
Get Together, Having Fun

We've got master poets at work here! And one more, just because I like hearing my readers groan:

Work It!:

Body Break
You've got to move your body now!

Feel the rhythm deep inside
Take it for a magic ride
Feel the music, make you move
Work it baby, to the groove

We are witnessing the apocalyptic re-birth of Bob Dylan! I'm sure you're all falling to your knees and trembling in the presence of such lyrical greatness.

The fun doesn't stop with the lyrics that were picked off someone's bum hole. The inlay has it's own magnificence happening as well.



And just look at how fucking happy these two are:



They must be high on ecstasy to be this happy and to enjoy this collection of music. If you have any spare ecstasy laying around, you may want to take some before listening to this collection of songs by The Body Break Team.

Listen to Havin' Fun / Strut Your Stuff
Listen to Pump Your Body
Listen to Keep Movin'
Listen to Work It!
Listen to Take A Body Break


And that's all! I hope you all enjoyed your work out!

Honestly guys, I'm not trying to ditch the blog. I keep on buying more stuff to write about, and I have bins full of it. This year has been extremely busy, and I promise to keep posting whenever I can throughout my move. You will most likely see silence between August and October while I settle into my new place. I get a bad case of the Winter blahs, so expect my activity to increase by then.

Until next time, keep fit and have fun! Yes, I've used that one before, but it's appropriate this time around.

Let's Go To The Zoo!

Since I haven't been around much lately, I figured I'd treat you guys with a trip to the zoo. There are many animals that live at the zoo, so let's learn a little bit about them!


Take It Easy: The Eagles Tribute Band



There's nothing quite as depressing as a roadkill guitar. I hope it didn't suffer any pain.

This isn't the worst thing I've ever heard. It also clearly states on the cover (in non-microscopic text) that it's a tribute band, so I'll give them credit for that. Here's some interesting text in the inlay:

The Eagles Tribute Band perform admirable versions of ten of the very best of these West Coast classics, faithfully reproducing both the sound and the spirit of the times.

"Admirable" is a far stretch. The singer sounds like he's not very fond of singing any high notes, or any of these songs at all for that matter. I'm also puzzled by the "live" version of "Life In The Fast Lane" on here. I find it extremely hard to believe that these guys rented recording equipment to record ONE BLOODY SONG from one of their live performances. They must be making a scrotum-load of money selling these crappy CDs.

Zoo Fact #1: Eagles sound like shit when they're taking it easy!!

Listen to Take It Easy



The Dead Dog Lady - Unleashed



Apparently, she got her name from a song she wrote about her dead dog. I'm guessing that the dog on the cover is the dead one. There is one major problem I have with this album... The fucking CD doesn't work, and I spent two dollars on this goddam coaster. I was anxiously looking forward to hearing songs like "The P.M.S. Song", but the Dead Dog Lady decided to be the Dead Compact Disc Lady.

It gets worse... I went and visited her website which is surprisingly still up, which looks like a 14 year old's Geocities nightmare. I figured I could go there and buy a working copy of the album, but when I clicked on the link, it didn't work. She also seems to be The Dead Hyperlink Lady.

Zoo Fact #2: Dead dogs cannot make any noise, and therefore do not need to wear a muzzle or record an album!


Goats for Haiti



Every time you buy a copy of this album, The King's School will purchase one goat and ship it to Haiti. This album is awful, and I cannot see Haiti's goat population increasing significantly from sales of this album.

You get all your favourite hits on this 6-track CD such as "1st John 3:1", "A New Command (John 13:34-35)", "Daniel 2:20", and "A New Command (Remix)". Also, the album cover will go down in history as one of the most cut-throat art contests in the history of Winnipeg.

Zoo Fact #3: Goats like to eat children who cannot sing!

Listen to Before I Go To Sleep Today


Shirley, Squirrely & Melvin - Live



The Pickwick record label can certainly bring a lot of strange joy to people who should be committed to a mental institution for their taste in music. My commitment date is May 2nd.

I've gone over this entire record sleeve, and I cannot find what city or venue this live album was recorded in. I also have to wonder if Shirley, Squirrely & Melvin actually did a tour to record this album, or if it was made in Pickwick's basement with their audience being made up of mice and cockroaches.

Anyway, there's some odd song choices here. Surprisingly, their hit song "Hey Shirley" isn't included on this album. Why not? Isn't it a tradition to include your greatest hit on your live album? I'll bet a riot broke out at this concert after they buggered off and didn't play it.

Instead we've got Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes", Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz", Jackson Browne's "Boulevard", and two original pieces of shit nobody cares about.

I also have the single for Soul Man / Blue Suede Shoes:



Personally, I think The Chipmunks are better than these shitty rodents.

Zoo Fact #4: Squirrels use 1950's jive music as their mating call!


Listen to Blue Suede Shoes
Listen to Mercedes Benz


So I've decided to solve a huge problem I've been having with blogging. I have two highly overflowing bins of stuff waiting for me to pick through. Since my queue pile is so incredibly massive, I've decided to start throwing together pre-chosen collections for blogging. This should speed up the process of me getting things posted here instead of rooting through two overly-full bins of cassettes, 8-tracks and other shit.

Stay tuned for more!

I Bought an Altair 8800 Computer

 I've known about the existence of the Altair for decades. I learned about it back in the early 1990s when I had initially become interested in anything with a monitor and a keyboard. That being said, the Altair didn't have much appeal to me. Switches and LEDs? I'll pass. Gimme a keyboard, some games, and the BASIC programming language! A floppy disk drive was always nice too.

So now here I am as an adult. I'd never owned, let alone seen an Altair (or even it's cousin the IMSAI 8080). The most logical reason for this is most of these computers were sold as kits in the United States in small hobbyist stores or out of the back of magazines. I live in Canada. If anyone in Canada wanted a computer back in the mid-70s, they would either have to make a trip to the United States to buy one or order one through a magazine (and it was the IMSAI 8080 that was able to reliably deliver product).

Only about 10,000 Altair computers (the majority being the 8800 model) were sold. The IMSAI sold twice as many, which still isn't a lot. Nobody knows how many Altairs ended up in the garbage or the scrap heap. Because of it's rarity and it's historical significance, these computers fetch a nice tidy amount on Ebay.

That being said, I shit the fuck out of my pants when an Altair 8800 showed up for sale locally for a good price. I phoned the guy who was selling it, and he told me he had a lot of interest in the computer. I asked if I could come down in an hour to see it, and he agreed. I excitingly and erratically drove over to the bank machine to get the money to buy this rare and beautiful oddity. What the hell was I doing? I NEVER wanted a computer with lights and switches!

When I got to the guy's house and feasted my eyes on this beauty, I trembled and dropped another load of shit in my pants. The guy let me pop open the cover so I could look inside. He told me it wasn't working and I could see why.... There was a broken wire inside, and the capacitors looked like the jizzfest on the opposing side of the enormous shit stain in the back of my pants. My girlfriend looked and exclaimed, "THERE'S NOTHING INSIDE OF IT!" Of course there isn't! There's only a CPU board and a RAM expansion. Nevertheless, it's probably the most valuable empty air I had ever breathed into my lungs.

I happily handed him the money, and loaded it into the back of my Jeep.

The basic story behind this computer was... the guy was selling it for his uncle who was the original owner. He had purchased it in the USA and put it together himself. He kept the original manual and the build instructions that came with it (which of course came with my purchase).

So now I'm a proud owner of an original Altair 8800. It is the only vintage computer I own that is older than me. Unfortunately, I won't be repairing it until the fall because I've got a million other projects planned for the next few months. When I do repair it, I'll be putting the entire adventure up on Youtube. For now, you'll have to suffice with some glorious pictures...









And yet again, my Coleco Adam series has been stalled, mainly from me getting more stuff that I never have time to blog about, and dealing with family services because someone reported my ex-wife to them. This year has been riddled with so many personal issues, it's unreal. Hopefully this part of crapfest 2017 is over so I can finally get back to doing the things I love.

Don't Get Dancing Fever... It'll Make You Puke

Happy new year to all my devoted and tortured readers! I'm a bit late to the party this year, but perhaps this may be useful for next year.

First of all, allow me to explain why it took two months to get around to this post. At the beginning of January (when I was initially working on this entry and was nearly done), my dad went into the hospital. I visited almost daily until his passing on February 19th. After that, I had to deal with all the things that go along with a passing family member. So that's where my time has been spent as of late.

In the spare time that I had, I've been trying to get the second episode of Tech of the Century edited. I didn't realize that I had recorded hours upon hours of footage of me refurbishing my Coleco Adam computer, and the initially planned 30 minute episode has turned into 10 or so videos, each about 15 minutes in length. The entire series should be up within then next few weeks, but I really needed to put something up on the blog in the meantime.

So now that I have your forgiveness, I shall make you hate me all over again....




We're going to take a look at these beautiful CD compilations released by Madacy. Madacy is a shitty budget Canadian record label who probably released other crap that I don't care about. I recently reviewed their awful Muppets release I owned when I was a kid.

Today, we're going to dance our asses off with volumes one and two of "Dancing Fever". I think it's funny that they use a phrase from the disco era on these compilations which cover songs from the 80s and 90s. The first volume has been sitting in my queue pile for about a year. I found the second volume about a week before I started writing this entry back in January. I honestly had no clue that a second volume existed!

Both of the album covers are almost exactly the same. The album cover boasts in a dark-purple-on-black-background text, "Dance to the Hits". There's no exclamation mark in that statement, so don't get too excited about cutting the shit out of your rug. I like how these albums brag about using digital mastering, but digital mastering doesn't make a turd more beautiful and pleasant-smelling. Perhaps a more accurate phrase would be "Digital Bastardizing".

Volume one is riddled with terrible covers of rap songs from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Here's some of the "highlights"...

Pump Up The Jam
This one requires an apology. It awful. I don't know what accent that's supposed to be, but it sounds like someone with a speech impediment trying to sound like they're from the south. The music is full of magnificent Casio goodness.

Wild Thing
Funky Cold Medina
Tone Loc's less talented wanna-be cousin makes two appearances here. All the samples that were used in the originals songs (Van Halen's Jamie's Crying and Kiss' Christine Sixteen) have been replaced by a real guitar and a Casio's attempt at making drum noises. I think the cowbell might be real too.

Buffalo Stance
This Neneh Cherry cover is actually not too awful except the intro is nowhere close to the original.

Me, Myself and I
This De La Soul cover cries because this version needs to be taken out back and beaten to death with a shot gun.



For Volume two, you are treated to a plague of lesser known hits from the 1980s. As a person who knows a LOT of music, I have to be honest and tell you that I don't know most of these songs. However, I will post the ones I'm familiar with.

La Ilsa Bonita
Madonna starts off the album by leaving the recording studio, and all we're left with is that same fucking Casio keyboard and someone who aspires to look and sound as sexy as Madonna. It's probably the same chick from "Pump Up the Jam". This song also appears on another Madacy album called "Today's Power Hits" which I briefly touched on in my dreadful Whitney Houston tribute. Incidentally, that version of "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" is on here as well.

Let's Go
I'll be honest and tell you that the version of Wang Chung's "Let's Go" included on here is the first one I ever heard. Back when I was a stupid kid, I purchased a two tape set called "40 Super Hits of 87" (also in my Whitney Houston tribute) and this version was the first track on it. It's difficult for me to comment on this version due to hearing it for the last 28 years. From what I can tell, it's a decent cover, but I'll let you be the judge of that one.

Two Of Hearts
This Stacey Q cover is a nice attempt at duplicating the original, but trips over the Casio keyboard and the whole thing falls on it's face, making an extremely glorious racket.

And those are the only ones I know on here!

I really need to dig out that "40 Super Hits of 87" tape set and review it. It's loaded with bastardized Bon Jovi, fucked up Fleetwood Mac, phooey poopy Huey Lewis and the News, shitty scummy Eddie Money, and many other horrible attempts at scamming you out of your money.


So yeah, I'm back in business. I know you all missed this kind of shit. In other exciting news, I'm planning an extreme two day Junq Tour across Manitoba where I visit some of my favourite thrift stores of old. That should be happening in August, and I'll hopefully be putting my adventures up on Youtube.

Until then, keep watching for new entries and a whole shitpile of Tech of the Century episodes!

In Celebration of 10 Years...

This year, Classical Gas Emissions will be celebrating 10 years of torturing it's readers. I've never had a personal project that has lasted for this long, so it's very worthy of celebration.

I knew I wanted to do something for my 10 year anniversary, but I was a bit stumped as to what. Initially, I had decided that I wanted to release a DVD which consisted of me going out, shopping for stuff for the blog, and possibly interviewing a few of the local people who influenced some of the things I've posted. I honestly didn't have the time last year to pursue this, because life gets in the way.

Recently, I have changed my focus. For the longest time, I've been wanting to do something more video-based, but I wasn't sure what. I kinda wanted my own channel on Roku. I would love even more to have my own local TV station, but that's never going to fucking happen. Instead, I've decided to actually have a dedicated show on my Youtube channel. What a great idea! It's about fucking time! Took long enough!

The way I see it, I'm always doing something around the house that's somehow related to technology, so why not set up the camera and record me working on it? It doesn't take much time out of my life to set up a camera and a microphone. Of course, I will be featuring some of the atrocious audio and video I've been posting here just to make the videos more "interesting". I already have some footage kicking around that I can edit down into an episode or three, so I've got a bit of a head start.

I'll still be posting here on the blog. The Youtube show called "Tech of the Century" will just be an extension of the blog rather than a replacement for it. Like I said, this is stuff I'm usually doing anyway, so I shouldn't have to take much time away from this place, if any.

So, in honour of 10 years of Classical Gas Emissions, I wrote and recorded a new song, put together a bunch of video clips, extracted a cover of the song "Classical Gas" from a CD I found at a thrift store by a relatively unknown musician, and made a preview of things to come!

Enjoy, and stay tuned!