Videos of the 2021 Junq Tour are up! The finds this year were really terrible. Stay tuned for my in-depth coverage of all this garbage.
Thursday, August 26, 2021
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Cheap Imitation Instrumentals
Sometimes my life is a never-ending mess. Things are going pretty sour at my real job, so I've been dealing with that lately. Because of that, I haven't had much brain capacity to do an entry, so I've been waiting for moments when I actually DO have the brain capacity to work on something. Anyway, let's throw my personal problems aside because I've got a real pile of interesting crap sitting here. There's usually nothing all that amazing about albums like these, but this time I've been falling down a bit of a rabbit hole.
Before I get into the other albums, I need to talk about this CD...
LDMI - Today's Power Hits
I originally picked this up on cassette when I was a teenager. When I found the CD in a thrift store, I immediately grabbed it. These are all cheap imitations. I honestly have no clue when this thing came out, but I would guess around 1990 or so. There's some bad covers on here (including a bad cover of "Bad"). This CD almost needs an entry on it's own, but I found it significant enough to be somewhat included here.
I'm giving you two songs off this CD, because they're going to rear their ugly heads later on.
Fastforward Music - Love and Emotion (CD 3)
I was ready to commend this company for naming themselves "Fastforward Music", but you'd end up fast forwarding through the entire album. If they wanted to be 100% truthful, they would have named themselves "Throwinthegarbage Music"
The design & art direction was done by Propeller. What the fuck is "Propeller"? Who the fuck is "Propeller"? Why is he/she named "Propeller"? Is "Propeller" the two ugly people on the cover? Also, where the hell are the other two CDs in this set? I have so many questions.
The back of the CD has the following text:
"When you share love's music, you share the sound of closeness, of whispers and sighs, of laughter and touch - and they mean even more"
This isn't fucking Hallmark, it's a crappy knock-off CD!
The song "Candle in the Wind" is starting to approach the same level of knock-off popularity as "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain", which is making me want to cry in the rain. I wish Princess Diana hasn't died. We wouldn't be having a plethora of Candle in the Wind covers if she was still around. In case you're wondering, this is a different version than the one I posted here. Elton John's vocals have been replaced by an electric guitar.
When Bridge Over Troubled Water started, it sounded okay. But then we get a harp singing instead of a fake Garfunkel. WHY???? The song itself is a fine piano piece on it's own, but no... it needed a fucking harp.
I don't know most of the other songs, but they're probably just as shitty as these versions.
Listen to Bridge Over Troubled Water
Pegasus - Pan Pipes
If you were expecting Zamfir, you will be disappointed because these are synthesized pan flutes. Zamfir needs to go down there and beat the piss out of the guy who worked on this CD.
There is a cover of "The Air That I Breathe" by The Hollies on here which has some funky ass shit going on. Out of all the songs I'm reviewing in this entry, this one probably best represents what weather channel music sounds like.
The best song on this CD is Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On". The fake pan flutes are much more enjoyable than Celine Dion's voice. However, I cannot say the same for the cover of "I Will Always Love You". I would rather hear Whitney belt that one out because the pan flutes just don't work for that one. We also have a really boring version of Lady in Red.
Guess what? We have another cover of Candle in the Fucking Wind! It's also the EXACT SAME INSTRUMENTAL TRACK as the previous one, except the fake pan flutes have replaced the electric guitar. They both obviously used a digital copy because it was really easy to sync them together, and I've provided a link to that masterpiece below.
Listen to The Air That I Breathe
Listen to I Will Always Love You
Listen to two version of Candle in the Wind mixed together
The Dreamsound Orchestra Plays The Hits Made Famous by Madonna
Surprisingly, Candle in the Wind isn't on this one. You get all your favourite Madonna songs here butchered by... well... There is no such thing as "The Dreamsound Orchestra" as we'll see...
The vocals in "Like a Virgin" have been replaced by an electric guitar which probably isn't real. The Pan Flutes decide to give us an encore on the song "True Blue". The song "Material Girl" is just laughably bad. And then we have La Ilsa Bonita. You knew it was coming...
La Ilsa Bonita has the EXACT SAME INSTRUMENTAL TRACK as the version on the first CD on this entry. The only differences are that the audio quality is shittier, the vocals have been replaced by a crummy keyboard sound, and it fades out early. These two versions were a bitch to sync up, mainly because the instrumental tracks were likely recorded on analog equipment. The Dreamsound version had to be run through an EQ to make it sound a bit better.
Listen to two version of La Ilsa Bonita mixed together
Candlelight Romance - Guitar
Wow, that's a creative name. Apparently, all selections are courtesy of "Countdown Music". So, did the "Countdown Singers" obtain the rights to all the cheap imitations, or are the cheap imitations just part of a big jizz fest to make money? I would love to know the answer.
I wouldn't be surprised if this version of John Lennon's "Imagine" is played on a banjo. Roger Whittaker's "The Last Farewell" is actually good because it sounds like it was done by The Ventures. Why couldn't they have done the entire album like that? Speaking of The Ventures, the version of Sleepwalk on here is really bad. I'm pretty sure I have this version of "Every Breath You Take" with vocals elsewhere, but I'm too lazy to go digging for it.
Guess what? We have Lady in Fucking Red again! To my surprise, it's a completely different version than the fake Zamfir one.
Listen to Every Breath You Take
Candlelight Romance - Romantic Piano
Yes! We're in for more Candlelight Romance! When I think of Romance, I think of the song "My Way" which was included on here for some reason.
The only song I've pulled from this one is "Take My Breath Away". They replaced the vocal track with someone banging their head on a piano. As with the others, I've mixed the two versions together. The vocal version fades out slightly before the stupid piano one does. Again, they were a bit difficult to sync up due to the original likely being recorded on analog equipment.
Listen to two version of Take My Breath Away mixed together
That's it for this round! I'm leaving for the Junq Tour tomorrow, so I'll have a couple bins worth of stuff to plow through and two videos to edit. I'm looking forward to seeing what trash I'll find this round. See you guys in a bit!
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
The Greatest Mainstream Recording Artists in Music History
We're taking a break from covering all the junk artists that I keep insisting on posting about, and instead focusing on some REAL music from REAL artists. I hope you guys enjoy the change of pace!
Anne-Marie Murray - Songs of Newfoundland
There came a point in Anne Murray's career when she decided to take a break from her middle-aged housewife music and dive head-first into Canada's thriving Newfie music scene. To distance herself from her old sound, she stupidly decided to use her middle name on the cover (pronounced "Anne Murray Murray"). What resulted was music that was even more fucking annoying than everything else she ever released. Thankfully, this album flopped and she went back to making housewife music, leaving this piece of trash behind and never to be revisited again. All of us should be thankful that Anne Murray Murray will happily sing "Snowbird" any day over "Petty Harbour Bait Skiff", whatever the hell that means.
Listen to The Star of Logy Bay
Genesis - From The Heart
The British group Genesis made a lot of hits back in the 1980s, none of which can be found on this album. During the conception of this piece of junk, Peter Gabriel forced the entire band to put down their instruments, go get make-overs, and record a bunch of cover songs acapella. Although Phil Collins tried to convince Peter that the album could at least use a few cymbals to fill out the sound, Peter was adamant that Phil Collins should take his cymbals and put them over his dick instead of trying to procreate ever again.
Phil Collins (back), Mike Rutherford (left), Tony Banks (right), and Peter Gabriel (front) all boarded a plane together and flew from England to Winnipeg, Manitoba to record this masterpiece of stupidity. Peter Gabriel really thought that the single "Wind Beneath My Wings" was going to sell more copies than Bette Midler's version, but he got a taste of bitter reality when the album only sold nine copies (four by the band members).
Listen to Wind Beneath My Wings
Listen to When Will I Be Loved
Tom Stinson - A Search for Peace
Tommy Stinson has been well known for his work with Guns N' Roses and The Replacements. Unfortunately at some point on tour with G'n'F'n'R, he seemingly found Jesus hiding in one of his guitar amps. He promptly quit the tour which resulted in Axl Rose erasing Tommy's guitar parts on the Chinese Democracy master tapes (again). He cut his hair like a dork, bought himself a $75 guitar from Wal-Mart, and set out to make solo artist history. Paul Westerberg told Tommy that he was a man of only a thousand brain cells to make such a stupid career move, but Tommy argued that Paul is way too dyslexic to know how to count anything in a person's body.
Tommy proudly released this solo album in 2005. Thankfully, Axle Rose was able to get ahold of the master tapes and erase them.
We will return to regular junk posts starting with the next entry...
Monday, May 24, 2021
These Terrible Elvis Tributes Made Me Cry In The Chapel (Part Three)
It's time to re-visit some really bad Elvis tributes! I've done some of these before (here and here), but I've accumulated a few more to tackle, and this is probably the worst batch so far. So let's get to it!
The Kool Kats - Music of Elvis Presley
Well, the cover has some shiny embossed gold lettering on the cover which is nice, but it doesn't scan well. Honestly, this CD is the best one of the lot. The covers are actually quite faithful to the originals, but you can tell this isn't Elvis. They were kind enough to make "Performed by The Kool Kats" in small dark text to fool all the baby boomers into buying this. How nice of them to rip off people on a fixed income.
Big Ross & The Memphis Sound - Elvis Presley's Golden Hits
Pickwick was kind enough to boldly state that Big Ross is the one singing on this album, but somebody obviously saw the name "Elvis" on this record at Woolco and wasted their $1.77 on it. Pickwick did a really excellent job mixing in a low buzzing noise throughout the whole recording.
The song "Suspicious Minds" is absolutely flat and lifeless, and the back up singer (yes, there's only one) sounds like she's bored out of her skull. On the plus side, they actually did the false ending on it. Most Elvis tribute albums don't bother with it because they already have the shopper by the balls with the word "Elvis" on the cover. "It's Now or Never" keeps the lifeless trend going, but Big Ross tries to make it fancy by doing his over-the-top vocal performance. All the other songs are pretty mediocre.
Jesup Singers - Heartbreak Hotel, Don't Be Cruel, and others
We know who this is just by the extremely loud cover art.. It's our friends at Fantastic F / Deville / Thunderbird Productions! Why did this company need so many different names? What are they trying to hide? Drugs? Deep fried peanut butter & banana sandwiches? 8-tracks that kill people during the first play? Who knows!
These covers are pretty bad, but we've come to expect that from Fantastic F. The guy talking through "Are You Lonesome Tonight" sounds like he's reading out a list of camping supplies that he can't use because of the pandemic. When he's singing "Hound Dog", he sounds like he's got a really bad chest infection. The guy on the guitar thinks he's Jimi fucking Hendrix. After the singer downs a bottle of Tequila, he slobbers his way through the song "Love Me". What glorious talent!
Listen to Are You Lonesome Tonight
Elvis Wade - It's Been 10 Years
So what's even better than a bunch of shitty Elvis covers? How about a bunch of shitty original songs about Elvis sung by a guy trying to sound like Elvis? The original songs occupy about half of the album with the other half being mediocre covers. My copy is autographed by the fake King himself. Each of the original songs are about how dead Elvis is, and make this album a truly miserable listening experience. One of the songs (The King is Gone) was written by another Elvis Impersonator named Ronnie McDowell who I covered in one of my previous entries. There seriously needs to be an intervention to stop Elvis impersonators from writing songs.
Wanna know something crazy about this guy? He's married to Sandy Posey! Honestly, I'd rather listen to her music instead of this piece of junk.
Listen to What's Gonna Happen To Your Memory
Listen to Memories of the King
Various Artists - Tribute to Elvis
There's a lot of people in the record collecting community who scoff at Pickwick's albums. Little do they know that Pickwick was simply distributed much better than the grotesque steaming shit that came from Canada's Arc Records. Personally, I found the Pickwick Elvis album to be of better quality than this one. This disaster was distributed by Arc International and apparently made it's way into my hands from England. I feel like I must apologize to all the Brits out there on behalf of Arc Records for stinking up their country.
The most unique thing about this record is that it contains Elvis songs that aren't generally found on other Elvis tribute albums. Some of the odd choices are "Wild in the Country", "Wooden Heart", "A Mess of Blues", "King Creole", and "Let's Have a Party". Not only that, all the artists are actually credited on this album. Although it's a sign of decency, it's not a sign of quality.
The covers are fucking terrible. The performances are fucking terrible. The quality of the vinyl is fucking terrible. I've had bad luck trying to clean records from Arc because the vinyl usually degrades with every cleaning. I wouldn't be surprised if they chopped up previous performers who didn't sell enough records and threw the body parts into the vat of molten vinyl to help keep the costs down. In summary, I transferred a fairly dirty and noisy LP.
The singer of "Hard Headed Woman" decided to sing "Ah-heh-heh" instead of "Uh-huh-huh", making it sound like he's giggling from someone tickling his balls with a feather. "I Got Stung" sounds nothing like the original. "It's Now or Never" has become a really bad spanish song with a shitty Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator singing it. "Jailhouse Rock" is sung by a guy with a bad case of rabies. I wouldn't be surprised if he ate the band after the performance, which may actually be a good thing.
Wow, that was really bad. Perhaps we should take a break from the knock-off artists and review some genuine ones. Could it really happen??? We shall see...
Monday, May 10, 2021
Let's Chew On Some Turds
It's been a while since I posted something. My job has been driving pine cones up my ass, and I've been trying to get my new workspace finished which will probably never be finished at this rate. Anyway, here's some crappy albums. Unfortunately for you, most of these artists play country music. Sorry.
Kenny Parrott - Favourites
NONE of these songs are my favourites.
This is the first Kenny Parrott album I ever purchased (around 10 years ago) and I'm only getting around to it now. I've since reviewed Vol.2 and Vol.3. I think it's absurd how many people from Manitoba (the city of Brandon specifically) are willing travel to Branson Missouri, see Kenny Parrott live, and buy his crappy albums (this one is autographed. Watch me rake in the dillies when I put it up on ebay). I believe this album predates Vol.1 which makes me question Kenny's ability to count.
You know what else is crazy? Kenny's been recording albums since the mid-1980s. You'd think that each one would move him an inch closer to superstardom, but unfortunately Kenny doesn't have a ruler (nor can he count) so he's stuck playing music in Branson Hell for all of eternity.
This tape is nothing but mundane country and adult contemporary garbage. There's no stand out tracks here, but I'll let you guys have one anyway...
Listen to There's a Tear in my Beer
Travis Barre
When my kid was in grade four, he had a teacher named Mr. Barre. Imagine my joy when I found this at the thrift store! Apparently he's just an elementary school teacher by day, but he's a terrible country music artist by night. I think I would have been happier if this album was full of songs about bratty kids who smell like Cheetos. Yes, 60% of all children smell like Cheetos. If you don't believe me, just walk into an elementary school and take a whiff (and then get kicked out like the creep that you are).
On the back of the album, we see that Travis is staring longingly at the guitar's neck, hoping to nibble on it and get it in the mood to play. We also notice that it's an HDCD just in case you crave some extra bits of Travis. Also, why the hell is there a "radio version" of one of the songs on here? Who the hell would want to put this on the radio? He's not singing about fucking someone in the ass, so I don't know why there's a problem with the original version other than it being a lousy song
Listen to Grow Old With Me (the non-radio version)
Lorne Power - My Yellowknife Home
There's no power in this music. It's just wimpy imitation Newfie music with a really bad mix. The rhythm section is brought to you by Casio. I'll give the guy credit though... Nobody else wanted to write a song about Yellowknife.
Mark Prindle - Smilehouse: The Tragic Remains of an Abandoned Masterpiece
Whenever I'm working on an album that I'm reviewing on Classical Gas Emissions, I usually skim through each of the songs to make things go faster. With each of the songs on this album averaging one minute in length, I was forced to listen to it from front to back, and it's a VERY difficult listening experience.
So here's how I got this CD... Mark Prindle has a music review site where he used to review entire discographies. I sent him one album he needed to complete a discography, and to show his appreciation, he sent me a copy of this album. It made me question his level of appreciation. If you've ever heard the sound of a garbage truck emptying itself, there's no need for you to pick up this album. It is without a doubt the musical equivalence.
If my memory serves me correctly, the song titles are just the descriptive file names that Mark used on whatever piece of equipment he made the music on. Then he went back years later and wrote lyrics based on the file names. Here's a few amusing quotes...
Xylodark: "This is the song of Xylodark, Hi everybody my name is Mark"
Popviolin: "My pop plays a violin. He plays it all day! He plays it all night! He plays it for you! He plays it for me!"
President: "Assassinate the president" (looped)
60snoisx: "Let's Put The "60s Noise X" back in "Sex""
8riffs: "This song has 8 riffs and all of them stink"
Keybord: "I was typing on my keyboard. Typing an important word. Along came a bird. And yeah he dropped a turd."
Every song title has a comment in parenthesis at the end of it. Some examples are "country version", "with orchestra" and "karaoke". There's quite a few songs about violins and you get to hear the occasional nice harmony, but most of it sounds like 12 dogs vomiting at the same time.
Jack Nelson and Country Line - Recorded Live
So what could be worse than the noisy Mark Prindle album? Well, here's an album that apparently has some sort of a noise gate on it. You only get to hear the loud parts of the songs while the quiet parts are almost completely muted. It's not even a nice and clear loud sound, it's a distorted pile of muddy shit. It also doesn't help that it's country music. I find it hard to believe that these assholes said "Yes! This is a quality product! Let's release it for everyone to be annoyed by it." If I had a recording of my band that sounded this bad, I would keep it for myself and record another live show to hopefully get a better recording. My only guess as to why this thing sounds the way it does is that there was a bunch of hum, hiss, or crackling in the recording, and they filtered the piss out of it to make it sound "better". They should have filtered the whole goddam thing and threw the master recording in the trash.
Well, that was fun! I'm thinking of doing another entry on recorded records fairly soon. I've been finding a ton of them lately, and I'm curious to see what kind of ancient recordings are on them. However, I also haven't done any knock-off albums lately, so perhaps I should put that in my sights. Be back soon!
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