Avenue of America 8-tracks

At 4:00pm on August 15, 2012, I will be featured on Kent Davies' "Amateur Hour" on CKUW 95.9 FM which is the radio station at the University of Winnipeg.

I've never been on the radio, so I might sound like some clueless asshole Kent found on the street (although I wouldn't be surprised if that's the kind of fun he's aiming for!) If by some chance you cannot tune in due to your forgetfulness or suffer the unfortunate handicap of NOT living in Winnipeg, you will be able to download the show here.

So now that I've officially sold out, you can expect the blog entries to suffer and become a much lower quality than before. Wait... is that even possible????

Kent mentioned to me that he was interested in my collection of 8-tracks, so for this entry I figured I'd dig out three more and post them. Without further ado, here's some shitty 8-tracks by a shitty Canadian company called "Avenue of America". Not only are these shitty cover songs, the cartridge shells are shitty too. Each of them cracked or broke while I was trying to get the shitty things apart to repair them.

I think I've just set a new record for the number of times I used the word "shitty" in a paragraph.

The redeeming thing about this run of 8-tracks is the actual sound quality is surprisingly good. Whoever mastered these did a decent job, so you'll be able to hear stellar crap for a change instead of the usual crappy crap.

Avenue of America presents The Magnificent Groups
(8X AVE-3802 A)


"8X AVE-3802 A" is rock star lingo for "Cheap Imitations of The Rolling Stones"

I didn't find this tape to be all that horrible since the singer vaguely sounds like Mick Jagger. Unfortunately, the poor bastard has trouble trying to hit the high notes in "Tumblin' Dice" and the back up singers don't come close to what's on the original recording. I actually had problems identifying this song since it sounds almost nothing like what the Rolling Stones did.

Listen to Tumblin' Dice



Avenue of America presents The Magnificent Groups
(8X AVE-3802 B)


"8X AVE-3802 B" is rock star lingo for "This isn't REALLY Creedence Clearwater Revival - Haa Haa, We Fooled You!"

The Mick Jagger singer is back at it, and he's singing CCR this time around. Actually, it sounds like they got a couple of different singers to perform on this tape. It's atrocious on many levels, but there's nothing as bad as this version of Proud Mary. In my opinion, if you can't get the lyrics right, then you have no fucking business covering the song!

Listen to Proud Mary



Avenue of America presents Grammy Awards 1972
(8X AVE-3702B)


By looking at the catalog number of this tape, I'm only assuming there's another volume. But we wouldn't know that by the incredibly descriptive title, would we?

This isn't really the soundtrack to the 1972 Grammy Awards. This is a bunch of assholes who will never win a Grammy in their lives, but I'll bet the album title gave them a nice ego boost.

Anyway, I checked Wikipedia for how accurate this tape was with regards to songs that won awards. Well, there's a few of them, but I don't see anything by Simon & Garfunkel, The Band nor Neil Diamond. Not only that, they put the Creedence Clearwater Revival rendition of "Proud Mary" on this tape while it was the Ike & Tina version that won the Grammy. Therefore I call bullshit on this one. It was all just an ego boost and an excuse to make money off some dumbass who thought he was getting a kick ass compilation of his favorite songs.

We already covered the Proud Mary song on the not-CCR 8-track (and it's the same stupid recording here), so I decided to pick on the song "Homeward Bound". Honestly, I was actually enjoying this slightly oddball version of the song until I heard the drummer make a mistake, and then repeatedly make the same mistake over and over again until the song was over. Sometimes I have to wonder if these recordings were done in one take. I could imagine the producer say "Ah fuck it, that's good enough! We need to rush this tape to the factory before 1972 is over."

Listen to Homeward Bound

...and that is certainly enough for this entry. I've got tons of stuff to get done before Summer ends, so the entries will be a bit spaced apart. But don't worry, I'll be back to torture you again.

Three Awful Cassettes

I figured I'd take a break from this hot, sweaty, stinky summer to bring you a blog entry. Here are three cassettes that have been sitting in my queue box for god knows how long. I don't remember where I bought or found them, but all three are terrible to some degree.


Douglas


Yup, that's all that's on the label. Who in hell's fuck is Douglas? What was the purpose of his existence? Why is his name on this cassette?

Anyway, this cassette seems to contain audio from an old record which was likely a home recording. This is not a professional recording, nor did "Sounds Great Tape Supply" do a very professional transfer. There's audio glitches in it for some odd reason and at the end of the cassette, you can hear the Microsoft Windows error noise! It threw me for a loop because I hadn't heard it in years, and I've been running Linux since 2006. If you ask me, the  tape company should be called "Sounds Like We Fucked It Up Again Tape Supply"

The recording is of someone playing a piano, and some woman howling at the moon, all blanketed in the glorious scratchy goodness that acetate records bring to make sure you don't preserve your precious memories all that well.

Listen to Douglas


Grandma Ferne Sings Sunday School Choruses For The Children


Yes! We have yet another mystery guest which fills us full of curious questions. Who is Grandma Ferne? Who's grandma is Grandma Ferne? Why is she trying to sing? Why is she in a Sunday School? Why isn't she in a personal care home wetting herself instead? Why do the children sing better than she does? Why the fuck did I buy this tape?

The whole tape is full of Granny croaking along to shitty three-second-long religious songs. Most people can have orgasms that last longer than these songs, so what's the pleasure in listening to this tape? The answer is: NONE.

Hear Granny Ferne sing about reading your bible.


Jenna Crispin - First Time Around


Girls always bleed the first time around.

I must say that the company who mastered this cassette (who chose to remain anonymous) did a fantastic job. It's the cleanest thing I've heard since the Rex Benson album, and I was actually able to turn on the dolby noise reduction without having the recording sound like mud.

I'm guessing Jenna is around six years old. She seems to be partial to country music which is very unfortunate for all of us. I did a search for her on Google and it appears that there's other people who hate her music more than I do. She's not as bad as that blind girl I reviewed which just goes to show that children with disabilities have slightly less talent than children without disabilities. Hell, my album is better than this piece of shit, and since I wrote most of my own songs, you can't tell me I did a shitty job with them. They're supposed to sound shitty!

Okay, enough about my awesome music career when I was a preteen, let's get back to the album. If there's one thing that most people have in common (including those who like country music) it's that most think the song "Daddy's Hands" is perverted and disgusting. But nobody discouraged Jenna from recording it! So now, I'm going to make you the reader feel like you're listening to a disgusting Gary Glitter-ish fantasy, and you're going to need a shower after this one.

Hear Jenna sing about the love from Daddy's Hands

Now I'm off to go cry about my troubled, sexually abused childhood. Perhaps I'll get therapy, record my sessions, and let you listen to them.

Album Review: JohNNy SiZZle - MetamorpheSIZ

I'm in a fantastic mood right now, and I've been putting off reviewing this album. Why? I don't know. In my opinion, it doesn't fit in with the garbage I usually feature on this blog. However, if it wasn't for Johnny Sizzle, this blog probably wouldn't exist.

I was first introduced to Johnny back in the early 1990s because he had a public access television show called "Johnny Sizzle's Entertainment Watch". I've featured a few videos from that show on this blog. He also went to the same high school as me, and there were a few people there who remembered him. I also remember seeing some of his home-recorded cassettes on sale in the 'local' section in the music stores. I was tempted to buy one, but when you're a teenager with very little money to spend, you question spending twelve bucks on a cassette.

A few months ago, I came across MetamorpheSIZ in a thrift store, I instantly bought it, took it home, and listened. Previously, I had heard only two of Johnny's songs at this point (Theme from Johnny Sizzle's Entertainment Watch, If Satan Was My Lover) so I kinda knew what I was in for. But this album was a bit different than what I expected. It's good! It's all catchy acoustic punk rock songs. I like punk rock, I like the acoustic guitar, and I like catchy songs. It sorta reminds me of The Replacements, and I like The Replacements.

The first track (Because I Want To) is an absolute gem. It would be a fantastic song for a female singer to cover, and I'd love to get my girlfriend to do a cover (that's if Johnny's cool with it, and my girlfriend likes the song).

While looking at the credits for the album, I found out that the first six tracks (which have a full band on them) have contributions from Mr. Plow! If it slips your mind, I posted about a Mr. Plow album here.

Even though the album is fantastic, I'm not going to post the whole thing for downloading, but suggest you purchase it from here.

I respect all the work that Johnny has done over the last 20+ years, and feel he deserves the money. However, I do feel the need to post one track from it, and I've been torn on which one to post. But ultimately, I decided on the family sing-song "Oh Happy Happy Hardcore Kid"

Listen to it here!

The album is going into my regular CD collection as opposed to going into the blog archive bin, and that speaks volumes in itself.

Oh, one more thing... the blog has received 100 likes on Facebook. Finally, some real friends!

Sex Records

I haven't posted in a while because I've been extremely busy. I've been doing house renovations - one of them is FINALLY getting my 1300+ CD collection under control. The other is trying to get my bedroom renovated. On top of that, I've been enjoying time with my child, my girlfriend, and then being forced to do the usual house chores (which have NOT been kept up very well). Not only that, the weather's been nice and I don't feel like being trapped indoors. Everything else ends up suffering, like having frequent blog entries, and I STILL haven't revamped my computers which are maxed to the tits with data. Don't worry, I haven't lost my passion for this blog, nor have I run out of things to blog about. The in queue box is violently overflowing.

Anyway, let's get this shit done...


I got a new turntable! It's a Technics model SL-QD2 and it sounds just as fantastic as the Hitachi that I retired. The only difference between the Technics and the Hitachi is I paid $1.00 for the Hitachi while the Technics one was free. So, let's put the new turntable to use and check out some records on the subject of sex...


The Wild Humor of Rex Benson

Click on the cover to see it uncensored - NSFW!

I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I did NOT buy this album for the cover. No no no. I bought it because I've never heard of Rex Benson and I'm always interested in finding new talented artists to feature on this clean, family-oriented blog.

The album cover states that the audio contains "out of sight stories of sinful satire and wild, wild sexplay!" I think there's more wild sexplay on Raffi's Adult Entertainment album. The wildest part of this album is the cover. Rex Benson doesn't utter a single cuss word and dances around the obvious with polite, non-offensive ways to paint the pictures of his sex jokes. He sounds like a very proper young man who is still suppressing his sexual desires.

There will be no audio clip. The album isn't very funny and the woman on the cover has ugly tits.


My Body Is My Own Vol.2

Sex with children is generally frowned upon, so Kid Stuff records made an album about it. I bought this one still sealed, coloring book inclusive! Trying to pick an interesting clip from this record was very difficult. So much of it is entertaining! Before we get to the clip, let's look at some of the pages in the coloring book:



I don't know about you, but encouraging a kid to color a picture of a man feeling up a little girl's leg is just... uhhh... weird. As for the dialogue, I'm borderline on if I find it all extremely creepy or downright fucking hilarious. I suppose I'll let you decide for yourself:

Listen to My Body Is My Own!


Def Dames Dope - Don't Be Silly

I got this in a box of records on freebie weekend. Some bastard kept the free condom and sticker that were attached to the record sleeve. The back of the album has an address where you can send away for a free T-shirt of the album cover. Why in hell would ANYBODY wear a T-shirt with THIS album cover on it? If you're stupid enough to send money for a T-shirt like this, you've invested in a guarantee that a group of teenagers will kick the shit out of you for being a loser.

Smile Condoms, the company who is promoted on the album cover has the slogan, "Smile: Best condom, worst chewing gum." If you're dumb enough to chew on a fucking latex condom, then you have no right to be procreating with or without a condom. Do everyone a favor and choke on the Smile.

In my opinion, the song, the condom, and the T-shirt all promote stupidity. I don't think ANYBODY who purchased all this stuff has the smarts to figure out what hole to put their penis in. Perhaps that explains the gunk I had to clean out of the hole in the center of the record before putting it on my turntable.

This is the radio edit. The song isn't good enough to put up the five minute remixes.

Listen to the fucking song.


And that's it for this round! Now that it's garage sale season, I'll be on the lookout for even more fun and interesting stuff. Stay tuned and please forgive me for the sporadic entries. It is summer after all.

Pakwah Wong - Karaoke Champion

So this entry is about a guy I went to school with. My classmates informed me that there was something not quite right with the boy, and you could tell it by his appearance. He was the only kid in high school who wore sweat pants. He would bob his head to the imaginary music playing inside of it. When he spoke, he spoke as if he were highly intellectual. If you hid his pencil case on him, he would yell, cry, and slam his head repeatedly on the desk.

Pakwah's peers generally left him alone, but there would be the occasional troublemaker who would magically make his pencil case go missing to put some entertainment in our otherwise boring classroom lives. However, it wasn't always Pakwah's peers who would cause him to have a psychotic breakdown. The chemistry teacher made him stay after class to finish up his project, and Pakwah proceeded to slam, yell, cry and scream while Mr. Chemistry tried (and failed miserably) to contain his laughter.

So where is Pakwah these days?

http://passages.winnipegfreepress.com/passage-details/id-101994/name-Pakwah-Wong/

Yup, he's dead. It seems quite fitting that someone who seemed slightly bizarre would die of something quite bizarre - diabetes at age 27. Personally, I could have seen him getting hit by a truck before dying from diabetes.

Pakwah's classmates these days are now matured and in their 30s. They'd likely understand him more now than they did back then.

Pakwah had his brief moments of fame in high school. My classmates had told me that Pakwah had performed an extremely unforgettable rendition of Ghostbusters at the school's Karaoke contest the previous year. For the first year I attended the karaoke contest, I brought a tape recorder knowing very well that I was likely in for a treat. And what a treat it was!

It seems strange and even sad that I'm releasing this recording post-humously. Perhaps those who remembered this event and even those who fondly remember Pakwah will take joy in hearing this recording. He could be thought of as Winnipeg's William Hung (although Pakwah sings much better).

Listen to Pakwah sing "Great Balls of Fire"

I swear that this was the only time I heard the entire school auditorium roar in cheer. Pakwah certainly had the ability to entertain. Incidently, if any former students of Tec Voc High School (namely those in the RTB program) have video of Pakwah performing at Karaoke, please get in touch with me and I'll happily put it on Youtube.