Junq Tour 2012: Carman

Yes! I'm back on tour to collect thrift store garbage from all over Manitoba. The Southern part of the province is covered mainly by the Christian Wheat Belt, so the thrift stores are naturally packed to the tits with Christian albums, Christian videos, Christian books, and Hutterites. I'm really trying to remember to take pictures of the thrift stores I visit, and I actually remembered this time.

So, fire up those horses and plows and we'll take a trip through Southern Manitoba's thrilling thrift store goodies...


George Staerkel - The Signature Collection

Hooray for photoshop! You know, George could do anything he wanted in photoshop for his greatest hits CD. My suggestion would have been to put some hair on him, but instead he left it bald, and the glare makes it a very obvious photoshop disaster. He could have trimmed his head down too which might have helped make it less photochopped.

Now then, onto the CD. I cannot deny that George is very talented. The guy can sing very well, and he can also play a nice array of instruments such as the trumpet, the saxophone, the piano, and a few others that I don't feel like mentioning. Although George can span a few octaves with his voice, he seems to prefer squeezing his balls and singing songs of a falsetto nature. Included are the songs "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Cara Mia", "Stay", and he also yodels through a few. He pulls it off very well, considering the pain he puts up with his balls squished in what is likely the hand of his wife Barbara.

The downside to this CD is the production. There's way too much reverb on everything, and the entire recording is run through a compressor, making it sound like compressed echoey crap.

All production values aside, it's very difficult to pick a song when there's so much talent to be found. But not all was lost... The song "The Lonely Bull" has George doing some very lovely trumpet work in it. Unfortunately, the trumpet is the only real instrument in the song. Everything else is synthesized. BADLY. The star of the show is the mandolin which, instead of sounding like a mandolin, sounds a lot like the "Mario got squished by an elevator" sound from the Colecovision version of Donkey Kong.

Listen to The Lonely Bull


The Humorous Gospel Songs of Bob Larson

I had a bitch of a time getting this record to play on my turntable. A little known fact: Atheist turntables have a much larger spindle in order to avoid playing garbage like this. I had to hammer this stubborn whore into submission because it was so tight.

The subtitle for this album is "Compatible Stereo". What the hell is compatible stereo? What would incompatible stereo sound like? Mono? Silence? Help me out here...

All the songs on this album sound pretty much the same with the exception of the lyrics. Bob Larson isn't much of a singer, so instead he does some kind of half-assed rapping. Mind you, this album came out before rap music was invented, so I guess Bobby is a pioneer when it comes to rap music. As for the songs being humorous, well, they're not. Well, maybe except for the song "Grumbling Christians". Lyrically, it's absolutely miserable but musically, it's happy as fuck. It's like listening to a 1950's version of The Police.

Listen to Grumbling Christians


The Bibleman Adventure

This video looked too terrible to pass up, and it certainly was. I honestly couldn't be bothered to watch it past the exciting theme song because it was so head-bangingly retarded. The intro itself gave me enough excitement to fulfill 7 years worth of Sunday sermons.

By the way, I played the title screen in slow motion to see what all the moving computer text was. It appears to be some sort of video routine taking place in an OSX terminal. At least we know Jesus approves of Apple products.

Check out this totally fucking epic action scene where Bibleman stops a group of bible thieves by ... uhhh... waving his arms at them?


We need more superheroes based on old books. My two suggestions are "Moby Dick Man" and "Playful Pussy Woman"

There's plenty more Junq Tour entries on the way! Unfortunately, it's because we're short-staffed at work and I have to fill in with extra trips. Might as well make the best of them!

Home-Made Album Artwork

Many apologies for the lack of updates. Home renovations have been plentiful, and they've been keeping me busy and away from the computer. On the plus side, my house is looking better! Anyway, here's a nice quick entry for you to enjoy. I guarantee you'll enjoy it because there's no music in this one.

When most people burned a CD or record a tape, they just scribble the songs on the case or write something generic like "Good Mix" on it. But occasionally, some people will take some time and put work into the 'album cover' of their freshly-made mix. These works of art seem to be a bit scarce in the wild, but it's always a treat when you find one. Let's look at some...


Samantha's Birthday Mix

I picked up two of Samantha's CD in a freebie box at a yard sale. Why would she get rid of these? Samantha was very quick about making this cover, as she just wrote on a piece of paper and drew some balloons. A good chunk of the songs on this mix CD suck ass.


Mix CD #6

I'm assuming that this is also Samantha's CD since it was in the same freebie box. You may not be able to tell from the scan, but Samantha put a LOT of work into this one. It looks as if she printed out a bunch of pictures of herself and her friends, cut them out, glued them onto the paper, waited for it to dry, and then ran the collage back through the printer to print the track listing. I'm not sure if the same was done for the title, or if she wrote it with a marker.

I'm guess using Photoshop to make her collage was just too fucking difficult for her.


Geordie




Before Brian Johnson became the singer for AC/DC, he was in a band called Geordie. What we have here is Geordie's first two albums recorded onto an 8-track (the brand name is Eaton's Viking) and I'm only guessing that the picture glued onto the top of the tape (which was cut from a newspaper) is Brian Johnson. The name "Geordie" seems to be somewhat professionally printed onto either a label, or it was printed on the background paper with Scotch brand magic tape over top. The song listing on the back is hand-written.


Random artwork found on the ground

Okay, so this isn't an album cover, but it's been sitting in the 'queue box' for fucking ever. It's an original piece of pastel artwork, and I found it laying on the boulevard. I have no clue what the artist was trying to convey. Perhaps they have Parkinson's disease and they're only able to draw squiggly lines. Whatever the person's artistic handicap may be, this is an ugly piece of work. The artist's name seems to appear at the bottom right, but it's barely legible. I'd hang it on my wall if it didn't suck.

Well, that's it for this entry. If you're completely bummed out that there was no audio, then you can always download and listen to the radio broadcast I did with Kent Davies' radio show Amateur Hour where I played some of my favorites and not-so-favorites. I haven't listened to it myself yet, so I have no clue how stupid I sound on the radio. Regardless, we both agreed that it would not be my last appearance on his show. Unfortunately, it may not happen until at least November since I'll be Junq Touring across Manitoba, in search of foreign garbage that will grace the face of this blog.

(In case the radio broadcast link above goes tits up, you can download it here too.)

Y.M.C.A. Forever

I picked up this VCD quite some time ago. I was initially attracted to this double disc set because of the interesting selection of songs on it. I mean, who couldn't resist a live video of some Asian guy singing "Please Don'tgoauy", "Can You Feel The Lave Tonght", "Ydsterday", "Surf In USA", and "Bao Case Loving You"

He spends his time in between songs having a discussion with some Asian girl who is only heard and not seen. I haven't a fucking clue what they're talking about because none of it is in English. The only English on this video is whatever popular songs this poor bastard tries to sing, and if you ask me, he should get his foreign ass back to taking English classes.

Check him out as he takes a shot at singing The Village People's Y.M.C.A. Feel free to sing along with the conveniently provided subtitles.



If anybody can actually identify who this guy is, please feel free to let me know in the comments section. Or, perhaps Youtube will inform me when they decide I violated the copyright.

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.