Junq Tour 2011: Weyburn, SK

The left channel on my main stereo amplifier (manufactured in 1966) seems to be fizzling out. It's given me great service since I acquired it in 1993. I tried to buy another one on Ebay for fifty bucks, but I was outbid and the winner got it for a whopping $209. My original one was given to me for free... FUCK YOU $209!

So until I replace it or take the time to repair it (yes, I can remove the screws because I'm an authorized technician), I'm listening to all my lo-fi albums in Xtreme-lo-fi!

Anyway, This and the next entry will document the two thrift stores I visited in Saskatchewan. The one in Weyburn didn't have a whole lot, but I came out with two trashy treasures:

Analynn - Sounds Of Love


Well, I suppose it's better than her other non-hit albums entitled "Sounds of Indigestion" and "Sounds of Squishing Puppies". This album was recorded in 1983, but it sounds like it was recorded in 1981 on one of those cheap K-mart cassettes. You know the ones... they came in threes sealed in a plastic bag with no cases. The green labels were used for 90 minute tapes, the orange labels for 60 minute tapes. They were all stamped "low noise" which included the noise you recorded on them.

Anyway, the inlay card of Analynn's album mentions that 'ORPAC & Productions Ltd' recorded this cassette in Dolby Stereo. Now, for those who don't know (and this includes ORPAC & Productions Ltd) Dolby Stereo is a method of encoding two channel audio signals onto film for motion pictures. So I call bullshit on this one because it sounds like it was played through a static-filled AM Radio station rather than a piece of movie film.

Now, listen to what a good high sounds like.



The Saskatchewan Roughriders - Eleven (That's Enough)


Yes, the 1988 Saskatchewan Roughriders decided to record a song, and its dreadfully awful. The chorus goes "Eleven. (Eleven!) Yeah. (Yeah!) That's Enough. (That's Enough!)" Jock creativity at it's finest!!! Since the Saskatchewan Roughriders can't fucking sing, they recorded a rap song (and they weren't any good at that either). However, after they realized they didn't have any musical talent, they put more effort into playing football rather than playing music and won the Grey Cup the following year. They haven't won the Grey Cup since, so I'm guessing it's time to get their asses back into the studio and record their next hit single entitled "Blump (I got tackled)"

It sounds as if someone attempted to record over the first few seconds of this recording (and I can't blame them), but their tape deck was a piece of crap.

Listen to the dumb song

And now, stay tuned for one more installation of the Saskatchewan Junq Tour!

"Fantastic F" 8-tracks

Since I've been ignoring the 8-track format as of late, I figured I'd focus on four 8-tracks released by some poop-hole company called "Fantastic F". What the hell does the F stand for? Fuck? Fart? Fudgepacker? Well, my guess is fudgepacker since they packed a lot of shit onto these four tapes.

By the way, did I ever tell you about my kick ass Superscope 8-track player? It's pretty sweet. I bought it about three or four years ago. Look how snazzy it looks with a Fantastic Fudgepacker tape jammed into the orifice.



Go figure that I'd buy a high-end player and play nothing but garbage tapes on it.

Anyway, Fantastic F's 8-tracks are the most colorful cartridges I've ever seen. If you place one of these fuckers around some other blandly-colored 8-tracks in a store, your eye is gonna catch them before you grab Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or The Beatles' "White Album" (by the way, the 8-track release of The Beatles' "White Album" has black and white pictures of all four Beatles on them. Can't really call that a "white" album!)

Anyway, let's get down to these very loud-looking 8-tracks...


A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac


This one actually isn't too bad. The covers are pretty faithful to the originals. The problem with this 8-track is it was mastered to damn loud, and peaks of the wave file are cut off even when I record it at a quieter volume. Hooray for the shitheads at The General Music Corporation!

Listen to Dreams


Super Disco April 1976: Sweet Love - Only Sixteen and others


There's a total of about two disco songs on this one. The rest are miscellaneous other tracks that don't belong on a disco collection. It's much like their "Hits of the 50s" 8-track (in this entry) which also contained hits of the 60s.

Their version of Slow Ride isn't totally awful, but it's one of the few songs on this tape which I'm most familiar with.

Listen to it here!


Super Rock: Do Ya - Hotel California and others


The audio on this 8-track was recorded too loud, it's a bit distorted, and the track I'm putting up sounds like it was recorded with a tin can microphone. Regardless, we've got the same singer trying to pull off some Electric Light Orchestra. I don't hear any of the awesome harmonies that are in the original version, and it makes you feel like you're eating a Caramilk bar with no fucking caramel in it.

Listen to Do Ya


Super Rock Volume 1


Whoever the fuck is naming Fantastic F's compilations of crap should be fired. But then again, they're probably not getting paid enough to give a shit about the name of the tape since these 8-tracks are bottom-of-the-barrel pieces of junk, offered at a much lower price than those expensive K-Tel compilations.

This is the worst one of the bunch. Not only does it contain the song "Dream Weaver", but it contains the worst rendition of Aerosmith's "Dream On" I've ever heard. The guitar playing sucks, and half of the lyrics are wrong. "I know everybody say you've got your blues to blow away" is a line that was pulled out of Fantastic F's Fudgehole. If you don't believe it's awful, listen for yourself:

Listen to Dream On

And that's it for this entry. I've got some stuff that I picked up while I was in Saskatchewan, so stay tuned for a super nifty edition of the Junq Tour!

X-rated BBS Ads

Here's another computer I scrounged up. It's a cute yet ugly little 386. Yes, I modified the display to show "FU". This computer has Windows 3.1 on it along with many DOS applications, one of which was a .gif image viewer. I used this piece of software to view the many x-rated .gif files that were stored on this computer.

There's quite a few interesting things about this batch of porn I found. First of all, the date stamps are from 1993. Second, the few that have copyright years noted on them are from before 1993. Third, they're all in color. Fourth, they all have BBS ads added into the image (a BBS (Bulletin Board System) was a computer system people could dial into and download files, post messages, and play 'door games' such as "Legend of the Red Dragon", all of which predated the popularity of the Internet). The BBS owners likely put their ads onto these pictures to prevent other BBSes from stealing them for their own, and to help promote their boards.

Computer image scanners didn't really appear until the early-to-mid 90s, and even so, the affordable ones were initially black and white handheld pieces of junk. The people who scanned these images either had a shitload of money to spend on scanning equipment, or they had access to a color image scanner belonging to a professional business.

Even color PC monitors weren't in existence for very long before these images were scanned. I clearly recall using Windows 3.11 on a 286 with a monochrome monitor.

First, the warnings...
THESE IMAGES ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK!!!
THESE IMAGES ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR THOSE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE!!!

And now, feel free to enjoy these nifty-looking BBS ads:


The Dirty Hacker BBS
Electric Blue BBS
The McHenry BBS
Rusty Eddie's BBS
The Taste BBS
Windy City / TomCatPix BBS

If you want to download all of them (like the guy in the comment section), click here!

Album: Steve Wilson - Get Your Groove Back

Ever hear a child create music on one of those V-Tech toys? I have, and it sound just like this album does. I got my 4 year old one of those toys, and he can actually play songs on that thing. I have no clue what the fuck this guy is doing, but the music is dis-jointed, out of tune, and to sum it all up in one word... dyslexic.

It was one of my dear readers who brought my attention to this guy. I must admit, I deserve it for all the garbage I've put on this site over the years. Revenge is sweet, isn't it?

I can't help but try to figure out if Stevie Wilson is blind, playing a joke, or dead serious. After taking a look at his record label (hosted by Angelfire nonetheless) I've come to the conclusion that he is DEAD FUCKING SERIOUS about his music, which sounds a lot like an old farmer singing while his horse gags on a kitten in heat.

I'd like to quote Steve's website on what inspired him before I subject you to a couple of his songs...

While living in Chicago during the early 6O's and delivering mail in the Maxwell street area, Steve was suddenly struck with the blues.

Poor fucking guy sure worked a depressing job, didn't he? I mean, what job is more depressing than delivering mail? He could've been a toilet scrubber or a slave, but I guess those jobs were just way too good for him. I have to wonder how many times he thought about slitting his throat with a white paper envelope and just ending it all.

But look where the Blues led him... He started his own record label! He even signed his dead dad to the label. My grandmother was a Ukrainian polka queen who died in '97, maybe she could get a record deal too!

Anyway, I'm being very unfair. I'd even go as far as to say I'm being an asshole. I should leave YOU the reader (and listener) to judge good ol' Steve Wilson for yourself. Here's the title track for his album...

Listen to "Get Your Groove Back"

And just in case this sample makes you desperately want a copy for yourself, here's an amazon link for buying your very own copy!

Let me individually review a few of these songs...

Alicia: This would be a pretty song if it were sung and played by a REAL musician.
Hope You're Alright: Steve, you are NOT the big bopper. Quit stalking old ladies.
A Thousand Years: The approximate length of this stupid recording
The Wedding: That poor bride obviously doesn't know Steve gave the DJ a copy of this song.
A Playboy's Confession: Not much of a playboy if he can't even play the fucking piano.

The others are... well... shitty. Not to mention the songs I listed above are shitty too. However, the title track is so awf..some that Steve decided to repeat it as a bonus track. Personally, I would've preferred his Christmas song (on his website) as a bonus track. Ending the album with a song about his dead mother would have been the icing on the dung cake.

I'm guessing this is supposed to be RnB music. Sounds like BrF to me... with the exception of his tribute to 50's doo-wop. Let's listen to that!

Listen to "You're Home"

Now wasn't that a treat? More entertaining than untwisting a twisted Slinky.

I hope Steve decide to record more music. I hope his dead dad records some too. I think the soothing sound of dirt and worms would bring justice to his record label. I'm still blown away that you can buy this turd on Amazon. I guess it just goes to prove that any asshole can release anything through Amazon.

To wrap up this entry, I was going to record a tribute to Steve on my kid's V-Tech keyboard. Unfortunately, I'm too talented to make it sound as bad as this crap.

Bucky Dee James & The Nashville Explosion Part 2

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is I've been able to acquire every album by Bucky Dee James & The Nashville Explosion. The bad news is they still suck. You can read about the first album I bought by them
here.

Bucky Dee James got signed by the Springboard label after he did a drunken Elvis impression at a friend's Christmas party. They based his talent on his twitchy snarly lip rather than his ability to sound remotely like Elvis.

Springboard seems to have the knack for finding garbage talent to record in their studio. If you're wondering what else Springboard has to offer, someone was kind enough to post an almost complete discography here. I must say that it's interesting to look through. It seems that Springboard specialized in making bootlegs until catalog number SPB-4075 when they started recording their own garbage. In other words, we have lawsuits to thank for giving Bucky Dee James his big break. Without lawsuits, this world would be void of talentless hacks like Bucky.

The first album up for criticism is "The Hits of Elvis Presley Vol. 2"



I've picked up a LOT of cheap imitation albums, and most of them have "Vol. 1" placed after the title. However, it's extremely rare that I'm able to find a Vol.2. Bucky lived up to his promise and brought us more atrocious Elvis covers. Here's a list of the grave spinners we get this round:


It's Now Or Never
Are You Lonesome Tonight
Surrender
Can't Help Falling In Love
Good Luck Charm
Return To Sender
Suspicious Minds
The Wonder Of You
Burning Love

I'd forgotten how bad this shit is, but the first track "It's Now Or Never" put it all back in perspective. Listen to it here.

Makes me wanna barf.

As a side note, I have enough cheap imitation Elvis albums to make my very own compilation, and fully intend to put one together for downloading. Another band I've acquired bad tribute albums for is Led Zeppelin, so you've got that to look forward to as well.

Now, let's move onto Bucky's third and final album... The Hits of Glen Campbell!



Before I get into this album, let's compare this album cover to the last one. Hmmm. Nearly the same background color. The Glen Campbell one is a bit greener. Same crappy font for the artist they're ruining. The imagination gears sure turn in the art department, don't they! The Glen Campbell album has that fake gold sticker thingy in the upper left hand corner, showing that the complaints have been rolling in from people accidentally mistaking Bucky's Elvis album for a real Elvis album. So now, we've got this gold (or yellow) medallion in the corner saying "This is fucking garbage! Buy it anyway!"

Here's what we get in this fine collection of Glen Campbell hits:

Southern Nights
Rhinestone Cowboy
By The Time I Get To Phoenix
Sunflower
Galveston
Gentle On My Mind
Wichita Lineman
Country Boy (You Got Your Feet In LA)
True Grit

So now, let's hear this non-famous Elvis impersonator sing some Glen Campbell...

Listen to Rhinestone Cowboy

Ummm.... What the fuck is this??? Is this the same guy? This sounds NOTHING like his Elvis albums! It sounds like Bucky actually does have some talent hidden under his snarly lip and sideburns. He actually does a decent job singing these songs, The Nashville Explosion play their instruments somewhat well, and the guy who mixed the album did a shitty job by burying some of Bucky's lower vocals under the band. This is a quality cheap imitation album we have here. Unfortunately, by the time Springboard gets to Bucky's third album, they decided they didn't want his shit anymore and focused their next few albums on lousy orchestra covers of movie hits.

Poor Bucky. After his brief fling with stardom, he got kicked off the label and blew all his earnings on drugs (one bag of weed).

It seems that after this album, Bucky and the Nashville Explosion had some difficult times as a band. After scouring the internet, I found this collection called "24 Country Hits" released in 1978 on the Intercord label. It's a European collection which features The Nashville Explosion with and without Bucky along with some other big name Country artists. This came out a year after the Glen Campbell album.

Obviously, these guys were struggling to find work. After being unsuccessful, they turned to panhandling, hoping to raise enough money to buy another bag of weed. They are now residing in the "where are they now" and "who gives a fuck" categories.