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.

Listen to Love Me Tender

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.

Listen to Suspicious Minds

Listen to It's Now Or Never

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

Listen to Hound Dog

Listen to Love Me

Listen to Love Me Tender

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

Listen to The King Is Gone

Listen to It's Been 10 Years

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.

Listen to Jailhouse Rock

Listen to Hard Headed Woman

Listen to I Got Stung

LIsten to It's Now or Never

Listen to Stuck on You

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...

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.

Listen to My Yellowknife Home

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.

Listen to Xylodark

Listen to Popviolin

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.

Listen to Elvira

Listen to Lay You Down

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!

It's Bunny and Rabbit Season!

Easter is upon us! The bunnies are hopping around shitting out colorful eggs, and chickens are... ummm... well they just shit on everything. I can't remember the last time I did an Easter entry, so you're welcome. Here's a couple of items to get you in the mood for eating cheap chocolate...

The Story of Who Framed Roger Rabbit

This is what you get when your parents are too cheap to take you to the theatre to see the latest D*sney movie. Normally, I wouldn't tackle anything made by D*sney for a number of reasons, but this was just too interesting for me to pass up. I almost NEVER see this kind of packaging for stories on cassette anymore, although I used to see them all the time in the mid to late 1980s. I'm fairly certain this was done to cut down costs on production, as this was also released on LP and CD. 

The booklet this thing comes with is really nice. You can't tell by the picture, but it's really colorful and pleasant to look at. Unfortunately, the cassette wasn't recorded with as much quality and care. I find the tape to be a bit muddy on sound, but that might be partially due to the quality of the narrator's voice track. The guy sounds like he should be yapping away on those cassettes that came from Amway.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a pretty big deal back in 1988. They promoted the hell out of this film and even did a TV special where they showed a "behind the scenes" look at how they made the movie. I've only seen the movie once which was around 15 years ago. Honestly, I've seen better movies. I couldn't even really remember what the plot was until I looked at the booklet and listened to the cassette, and even then I'm having trouble remembering it.

I'm only posting a short clip of the audio because I don't need any hassle from Mickey Mouse or anything.

Listen to a clip!

The Tyrolean Mountain Boys - The Chicken Yodel

Classical Gas Emissions appears to be increasing it's yodelling content. Is that a good thing?

You know what the worst part about this album is? The person who drew the album cover didn't get any credit for their work. You can tell it was done by one person, and they were probably really proud of it. Then the Tyrolean Mountain Boys took the artwork, said "fuck you, we're taking all the credit" and the artist was so upset that they never drew anything ever again. What a sad story.

This album was recorded by a bunch of German guys fresh out of English class. For the most part, I can't understand what the fuck they're singing. They're better at playing the accordion and tuba than they are at speaking English.

Aside from the Chicken song, this album is filled with songs that I've seen from the various Newfie albums that I've reviewed. I have absolutely no desire to revisit these songs with their added German accent. I'd rather put on a Slim Whitman album.

Listen to The Chicken Yodel

And there you have it! My favourite part about Easter is watching the psychotic customers at Wal-Mart fighting over the discounted smashed chocolate bunnies and eggs on the following Monday.

Lacquer Records from the CBC

A few weeks ago at Value Village, I found a huge lot of acetates / lacquers / transcript records (whatever you wanna call them) that came from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The CBC is Canada's national public broadcaster which transmits programs via radio and TV and has separate stations for English and French which are Canada's two official languages. Thankfully, these records are in English.

When I found these, there were two records in the lot that were completely unplayable. All the lacquer containing all the grooves had flaked off, leaving nothing but the aluminium core. However, there were still 8 records that looked playable, so I grabbed them. A couple of them are chipping on the edges which leads me to believe that they have a fairly limited life. 

I'm an absolute sucker for these discs, probably because I'm likely the only person who owns a copy of whatever's recorded on them. I am unsure if the CBC has copies of these or not. It seems like some CBC employee just took these home and stuffed them in his basement to rot over the last 70 years. All of these records date from 1952. I'm only speculating that the guy who took these got fired for stealing company property.

The logo you see above is quite interesting. The lightning bolts have a silver shine on them which doesn't scan accurately. Some of the records play from the inside outward. 

These records were absolutely filthy, so I cleaned them with nothing but distilled water and a record cleaning brush. I figured using any sort of chemicals would likely deteriorate them further. I tried playing them with both a 33 RPM and a 78 RPM stylus. The 33 RPM one sounded better, although I'd probably get better results if it was just a bit thicker. However, I'm not in the market to buy a ton of styli just to transfer 8 records without gaining any kind of profit. You get what you get with these digital transfers.

Anyway, let's begin our audio adventure, going in chronological order. Click on the titles to hear the recordings.

Record 1

Side 1: This Week in B.C. (April 30, 1952)

Farming and weather coverage for the last week in B.C. This was recorded on an Audiodisc record. I'm very unsure why there's a "FLAT" stamp on the record. Did they test these to make sure they were usable? Did recordable records often show up that weren't flat? Could someone shed some light on this?

Side 2: You've Been a Liar

Well, this starts off with the William Tell Overture, followed by some jazz shit, and then we get a performance by Fred Astaire & Jane Powell which is probably the most enjoyable part of this side of the record.

Record 2

Side 1: Farm Item: Potatoes (June 25, 1952)

If you like potatoes, you'll love this record! It appears that Winnipeg's potato shipment has been delayed. Along with learning about where potatoes go and where they come from, we get to find out how much potatoes cost... 10-11 cents per pound, and $105 per tonne. Why would anybody complain about this???

This was recorded on an Audiodisc record.

Side 2: Cecilia

This is a performance of a song originally by Jack Smith. I have no clue who the two people are performing it, but I think it's better than the original version. That dude has a really low voice! Then we get an accordion music break followed by another performance by the same two people.

Record 3

Side 1: CBW Call #1, CBW Call #2 (July 20, 1952)

These records were obviously made in Manitoba (more specifically, Winnipeg). These two calls mention a democratic convention that was to be broadcast on July 21, 1952. They were to be used the day before and the day of the convention. It's interesting to note the days in which these records were recorded, the initials of the person who recorded it, and also the "PLAYED" stamp on it. I believe this record, along with all that follow were recorded on Presto blanks.

If you want to read about the actual convention, here's a Wikipedia link. However, I found this piece to be the most relevant and interesting:

The 1952 Democratic convention was the second political convention to be televised live, coast-to-coast (following the Republican Convention weeks earlier).[5] Experiments in regionally broadcasting conventions took place during the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1948, however 1952 was the first year in which networks carried nationwide coverage of political conventions.

Side 2: Tassinari 

An absolutely horrendous opera performance by some guy named Tassinari.

Record 4

Side 1: This Week in Ontario & Quebec (Aug 16, 1952)

Apparently, there was a really bad outbreak of Foot & Mouth disease (I've had it in my adult life which was NOT fun). You also get to learn about cattle and poultry.

Side 2: Piano Playhouse (Aug 30, 1952)

Exactly what it says.

Record 5

Side 1: Family Worship (Sept 3, 1952)

Apparently, the world required a short program called "Family Worship" every morning of the week. With this particular episode, you learn how to get friends.

Side 2: De Styx

I can't make out the first word because the label is all mouldy in that spot, but it's another god awful opera performance. People in the 1950s really enjoyed shitty music.

Record 6

Side 1: Family Worship (Sept 4, 1952)

A word-by-word analysis of the phrase "Give us this day our daily bread". Perhaps one day I should analyze the deepness of a digital camera manual that was poorly translated from Chinese to English and release it on vinyl.

Side 2: Good Old Days

Some piano music for your enjoyment.

Record 7

Side 1: Family Worship (Sept 5, 1952)

You get a story about how a guy failed to measure the depth of an ocean and how the Lord's love is that deep, except more "wordy" in a religious kind of way.

Side 2: Scarf Dance & Piano Playhouse

A classical music piece, followed by a pretty decent piano medley.

Record 8

Many of these records seemed to come unlabelled and the CBC glued their own label on them. I should have searched a bit more at the thrift store for the label that had likely just fallen off this record. Oh well.

Side 1: Some German Guy

Your guess is as good as mine as to what this guy is talking about. This record played from the inside out.

Side 2: Johnny Standley - Little Bo Peep / Mrs. O'Malley

This was a very famous comedy sketch during the early 1950s. You can find cleaner versions of it floating around. This version has most of the Mrs. O'Malley song chopped off, but there's a little bit of commentary at the end from someone working at the CBC.

Well, that was fun! I absolutely love finding radio station stuff out in the wild. Unfortunately for these records, I don't count on them being playable the next time I come across them. They will likely deteriorate into an unplayable state in the next few years. At least we have digital copies now.

My Oldest Mix Tape

The day my mother showed me how to use a blank cassette and the record button, I was hooked. I have no clue what day that was, but it was pretty early in life. 

Today, I'm diving into my personal collection of junk and sharing one of the first mix tapes I ever recorded. When I was around five or six years old, my mother decided to join a religious cult. Due to this life-changing event, there were certain things I was no longer allowed to have in my life such as Christmas & Birthdays. Other things suddenly became satanic such as certain nursery rhymes & songs that originated from other religions. It's obvious that this cassette pre-dates the cult life because the song "Put Your Hand in the Hand" appears not one, but THREE times on this cassette. Also the nursery rhyme "1,2,3,4,5,6,7, all good children go to heaven" hasn't been cut, and I distinctly remember doing this when recording the record in question to cassette at other times during my youth. There are also no songs from the first Mini Pops album which my parents purchased for me shortly after I recorded this tape. So this cassette is a real place mark in life, and I'm actually very happy to still have it after all this time. My mother generally made a habit of throwing away some of my cassettes, and somehow this one survived every single one of my room cleanings. 

At this point in my life, I was completely illiterate. I only knew what record I was selecting by the pictures on the cover, the logo, or the color of the record label. To get the name of the classical music pieces on side B of the "Three Billy Goats Gruff" record (which are included on this tape), I did a Google search and came across the cover for it which terrified the shit out of me. This record was given to me by my aunt who sadly passed away a couple of weeks ago.

So now, let's talk about the tape itself. The label folded over the top and the one rusty screw are all that's holding this tape together. By the tiny bit of label left, I can tell that this was a Woolcrest 60 minute cassette. These cassettes were sold at Woolco, three in a bag for one special price. The 60 minute tapes were red, and the 90 minute tapes were yellow. However, what's inside the shell of this one is a very different story.

It became obvious that I transplanted this cassette at some point, possibly because I stepped on the original shell and broke it. This was most likely a K-Mart branded cassette. My surprise came when I transferred it and realized that it was a 120 minute tape. K-Mart tapes had different labels for different lengths: C-60 was red/orange, C-90 was green, and C-120 was blue. I haven't seen a K-Mart branded C-120 in decades. These cassettes were also sold as three in a bag.

The stereo used to record this was a Morse branded floor model unit with a turntable, cassette and 8-track player, kinda like the one pictured above except without the fancy disco decorations. I distinctly remember chewing on the chrome-trimmed rubber that ran along the edge of the fake wood panelling.

So here's some highlights about this cassette:

- It is (currently) 38 years old

- It contains 57 tracks which are mostly children's albums (some of which I've already covered on this blog)

- It's full of splices, dropouts, and twists

- It contains 45 RPM records playing at 33 RPM and vise versa

- There is a song by Alan Alda

- You can hear the record player shut off at the end of Side B

- Contains an Engelbert Humperdinck song which skips repeatedly for a while

In other words, this tape is an absolute mess. Due to this tape being a C-120, it was a real marathon to get through while digitizing it. While I somewhat remember the joy of recording this cassette, there's not as much joy listening to it in my 40s. However, the fact that I could fill a C-120 as a five year old child is a true testament to my addiction to music. This cassette may also be partially the reason why this entire blog exists.

These are the albums I took some of the content from:

- Funtown with Petite & Mayor Bob

- Petite Sings For You

- Elvis' Gold Records Vol. 1

- Engelbert Humperdinck - Sweetheart

- Walt D1sney's Acting Out The ABC's

- Marlo Thomas - Free To Be You & Me

- The Western Union

- Varous 7" records

So now, let's celebrate the content of this cassette! I shall give you some highlights and a download link if you choose to torture yourself for two hours.

Listen to Engelbert skipping

Listen to a portion with a twist in the tape

Listen to the French version of Bunny Beat playing on the wrong speed

Download the whole mess

Yes, I know I've been a bit absent. February is usually my "dead" month due to the winter blahs and there's lots of stressful garbage going on at work. I always come back, and I have another couple of entries in queue which should be fun. See you again shortly!