I'm just gonna stick with the facts on this one. No comment necessary. Calvin B. Rhone is a still-active Los Angeles gospel singer who recorded this private-press sanctified soul album in 1983. Some tracks have a lot more to do with Earth Wind and Fire or Stevie Wonder than with robe-clad, hand-clapping choirs. Enjoy!
P.S.: One of the songs is called "He Came On Me." The title phrase is indeed sung by Rhone. Repeatedly. Calvin B. Rhone has an "Intimate Friend" A1 We've Come To Praise Him A2 Intimate Friend A3 Lord! B1 Believe B2 He Came On Me B3 I LoveTheLord B4Bless The Name Of Jesus I just discovered this album last week and - Why look! Someone else posted a YouTube of said song just a month ago. Coincidence? Or perhaps the universe just wasn't ready for this record until now..?
A1 We've Come To Praise Him A2 Intimate Friend A3 Lord! B1 I Believe B2 He Came On Me B3 I Love The Lord B4 Bless The Name Of Jesus Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu
A1 We've Come To Praise Him A2 Intimate Friend A3 Lord! B1 I Believe B2 He Came On Me B3 I Love The Lord B4 Bless The Name Of Jesus Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu
A1 We've Come To Praise Him A2 Intimate Friend A3 Lord! B1 I Believe B2 He Came On Me B3 I Love The Lord B4 Bless The Name Of Jesus Copy the BEST Traders and Make Money : http://bit.ly/fxzulu
I have obviously fallen off my new-post-every-few-days schedule, but yes, I'm still alive (and well), and have been receiving your always-appreciated emails, musics, DVDs, etc. There's no shortage of material for this here web-log. Guess I've been too busy watching TV... How did I not see this before?! A recent live version of the greatest song ever about animal homosexuality is up on Vimeo:
You know that Mr. Will Grove-White is the right kind of people since he's a member of the mighty Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. But brilliantly performing the Beach Boys on nose flutes, and no other instruments?! One can only bow down: "We're not worthy!"
And here's your WTF? of the day: a nine-minute long concert, also on Vimeo, by an Odd-stralian named, er, Dumbshit: DUMBSHIT live 4/24/15 Our source for all good things Down Under, Buttress O'Kneel, has played with Mr. Dumbshit a few times, and even after having been an acquaintance of him for a good decade or so, is still a bit perplexed by his, shall we say, lack of regard for traditional musical standards. How self-aware is he? One wonders "...if he is and just doesn't care, or if he's kidding, or if he's doing some kinda meta-kidding-outsider combo... he normally plays some weird indian stringed instrument, this is the first time i've seen him play a casio - adds a whole other element. with classic songs like "my housemate's a fuckwit" and "exposing myself to the moon", he's always fun to watch."
Back in 2008 we posted a hilarious radio spot from the conservative religious group Focus on the Family responding to a law passed in Colorado that allowed trans-gendered people to use public bathrooms. Recently we received this fairly genius bit of animation that illustrates the ad, making it even funnier. It comes to us courtesy of Mutant Lab, who are clearly doing the Lord's work. Work it, girl!
A clever, amusing new music video by Los Angeles rocker Taylor Locke finds the artist tooling around town in a motorized easy chair, the comfy kind one might find in a living room. The video makes it look like a cheesy tv commercial for what I thought couldn't possibly be a real product, but upon further investigation, the website appears to be real. Ok...What could one possible do with one of these things? I doubt that they're street-legal. It certainly does make music videos more interesting (along with the nekkid lady!) The catchy power-pop music is quite good, too.
Sound collagist I Cut People have a mordantly funny new on-line album that slices and dices innumerable American media sound bites, revealing the existential angst, neuroses, and anxieties contained in bland public service announcements, cheerful commercials for medications, news broadcasts, and chat shows. The tracks are brief and the whole thing flies by fairly quickly, but it's not background music. Attention must be paid to catch the rapid-fire edits in such wickedly surreal cut-ups as "Ebola Vacation" and the lewd, rude "Watch Me, Innocence." Listen for free, buy for cheap: I Cut People: "Miserable Day" Bandcamp page
I could give some background on these videos...but why bother? They won't make any more sense if I did. So I'm just gonna hit you with three of the greatest, most incredibly WTF-iest things I've seen/heard lately. Prepare to question your sanity!
#1:
#2 (thanks to maniac Francis C for passing this one on to us):
This 1999 collection of eccentric electronic instrumental Christmas music by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh doesn't sound much like Devo, or, for that matter, Christmas music. It does sound really nice, tho. As the song titles indicate, the tunes suggest famous Xmas carols, and sometimes just barely at that, e.g.: the cartoonish "Midnight Windup Toy". And isn't "Soylent Night" the greatest title? Mark Mothersbaugh - Joyeux Mutato
01 Jingle$, Jingle$, Jingle$ 02 Blue Joy
03 Midnight Wind-Up Toy 04 Bell Boy 05 Happy Woodchopper 06 Only 12 Shopping Days Left 07 Peace And Goodwill 08 Enough Xmas For All 09 You Better Watch Out... 10 Let There Be Snow 11 I Don't Have A Christmas Tree (Soylent Night) BONUS: Devo - Merry Something To You [a barely minute long jingle from a 2010 Warner Bros xmas comp] I was reminded of this album after li'l bro Paul Fab told me about the big ol' Mark Mothersbaugh exhibit he saw recently at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. (That's Paul at the exhibit, above.) It's a career retrospective of Devo memorabilia and Mothersbaugh's prodigious visual art output. Check the short (exclusive! not on YouTube!) video below Paul shot of some crazy contraptions: "I believe he calls them Orchestrions. It's a gallery (his kooky rugs on one wall) with four Orchestrions which all play together. They're mostly old organ pipes, but also many bird calls, whistles, metal bells and other noisy things. They're cobbled together with visible electric (and barely electronic) controls all left out and taped into whatever position they're supposed to be in. Every 5 minutes they start playing. What a cool sound."
Damn! Can't wait to see it. Once it finishes its Denver run, the exhibit will be on tour for a couple years. (I did quite like Mark's "Beautiful Mutants" gallery show in 2009.) Thanks to Paul for the pic and vid.
Oh, so horrible, so hilarious...how can this be real?! I just discovered this on craigslist whilst looking for something else entirely. From reading the below description, you know this is all kinds of wrong, but the reality is even worse than you can imagine. A touching memory from your beloved little friend you miss can always be as close to you as your computer. In our Pet Memorial Photovids,,,the pet photo that you send us will be animated to sing our original song,,,"When You Think Of Me,,,Smile !". Yes,,,your own pet will sing to you.
You may order a song-only version,,,or you can choose to order a Customized Memorial photovid for which I invite you to compose a brief script of dialogue that you want your beloved little friend to say in their video. I will help you with the script as much as you want me to.
IN this example for you,,,,this video is a customized Memorial with added dialogue that I produced for a client. A customized version like this featuring your own script thast your pet would perform is $60.00. A song-only version with the pet just singing the song is $30.00. This is the song your pet would sing,,,and your Memorial Photovid would be similar to this video:
Long before Peter Frampton's talk-box, the Vocoder, or Autotune, there was the Sonovox, demonstrated here in what must surely be the strangest "pop" music of the 1940s:
Anyone have a spare Sonovox lying around? It's almost David Dole's 100th birthday, and he'd really like one. Granted, the considerable historical importance of this gizmo almost assures that it won't be found in too many attics or garages - museums, more like. But he really deserves one. After all, he was one of it's first users. If any invention was truly out of time, the Sonovox is it. It's ability to create strange electronic sounds and music would have been welcomed in the post-Moog '70s and '80s when bands like Kraftwerk and Zapp were artificially processing their vocals. But, incredibly, the Sonovox was invented at the height of the Big Band era. For the most part, people didn't really know what to do with it. But our special guest poster today is here to tell us about the one industry that did utilize the Sonovox: advertising. I am quite amazed and delighted that Mr. David W. Dole is able to give us this first-hand account of the history of the Sonovox. I don't know if it's story has ever been told in such detail in public before. Here's the man himself: Sonovox enthusiasts: It must have been around 1942... I was 28 years old - working in the "broadcast department" (of course then that meant "radio" only) at Henri, Hurst & McDonald - an ad agency - 520 No. Michigan- Chicago. About 1940, in California, Gilbert Wright was dressing for the day and was using his new electric razor with which to shave. Some 15 feet away - in the bedroom, his wife called to him with a question. He answered while stroking the electric razor over his throat. Mrs. Wright called to him: "What did you say, honey? - it sounded like your razor was talking to me!" Voila! Birth of an idea! Gil thought it thru - and about two years later he and wife were visiting her brother (I think that was the relationship) in Chicago - and putting out the word they had something new and unique called Sonovox for which Gil had obtained a patent. Gil's brother-in-law was a partner in a radio rep firm on Michigan Avenue. The word went out, through the brother-in-law's sales reps to the timebuyers in Chicago that Sonovox was issuing an invitation to visit the radio rep firm and learn about Sonovox. I was interested and visited - and learned how to become a Sonovox articulater. I spent perhaps 6 or 7 lunch periods - slightly extended - using Gil's equipment plus a 10" Victor Red Seal phonograph record of AndreKostelanetz orchestra of some 40-60 musicians playing "Mary Had A Little Lamb". I was particularly interested in the capabilities of Sonovox and how it might effect my then current job. You see I had been a radio sound effect artist in Minneapolis and had moved to Chicago and joined the agency for John Morrell and Company - meat packers - in Ottumwa, Iowa for their product, then the largest selling dog food in America. On the program, encouraged by the announcer's "Come on, boy. That' it. Sit up! Speak, speak:" And with that I would whine, growl, and end with "Woof, woof, Red Heart" The announcer would repeat it - "That's it - Red Heart"... in three flavors: Beef, Fish and Cheese! Americs's largest selling dog food!" I was curious as to whether Sonovox might either put me out of business as a sound man - or would be a tool to use in place of my live performances ! Turned out neither! As I was deciding on this, Mrs. Wright came to me, complimented me on getting the use of Sonovox down pat and asked if I would consider making a trip to New York on their behalf as an articulator. It seems that they had sold the idea of using Sonovox to Bromo Seltzer's agency - articulating a steam engine chugging along repeating "Bromo-Selt-zer - Bromo- Selt-zer", but that Mrs. Wright had been the articulator and the client felt that the product would be better represented if the articulator was a male. (The Sonovox technique is sexless but the client was not persuaded.) I replied "Yes, be glad to". But it proved un-necessary - the client was convinced Sonovox was sexless.
I'm still in the market to acquire Sonovox equipment with which to entertain my grandchidren! Know where I can acquire a unit? David W. Dole dwdole@me.com
There are a number of wonderful old "sono" radio commercials you can listen to here: PAMS advertising
The other early adopters of the Sonovox were children's record producers. I've uploaded one such goodie from 1947, plus a bonus track: an mp3 of the audio from the above Kay Kyser video, from the 1940 film "You'll Find Out". "Sparky's Magic Piano" Much thanks (and happy birthdaty!) to David Dole.
Oh, and he would also like to pass on one of his other innovations: Use DOLE DATNG - Briefest and best! "JA" is January. All other months use 1st and 3rd letters: FB MR, AR, MY, JN, JL, AG, SP, OT, NV & DC. Letters ALWAYS in the middle - with date and year interchangeable but 2 numbers for "day" and 4 for "year". Copyrighted 1996 but free for all!
More odds 'n' ends today. First of all, radio dj Mister X is requesting help from the maniacs community. He's looking for "...a song from the early/mid 60's, a truckers song, one of the earliest perhaps, it's about a trucker losing his brakes on a long downgrade and "runnin' wild"...and the Chorus went like this: "Downgrade, downgrade, 20 Tons of diesel running wild". (cool guitar riff at end of chorus)." It was played on L.A. radio. I have no idea. Anyone?
Let's watch a little telly, shall we? Buttress O'Kneel passed this nightmarish/hilarious video on to us, and it's probably just some kids goofing around and not the work of a horrific Lovecraftian cult, but I'm not entirely certain. The, er, "band" is called АНСАМБЛЬ ХРИСТА СПАСИТЕЛЯ И МАТЬ СЫРА ЗЕМЛЯ (ENSAMBLE OF CHRIST THE SAVIOUR AND MOTHER EARTH).
Speaking of videos, I've been diggin' the works of Petunia-Liebling MacPumpkin, and her creepy rinky-dink electronics. She could have slipped into affected art-school-chick territory, but fortunately fell on the right side of weird (e.g.: more Residents than Bjork.) Her new video is about dead fish, and appropriately features Art Barnes of Barnes and Barnes fame, the goofballs that sang "Fish Heads" back in the day. It's all so '80s public-access cable, so annoying. And I'm so glad it exists. Petunia-Liebling MacPumpkin video channel
And dig this brand new Sun Ra youtube channel, put up to coincide with the new iTunes releases of remastered legit releases of over 20 of Sonnys' album, as there were far too many poopy-sounding bootlegs floating around. If you are unfamiliar with the finest jazz bandleader that the planet Saturn has ever produced, this is a great place to start: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/explore-cosmos-vol.-3-exotica/id877071840
