Silly Sundays - Buchanan and Goodman - The Flying Saucer

As promised back in December, this kicks off a month of themed Silly Sundays posts about break-in records. And here's the very first break-in hit.

Dickie Goodman (wiki AMG extensive bio) and Bill Buchanan (wiki AMG) only worked together for about three years (probably less in reality, but records were credited to the pair until 1959), though they both continued releasing break-in records under various names and pseudonyms for a while, with Goodman continuing until right before his death in 1989.

If you read that extensive bio linked above, you'll get a good overview of Goodman's place in the history of novelty records, and this page here will give you the script of the record and a quick review of the history involved. This record is dizzyingly fast and complex, with layers of jokes (my favorite is probably the repeated misnaming of artists and song titles).

I haven't firmed up all my plans for this month of posts yet, but there's some good stuff coming -- stay tuned.

Buchanan and Goodman - The Flying Saucer Part One
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The Flying Saucer Part Two
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Silly Sundays - 30 Rock - Muffin Top

Today is my wife's birthday, and in her honor I'm posting her favorite song right now. Since we returned from our honeymoon, we've started watching 30 Rock in earnest, and in the last six weeks we've watched all the available DVDs -- by the end of this season we'll be caught up.

I had to edit this together myself, since the show still hasn't released an official soundtrack, so I took recordings from the two original episodes where the song was featured and slapped them together. It's a tiny bit sloppy at the cuts, but I hope it doesn't interfere with your enjoyment of the song.

In October, I'll be posting the other really really great song from season one, "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah." Until then, download this and put it in all your mixes. Happy birthday, sweetie! I love you.

Jane Krakowski featuring Ghostface Killa - Muffin Top
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Silly Sundays - Macy Skipper - Goofin' Off

All right. I've been sitting on this for literally months, trying to write it up. Sadly, I can't find much of anything about Macy Skipper online (apart from his other three recordings which you can listen to here). He's apparently from St. Louis, MO, released just a few singles on as many labels, and lived in obscurity.

I wish he would've recorded more stuff like this -- the other records he put out are more standard rockabilly stuff, which I love well enough, but this just feels so special to me. This is a wonderful slab of nonsense which fits ten minutes' worth of absurdity into 180 seconds. It's consistently dazzling, bewildering, and hilarious. I've listened to it at least twenty times in the last week, and I don't think I'll ever want to slow down. Like the best funny spoken word records, I want to memorize it and perform it at parties.

And the worst part is, I want to write something funny about this record, but I can't come up with anything. Man, I feel so unnecessary...

Macy Skipper - Goofin' Off
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Silly Sundays - Bobby The Poet - A White Christmas and The Three O'Clock Weather Report

Okay, here's a weird one for yas. You know how Bob Dylan put out a Christmas album this year? Sure you do. Well, waaaaay back in the 1960s, Bob was one of the biggest things ever. Impressionists loved to add him to their stable of characters. Impressionists also loved to do Kennedys. Hence, here are the two Bobbys together at last.

A lot of people out there assume this is a parody of Simon and Garfunkel's "Silent Night/9 O'Clock News." And since the album this was eventually released on came out in 1967, months after the Simon and Garfunkel track, that would seem to be a safe assumption. But that album was largely recorded in front of a studio audience (and this is clearly not), and this single says 1962. I'm chalking this up to odd coincidence. (On the other hand, knowing what I do about Paul and Artie's odd sense of humor, it's not inconceivable they'd heard this record and the name stuck with them too.) I don't tend to use the "Musical Mysteries" tag when a record is as clearly sourced as this, but I'm putting it on today anyway. Anyone with facts or info is requested to post it in the comments.

Tomorrow we'll be hearing about the history of one song on Bob's album (oh and by the way, he doesn't do "White Christmas" on the album), with widely varying historical versions of the song, and then on Tuesday I'll complete this little Dylan segment so we can move on to other things.

Bobby The Poet - White Christmas
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Silly Sundays - The Asylum Street Spankers - You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch

The Asylum Street Spankers (official Myspace wiki AMG) are an Austin-based group of bluesy, folkie swingers. This track uses each verse of the song to highlight a different side of their musical versatility. Besides the country verse I excerpted as a hidden mystery track here, they also take on lounge crooners, oldschool ska, and Mr. Tom Waits. And they acquit themselves admirably in each style.

The whole album is, yes, this good. Make sure to click on the buy link down there -- if you like this track, you'll love the whole thing.

The Asylum Street Spankers - You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch
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Silly Sundays - Rose and the Arrangement - The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati

It's less than a week to Halloween, so hang on to those hats and glasses -- we're going to hear some spooky, kooky, ooky things between now and then.

Here's my favorite song ever about horror films. With a title reminiscent of "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago," and a group of accomplished musicians and singers, Rose and the Arrangement (Dr. Demento loves them) serve up a delicious platter of horrendous rhymes and a catchy earwig of a tune. This was on the first Dr. Demento compilation I ever got, and it's a great novelty tune. Its greatness is largely due to a refusal to take anything seriously, even its own jokes. (I love that the singer has to apologize for one particularly bad pun, and that the background singers criticize the finale of the song.)

The title was borrowed for an otherwise unrelated micro-budget film in 1996, and I don't normally link to these things, but this fan video for the song made me laugh a lot.

Come back tomorrow -- more spoooooky recordings are on the way!

Rose and the Arrangement - The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati
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Aye, Pirate Week :Tim Curry and The Muppets - A Professional Pirate

Psst! Avast there! It be too late to alter course now, mateys.

Aye, greetin's, friends. Welcome t' Pirate Week har on She'll Grow Back. Ahoy, in celebration o' International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I'll be pro'idin' some nautically-themed music all week. So keep your ruddy hands inboard -- that be the best way t' repel boarders!

Aye, as tis' Sunday, har's one o' the silliest thin's we'll lis'en at all week. Tis' Tim Curry and The Muppets, from Muppet Treasure Island. The song be written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who also enscribed "On Broadway" and "We Gotta Get Out O' This Place," among others. Arrr, as the soundtrack be impossible t' find, the buy link today steers ye t'wards the movie.

Download with care -- thar be squalls ahead, and Davy Jones waitin' for them what don't obey. Aye.

Tim Curry and The Muppets - A Professional Pirate
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Buy from Amazon, Matey -- Buy from Deep Discount, Arr

Silly Sundays - Rupert Holmes - Psycho Drama

Here's a bit of fun from Rupert Holmes' 1973 album, Widescreen, a collection of songs Holmes conceived of as "movies in sound." This is the fullest exploration of that idea from the album, and is more or less a full-blown radio play.

In the liner notes to the expanded collector's edition (where the buy link goes, natch), Holmes writes:

"Had I But Known (as they used to say on such [old-time radio] programs) that in the nineteen-nineties I'd have the chance to write four years worth of such programs for Remember WENN ... I'd probably have traded in this cut for two more ballads."

But if he'd done that, this album would feel a little less special to me.

Rupert Holmes - Psycho Drama
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Silly Sundays - Rupert Holmes - Beef Lo Mein

Here's a track from the soundtrack to Rupert Holmes' 2006 mystery Swing. You can read more about the novel, and listen to the soundtrack, at Holmes' semiofficial site.

The novel is a murder mystery (and, like his first novel Where The Truth Lies, also serves as a metamystery) set in 1940's Golden Gate International Exposition. I won't summarize the plot here, but it's smart and complex, twisty and turny, and simultaneously hilarious and dead serious. Despite the grim, uncomfortable aspects of the plot, there's plenty of time for fun exploration of the World's Fair and 1940's pop culture.

And so, here is a 40's-style novelty song, proving once again that it's hard to write a song about food that isn't funny. (And, funny as this is, the song also turns out to be tragic in the novel. Just go ahead and click the buy link down there, okay?)

Rupert Holmes - Beef Lo Mein
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Silly Sundays - Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

Here's our second post for Rupert Holmes month on Silly Sundays. In 1979, this was a massive #1 hit for Holmes, the song that really launched his career as a popular musician. The album, Partners in Crime, contains a lot of songs themed around unhealthy relationships and cheating, most with a tongue-in-cheek attitude belying the serious nature of the unhappiness chronicled therein.

Which is actually a clue to how Holmes works: he takes a truly unhappy situation and discusses it in a funny way, full of tiny, perfect details and human reactions, and makes you forget just how damned serious the subject can be. (For more, click here and scroll down about 3/5 of the way, for my review of his excellent first novel. In two weeks, we'll be hearing a song from the soundtrack of his excellent second novel.)

Which is why this was a pop hit: people listen to this song, hear the happy ending, and don't think about the fact that this relationship is clearly doomed. If both members of a relationship are trying to cheat, it doesn't matter if they end up cheating with each other -- that's not a very happy ending.

...

Well, that's a little serious for Silly Sundays. Maybe I should've posted something lighter instead. Anyway, come back next week for Holmes' first take on old-time radio, long before he got to create and write Remember WENN...

Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Pina Colada Song)
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Silly Sundays - The Buoys - Timothy

For the month of August, Silly Sundays will be devoted to some tracks written and performed by renaissance man Rupert Holmes (official wiki AMG), the only man to win a Tony and an Edgar for the same work. (We'll be hearing a song from that work later this month, methinks.)

In 1971, Holmes was writing and recording and producing songs with his friend Ron Dante (of The Archies fame/infamy), and his friends The Buoys (official wiki interview). The Buoys were signed for a major label single, but the label wouldn't set aside even a penny for promotion. As such, Holmes had to promote the single himself. He set out to write a song so offensive it would be banned and censored, thereby achieving fame. Inspired partially by Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons," what he came up with was "Timothy," a dark tale of implied cannibalism.

Holmes' plan worked -- the song was quickly banned by some stations, and the record label issued two different censored versions (boo hiss for censorship!), but it slowly moved up the charts. Which means at one point Casey Kasem introduced the song when it entered the Top 40. The label also tried to defuse the controversy by announcing that Timothy was a mule, which claim was immediately denied by Holmes and the band. The Buoys went on to record two more albums, only one of which was released. The members have occasionally reunited in different formations, and here's a live video of the song from 2005. Holmes went on to record many more albums, write Broadway shows and novels and work with Barbra Streisand, of all people.

Most weeks, I provide a buy link for anything in print, but apparently the available commercial release is unofficial, and The Buoys, and Holmes, aren't getting any royalties, so I won't do it this week. Shame.

The Buoys - Timothy
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PS -- It's my mom's birthday today. She doesn't read this blog, but it's worth pointing out that once, she made the creepiest Donner Party joke I've ever heard. Happy birthday, Mom!

Silly Sundays - Bowser and Blue - Polka Dot Undies

Boswer and Blue (official wiki AMG) are a Canadian comedy duo, and a real favorite of Dr. Demento, the king of novelty records. I should warn you that, despite that art to the right there, Bowser and Blue aren't really Lou Reed and Jim Belushi playing incognito. This song does, however, include contributions from a sizeable percentage of 80's stalwarts Katrina and the Waves.

This is one of the best of the many many parodies of Bob Dylan out there, with a twist. This one belongs to what I like to call the "Hello Operator, Give Me Number Nine" school of comedy. (You'll hear more of these songs on Silly Sundays to come, I'll bet.)

This song makes me uncontrollably happy, and it can still make me giggle like an eight-year old. Thanks, Bowser and Blue.

Bowser and Blue - Polka Dot Undies
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Buy from Bowser and Blue

Silly Sundays - Monster Mansion!

Back in 1981, Six Flags Over Georgia hired a former Disney Imagineer to put together a new dark ride, one that couldn't be found anywhere else in the world. That ride became known as Monster Plantation. Last month, the ride reopened as a new, refurbished version of the original, with a new name and a lot of new effects. (If any of those A J-C links want you to register, don't forget bugmenot.)

One thing that didn't change was the theme song (though it sounds better now, thanks to advances in speaker design during the intervening decades, and a new instrumental version plays near the queue area). Here is the original theme song, played in several different instrumentations, all of which can still be heard in the new version of the ride.

I hadn't been to Six Flags in years and years, but when I heard they were refurbing this ride, I bought a season pass. I also wrote this, in an email to my friends:

The first audio-animatronic robots I ever saw were at Six Flags Over Georgia, in The Monster Plantation. I remember almost every part of it, and if it hadn't been as good as it was, I'd probably care less about robots, and dark rides, and Disney parks (and their themed brethren).

Those of you who aren't near Atlanta can see the difference between the old and new versions of the ride on YouTube, but of course watching a dark-ride video is pretty unsatisfying. Anyway, enough talk. This song is insanely catchy, so I don't recommend listening more than twice in any given week.

Monster Plantation/Mansion Theme
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Silly Sundays - Stan Freberg - Incident at Los Varoces

Our final post for Vegas/Canyon week here at She'll Grow Back also marks the introduction of a new feature: Silly Sundays. After this week's near-death of one of my favorite blogs, Dr. Forrest's Cheeze Factory, I've realized it's time to post or repost some of my favorite silly recordings. (This week's is more serious than most, and much longer too.)

If I had twelve hours to spend on this post, I would put up an additional webpage detailing all the cultural references in this fifty-year old recording, but I don't have anywhere near that long.* So let me just say this:

Stan Freberg was the son of a Baptist minister, and the voracious spirit of Las Vegas, even fifty years ago, bothered him no end. In 1957, network radio was dying, and sponsors were light on the ground. Despite the weak position he found himself as a network radio comedian, Freberg recorded a twenty-minute-long, all-out attack on Las Vegas. Like the best satire, it's just as funny and prescient today as it was at the time. (There have been, in the past week, at least two blog or forum posts tying North Korea's nuclear bragging into this piece.)

And, also like the best satire, it scared the crap out of the people responsible for distributing it to the masses. After hearing it pre-broadcast, weak-willed CBS Radio execs demanded a different ending for this, though I imagine they didn't expect God Himself to take an active role in the new version. (I've never heard the second version, and I don't think it's ever been released to the public after that first broadcast. Anyone out there wanna try to prove me wrong? Please? And, also, boo hiss for censorship!) Stan himself gives us all the details in his delightful autobiography, It Only Hurts When I Laugh.

In 1957, Freberg was at the top of his game. He wrote and produced 15 near-flawless half hours of radio, and it's an incredible shame that these CDs are out of print. Luckily, a best-of is available, via the buy link down there. Like all of the best of Stan's work, today's recording also features Daws Butler, Peter Leeds, June "Rocky" Foray and Peggy Taylor, with the Billy May Orchestra, and also Jud Conlon's Rhythmaires.

This track is 20 minutes long, and 50 MB. Download with care.

Stan Freberg - Incident At Los Varoces
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*If you're looking for extensively-researched blog posts on Freberg, look no further than this page here.