Another Beatles rip-off record, but this one honestly isn’t that bad. Yes, I’ll say it: The Buggs might even be pretty good. Sure we get the obligatory “She Loves You” & “I Want To Hold Your Hand” covers (as well as stray covers of other contemporary songs retitled so that, like almost every song on here, they include British locations in the name — “Just One Look” becomes “Soho Mash”, for example), but my faves are what I take to be originals. “Mersey Mercy”, “Liverpool Drag” & “London Town Swing” are truly pretty charming if you like that peppy early “Beat” sound, and on the whole LP only “East End” really sucks (well, and I guess “Swingin’ Thames” isn’t going on any mix tapes of mine in the foreseeable future either).
This one is pretty common in both Stereo and Mono editions, so it must’ve sold a lot at the time. Tracks by the Buggs also showed up on the Coronet compilation “At The Hop” (with the Four Seasons, Charlie Francis & Barbara Brown), and I’ve read somewhere that there was a followup album, but I’ve never seen it.
To wit: “In this album you will hear the original Liverpool sound recorded on location in England by the Buggs, a fast moving, well paced group that we are sure you will like.”
The Buggs “The Beetle Beat” (192 kbps)
I’ve got a number of these “Beatle rip off albums” which emerged as the first wave of Beatlemania was hitting the US. Basically Beatle sound-alike (or in some cases, not so sound-alike) cash-ins that were designed to fool the less attentive members of the public (read: little kids or their hapless parents), they were released on budget labels with ambiguous and/ or misleading cover design that tossed in exotic buzz words like “Liverpool”, “Mersey Beat” or just “England”. Then when the consumer got home and dropped the needle down, they’d be confusingly greeted by a made-up group ineptly covering a song or two by the “fabs” and 20 more minutes of throwaway filler that ranged from “pretty close” to “guh?”.
For my money, “Beattle Mash” has the best cover of the whole slew (I don’t know if you can tell how out of focus it is, or how little this helps disguise the age of these guys), while the group themselves (referred to on the front as “The Liverpool Kids”, in the liners as “The Liverpool Moptops” and on the label as “The Schoolboys”) mostly stick to churning out lame recycled frat rock and twist riffs, pausing now and then to slip in a not-very-rewritten rewrite of an actual Beatle song. Or as the back cover puts it:
…these four men, who with a group of excellent musicians, have adopted the style of BEATLING, the hottest craze in show business on either side of the Atlantic. [snip] Our interpretation of the style by our own talented group will give you the great pleasure you are looking for.
So I hope the great pleasure you are looking for finds you today, because I have little doubt that it eluded the original purchaser of this record.
The Liverpool Kids “Beattle Mash” (192 kbps)
Wake up to this 7″ promo collection of various Snap Crackle Pop related songs released by Kellog’s in 1983. The lack of really kid-friendly graphics or song titles (side two is just broken down into genres) makes me assume that this was mostly intended for industry or radio use, but maybe it was a premium? I came across my copy used so I can’t say for sure. UPDATE: A friend of mine assures me that it WAS a mail-in premium and that he distinctly recalls saving Rice Krispies boxtops to get his copy.
Of course it was the promise of a cereal song being done in the style of “New Wave” as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-corporate-marketers that forced me to buy it, and I really wasn’t too disappointed. The end result is something like Meat Loaf meets the Motels (or “Billy Joel gets into a car crash with Quarterflash and Richard O’Brien writes them the ticket” if you prefer), and it comes complete with the classic st-st-stutter that skinny tie enthusiasts around the globe simply couldn’t get enough of.
Snap! Crackle! Pop! Rice Krispies
Wakin’ Up
Snap! Crackle! Pop! Medley
Rock & Roll
Western
New Wave
Kellog’s “Snap Crackle Pop Tunes” (192 kbps)
One of the more common 1970’s Halloween sound effect records to still turn up, this has connections to some of the other Pickwick titles I’ve already posted. I’ve mentioned Wade Denning a few times, but Frank Daniel seemed to have been equally involved in making the world a better place through spooky records; he did the cool artwork for this title as well as for the back cover of Famous Ghost Stories, and both sides of Sounds of Terror, for which he also takes the sole writing credit. Thanks Frank!
Compared to those other two Pickwick titles, Sounds to Make you Shiver! seemed less intense to my ears as a kid (though there’s enough female moaning on here that I was commanded by a childhood friend’s parents to take it off when I brought it along for a sleepover party). In keeping with a somewhat standard format of the day, one side has a “story in sound” (“…designed primarily for general scaring”), while the other has many of the same sound effects banded out individually and touted in the liner notes as “ideal for background noises that will give extra authenticity to mystery play or skit. Just play the record on cue in the wings and the audience will shiver and love it”. While this sort of audio double-dipping smacks cynical grown-up me as a cost saver, I know that when I was a kid I really did love being able to easily queue up and play something along the lines of “Witch Laugh” or “Screams & Groans” while, you know, doing shit like phoning up people at random in the middle of the day. These days I’ve found that a lot of side one is still pretty good stuff to mix in as a layer of sound underneath spooky songs, just as long as you make sure to stay away from the dreaded “guy pretending to be a cat” section. Man, oh man.
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The Newest Teen-Age Singing Group! Yeah! That’s right!
In honor of Mr. Al Lewis, here’s an LP cash-in attempt that uses the Munsters name on a collection of teen beat/ pop music from 1964. While that could be a recipe for total crap, there are actually some okay instros here, and a few vocal numbers that almost even make it into creepsville. Sure there’s no involvement from anyone on the show (in contrast to the cast album “At Home With The Munsters”, shared files of which I think can still be easily found), but dammit the man needed to be paid SOME sort of tribute, right? I sincerely hope this fits the bill.
By the way, “netiquette” compels me to make note of the fact that this is the first thing I’ve posted that hasn’t been a rip of my own (the transfer is from a much cleaner copy of the LP than mine so I went with it). Kindly do try to understand, and I promise to make mention of such things should they arise again.
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Despite the dumbed down stories, having Spider-Man pop up on the Electric Company seemed pretty damn cool to me as a kid. I’m fairly sure this was the first flesh & blood guy I ever saw playing him (they began in 1974), and that alone was a big enough deal that even giant rope webbing or played-for-yuks villains couldn’t mitigate the thrill. Oh, plus I thought that the theme (included before each story here) was pretty sweet, but I guess in retrospect all the Spider-Man songs sounded badass to me at the time. Actually I don’t think he ever really spoke out loud on the show (instead they’d flash cartoon type word balloons), but on an audio record I suppose it couldn’t be avoided. Mr. Morgan Freeman introduces all the episodes, naturally.
The Purple Pirates And Evil Mcweevil
The Last Laugh
Spidey Vs. Mister Measels
Spider-Man Is Born
Spidey And The Queen Bees
Deadly Is The Doctor Called Doom
20,000 Feet Underground
Spidey And The Sandman
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Here’s the second Power Records Spider-Man long player, with a different guy voicing him & maybe what, three other actors playing the rest of the entire cast on every story? These days it kinda sounds to me like this whole album was cut in a day, but as a kid I never minded at all. Here’s a testament to how often I must’ve played this thing; it’s been 32 years and I still frequently quote several of the astronomy scene lines from “The Invasion of the Dragon-Men” in my head when I’m noticing the stars at night (“Looks like the letter ‘W’!”, “Couldja pour me a Coke outta that dipper?”). Any way you spin it that’s probably pretty lame.
The Invasion Of The Dragon-Men
Return Of The Conquistador
The Mad Hatter Of Manhattan
The Abominable Showman
The Bells Of Doom
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Despite the higher catalog number this is really the first of the two long playing Power Records Spider-Man collections (and it’s really a Spider-Man collection in name only; there are four separate Marvel titles compiled together here and Spider-Man is just the first).
If you were a kid in the 70’s you might’ve found these four stories in a few ways; as separate 7″ book & record sets, or on this LP in any number of forms (for example it was released both with and without the Incredible Hulk story, and on Power, Peter Pan and Zap Records). I always preferred the 12″ versions to the little book & record collections myself, mostly because I hated the pauses in the action & that annoying “ding” sound, but as I remember some kids wanted the comic part more. Oh and hey, how about those guys playing Captain America & the Falcon, huh? Man. Even when I was 5 some of these lines made me laugh, but then again I thought that the Man-Wolf story was scary for a while too.
Okay, since I’m going to post the balance of my Spider-Man related audio stories today, I’ll keep it short and just put the track listing here so as to get on with the show:
Spider-Man: The Mark Of The Man-Wolf
The Incredible Hulk: At Bay
Captain America And The Falcon: And A Phoenix Shall Arise
The Fantastic Four: The Way It Began
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I wish it was under better circumstances, but here’s the debut entry from a series of live tapes I made of Punk Rock bands in the mid ’80’s back when I lived in Kansas. I’m kicking it off with this one because Jason Sears, the singer for RKL, died this week (compounding this is that the original drummer Bomber — the guy drumming here — passed away only a few months ago.)
I made this recording on a crummy handheld Sony tape deck upstairs at the old Foolkiller in KC, which is where I saw a lot of my first punk gigs. I took the trip up from Lawrence to KC for shows all the time, but since I was under the driving age and lived about an hour & a half away from the club I was totally dependent on others for the rides up and back. Usually it was no problem, but for some reason this time it wasn’t happening — either no one was interested enough or they weren’t able to pull it off, and I was getting desperate. The lineup looked so good too; it was not only RKL (who I knew from their debut single on Mystic which I had been playing constantly), but also Dr Know who were great when they’d come through 6 months earlier (on their “Plug In Jesus” tour). Eventually it was looking SO grim that I called up the local college radio station (KJHK) and begged them to announce my situation; “15 year old kid wants a ride up to KC to see a hardcore show. Any takers?”. Seemed pretty last ditch to me but as luck would have it, a friend of mine I hadn’t thought to call WAS listening and offered to hook me up (thanks Gil!). My evening was saved, the show was great, and I’m proud to be able to present it to you in all it’s lo-fi glory 21 years later. Like I said, I just wish it was under happier circumstances.
Oh, and the flyer here is one I made for a show that ended up falling through about a year later (I still have the original lurking around). I can’t remember now if the Melvins ended up playing by themselves or if the whole thing was scrapped, but as you can see I more or less just swiped the art from the “It’s A Beautiful Feeling” single whole hog.
UPDATE: Stunt from 7 Inch Punk has graciously offered to host the file off his 12 Inch Punk server, so now there are two download options. Thanks man!
Link One: RKL “Live At The Foolkiller in KC, MO May 5, 1985” (192 kbps)
Link Two (12 Inch Punk): RKL “Live At The Foolkiller in KC, MO May 5, 1985” (192 kbps)
Yeah, this is the kind of weird recording that I really love. One side contains a “spooky story” and the other explains how you can conduct a “Haunted House Halloween Party” by interacting with the sound effects & storyline while the record plays:
“…scary place #5 is supposed to be a bucket with a beating heart inside. To make the heart, take a balloon and fill it half full of warm water, then coat it with a thin layer of vaseline and place it on the bottom of the bucket. Now put a two inch layer of flour and water mixed together around the balloon. When you are getting close to the bucket on the tour you should be hearing the loud heartbeats on the record. Lead your victim around slowly so that he hits the bucket with his foot. This way, he will think that he’s discovered something by accident, and the surprise will be better! Now, have him feel the bucket, then tell him to reach inside. You should be holding the opposite end of the balloon, and squeezing it in time with the heartbeat on the record. When your victim feels the balloon, it should feel as though it is really beating! Remember, keep in time with beat of the heart on the record. At THIS point, you’re ready for scary place #6…”
Being an audio combination of Halloween-themed ephemera & now-displaced “functionality”, this nears perfection for me. The only flaw might be that it’s actually kinda well done.
Carol Darr and Mark Masuoka – Spearhead Marketing “Halloween Party Instructions & Story” (192 kbps)
