Music that is weird, bizarre, or so bad that it is funny - recommendations

[Heather Harrison]

Over the years, I have enjoyed discovering music that is off-the-deep-end weird or so bad that it is funny.  Today, I was listening to Rhino's 4-CD compilation of 1960's girl group recordings entitled "One Kiss Can Lead to Another" and was reminded of two very strange songs.  The decade of the 1960's was a great time for bizarre music, but girl group material was usually fairly straightforward and not all that weird.  However, there are some notable and impressive exceptions, and I am glad Rhino included two of the weirdest in their compilation.

"Peanut Duck" by Marsha Gee.  This falls into the category of so bad that it is funny.  It was not released during the 1960's, but much later a DJ found the tape, and a cult classic was born.  This is one of a long line of 1960's songs about some sort of new dance craze, and this is easily the weirdest I have heard.  The singer sounds rather bored, and she makes some half-hearted attempts at growling and quacking.  The music, such as it is, is about as simplistic as can be.  This has to be heard to be believed.  A search may reveal downloads.  As a side note, nobody seems to know who Marsha Gee was.  Apparently, she recorded this; then, it was promptly forgotten and she drifted back into the woodwork.  Nobody even knows who wrote it.  If she is still around, I wonder if she knows that her long-forgotten recording has become a cult favorite.

"Egyptian Shumba" by The Tammys.  The Tammys were Lou Christie's high-pitched backing group in his earliest hits (i.e. "Two Faces Have I").  He drifted into the bizarre on occasion, but I can't think of any of his creations more bizarre than this.  He wrote and produced this masterpiece of weirdness.  Imagine a squeaky-voiced girl group singing over a bizarre attempt at pseudo-Egyptian sound.  On top of this, they let out the craziest screams every now and then.  As with "Peanut Duck", this must be heard to be believed.  Unlike "Peanut Duck", this is actually well performed, and the production quality is great, as would be expected of Lou Christie.  This just might be the weirdest girl group song I have ever heard, and no other Egyptian-themed pop song that I have heard has anything on this.

The following site looks like it might be a good source of weirdness.

http://www.weirdsville.com/podcast.html

I haven't listened to any of their podcasts yet, but I have downloaded the two earliest ones, and I will check them out when I get a chance and I will report back.  The second one (located near the bottom of the page) has "Egyptian Shumba".  If they chose that, I figure that they might have good taste in the bizarre, so I am curious to hear what else they have dragged up.

There is more that I can post about here, and if this thread gets going, I'll add more.  I wanted to find out what weirdnesses other people here have stumbled upon.  I posted this in the Diner because pop music is an especially good source of the bizarre and so-bad-it-is-funny, but any genre (including classical) is certainly welcome here.

Heather

[Bogey]

 I would throw this into your category Heather.  And yes, I own and enjoy it:



Check out some of the track listings here:
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Godzilla-1954-1975-Original-Soundtracks/dp/B0000061GJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1195447812&sr=1-1

And maybe this:



Also, some the non-score Iron Giant cd might fit here, which I just love:



1. Blast Off - The Tyrones
2. Rockin' In The Orbit - Jimmie Haskell   
3. Kookie's Mad Pad - Edd Byrnes
4. Salt Peanuts - The Nutty Squirrels 
5. Comin' Home Baby - Mel Torme 
6. Cha-Hua-Hua - Eddie Platt
7. Let's Do The Cha Cha - The Magnificents
8. Blues Walk - Lou Donaldson   
9. I Got A Rocket In My Pocket - Jimmie Lloyd   
10. Searchin' - The Coasters
11. Honeycomb - Jimmie Rodgers     
12. Destination Moon - The Ames Brothers   
13. You Can Be... - Michael Kamen/The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra   
14. ...Who You Choose To Be - Michael Kamen/The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra 

[beer]

Anything by Ze Cabra

[hornteacher]

From the 1990s a group called "They Might Be Giants" had a few bizarre songs.  "Spider" and "Minimum Wage" are two songs that come to mind.

[Heather Harrison]

I have heard of a few of the items that people have mentioned.  They Might Be Giants can definitely be weird, and they are quite creative.  I have heard some of their work and should probably hear more.

I don't have the Godzilla CD, but it sounds like it has possibilities; I might have to get it.

Mel Torme's "Comin' Home Baby" is a classic!  It is a bit strange, but it is also quite catchy and well performed.  But then, in my book, Mel Torme can do no wrong.  I think it dates from a time when rock & roll was becoming the dominant form of popular music, especially for younger people, and older established artists either tried to make their music a bit more edgy or recorded their own versions of the rock & roll hits of the day.  Some efforts along these lines were more successful than others.  However, the less successful ones can be downright funny.

In the 1990's, Capitol put out a large series of CDs entitled "Ultra Lounge".  They focused on styles of music from the 1950's and 1960's now known as "lounge music", "space age pop", "exotica", and "cocktail music".  The CDs were, appropriately, packaged in rather cheesy, kitchy covers.  Two CDs in this series were entitled "On the Rocks" and featured the rock & roll hits of the day performed by older established artists and by the masters of easy listening.  Basically, if you take all of the soul out of rock & roll, this is what you get.  And the results are often downright hilarious.

Here are just a few of the highlights: 

"Mrs. Robinson", performed by Guy Lombardo's band in his inimitable style.
"Light My Fire" - two different performances (one on each CD), both of them seriously strange.
"Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" and "Mighty Quinn", performed by the sultry Julie London, whose career had largely run its course by this time.
"Daydream Believer" in a trippy performance by Lord Sitar.
Medley of "Incense and Peppermints" and "A Beautiful Morning" performed by that master of exotica, Martin Denny.
"These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" performed by Mrs. Miller, whose style I cannot find words to describe.



In fact, the entire Ultra Lounge series is a great source of bizarre music.  Other record labels also put out CD reissues of this previously forgotten music.  Rhino's series "Cocktail Mix" is another good choice.  It seems that this "lounge music" (or whatever it is called) was the last gasp of the old music that was being pushed out by rock & roll.  The older style of music took some really strange turns as it declined, and in its death throes it gave us some of the most delightfully bizarre music around.

Heather

[bwv 1080]

Mozart's Leck mich im Arsch would fall in this category

Leck mich im Arsch!
Laßt uns froh sein!
Murren ist vergebens!
Knurren, Brummen ist vergebens,
ist das wahre Kreuz des Lebens,
das Brummen ist vergebens,
Knurren, Brummen ist vergebens, vergebens!
Drum laßt uns froh und fröhlich, froh sein!
   

Kiss my arse!
Let us be glad!
Grumbling is in vain!
Growling, droning is in vain,
is the true bane of life,
Droning is in vain,
Growling, droning is in vain, in vain!
Thus let us be cheerful and merry, be glad!

more here:

K233 and K234 Mozat's "Kiss my Ass" Canons
Dennis Pajot

http://www.mozartforum.com/Lore/article.php?=&id=070

In 1799 Constanze Mozart sent Breitkopf & Härtel several manuscripts including a list of "songs". Among this list of songs Item 21 reads "Three Canons Lek mich im Arsch". Constanze included a note saying she would be sending the Canons later and that their texts would have to be altered because they were "unruly". It is uncertain which canons she referred to but two were most likely--K231/382c, known by its incipit "Leck mich im Arsch" (Kiss my Ass) and K233/382e "Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schon sauber" (Kiss my ever so nice clean ass). The third was probably K234/384e "Bei der Hitz im Sommer ess ich" (In the heat of summer I eat). B & H published the 3 Canons with new texts: "Lasst froh uns seyn" (Lets be joyous), "Nichts labt mich mehr als Wien" (Nothing pleases me more than wine) and "Essen, Trinken, das erhalt den Leib" (Eating, drinking support love), only citing the first line of Mozart's original text. Not only these three, but also six other canons were published by B & H with new suitable texts. However the other six texts are known to us from Mozart autographs, these first 3 canon texts have been lost to us. However a recently found set of the "Oeuvres Complettes" of Mozart's from ca. 1804 gives all 9 original canon texts that B & H suppressed. The original texts are entered just below B & H's printed words.

Albert Dunning in the Mozart-Jahrbuch and again in his NMA volume has questioned the authenticity of these 3 "Leck mich im Arsch" canons. Then in 1988 Wolfgang Plath established the music of K233 and K234 is most likely to be attributed to Wenzel Trnka (1739-1791), having been published before 1800 in "XII Canons for 3 Voices Composer Sig. Wenceslao Trnka", and again later by Aloys Fuchs under Trnka's name. Michael Ochs in a 1991 Mozart-Jahrbuch article hypothesized that Breitkopf & Härtel received the Mozart canon autographs from Constanze Mozart and made in-house copies of them; then on these copies were written the substitute texts, with a few modifications in the music to accommodate B & H's new words. Even though this is very plausible, unfortunately there is no evidence of any in-house copies and no clue where the autographs went. Ochs reproduces the original text of Mozart's for the canons as follows:

K233 "Leck mire den A..recht schon, fein sauber lecke ihn, fein sauber lecke, leck mire den A...Das ist ein fettigs Begehren, nur gut mit Butter geschmiert, den das Lecken der Braten mein tagliches Thun. Drei lecken mehr als Zweie, nur her, machet die Prob' und leckt, leckt, leckt. Jeder leckt sein A...fur sich".

K234: "Beider Hitz im Sommer ess ich gerne Wurzl und Krauter auch Butter und Rettig; treibt furtreflich Wind und kuhlet mich ab, und kuhlet mich ab. Ich nehm Limonade, Mandelmilch, auch zu Zeiten Horner bier, auch zu Zeiten Horner Bier; das im heissen Somer nur, im Sommer nur. Ich fur mich in Eis gekuhlts Glas Wein, fur mich in Eis gekuhlts Glas Wein in Eis. Auch mein Glas gefrohrnes".

Remember Plath established most likely the music is by Trnka, but according to Ochs "we must nevertheless admit that the words have a definite Mozartean ring. Their appearance...leads one to speculate that Mozart fitted his own text to someone else's music, unlikely as that may seem. According to Plath, Trnka's canons originally had an Italian text (from Metastasio), and had been changed to the coarse German by someone else, and then later attributed to Mozart.

K231: Leck mich im A...g'schwindi, g'schwindi!Leck im A...mich g'schwindi. Leck mich, leck mich, g'schwindi/etc. etc. etc." A further possible "Leck mir Arsch" canon may be K559. the text "Difficile lectu mihi Mars" apparently makes fun of Johann Nepomuk Peyerl (a Bavarian tenor in Mozart's circle). According to an account by Gottfried Weber in 1824 one evening Mozart wrote out the nonsense Latin sounding words in the hope that Peyerl's accent would pronounce the words "Lectu mihi mars" as "leck du mich im Arse". When this happened the party would turn the page over and find the mocking canon K560a "O du eselhafter Peirel", which is indeed written on the back of the K559 autograph. However Dunning in NMA shows there is reason to doubt this account. This canon also has Mozart versions using the names "Martin" and "Jakob". The Breitkopf & Härtel set spoken of earlier uses the word Reitknecht, perhaps used by B & H to make a text more presentable.

Another of Mozart's humorous canons is K232/509a "Lieber Freistaedtler, Lieber Gaulimauli" written most likely in summer of 1787, where Mozart pokes fun at a student, Franz Jakob Freystadtler, whom he nicknamed "Gaulimauli" (horse-mouth) "Stachelschwein" (porcupine) and "Herr Lilienfeld (Mr. Lilyfield) in  letters and a comedy sketched by himself. In my favorite Canon K561, Mozart says good night with an insult in five languages, and then ends by saying "Sleep tight, and stick your ass in your mouth". Again B & H made a complete re-texting for the canon.

Köchel had placed the "Leck mir Arsch" canons K231, 233 ,234 with the 1775 compositions, believing they fit well with Mozart's letters from his Salzburg years that used toilet language. In K3 Einstein moved them to Mozart's early Vienna years because of the "humorous social intercourse" which the texts reflect, renumbering them K382c,d and e. William Cowdery (1991) believes they might fit well with the similar obscene lyrics of the 1788 Canons. However Dunning pointed out that the earlier dated canons differ in their melodic flow from the Vienna Canons" of 1787 and 1788, even placing a slight doubt on their authenticity. Regarding the Canons K559 and K560a Dunn believes they may have been written as early as 1786, as Peyerl was still in Salzburg to at least mid December 1785; so the earliest Mozart could have met him in Vienna was at the very end of December 1785 and most likely 1786. Mozart then batch entered the 9 canons at one time in his work catalogue on September 2, 1788. However Alan Tyson's NMA volume of watermarks places the Peyerl canon on a type of paper Mozart purchased after his return from Prague in December 1787 and predominately used in 1788, including all pages of K550 and K551, Symphonies #40 and #41.

All the Canons discussed here are available (in the Breitkopf & Härtel re-texting) on the Philips Complete Mozart Edition, volume 23.

[springrite]

Mozart's Leck mich im Arsch would fall in this category

Kiss my arse!
Let us be glad!
Grumbling is in vain!
Growling, droning is in vain,
is the true bane of life,
Droning is in vain,
Growling, droning is in vain, in vain!
Thus let us be cheerful and merry, be glad!

Just checked and realised that this is what I received from Harry as part of his refusal bin care package! Hooray!!!

[Heather Harrison]

Mozart's canons on crude and scatological subjects are great choices!  I have an old LP with many of them, and I have enjoyed it for years.

Purcell also wrote a few canons along these lines.  There is one entitled "Pox on You For a Fop" that talks all about belching and farting (which of course invites the use of crude sound effects).  And since it is in English, I can understand it.  There is a CD by the Baltimore Consort and the Merry Companions entitled "Art of the Bawdy Song" that has a great selection of songs of the 1600's about subjects that the "polite" elements of society would rather not discuss.

Some of history's greatest composers spent some time in the gutter, and the results are priceless.

Heather

[MN Dave]

Two words: The Residents

I win. 

[bhodges]

Two words: The Residents

I win. 

I do believe you do win.  (I don't recall anyone here ever mentioning them.)

--Bruce

[MN Dave]

I do believe you do win.  (I don't recall anyone here ever mentioning them.)

--Bruce

Do you own any Residents recordings, Bruce?

[bhodges]

Do you own any Residents recordings, Bruce?

I do indeed!  Let's see...I have The Commercial Album, Stars & Hank Forever, and The Tunes of Two Cities.  But that appears to be it!  (I just looked at their website, and they have made many more recordings than that.)

What are your favorites, and which one should I buy next?    Oh, and have you ever seen them live?  (I haven't.)

Edit: just had to put up this lovely photo of them performing back in 1989-90, the Cube E tour.

--Bruce

[MN Dave]

I do indeed!  Let's see...I have The Commercial Album, Stars & Hank Forever, and The Tunes of Two Cities.  But that appears to be it!  (I just looked at their website, and they have made many more recordings than that.)

What are your favorites, and which one should I buy next?    Oh, and have you ever seen them live?  (I haven't.)

--Bruce

Well sir, I think your next two purchases should be DUCK STAB/BUSTER AND GLEN and DEMONS DANCE ALONE. I saw the latter as a concert and it was awesome and surprisingly moving. I was close up because it was in a small club where the stage was only a foot off the floor. They had a fellow in a demon mask prancing around in the audience during the whole thing. It was wild, weird and fun.

[bhodges]

Great, I'll take those recs on my next visit to Academy Used CDs (which might be this weekend).  I've seen videos of some of their performances...truly, truly weird. 

--Bruce

[MN Dave]

Great, I'll take those recs on my next visit to Academy Used CDs (which might be this weekend).  I've seen videos of some of their performances...truly, truly weird. 

--Bruce

Hopefully, they're well-stocked.

[pjme]

If you want to know how a Crystal Bachet sounds, combined with glass harmonica and (multiple) ondes Martenot ,visit Thomas Bloch's website.

http://www.chez.com/thomasbloch/

Naxos has this CD:



THe concerto  "Kyriades" by Bernard Wisson is quite funny.....
Peter

[pjme]

For a really wonderful experience go to the Logos Foundation in Ghent.

http://logosfoundation.org/

See wondrous music boxes, extraordinary automatons, listen to

the Bourdonola (automated pipeorgan, flute pipes, bass)
Harma (an automated reed organ. 2000/2005)
Melauton (an automated melodica, under construction)
Piperola (automated pipeorgan, flue pipes, soprano)
Vox humanola (automated pipeorgan, vox humana, 1995-2005)
Trump (automated organ trumpet, 1999-2004)
Puff (quartertone puff-organ, 2004-2007)
Ake (automated accordion, 2004-2005)
Qt (quartertone organ, 2005-2007)
Krum (automated pipeorgan, reed pipes, 2005-2006)
Bako (automated bass accordion, 2006-2007)
Klaks (under construction)

Slag-werk - automated percussion

Klung (automated brass angklung, 1998 - 2006)
Rotomoton (five automated rototoms, 2000 - 2007)
Springers (automated siren, shakers and springs, 2000)
ThunderWood (automated 'nature' noises, 2000/2006)
Troms (automated drums, 2000 / 2004)
Vibi (automated vibraphone)
Belly (automated carillon, 2001-2006)
Flex (automated singing saws)
Tubi (automated quartertone tubophone, 3 octaves, 2004)
Llor (twelve large automated stainless steel shell-bells, 2005)
Vacca (48 automated cow bells, 2005)
Casta uno 1(15 castanets, integrated in Vox Humanola)
Casta due (16 castanets, 2007)
Vitello (36 automated cow bells, 2006)
Psch (12 small thundersheet noise generators, 2006)
Snar (an automated snare drum, 2006)
Xy (an automated quartertone xylophone, 2007)
Simba (a cymbal playing robot, 2007)



....see completely naked composers & performers who use their own body as instrument! Yes, this is only possible in the land of Brueghel and Magritte . 

[Heather Harrison]

I thought there might be people here with a taste for the bizarre; there are a number of items here that I may have to check out.

A few more items came to mind.  These aren't as off-the-deep-end-weird as some of what has been posted here, but I think they are worth listing.  The mid-to-late 1960's time period is known for bizarre rock music.  Some of it was created under the influence of LSD and other drugs, and the results are quite fascinating.  Weird sounds, unusual distortion effects, and lyrics that seem to make no sense whatsoever are hallmarks of the time.

Here are a few albums from that time that have some bizarre tracks.



Strawberry Alarm Clock - Incense & Peppermints.  I have the original LP, and it hangs on my wall because I like the artwork.  The title track has a great sound, and the lyrics are quite bizarre and I can make little sense out of them.  If anyone here knows what that song means, please let me know.  Some other tracks on the LP are weird and interesting.



Tommy James & The Shondells - Crimson & Clover.  I have the original LP.  This group was quite versatile, with a repertoire ranging from straightforward rock to really weird stuff.  The popular title track of this LP makes use of reverb and weird distortion effects, and it sounds quite trippy.  But perhaps the weirdest track on this LP is "I Am a Tangerine", with lots of distortion and wacky, nonsensical lyrics.



The Beatles recorded some very weird and very good albums in the late 1960's.  There are a few bizarre tracks on these.  A particular favorite of mine is "I Am the Walrus", from the "Magical Mystery Tour" album.  This is another of those weird songs with seemingly nonsensical lyrics (but it actually seems to have a lot of meaning).  The late 1960's must have been a great time; truly bizarre and fascinating music was at the top of the charts then.

There are certainly many others; these are just the examples that I can think of at the moment.  If I think of any other good choices, I will post them.

Heather

[KevinP]

A song so bad it's funny from a movie so bad it's funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQJS3Yv0Y

[MN Dave]

A song so bad it's funny from a movie so bad it's funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQJS3Yv0Y

Down, down to Goblin Town...!