Classic rock lists

[SunKing]

Classic rock lists for those who are obsessed with music.

List 1

: Out of This World – 20 Most Bizarre Albums Ever

1. Nine Former Addicts – the Addicts Sing
2. Mr Methane.com – Anal Madness from the Man with the Rumbling Ring
3. Music to Read James Bond by
4. JB Barlow & WA Pocock – Auscultation of the Heart
5. Salvador Dali – Death in Venice
6. Perspico Acumine (Holdings) – A Perfect Action
7. Stereo Dynamics! To Scare Hell Out of Your Neighbours
8. Timothy Leary – You Can Be Anyone This Time Around
9. Elvis Presley Séance
10. Portsmouth Sinfonia – 20 Classic Rock Classics
11. Fiona Richmond – Paul Raymond Presents Frankly Fiona
12. How to Pass the Driving Test
13. Nutley Brass – Beat on the Brass
14. Mao Tse-Tung – Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, Volume One
15. Gaston & Purcell – Mr Handman: Amazing Feats on Musical Hands
16. Mini Pops – Mini Pops
17. Napoleon Hill – Think & Grow Rich
18. Why Did Lenny Bruce Die?
19. Evel Knievel – Evel Knievel
20. Jim Jones – the Last Supper

 

[John]

This is from the SMH


Steve Packer sifts through the nostalgia bin to find the 20 strangest albums ever made, from singing Siamese twins to a kazoo orchestra.

For something that you can't put your finger on, we have a lot of words for it: strange, odd, bizarre, weird, peculiar, curious, eccentric. Maybe it was coming across a copy of a 45 record, The Actual Roar of Niagara Falls, in a second-hand shop that got me wondering. Or it may have been reading about a Teach Your Parrot to Talk disc.

But I started thinking about the strangest, oddest, most bizarre records ever released. And then - cue the Twilight Zone music - the British music magazine Mojo published a special issue, The 150 Greatest Rock Lists Ever, and the very first list was the 20 most bizarre albums ever.

Mojo's a class act, but this sudden bout of the "evers" doesn't get off to a good start. Bizarreness is a hard one to quantify, but selections like the Portsmouth Sinfonia playing rock songs in classical style, or a stodgy driving instruction record, hardly rate.

So here's an alternative top 20 oddities list, compiled from sources including Mojo (three albums) and other publications, websites featuring rare records, and my own record collection.
1. Famous Songs of Hank Williams in Modern Rock-Acid Style Modern Sound (1969)
On the cover, a wistful hippie girl feeds multicoloured sugarcubes to a horse. Despite the drug references (LSD was banned in California the same year), the Alshire label dropped the album into supermarkets and chain store racks amid its other budget fare - mainly the 101 Strings titles. Organ and fuzzed electric guitar tastefully warp Hank's country classics. It didn't sell.
2. Jungle Mating Rhythms Chaino (1958) Chaino was a mysterious figure, born Leon Johnson in 1927 and raised in Chicago, where he died in 1999. When not drinking and bar fighting, he somehow mastered the bongos and other percussion. In 1958, he hooked up with a producer to make Jungle Mating Rhythms in a style now called lounge-exotica. Promotion for this implied they were musical marital aids, for stirring animal passions in suburban middle-America. The moods ranged from ritualistic spookiness to "bedroom percussion" with whoops and love calls.
3. Ali and His Gang vs Mr Tooth Decay (1976)
A story record with 40 minutes of Muhammad Ali impressing on kids the importance of regular brushing, with help from Frank Sinatra, Howard Cosell and others. There's also a song about how it was actually Ali who did most of the heroic deeds in history, such as Paul Revere's ride.
4. The World's Worst Record (1978)
From Kenny Everett's Capitol Radio show The World's Worst Radio Show, presenting the "bottom 30 music chart". Compiled in irony, but a fearless attempt to gather together those recordings that, by some consensus, are the most dreadful ever etched into vinyl. Lowlights include A Lover's Concerto, by Mrs Miller, The Drunken Driver, by Ferlin Husky, and Wunderbar, by Zarah Leander.
5. A Journey Into Stereo Sound (1958)
"This is a journey into sound, a journey which along the way will bring to you a new colour, new dimension, new value." If the opening to this demonstration record seems familiar, that's because it was sampled for Eric B and Rakim's 1987 hip-hop classic Paid In Full. Record label Decca released A Journey worldwide to trumpet the new wonders of "sound sculptured in space".
6. Marcel Marceau Speaks (1971)
Conversations are so rare with the French master of mime, this hour-long one has been issued on LP, cassette and, recently, CD. Marceau talks about the history of mime, "making the invisible visible", mime's "eternal law of the underdog" (Chaplin, Pierrot), and related subjects.
7. Polka Disco Jimmy Sturr and his Orchestra (1979)
"Possibly the two most hated words in music," notes Frank at the Frank's Vinyl Museum website. Sturr and his big-band still do Las Vegas and this year he appeared in concert with Willie Nelson. Polka is still his thing, but this album is notably absent from an extensive back-catalogue.
8. The Addicts Sing Nine Former Addicts (1975)
Former drug addicts sing gospel harmony in jail and get both early release and a record release. On the cover, their disembodied heads float in front of the Manhattan skyline at night, with a graphic drawing of an arm and syringe on the back. They managed one song quite well.
9. Tender is the Night Peter Nero (1967)
"Prepared expressly for Abbott Laboratories by RCA Victor" and released to promote Placidyl sleeping pills. Inside the gatefold cover was a list of the "key advantages for non-barbiturate night-time sedatives" as established by "112 physicians". For most people, the music would have been sedating enough. Nero, a pianist and arranger went on to achieve a very 1970s kind of fame with the Philadelphia Pops Orchestra.
10. Dedication Gwynne and Lynne (1970s)
"Siamese twins joined at the back share their inspirational story in song," it says in the record cover gallery at showandtellmusic.com. And there they sit, looking hideously wholesome, like an identical twin spin-off from Young Talent Time, their attachment to each other concealed by nifty dressmaking.
11. The Great Stalacpipe Organ of Luray Caverns, VA Leland W. Sprinkle (1956)
Deep in Virginia's Luray Caverns, Sprinkle went around tapping hundreds of stalactites to choose 37 for the "largest natural musical instrument in the world". Attached to the stalactites were rubber-tipped hammers, linked by electrical cables to an organ console. The recordings surface occasionally on late-night American radio.
12. Some Kazoos Temple City Kazoo Orchestra (1979)
Technically a four-track 12-inch EP, but four is enough considering they are Sprach Kazoostra (the 2001 theme), the Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive, the Rolling Stones' Miss You and Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love, all played on massed kazoos.
13. The Elvis Presley Seance (1979)
From a ouija board session on BBC radio with medium Carmen Rogers. Elvis seances are often held on his birthday (January 8) or the anniversary of his death (August 16), and it can only be hoped that they are not all as boring as this one.
14. Songs of Tragedy Hank Snow (1964)
A follow-up to Snow's When Tragedy Struck, this one gets the nod for the stark hangman's noose on the cover. Despite the dire theme, the prisoner songs (Walk the Last Mile), tributes to old soldiers (There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere) and traditional downers (Old Rover) were produced by Chet Atkins in so-called easy-listening style.
15. Trout Mask Replica Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band (1969)
Arguably rock music's weirdest accepted masterpiece. Beefheart had friend Frank Zappa produce the groundbreaking double album after record companies restrained his previous output. A collision of surreal poetry and lyrics, Delta blues influences and unrestrained improvisation. Titles include Neon Meate Dreams of a Octafish.
16. Metal Machine Music Lou Reed (1975)
The most obnoxious noise ever foisted on fans by a major artist. Before punk or industrial avant-garde music, Reed served up 64 minutes of dense, speeded-up or slowed-down feedback, distortion and tuneless guitar, titled Parts 1-4. As the web's All Music Guide says, "it hasn't gotten any more user-friendly with time".
17. The Return of the Durutti Column (1979)
Apart from the misleading title (it was a debut album), the original sleeve from trendy Factory Records was made of sandpaper. It was designed to damage everything it brushed up against, which included a few retailers who refused to display it. Those expecting equally abrasive music found themselves soothed by English guitarist Vini Reilly's airy instrumentals.
18. Lie: The Love and Terror Cult Charles Manson (1970)
Fourteen incredibly bad songs recorded in 1968, after the Manson murders.
19. For You, My Indonesia General Wiranto (2000)
After being sacked in the wake of East Timorese atrocities, the former Indonesian military chief, a self-confessed karaoke addict, held an elaborate launch for this album of crooned love songs. All proceeds purportedly went to thousands of the victims of his policies in refugee camps and elsewhere.
20. MrMethane.com (2000)
As an ideal end note, an album of "controlled anal voicing" by "the world's only performing flatulist", a young Englishman who wears a cape, green bodysuit and mask. Tracks include Greensleeves and Beethoven's 1812 Overture.