Wow, jonmc, that's great stuff there. Weird is an understatement. Endearing is right, though. What the hell is going on?

I have no clue. This record is one of those bottomless mysteries. It must have been a curse to be named Ambrose back when this record came out in 1959.

HOLY CRAP. I was googling around for more information about Linda Laurie and this song (there was a sequel to it called "Forever Ambrose," which is unlistenable) and found out on this page (scroll down awhile) that apparently a guitarist named Jimmy Valentine did an instrumental cover of this. That I'd like to hear.

Umm. Yeah. So what about the rest of the record? This sort of strikes me as a skit, but then, it wouldn't be the one of the weirdest records of all-time. Can't find it on SoulSeek.

There is no rest of the record. That's it. I told you it was weird.

Um, uh, the reverb alone on this record will haunt me in my dreams.

And that peroxided mother reference? Ack.

Ack.

I can't help but feel that this was probably regularly played on the Joe Meek dansette. It also reminded me of David Bowie's Please Mr Gravedigger - hardly a stellar song either but it does have a certain atmosphere.

dodgy, what's odd is this song was a minor hit, especially in the northeast US (the Bronx accents on the vocal probably account for that). Some of the lyrics seem funnier in the context of 1959, like the "color telephone," and peroxide stuff, and the mentioning of "disk jockeys," which was a new kind of celebrity back then. So it was kind of contemporary and hep, back then. But this song was a staple on Dr. Demento back in my early teens, and was freakish even by the standards of his show.

We had Demento broadcasts in my area when I was growing up...but I really miss Dave Dixon in his WDET days. Good mix of stuff...people definitely had a love/hate relationship with him, but he knew his shit. Too bad he's dead.

All the great old DJ's (the good Doctor excepted) seem to be no longer with us. Guys like Scott Muni, Wolfman Jack et al were (along with guys like Lester Bangs & Dave Marsh and of course all the fellow geeks I met along the way) the prime movers of my musical education.

Cousin Brucie is still around, but he's probably just a head in a jar at this point, especially since the last great oldies station in the country (101.1 WCBS-FM, We Play your faaa-vorite oooldies) is now a "modern rock," station.

Progress often sucks.

This kinda furthers my theory that between, say, 1955 and 1975, the record was the primary mass medium available for the average person having some creativity to express -- however dubious.

I think Clear Channel has bought up just about every radio station in/around San Antonio so they can feed us subliminal messages, or something. The only bearable station plays an 80's-90's mix that is entirely predictible and bland.

Sometimes I think the messages are things like "I'm so glad I'm a Texan, and wear a big hat..." or "Buy more duct tape..."

Now, I'm sad. I'm gonna spend the rest of the night drinking beer and listening to pre-1980 (that's when things started to go wrong, I think) music and mourning the state of modern culture.

mihail, that's doubly sad since Texas has given us so much wild and wooly rock and roll over the decades, that blandifying it is a double crime.

Yeah, Threadgill's has pretty much just become a tourist attraction. Though there's still "Austin City Limits" on PBS. Austin has a "keep Austin weird" movement going but I think the anti-weirdos are winning. Anyway, it's an hour drive away. San Antonio has never been weird, just touristy.

There's no hope for the rest of the state, which is mostly every shade and flavor of country (EXCEPT the good old stuff). Even, lord help us, "contemporary christian country". Yes, they get that specific.

Believe it or not, it ain't much better up here in the Big Apple. And college radio isn't much help (WFMU excepted), it's usually jerkoff kids with no mike presence who are needlessly obscurantist and alienating to neophyte listeners (plus, for all their vaunted "independence," they usually all wind up playing the same indie-flavor-of-the-month, grumble, grumble, get offa my lawn you rotten kids)

But back in the day I got to hear broadacsts of maniacally fun DJ's playing everything from classic rock to punk to oldies to hip-hop to salsa*...

(reverie)

in honor of the salsa, here's two old school gems

Willie Rosario - Let's Boogaloo
Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Johnny Pacheco - Quimbara

if those don't have you swigging cheap rum and dancing around the house in your underwear, take your pulse.

What the hell, here's one more:

Willie Bobo - Spanish Grease

**boogalooing**

Thanks! 8-)

Now I want to take salsa dancing lessons.

Well, the stuff I posted isn't strictly speaking "pure," salsa. It what's known as "Latin Funk," or SalSoul, salsa mixed with R&B and post-Cream hard rock that was popular in Hispanic neighborhoods on the East Coast in the 70's & 80's, so it has a more ghetto-funk aroma than the stuff you hear on most "world music," type of places, which is to it's credit, if you ask me.

Well, it still has me dancing around in my underwear drinking generic diet soda (but in a martini glass. Long story).

I just wanted to be clear in case you went searching for other music like it.

I tend to like "world music" in general these days, and probably will search for more Latin stuff, so that will help. I also like (some) Bangra...a lot of stuff coming from various parts of Africa (yes I know I'm being WAY general on that).

I think it's because non-U.S. groups are playing good tunes in whatever genre, wherever the artist(s) come from. U.S. music has become too formulaic, too generic, too commercial. Late '80s was like that too, but where's the next grunge (or whatever) movement to save us from the current dreck?

I tend to like "world music" in general these days

depends on what you mean by "world music." Too much of what's marketed under that banner is basically easy listening with some ethnic instrumentation. I like what could be called for lack of a better word "international garage rock." Rock and roll gave permission for pop music to pull out all the stops back in the day, and the world responded in kind. I have tons of stuff from Europe, South America, Japan & the Middle East from those days that sounds positively giddy and insane with the intoxication of freedom.

This site is a great starting point. The p2p hunts it'll send you on are a blast.

Sometimes I think the messages are things like "I'm so glad I'm a Texan, and wear a big hat..." or "Buy more duct tape..."
posted by mihail 27 November | 18:13

but i like my big hat! they had to kill three beavers to make it! which sounds funny! and is! it's wasteful, and makes me look like a cowboy!

somehow i'm still serious! exclamation point!

sam, do you drive a pickup or something?

And "world music" as in, music from the specified locale that has the gusto U.S. music has lost, not as in "we ripped off Ladysmith Black Mambazo and ripped out the guts of it while we were at it".

Hey, I've had some of the best times of my life in pickup trucks (better them than SUV's). Like smokin' dope and listening to Focus' "Hocus Pocus" in my buddy brians GMC and moving into my first apartment in my budddy Mooch's Chevy truck, then getting loaded, but I digress..

Don't take this the wrong way, mihail, but even stuff like Mambazo (not neccessarily those guys, themselves) far too often seems kind of museum-piecey to me, sort of "look at the the fleet fingers of these native people. Are they not fascinating?"

I'm more interested in what a dude in Africa/Brazil/India puts on when he wants to get down and party. And I realize that like the music I uploaded, its going to have a Western influence. And I'm cool with that, I'm no purist. I want less Smithsonian exhibits, more rockin' out. This music is not artifacts, it's alive.

Mambazo was just the first name that came to mind, is all.."alive" would be a good description of what I like.

...and there are too many fancy-pants pickup trucks around here that are not USED except as exhaust-belching commuter vehicles.

I hear you. In NYC, I've overdosed on limo-liberal expat yuppies spouting what I described. we're in the same boat from different perspectives.

.

U.S. music has become too formulaic, too generic, too commercial.

ah but you havent heard Pink Martini, then.

sam, do you drive a pickup or something?
posted by mihail 27 November | 20:00

oh man i don't i but wish i did. i can't cotton to the high emissions/low mileage vehicles, however. and i think, jmc, that mihail is probably referring to the extremely high concentration of urban cowboys you get living in the suburbs round these parts (if she's in san anton., i'm about an hour and a bit straight up i-35): there are an awful lot of people who drive brand new f350's from round rock to their job at samsung or whatever. nb this is all supposition, and i don't know what who is referring to when they say whatever -- but we get it really bad down here. i think most everyone in texas buys into some significant respect for the people who actually do stereotypically texan things, but too many like to ape that style without needing the heavy equipment for anything more substantial than the proverbial hauling of the kids to soccer practice.

shit, i know this goes on nationwide. but there's a lot more of it down here than there was in n. carolina -- or rather, in the weird enclave that is raleigh-durham-chapel hill. but i used to live in the sticks in n.c., and there weren't as many stupid big trucks as there are parked in front of mcmansions as there are here.

still and though, i wish i could justify buying a truck. i bet i could change the timing belt and water pump on most trucks and wouldnt have to pay a million dollas like i do on my honda.

i don't have the elitist disdain for people who want to drive big trucks and act like their ranchers, because i want to drive a big truck and act like a rancher. but i wish people would hold off that kind of indulgence until detroit and japan started manufacturing higher mpg trucks. there's some belt tightening that needs to be done around here that people find an anathema, big time.

Well, after thirty-five years on this planet (well, on Dec. 3, it'll be official) I've come to the conclusion that outwardly "normal," people are often the weirdest fuckers on the planet (and vice versa), and I mean that in a good way.

As Joey Ramone put it "Everyone's a secret nerd, everyones a closet lame..."

sam, speaking as someone living in a town dependent on GM's large SUV sales for something close to 10% of its workforce, even though we survived this massive cutback last week, they're very worried that the SUV gravy train is coming to an end. It was wholly dependent on artificially low gas prices.