Posts Tagged ‘Tony Redman’
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 by Tony Redman
This being Way Out Wednesday, you knew I’d eventually have to wander into teenybopper territory, but I promise I won’t go for the usual suspects.
Friends is a TV tie-in album by Johnny Whitaker, best known for playing Jody on the sitcom Family Affair (1966-’71). After doing guest shots on other shows and a couple of Disney movies, including 1972’s Napoleon and Samantha with Jodie Foster, he landed the role of Johnny (how convenient!) on Sid and Marty Krofft’s Saturday-morning children’s show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-’75). I guess he became a preteen heartthrob, because here he is posing on the Friends album cover almost topless! Anyway, on to the songs …
The first track is one of the themes to Sigmund. If you have any recollection of the show, you can — and will — sing along to this one.
Friends (Sigmund and the Sea Monsters)
Next we have “Alley Oop.” No, wait, I’m sorry — we just have a song that starts off sounding an awful lot like it. “Monster Rock” is a pretty silly song, made even sillier by having Sigmund sound like Boris Karloff with a touch of helium in his voice.
Monster Rock
Of course for any album of this type, you’ve got to have tender love ballads. I picked the following one because I kind of like it, even though the background singers seem to be doing most of the work here.
Can’t Get You Off My Mind
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Tags: Hollywood Bowl, Johnny Whitaker, Lovin' Ain't Easy, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Tony Redman, Way Out Junk
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Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 by Tony Redman
Last week, we talked about ’60s icons the Beatles. Now let’s talk about an icon from the ’70s. That’s right — I mean Arthur Fonzarelli, better known as Fonzie from TV’s Happy Days. Here’s a (most likely unauthorized) tribute album to the Fonz from 1976, performed by a girl group called the Heyettes.
Since this was an election year, they had to put in an obligatory “Fonzie for President” song, even though Fonzie wouldn’t have been old enough to be President. Unless, of course, you figure him being in his late teens/early twenties around the time the show takes place. Then, by 1976, he would be 15-20 years older and old enough to run. But who wants to be ruled by an old Fonzie?
Fonzie for President
Here’s “The Fonz Song,” which goes on and on about what a wonderful guy Fonzie is and features a guy that almost, but not quite, sounds entirely unlike the Fonz himself.
The Fonz Song
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Tags: Fonzie, Heyettes, Leather Tuscadero, Michael Jackson, Sit on It, Suzi Quatro, The Jacksons, Tony Redman, Way Out Wednesday
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Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 by Tony Redman
Well, since we’re in a Beatles state of mind here at Popdose, I wanted to find something relevant to the topic, and here it is. Sorta. This is a group called the Fabulous Beats, whose act was strangely reminiscent of a certain Fab Four. To take it even further, the songs on this album were originally country songs. That’s right, you have country songs sung by guys who are trying their best to sing and play like the Beatles. Folks, I can’t make this stuff up!
The first song featured is called “Let Me Be the One.” My research shows that it was originally sung by Hank Locklin. I don’t know the guy or the song, but I had to include it because it follows the first rule of Beatles imitators: find a spot in a song to sing “yeah yeah yeah” and repeat as necessary.
Let Me Be the One
Next we have the Patsy Cline classic “Walkin’ After Midnight,” complete with jangly guitars and two part harmonies. The crazy thing here is that, as Beatles, they don’t sound much like the originals. However they could have possibly made a career from being Everly Brothers impressionists. I guess there wasn’t as much call for that, though.
Walkin’ After Midnight
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Tags: Beatles, Fabulous Beats, George Jones, Patsy Cline, Tony Redman, Way Out Junk, Yeah Yeah Yeah
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Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 by Tony Redman
Here’s a patriotic selection for you called American Pie – A Musical History of Our Country, brought to you by the Peter Pan Children’s Chorus. (Yeah, I know I should have presented this around July 4th, but better late than never, right?)
Anyway, they couldn’t have an album called American Pie and not have the song “American Pie,” could they? Here it is, not sung by the Peter Pan Children’s Chorus, but by a kinda-sorta Don McLean soundalike singing the first half of the classic song (or Side One, if you had the 45 of it). They do score extra points for singing the song as written, though, even if it’s not a terribly good rendition.
American Pie
We now move on to the story of America, actually featuring the Peter Pan Children’s Chorus and some lady we don’t know that takes over the proceedings. I’ve skipped ahead a bit to the narration and build up to the song “Goin’ West.” It’s nice to know they mention one of my ancestors. No, not George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, but Mr. Nobody In Particular! At least they don’t romanticize the time in the narration, talking about things like “burying their dead in unmarked graves so the Indians wouldn’t find them.” I may be showing my ignorance of American History here, but were Indians known as grave robbers? They finally get on with the song, talking about how much hope they had that things would go well. If I remember my history (through educational games), they all die of dysentery before they get to the end, don’t they?
Goin’ West
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Tags: American Pie, Peter Pan Children's Chorus, Tony Redman, Way Out
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Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 by Tony Redman
With the Batman: Arkham Asylum game coming out this week (for PS3, Xbox360 and PCs), I thought I’d throw out another Batman-related album for you. When the Batman TV show came out it seemed like you couldn’t swing a dead bat without hitting some sort of Caped Crusader tie-in, and record albums were no exception. Some were pretty good. Some, not so much. I’ll let you judge where this one falls.
This first song is the Bat Boys’ version of the Batman theme song. This really isn’t too bad, with a nice swinging organ solo.
Batman Theme
I hope you liked the previous song because, despite the name Batman and all the sound effects on the album cover, absolutely nothing else on this album is remotely Batman related! There’s not even any name checking in the song titles. What the songs I picked from this album do have in common, though, is that they’re jazzed-up versions of classical tunes. The first, “Uppercut Blues,” borrows heavily from “Flight of the Bumblebee” (which was actually the Green Hornet’s theme song). The titles of these songs seem to be pretty random. You can maybe imagine people punching each other while listening to this song, but there’s nothing bluesy about the song at all!
Uppercut Blues
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Tags: Bat Boys, Batman, Flight of the Bumblebee, Saber Dance, Tony Redman, Way Out Junk
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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 by Tony Redman
If you were a child of the ’80s, you or somebody you knew probably owned a Cabbage Patch Kids doll. They were so popular that stores were inundated with customers wanting them at Christmas. (For those of you too young to remember, imagine the frenzy of the Tickle Me Elmo and the Nintendo Wii Christmases put together.) The album Cabbage Patch Dreams attempts to put together a storyline for these characters.
In the first song, a stork introduces the concept of the Cabbage Patch Kids, which somehow involve magic cabbages and bunny bee crystals. Don’t ask me to explain that. I don’t get it either.
Cabbage Patch Theme
You can’t have an adventure without a villain, and in this case we get three of them: Lavender McDade (your typical scary little old lady), Beau Weasel (a weasel), and Cabbage Jack, a rabbit who’s upset that his favorite food is being turned into babies and flirts precariously close to sounding like an African-American stereotype.
Villains Three
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Tags: Cabbage Patch Kid, Cabbage Patch Kids, Lavender McDade, Otis Lee, Tony Redman, Way Out Junk
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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 by Tony Redman
Zoom was a children’s show on PBS (or whatever they called PBS back then) from 1972 to ‘78. The big draw of the show was that it was for kids, by kids: you could write a story or play or any sort of interesting idea and send it in, and there was a chance the cast would perform it on TV. They also sang a lot on the show; Come On and Zoom is a collection of some of those songs.
Of course we have to start things off with the show’s peppy theme song. I may be wrong here, but I seem to remember somebody taking Zoom’s producers to task for the line “We’re gonna teach you to fly high,” citing it as a drug reference. I think they may have changed the lyric in later years, but here’s the original version:
Zoom Theme
Zoom was good at featuring songs that got stuck in your head, and “Piccolomini” was no exception: interspersed with some tongue twisters is the cast singing the word “piccolomini” over and over. It’s a bit annoying but very catchy (but why they’re singing about an Italian nobleman’s family in the 13th century is beyond me).
Piccolomini
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Tags: Box 350 Boston Mass 0-2-1-3-4!, Fannee Doolee, Tony Redman, Ubbi Dubbi, Way Out Wednesday, Zoom
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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 by Tony Redman
Here’s another album to go with the Superman and Batman ones I talked about earlier. Although they aren’t credited, these songs are most likely performed by the Merriettes again. This album features the entire Justice League. Unlike the Superman and Batman albums, this actually has songs and stories on it, but since we’re all about the music here, let’s take a listen to the songs.
We’ll start things off with the Justice League’s song. The line-up here is Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, Metamorpho, and Plastic Man. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that this particular incarnation of the Justice League never existed. In fact, I don’t think Plastic Man was ever in the League until a few years ago. I really like this song’s swinging organ accompaniment. Listen for the Justice League roll call: Wonder Woman sounds like a guy speaking in falsetto and Batman sounds like an old Jewish man!
The Theme of the Justice League of America
This album also features a song about each of the individual heroes (except for Batman and Superman who, as you know, had their own records). Here’s the song about the Flash. Many of these songs seemed to work from a checklist: give the hero’s true identity, explain his power, and mention something special about him. The first verse is about how fast the Flash is; the second verse covers his real name (Barry Allen), that he works for the police, and that he keeps his Flash costume in a ring on his finger. What else do you need to know?
The Flash
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Tags: Aquaman, Batman, Flash, Justice League, Metamorpho, neal adams, Plastic Man, superman, Tony Redman, Way Out Wednesday, wonder woman
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Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 by Tony RedmanHere’s a wonderful record of songs featuring Batman and some of his DC Comics cast of characters, sung by a group called the Merriettes. Like the Children’s Treasury of Superman Musical Stories, each character gets two songs.
This first track has an intro reminiscent of the Batman TV show’s theme, which I would assume was the reason for the album in the first place. I did find one thing odd, though: on the show, I thought the Caped Crusader was always referred to as Batman, but on this record he’s always called the Batman. I know he’s called that occasionally, but I didn’t think it was happening yet in the ’60s.
Look Out for the Batman
Here’s the second song featuring (the) Batman. It’s a sprightly little tune, even though they sing about “When someone tries to plot a holdup or a killin’.” Yeah, I know they just used the word to have something to rhyme with “villain,” but that’s still a bit more intense than I’d expect on a children’s record!
It’s the Batman
The next song features Robin the Boy Wonder. (At least they don’t call him “the Robin.”) In this one they sing about all the amazing things Robin can do. Heck, if he’s “an acrobat, a pugilist, mechanic, wizard, and scientist,” what does he need Batman for? I do like the jazzy little instrumental break in the middle, though.
There Goes Robin
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Tags: Batman, Batmobile, Joker, Merriettes, Penguin, Robin, The Batman, Tony Redman, Way Out Wednesday
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Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 by Tony Redman
It’s Tony from Way Out Junk, and I’ve got another crazy one for you. Remember the high-pitched singing rodent craze started by Alvin and the Chipmunks and then all the rip-off groups that appeared afterward? This album is from the second renaissance of the Chipmunks, and features the Happy Hamsters. What’s their back story? Who knows? I don’t even know what their names are, or if they’ve got a human father figure or anything. Admittedly this is the Happy Hamsters’ second album, but I don’t think continuity is their strong suit here. Anyway, on to the songs!
Well, since this album is called The Happy Hamsters Go Ghostbustin’, you have to expect the song “Ghostbusters.” The singing isn’t that bad, all things considered. The problem is all the jabbering they do during the instrumental parts. It’s just a little bit here, but it gets worse, trust me!
Ghostbusters
Next, as a salute (?) to Michael Jackson, here’s “Thriller.” Again, the singing’s all right, and there’s not too much chatter this time. Extra points for including the Vincent Price part of the song as well. Of course, it does lose the effect hearing it done by three helium-filled voices.
Thriller
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Tags: Chipmunks, Ghostbusters, Happy Hamsters, Michael Jackson, Star Wars, Thriller, Tony Redman, Way Out Junk
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