Author Topic: The Jukebox from Hell  (Read 64527 times)

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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #25 on: July 19, 2012, 10:05:09 pm »
My next entry in the Jukebox from Hell is simply inexplicable.


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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #26 on: July 20, 2012, 10:19:51 am »
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #27 on: July 23, 2012, 12:13:28 am »
We've already hit William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in this thread. Our next entry in the Jukebox from Hell is another alumnus from Star Trek, George Takei (there must be something about that show; fortunately, DeForest Kelley knew better and never recorded an album in his lifetime). In 2008, Takei was one of the first contestants on the 2008 CBS reality show Secret Talents of the Stars; Takei's "talent" was supposedly that he was a country singer. Supposedly being the key word.

Let me put it this way: it was so bad, CBS canned the show after one episode.

Here's George Takei with his take on Willie Nelson's hit, "On the Road Again:"

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2008/4/george-takei-goes-country-485517
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Offline Scythian

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #28 on: July 23, 2012, 12:44:15 am »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwbtbfAnI80

This one is actually pretty good, what do you guys think?
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #29 on: July 25, 2012, 10:26:23 am »
Meet William "Shooby" Taylor. Taylor was a scat artist, and while that in and of itself doesn't necessarily qualify him for the Jukebox from Hell, it was his decision to scat over pretty much any type of music, regardless of how appropriate it was, along with his somewhat unorthodox choices of syllables that qualifies him for this honor. His work was somewhat inconsistent, ranging from the good fits (a scat-along with Miles Davis) to the borderline sacrilegious (the black power anthem Lift Every Voice and Sing) to the absurd.

Fun fact: Taylor, at one time, appeared at the world famous Apollo Theater in Harlem during its Amateur Night competitions and was promptly booed off the stage.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Briefing Room, I present this morning's entry in the Jukebox from Hell: Shooby Taylor scatting over the Johnny Cash classic "Folsom Prison Blues."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZ1PYS7qUU
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #30 on: July 26, 2012, 10:21:52 pm »
We know very little about our next entry in the Jukebox from Hell. Basically, a cassette tape containing the name of "Wooshie Spkamoto" and two karaoke tunes (Melissa Manchester's "Don't Cry Out Loud" and Kenny Rogers's "Lady") wound up in the hands of a disc jockey at WFMU, a New Jersey radio station known for featuring the totally bizarre artifacts of the music world. Naturally, they played it.

Here's Wooshie's cover of "Lady:"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4NJ21IchO8
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #31 on: July 27, 2012, 03:09:16 pm »
Today's entry in the Jukebox from Hell takes a decidedly more mainstream turn-- sort of.

In 1971, Rupert Holmes (later to become famous for a certain little ditty involving piƱa coladas and getting caught in the rain) was able to get a band known as The Buoys signed to a recording contract. There were just two problems: 1) the contract was for only one song, and 2) the contract didn't require the record company to promote the single (and they weren't about to spend any money doing so). So Holmes decided to do what he could to make the single go viral: for that one song, he would write a tune so appalling that word-of-mouth would begin to spread about it, piquing interest in the song and prompting sales.

The result was "Timothy." At first listening, the song is an innocent tragic tune about three men trapped in a mine, with vocals buried under a thick brassy and stringy arrangement. But listen carefully to the lyrics and you'll soon find that by the end of the song, two of the men have eaten the titular character. That's right, Rupert Holmes wrote a song about cannibalism. Despite the record company's attempts to defuse Holmes's efforts by saying Timothy was a mule, Holmes's viral strategy worked. The song reached #17 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the group's only hit single. "Timothy" was featured in Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, reaching #4.


The Buoys - Timothy
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #32 on: July 29, 2012, 03:18:20 am »
The next entry in the Jukebox from Hell is another ruse. Jo Stafford, an acclaimed jazz vocalist, and her husband, pianist Paul Weston, had an act in which they posed as the lounge act "Jonathan and Darlene Edwards." "Jonathan" (Weston) would play an out-of-tune piano rather sloppily while "Darlene" (Stafford) would sing along off-key. Ironically, it was under this ruse that Stafford would win the only Grammy award she ever won in her lifetime-- the 1960 Grammy for Best Comedy Recording.

From their first album, Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris, here's "Paris in the Spring."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alWBCVHGPnY
« Last Edit: July 29, 2012, 03:25:05 am by jmyrlefuller »
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #33 on: August 02, 2012, 02:29:21 am »
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the audition process for reality shows like American Idol, I had a friend of mine who tried out for it many years ago (she didn't make it through). Basically they gather thousands of auditioners in a big arena or stadium and have them perform one-by-one for the producers (not the on-air judges), then they send those they like to the televised auditions in front of the judges. Well, every so often they'll send a gag contestant to the judges as a joke. (Oftentimes they're not eligible for the contest; in fact, the first gag act was the hosts of the English version of the show in costume.)

William Hung earned a name for being one of the first "gag acts" to become famous from the American Idol auditions process. Hung, at the time a college student at UC-Berkeley, had no musical training when he tried out for Season 3 of the show. Yet his cover of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" rocketed him to infamy, parlaying it into three albums. Hung, mostly retired from music, now works for the LAPD.

Here's his signature song.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo-Y_Vb0wsw&t=52s
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #34 on: August 03, 2012, 12:43:34 am »
In honor of the Olympics, I figured this entry in the Jukebox from Hell would be particularly fitting.

In 1994, the Canadian Football League decided that, in order to try and keep pace with its bigger, U.S.-based rival, it would begin placing markets in the United States. The original plan was to stay up north, but when it took in a Sacramento team from the now-defunct World League, that went out the window and in 1994, three new teams in Baltimore, Las Vegas and Shreveport (yes, Shreveport... it's a long and odd story) took the field.

Las Vegas's national anthem singer was a lounge singer named Dennis K.C. Parks. The problem was that Dennis, although he had a lyric sheet, had no idea of how the tune to Canada's national anthem, "O Canada," was supposed to go. The result was something that kind of resembled the old German Christmas carol "O Tannenbaum..." which sounds nothing like "O Canada." Despite his efforts to cover himself by using the pseudonym "Greg Bartholemew," Parks was discovered quite quickly and became an international embarrassment. (Fortunately, the Canadians took it in stride and brought him to Canada to learn the song the right way.)

Here's Dennis K.C. Parks's version of "O Canada."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpXzASiXX8U
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Offline Chieftain

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #35 on: August 03, 2012, 06:13:28 pm »
Gives new meaning to "sounds like Hell"...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QQX_KakJm34#!

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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #36 on: August 04, 2012, 02:52:59 pm »
This one sets up a nice segue... from a video parodying Lawrence Welk... to the real McCoy.

Here's Brewer & Shipley's lone chart hit, "One Toke Over the Line..." performed by the cast of The Lawrence Welk Show.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #37 on: August 08, 2012, 01:16:22 am »
For the next few days, I'm going to feature in this thread Disco Week: a flashback to the late 1970s and some of the most ill-advised disco records ever recorded.

The first entry is a cut from The Ethel Merman Disco Album. Yes, Ethel Merman, at the time in her 70s, recorded a disco album at the peak of the fad. Here's her signature tune, "Everything's Coming Up Roses," discofied.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERZA-UawBuU
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #38 on: August 09, 2012, 01:11:11 am »
Disco Week, Part II:

Monti Rock is perhaps best known as one of the eccentric regular guests on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show in the 1970s, squarely on the D-list.

If you're wondering where Richard Simmons got his persona, take a listen to this disco cut, "Get Dancin'," which Monti Rock recorded under the title "Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes" (certainly not subtle). The rambling, exuberant, encouraging banter Disco-Tex engages sounds very similar to the kind Simmons would make famous a few years later.

It's also gay as ****, which isn't surprising considering disco's roots in the gay club scene.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD6PqT3LjQk
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #39 on: August 09, 2012, 08:28:22 pm »
Disco Week, Part III:

I Love Lucy is remembered as a television icon-- the first TV show to gain a wide life in reruns, one that continues to this day. However, as Lucille Ball was beginning to find out in the later years of her last sitcom Here's Lucy (and would later realize fully a few years later when Life with Lucy was a huge flop), some things are best left as they are, in the past.

But that didn't stop the Wilton Place Street Band, a studio group assembled to take Desi Arnaz's classic Cuban-style theme to I Love Lucy... and set it to a disco beat. I'm not going to make any connections here... but Vivian Vance, the woman who played Ethel on that show, died the same year this travesty was released.

As performed on Soul Train, I present... "Disco Lucy."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyfD1mfLOo
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #40 on: August 10, 2012, 06:33:20 pm »
Disco Week, Part IV:

This little piece was released when disco was already well out of fashion. The creepy narrator trying too hard to invoke his "low voice" is Kevin Kline, who later became a famous actor.

Here's Cristina Monet (and Kevin Kline), with "Disco Clone."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1lqi29BVXE
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #41 on: August 11, 2012, 01:17:24 pm »
Introducing the Minipops.

In 1982, the British television network Channel 4 launched a TV show called Minipops, in which kids would sing, in costume, to contemporary pop hits of the day. The idea seems innocuous enough-- after all, the popular "Kidz Bop" line of albums does the exact same thing today here in America. That is, until you realize some of the lyrical content of the songs they're singing.

Then, seeing little 5-year-old Joanna singing "night time is the right time, we make love" while dressed up as grown-up Sheena Easton seems kind of creepy. The outrage from this incident forced the show's cancellation. Overkill, perhaps, but certainly the choice of song (and original lyrics) was inappropriate.

(Note that this was originally going to be Disco Week Part V, which would've featured the Minipops cast doing a medley of ABBA... and blurting out the equally creepy first line, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! A Man after Midnight..." but unfortunately that one doesn't seem to be on YouTube.)

Here's Joanna Fisher singing Sheena Easton's hit, "9 to 5 (Morning Train)."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh7NxD9fTGM
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #42 on: August 12, 2012, 12:01:18 pm »
Wrapping up Disco Week:

I have purposely tried to avoid repeat appearances on the Jukebox from Hell, and I featured a couple of Lawrence Welk performers last week, so I was hesitant to include this one so soon. However, Myron Floren wasn't among the performers, so I'll let this one slide. Myron was Welk's second-in-command and, like Welk, a skilled accordionist. While accordions go well with polka, Western European romantic music, and Weird Al parodies... disco is probably way down on that list.

But oh, no. Remember, this is the late 1970s, and they had to discofy everything. EVERYTHING. Including Lawrence Welk apparently.

But here it is anyway... Myron Floren, with a disco-backed cover of A. Humpfat's Clarinet Polka... "Disco Accordion."

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DP/2003/01/365-Days-Project-01-31-floren-myron-disco-accordion-1977.mp3
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #43 on: August 13, 2012, 07:06:12 pm »
I promise this is the last Star Trek related tune I will include here... until, at least, I run out of artists.

This little ditty dates to 1987, from Britain. I'm going to start this by saying that from 1984 to 1986, there was a popular rock supergroup known as The Firm active. Well, the band in today's entry into the Jukebox from Hell isn't that "The Firm." They're both from the mid-80s, both were British, and they have the same name, but the similarities end there.

This "The Firm" was a novelty group that recorded a rather annoying tune about the TV show Star Trek... as if that show hadn't churned out enough bad music already (see above). Rightfully so, the record companies refused to distribute this dreck. So the band pressed their own copies and distributed them to radio... and inexplicably, it became a hit. A number-one hit, even. (Of course, I imagine there were plenty who were expecting a tune from the aforementioned rock supergroup and were sorely disappointed.) It never caught on in America, with the only real exposure coming from novelty DJ Dr. Demento.

The song attempts to associate characters with catchphrases that were never uttered during the course of the Star Trek series... with extremely bad imitations (the imitation of McCoy is particularly bad). Ladies and gentlemen of the Briefing Room, I present... "Star Trekkin'."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE
« Last Edit: August 13, 2012, 07:11:21 pm by jmyrlefuller »
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #44 on: August 14, 2012, 09:21:49 pm »
Actor Telly Savalas had a nice career as a tough-guy character actor. He's probably best known for his starring role in Kojak.

However, he also had a musical career. While not as infamous as William Shatner's, Savalas was prone to, quite frequently, perform spoken-word covers of popular songs. Amazingly, he was a hit in Europe with those things, especially with a cover of the Bread song "If." Oddly, Savalas had a very respectable baritone singing voice, even if it was somewhat limited in range. His covers of a couple of Don Williams tunes turned out very well. Why he decided to speak the lyrics to so many of his songs, the world will never know.

Here's one of the tunes that didn't turn out so well. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Telly Savalas, with the Righteous Brothers cover "You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPtoQYzcRwg
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #45 on: August 15, 2012, 09:03:49 pm »
Not too much is there to be said about Wing Han Tsang, a New Zealand woman of Chinese descent. Let her high-pitched warbling speak for itself.

Here's Wing with a cover of ABBA's "Dancing Queen."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqBWvmhS-AY&feature=related
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #46 on: August 17, 2012, 11:04:38 pm »
Norman Odom has a special place in music history. He helped launch the career of famed record producer T-Bone Burnett. His style of music is considered an important forerunner to the genre of psychobilly.

And all of that came from this oddball mess he recorded under the nickname "Legendary Stardust Cowboy" in 1969-- "Paralyzed." That's all I'm going to say about this one, as the element of surprise makes this one all the more, well, entertaining.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EEZAivzl1Q
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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #47 on: August 18, 2012, 06:08:40 am »
HA!  You call zis muzik BAD!?! 

It is to laugh, that you sink zis musik ist BAD!

HA, HA HA! HA HA HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Zis ist the epitome of bad!

(Credit to Ivor Bigguns)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyQE1zzLbGo

or zis von...  (which I actually like... Star Trek done as opera)

(credit: Robot Chicken)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Ff3upJG00

Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #48 on: August 20, 2012, 12:12:17 pm »
The next entry in the Jukebox from Hell comes from an obscure pornographic Broadway musical called "Let My People Come." Most of the VERY graphic songs from this musical aren't fit for play most places, including here. However, one song does have a fairly wide circulation, a tune about... coming out as gay. Certainly not the worst tune out there about this topic (but most of the ones that are worse are intentionally cheesy, see the Kids in the Hall song of the same topic), but the end part with everyone yelling in ecstasy "I'm gay!" is enough for a few chuckles.

Here's "I'm Gay."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAN-q7G5I88
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: The Jukebox from Hell
« Reply #49 on: August 22, 2012, 09:14:59 pm »
An old tale known as the Marching Chinamen states that if the entire population of China were to line up and file through a gate, they would never finish, as China's population is large enough that the children of those currently passing through the gate will mature and have more children, who themselves have time to mature and have yet more children, ad infinitum. (Presumably the tale was long before the one-child policy came into effect.) It was adapted into the humorous short-story "The Marching Morons" in 1951, in which the Chinese were replaced by stupid people.

The next entry in the Jukebox from Hell illustrates this point in pure clarity. As long as I limit myself to one entry per day (as I have), I should never run out of bad music to feature here. Heck, up to this point I've even been able to restrict myself to one song per artist... and I still have a big backlog to go through. Yet every day, more bad music comes out. I heard this tune on the local country music station for the first time today. Within ten seconds of trying to listen to it I was annoyed. This woman sounded like a valley girl trying to cross the anger of Taylor Swift with a pop sound vaguely resembling Katy Perry without the charm or perhaps Ke$ha. After putting up with the entire song, waiting for the backsell... it comes. Shockingly this piece of bilge was from an almost unrecognizable Swift herself. Although she's put together some tripe before that pandered squarely to the teen girls and no one else... never before had she ever released a song as bad as "We are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

The Kennedys must be getting to her head... and not the Dead variety.

Here it is.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcMn_Eu-XTE
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