Neighborhood Rhythms (Patter Traffic)

Freeway Records – 1984

This is the followup record to English As  A Second Language, released in 1984 and again featuring a huge amount of short tracks by L.A. artists, poets, punks and various lowbrow Hollywood fixtures.

There’s lots of Henry Rollins and Chuck Dukowski, something from the late, great Jeffrey Lee Pierce and loads of L.A. poets.

I dare say, at over one hundred tracks there’s probably something here for everyone, or something to offend everyone. Like the first compilation, much of this is unsafe for daytime radio or for the kiddies, unless they’re like my kids. All kinds of love, sex, death and dying and general testimonials of the human condition are contained herein.

After this compilation, Freeway released a Wanda Coleman/Exene Cervenka split LP, rereleased Charles Bukowski’s Hostage LP, released an album by poet Michael C. Ford and then quietly folded.

Both these compilations have been hopelessly out-of-print since the initial release and given the massive roster, it’s unlikely anyone will ever untangle the rights for all the artists involved.

You can sample individual tracks over at UbuWeb, who curate it there and download the whole thing here:

Neighborhood Rhythms (Patter Trafic).zip (176 megs., 192k)

English As A Second Language (Talking Package)

Amazing and vast collection of brief spoken word and poetry pieces by various Los Angeles artists, Punk musicians and scene fixtures.
This is one of two behemoth two-record albums produced by Harvey Kubernick on Freeway Records.

This is the first of the two, released in 1983 as English As A Second Language (Talking Package).

Most tracks are less than a minute, with few ever going more than two minutes and some clocking in around two to five seconds, so – as you can see – there’s a lot of tracks.
The standouts are people like Charles Bukowski, Henry Rollins, Exene Cervenka, John Doe, D. Boon Chris D (of The Flesheaters), (and loads of folks from the SST Records roster) etc., plus some L.A. area poets, as well as some folks not generally known for spoken word stuff (like Bob Flanagan), L.A. stalwarts such as Rodney Bingenheimer, Kim Fowley, etc. Some of the best tracks are both from L.A. area poets like Luis Campos, Wanda Coleman, Dennis Cooper and Dave Alvin (of the Blasters). There’s also some brief musical numbers here and there.

Most of the tracks are interesting, some have aged well, some have not. Some of it’s indulgent or pretentious, but much of it is wonderful. It’s a dizzying time capsule collage of eighties L.A.

Plus, dig the groovy cover by Raymond Pettibon, years before he went from Black Flag covers and flyers to highbrow art galleries. That fact alone is one of the things that gets this listed on Ebay and sold relatively quickly. As far as I know, this has never been shared anywhere until now.
UbuWeb has graciously accepted this LP’s tracks and curated them here. You can listen to the individual tracks there and download the entire album here:

English As A Second Language.zip (177 megs, 192k)

Crazy Found Record: Don and John Lampien

I Won’t Say I Love You/BW The Sheik of Araby

Low budget looking 7 inch 45 rpm I found in a christian thrift store.
I couldn’t pass it up; it had all the marks of a homemade record or at the very least a vanity recording of the type where some truck driver scraped up enough money to cut a record. Plus, it was from nearby Seaside Oregon, so my curiosity was doubly piqued.

How can I describe these recordings? On the a-side, one of the Lampien brothers (I’m assuming) croons a heartfelt love song while someone does a fair Helen Wiggins of The Shaggs impersonation, barely keeping time and switching the accent from snare to high-hat mid-song.

A-Side: I Won’t Say I Love You

On the flip, we have a swinging country song that incorporates the old standard The Sheik of Araby and while the drumming Lampien manages to keep time well enough this time around (I’m guessing the boys learned how studio playback worked by this point), the song incorporates a Donald Duck-like voice as counterpoint to the singing.

B-Side: The Sheik of Araby

Crazy!

I immediately rushed back to the store and bought every copy they had.

Sears, Inc.: Demonstration Disc Sears #9235

A favorite weird found seven inch I’ve had for years.

It’s a one-sided, 33 1/3 RPM that apparently was a training aid for stereo salespeople.

There’s somewhat of an attempt at production value and it’s plenty humorous, with a sort of Gary Owens-like announcer/narrator and a cute female voice that responds to everything with a coo or interjection like ‘groovy‘ or ‘dynamite‘.

The narrative runs us through the various features of the 9235 (whatever that was) with music and the sounds of adjustments being made.

The opening narrator refers to the recording as ‘a tape’, so this may have also been on cassette, open reel or 8-track tape and the inclusion on 7 inch may have been an afterthought.

It was plenty hammered by the time I found it – without a cover in the bottom of some 50 cent bin at a thrift store. I made no attempts to clean it up or compress it. I exported it at 320kbps, so have at it. It could probably use some de-clicking and some de-essing, especially on the girl’s parts. But there’s plenty of cool dialog and one-liners for you DJs looking for cool retro soundbites. As far as I know, this isn’t anywhere on the web.

I’ve played this many times on my radio shows. I really like it.

Play:

Download (re-up’d 11.01.11)
I included also one isolated sample in the zipfile because it’s both handy and I like it.

Marlin Perkins – The Cat’s Meow

A two-sided 7″ 33 1/3 RPM single put out by Norden Labs to promote a feline distemper vaccine, featuring TV’s Marlin Perkins.
Marlin, as you all know, was host of the long-running television program Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom from the 60′s and well into the 70′s
Here Marlin waxes scientifically about the existence of the Abominable Snowman and somehow – on side two – manages to relate it to the vaccine Felocine.

Download.

Century 21: Steamroller

Here’s a CD I found in a junk store somewhere that was in a big box of similarly marked CDs that seemed to be related to radio promotional spots.
It was. It’s a package of station ID demos for 1989 called Steamroller.
You can hear some station ID spots all done in the same motif, as well as some well-known (Imus in the Morning) and not-so well-known existing programs that were in the air in the late 80′s.
I’ve had this for years, and I think I ended up mailing the actual CD to someone, but can’t remember who.

Like I said, there was a huge box of this stuff at the store, but when I thought of returning for more, they were all gone.

Get it here.

PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS

The Infinite Power of Self Image Psychology

By Dr. Maxwell Maltz, M.D.

“Everything you need to know to get more living out of life”

How can you beat that?

I’ve owned this record for a very long time. It’s one of the first albums I bought that now could be classified as “Incredibly Strange Music”, although it’s not musical at all. I’ve used it on countless audio mixes, collages and radio shows. If you’ve listened to many of my shows, no doubt you’ll recognize it. But for some reason, I’ve never gotten around to digitizing it until now. Which is a shame, as it’s definitely full of great sounding sampling material.

Oh, well. better late than never!

I don’t know much about Dr. Maltz, but have seen his book around plenty and have certainly heard the term Psycho-Cybernetics, which is why I snatched this up, lo all those years ago.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

“Psycho-Cybernetics is a classic self-help book, written by Maxwell Maltz in 1960 and published by the non-profit Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation. Motivational and self-help experts in personal development, including Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy have based their techniques on Maxwell Maltz. Many of the psychological methods of training elite athletes are based on the concepts in Psycho-Cybernetics as well. The book combines the cognitive behavioral technique of teaching an individual how to regulate self-concept developed by Prescott Lecky with the cybernetics of Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann. The book defines the mind-body connection as the core in succeeding in attaining personal goals…”

Whatever.

Here’s the link.

I may get around to taking a snap of the cover, as I can find nearly no info the record nor pictures of the cover.

Tracklist:

01 Introduction
02 Cybernetics and You
03 Why Not Imagine Yourself Successful?
04 How to Utilize the Power of Rational Thinking
05 Relax: Let Your Success Mechanism Work For You
06 You Can Acquire The Habit of Happiness
07 Ingredients of the “Success-Type” Personality
08 How to Unlock Your Real Personality
09 How To Develop That “Winning Feeling”

Produced by Success Motivation Institute, Inc., 1965

Catalog Number SMI-1348

Salvatore Martirano

L’s GA
Polydor (1968)

Whacked out mix of early electronic and symphonic music from composer Salvatore Martirano (1927 – 1995).
Martirano was a New York native who taught at the University of Illinois and was instrumental in the early electronic music scene, which at the time was heavily rooted in academia.

The title track, L’s GA For Gas-Masked Politico, Helium Bomb, And Two-Channel Tape is a strange, post-modern, psychedelic take on politics utilizing Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (L’s GA, natch) with strings, electronic noise and tape manipulation.

“…a multimedia performance featuring three films, music, and the poet Michael Holloway reciting the Gettsyburg Address through an oxygen mask feeding him helium from a tank whose valve he can control for effect.“

This is a great, spooky-sounding album that would bookend well with Freddie Hubbard and İlhan Mimaroğlu’s Sing Me a Song of Songmy. It’s so weird, in fact, that I’m flummoxed that it isn’t on the notorious Nurse with Wound list.

Fans of strange Euro-Prog such as Michael Chion, Horrific Child, Camille Sauvage or the previously mentioned Hubbard/Mimaroğlu piece would do well to snatch this up.

Thanks to the amazing Brian Cutean for introducing me to (and many more, similarly strange albums recently) this, by way of Daniel F’s Outside World.

This isn’t my rip. After searching high and low for this album I finally requested it on a forum and felt this needed to hit more ears.

Download

Stevens and Grdnic

Somewhere Over the Radio
Takoma (1979)

Really funny – albeit somewhat dated – comedy record built around the concept of late-Seventies FM radio. Some of it’s really good and I remember hearing bits of this on my local burnout classic Rock station back in the day.

The production values are great and the humor stays within the lowbrow to highbrow range, with oodles of dope references and lots of slams to the crass commercialization of radio. It reminds me somewhat of The National Lampoon Radio Hour – especially the post-Michael O’Donoghue period.

Some funny bits are one about a giant rock festival with $85 dollar tickets (which is chicken-feed nowadays), a running gag about a punk rock band called Garbage and a rock opera about a duck named Herman.
Ron Stevens and Joy Grdnic (pronounced grid-nick) were a comedy team who also worked in radio. Apparently, they are still working together in the syndicated radio market. Joy is still drop-dead gorgeous, too.

Tracklisting

1. Tuning In
2. Bogus Concerts
3. Ron Pentecost
4. Rock & Roll Toy
5. No Parking
6. Today’s Weather
7. Speed Reading
8. Steve McNab
9. Bend Over Beethoven
10. Jesse Jeff Westchester
11. Dermadrug
12. Hiwater Pants
13. Movie Trivia Giveaway
14. Do It
15. Unisex Stereo
16. Miss Information pt.I
17. Joe Brackne
18. Miss Information pt.II
19. Fun & Fresh
20. Miss Information pt.III
21. Marijuana Helper
22. Herman
23. Massage Parlor
24. Rocko Products
25. We’re Really Gonna Make It This Time
26. Disco Record Offer
27. Tuning Out

Note: My rip varies from the LP with regard to tracks. I separated out a few tracks to make it work better in MP3 playback. This doesn’t affect the order or running time, but makes a few more tracks than that which is listed on the LP.

Download (Re-upped 12/26/12 – when it’s gone, it’s gone.  You’re welcome.).

Robert Armbruster & Marvin Miller

The Living Constitution Of The United States
Kayden Records/Union Oil Company

“A timely, inspiring record – with a stirring, patriotic musical score” ~ Cover notes

Another historical/histrionic patriotic record, this time in 1961.
This one’s fun because it has veteran voice actor Marvin Miller – voice of Robby the Robot and others – doing the narration, as well as other familiar-sounding, if not famous voices (William Conrad, later of 70′s TV show Cannon is one).

It breaks down the articles of the Constitution and has people acting out famous quotes or passages relevant to the topic, with lush orchestration.

I think this may have been a give-away at Union service stations, as it says Union Oil Company at the bottom of the front cover. What’s an oil company doing on a patriotic piece of propaganda, anyway?

Download