SORRY, WE ALREADY HAVE YMA.

Slow loading web pages are a pisser (but you knew that). A few days ago, I was on a blog that had waaaay too many posts on the first page, so it took a painfully long time to finish loading. Yet I felt compelled to go back to it to snag an mp3 of a song by The Sound of Feeling, just for you. TSOF (as us lazy typists like to call them) were twin sisters Alyce and Rhae Andrece, whose other main "claim to fame" was as bit actresses in Star Trek and Bonanza (sometimes research leads nowhere...). I thought, maybe, one or two people might find it mildly amusing. I found it hilarious. The more I listened to it, the more I found it hard to believe that it was actually released. It's a cover of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," a song I've never been too fond of anyways. But this cover is, well, on a different planet than the original. Really, the backing vocals make the Shaggs sound like divas. And the lead vocal sounds like somebody strangling Yma Sumac. That's no easy feat, that spread.

It starts out innocently enough, a quiet intro into the lead vocal. It's at about :34 seconds in, when the background vocals start, that you realize that something is askew. Someone had to have been sleeping with the producer. These aren't backing vocals, they're, well, closer to moans. Just about the time you get used to them, and settle in, it gets quiet. (You know in the old war movies, they used to say "it's quiet out there, too quiet."? It's kind of like that.) Keep in mind, you're only into a little over a minute of it. Then the lead vocals come back in, with a little scat sorta thing, kind of annoying, but okay.... just as soon as you drop your guard, it's staccato time. Yes. Then it slowly evolves into some high pitched theremin impressions, and you're closing in at just past 2:00 minutes, when the music dies down and is replaced by the soothing sounds of ocean surf. Then, inexplicably, in fades a street organ (that's the type that usually has a monkey attached). Okay, this is just getting all WTF, up in your face. It's exhausting. I'll leave it at that. It's five minutes and 24 seconds of misguided freakness. (And, yes, the vocals do return.)

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The Sound of Feeling - Hurdy Gurdy Man mp3 at Ponytone

The Shaggs - The Philosophy of the World mp3 at the University of Lethbridge

(Re Shaggs link source: No shit. It was labeled as "atonal" so, it must have been for a music class.)

Yma Sumac -Ataypura mp3 at Cinecentro