DID SOMEONE SAY SHAGGS?

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Shaggs - My Pal Foot Foot mp3 at Secret Comics

BOY IN CAMOUFLAGE

Yellowstone, mid-sixties.

Today is my brother's birthday. He was badass. He passed away in 1997 and I miss the fuck out of him. He was my best friend. We were twins and, more often than not, into the same shit. Sometimes he and I would would find it necessary to spread the gospel, three cuts of which are below. 

Palm Desert, mid-eighties

Dick Dale called him "Timmeeey!" Jerry Lewis shouted at him "Hey Grizzy!" Ozzy Osborne bought him breakfast at Denny's. These are true facts. He had Van Dyke Parks's phone # and self portrait on a scrap of paper. When he met Harry Nilsson, Nilsson had just hung up the phone after talking to Ringo Starr. Between his dual interests, as a guitar player and music photographer, he met a lot of the hot shots. Yet, his true spirit was wrapped up in stuff like this. Amen.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Hasil Adkins - She Said mp3 at Beware of the Blog
The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralyzed mp3 at Beware of the Blog
The Shaggs - My Pal Foot Foot mp3 at Secret Comics

PACKIN' 'EM IN AT FREMONT TOWN HALL

If you're at all into the Shaggs or at least aware of them, then sometime in the last 24 hours someone you know may have hepped you to a post at Dangerous Minds with old footage of the Shaggs live. I just saw snippets of this morning before heading out, bookmarking it to check it out later. And just like that, it was gone. Pulled for copyright something or other. 23,000 hits will do that. But the article over there at Dangerous Minds, by Howie Pyro, is a good read regardless. If you don't know the Shaggs, read the article and check the songs below. See if you feel the fuss.

The rest of you jaded fucks, guess what? That video is still up, and has been for a good year, just without sound, which is likely why the one posted at Dangerous Minds is gone. The music was overdubbed and not synched anyway. The soundless version might still be up because maybe it was the actual music that got the other one pulled. But if I was you, and at all interested, I'd check it now.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Shaggs - My Pal Foot Foot mp3 at Secret Comics
The Shaggs - Who are Parents? mp3 at Raven Sings the Blues
The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World mp3 at University of Lethbridge
The Shaggs - Why Do I Feel mp3 at KUSI
The Shaggs - (Backwards) (streaming) at YouTube
Video:
The Shaggs - Live footage (no sound) at YouTube

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.)

.

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