The fakest fake-live LP ever? You decide.

I found this cool thrift LP last week:

















Very nice condition, interesting line-up, cool photos. No complaints. None at all.

Well, actually, one--fake, dubbed-in audience noise. Very fake, dubbed-in audience noise. Worst of all is a scream of excitement that registers more like a reaction to Godzilla or Rodan--a sound effect that shows up at least once per track.

Could this be the fakest fake-live LP ever? I wonder. I'm referring, of course, to LPs labled as "live" but which really consist of studio tracks with canned crowd sounds. Common enough items, but I've yet to hear one as uncovincingly "live" as this one. The stereo version must be even funnier.

Some fine and fun music, though. Here are two by the Critters, whom I had heard of but had never heard:


















Georgianna--The Critters, 1964. From Musicor LP pictured above.

I'm Gonna Give--The Critters, 1964. Same album.

All together, now: (Screeeeeeechhhh!!!) That was one frightened audience. Yet, the Critters don't look that scary in their photo. If anything, they look very New Wave (remember New Wave?).

Teddy and the Pandas had a more refined sound, even if they were hairier than the Critters. These guys, I'd never heard of:














Once Upon a Time, Teddy and the Pandas, 1966. From Musicor LP.

(Bye, Bye) Out the Window--Teddy and the Pandas, 1966. From Musicor LP.

No offense to Teddy or the Pandas, but doesn't (Bye, Bye) Out the Window sound like a title that would show up on Sesame Street?

I rescued two more tracks from this LP, both by The Bitter End Singers. Don't know the year--1965? 1966? Thereabouts. In the second number, they sound sort of like The Byrds. To me, anyway. The Byrds, with Johnny Cash on lead vocal....

Let Me In or Keep Me Out--The Bitter End Singers. From Musicor LP.

I'm on the Run, The Bitter End Singers. From Musicor LP.

Worth a buck, certainly. Which was more, probably, than they spent on the crowd sound effects.


Lee

Another weird MY(P)WHAE playlist....

Didn't anybody like my Stairway to Manhattan? Wahhh!

Sorry. I lost control of my emotions. It won't happen again.

Something that will happen again and again at this blog--weird playlists. Not that each and every track is weird--just the combination thereof. And here's the latest one.

Got this first number at a flea market several years ago, and I love it. A Beatles site likens it to I Call Your Name, which it closely resembles (different chords, though), but I think it's more You Can't Do That-ish:

See Me Back--The Merseybeats, 1964. From Fontanna 45.

Remember the Coquettes? Me, neither. But they made at least one interesting side--Sidewalk Sweethearts. Gotta love that title. The excellent Ray Conniff arrangment is a cross between The McGuire Sisters and the Girl Groups to come:

Sidewalk Sweethearts (R. Evans-Parnes), The Conquettes, with Ray Conniff and His Orch., 1957. From Columbia 45.

This first-rate easy instrumental showed up at a thrift store, oh, a few months ago. And it looks like I already put it up. Hm. Oh, well, it's worth a second posting:

The Sound of Love (Don Costa), Don Costa and His Orch. and Chorus, 1960.

I hope I didn't just put that up recently.... I know for sure I haven't put this one up yet. Did you know that Telstar has words? Well, we're about to hear them:

Magic Star (Tel-Star) (Joe Meek), Margie Singleton with the Merry Melody Singers, Arranged by Bill Justis, 1963. From Mercury 45.

I've got to dig out my copy of Help Me, Telstar. I promise. But now, courtesy of Cruella, here's Perry Como's 1954 recording of Cole Porter's slightly kinky Silk Stockings. A very fine record, and one I'd never heard before. And I call myself a Como fan:

Silk Stockings (Cole Porter), Perry Como with Mitch Ayres and His Orch. and the Ray Charles Singers, 1954.

Borderline exotica, that. And here's a very unexotic item from 1957 that I initally regarded as high camp but now regard as reasonably clever--and I think it works as a rock and roll march. As well as a rock and roll march can work. Leon Carr, the lyricist, also gave us the words to See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet. (Did I mention this was going to be a weird playlist?)

The Teen Age March (Mann Curtis-Leon Carr), Carlson's Raiders, led by Jack Marshall, 1957. From Capitol 45.

I used to know my Kingsmen history, but it's gotten a little fuzzy. Now, I think Jack Eely sang on the Kingsmen's recording of Richard Berry's Louie, Louie. (Google check.) Yes, he did. Eely left the group--don't remember why.

Anyhow, I found this Jack Eely and The Courtmen 45 at a Goodwill recently, and it's pretty cool. As the title suggests, it's from 1965. Er, 1966:

Louie, Louie '66 (Richard Berry), Jack Eely and The Courtmen, 1966. From Bang label 45.

You're probably wondering who supervised that recording, and wonder no more: it was Mike Zalk. Mike supervised the flip, as well. Now we know.

"All right, guys. No one's allowed to leave the studio until the session's over."--Mike.

Our last number is The Dixiebells' learn-to-play-piano-in-five-minutes classic of 1963, Down at Papa Joe's. There's enough bass response for any three early-Sixties pop records here:

(Down at) Papa Joe's (J. Smith), The Dixiebells, 1963. From Monument label reissue.

The kinds of playlist you only enounter at... MY(P)WHAE!



Lee

We'll take (a stairway to) Manhattan.

I didn't intend for the second set of chords (following the opening) to sound like car horns, but I'm glad they do. Great effect, even if I didn't plan it.

The acoustical simulation I used for this track was "garage." Kind of strange, using a "garage" sound to give the proper body to a big-city piece. It sounds stranger, still, to describe the fact.

I just do what works, folks. I had a lot of fun with this, and it practically flowed out of my fingers, save for the time I spent transposing the middle section--I'd meant to start it in the dominant key, but instead wrote it in the tonic (E-flat). Oops. A short highlight-delete-athon fixed that problem:

Stairway to Manhattan (Lee Hartsfeld), composed on/with Noteworthy Composer® software, July 12, 2006.

Yet another comment by Lee on the whole silly tradition of Sixties-rock worship--Zepp devotion, especially.


Lee

Scheduled outing--er, outage. And other news.

Amazing how much a suffix can change the meaning of a word--"outing" vs. "outage." Then again, one could go on an outing during Blogger.com's scheduled outage. So maybe the meanings aren't that far apart, after all. And what the heck am I talking about? I forgot.

Oh, yeah--Blogger.com has a schedule outing--er, outage--at 4:00 pm. Which would be 7:00 pm my time (EST). Otherwise, they'd be out now, and I wouldn't be typing this. Because I'd be on an outing. (Oops--it's raining.) No, I guess I'd be on an inning. Watching TV or reading.

In other technologically-oriented news, Box.net sent me an e-mail of apology for some files that aren't working: "Lee, I just wanted to keep you in the loop - we got a support email from one of your readers asking about a problem downloading one of your latest posts (Merv Griffin songs) . We are working on the issue and should have it resolved tonight. I apologize for the inconvenience to you and your readers."

I was glad to get that, because I noticed a few other files that aren't cooperating. Anyway, Box.net is good about fixing stuff, so in all probability the files will, in fact, be up and running tonight. Maybe the upload issue will be fixed, too. Specifically, the "single file" option, I think it's called, suddenly stopped functioning recently. However, my first fling with the "multiple file" option was a success. I'll keep you up to date on all the fascinating details, there. A thriller-diller in the making.

The only thing more exciting than dealing with technical issues is describing them. Oh, and there's more....

I just bought and downloaded a new spyware-zapping program (Spyware Doctor), and I'm pretty pleased with it. However, it took me a couple of days to figure out that the dang thing was scanning the Net as I was using it. Real-time scanning! And you don't know what slow is until you try to surf cyberspace with a spyware-seeking program doing its stuff live. Good grief. Anyway, I get the award for slow analysis, here, because I should have checked the program settings first thing--as in, the first time the Internet slowed down to 16 rpm. Then again, dialogue boxes didn't start popping up in great numbers until Day Two. Even then, it took me a while to realize that the whole stupid program was running as I surfed. I thought maybe there was a special cookie-seeking option that never shut off. But, no. The thing was in full scan mode. "What on earth is taking place here?" I exclaimed on several occasions, as pages downloaded in slo-mo. "Darn it all, this is quite inconvenient," I said, too. Plus, "Quite curious, all of this" and "Gee Willikers."

In other news, the cats left a chipmunk under my foster mom's chair blanket--very thoughtful of them. Needless to say, the chipmunk was bereft of life. So far this spring and summer, the furry ones have brought in any number of mice, a few moles, three or four rabbits, and, now, this. Oh, and maybe twenty birds. Since birds evolved from dinosaurs (in fact, I've read they may even be a type of dinosaur), I always remark that the cats have killed another dinosaur. Because, really, that's what they're doing--killing dinosaurs.

That sounds quite weird. But it's true. Cats hunt dinosaurs. And eat them.

And you'd think that mice would have the sense to stay out of a house inhabited by 22 cats. Guess again. In fact, the nitwits have chosen the kitchen as their headquarters. Bright move--stationing themselves in the cat dining area, as close to the food as possible. Once upon a time, I tried to save the things by shooing them out an open door, but I quickly learned that mice run from their would-be rescuers. "No, no--the door. Run out the.... Forget it."--Me, to doomed mouse.

And cats are weird in the way they chase things. You'd think a cat would 1) spot the mouse, 2) run to it and 3) kill it. Rather, cats chase things in episodes, stopping to smell the scent, then looking around as if unable to visually track their prey. Never mind if the prey is three feet ahead of them in a straight line--they have to halt and do a "Where did he go?" routine. It's weird. Yet, they usually get their mouse. I have a theory that cats possess a sharp but limited field of vision, one that doesn't allow them to survey an area very well. It's like target-tracking radar vs. something with a wider, more general sweep.

Bottom line is that they're better at getting mice than, say, I would be. Mice can evade humans too easily--we can't go where they go. Whereas cats can go most of the places mice can run into. Then again, I have no desire to capture, let alone consume, a mouse.

On to my latest bitch: I don't remember when "terrorism" became "terrorism," but we never hear "terrorist" anymore unless someone is referring to "a terrorist." Attacks are "terror attacks." Possible targets of terrorism are "terror targets."

For the sake of consistency in language, shouldn't we call terrorists "terrors"? Granted, the word conjures up images of Dracula, The Mummy, and the Frankenstein monster stomping into town, but, then, so does "terror attack."

At this rate, the Department of Leaving Ourselves Open to Attack will start banning horror movies. Which would put the Sci-Fi Channel out of business. I've always wondered, by the way--is there a Horror Movie Channel that shows science-fiction fare? You know, to balance out the Sci-Fi Channel.

Every once in a while, I switch to that place to see what's playing, and usually there are a bunch of people running around trying to keep from being killed by mutant something-or-anothers. Is that the sole "science-fiction" plot in existence today? I just sent Sci-Fi my new script--"The Monsters Are Coming--Run!!"


Lee

Riders in a Tunnel

Here's my Raymond-Scott-style Riders in the Sky arrangement again--this time, in two new sound-shapings (Tunnel and Synth Room).

I'm getting that "Synth Room" means "synthesized room," as opposed to a room containing a synthesizer. I think it means that contours were created, vice sampled, but what do I know? (About synths, not much!)

Anyway, I think I've done a decent job of imitating Scott's style, even if the patches (synth voices) aren't precisely what I wanted. I can't afford to hire even a small group of studio musicians, so we'll have to settle for my sound card and a little MAGIX. Note that I use the Scott gimmick of fast/slow/fast, with the B section utilizing part of the main strain in the style of a left-hand riff. How cutting-edge:

Riders in the Sky, Raymond-Scott-Style (Stan Jones, arr: Lee Hartsfeld), "Tunnel" effect, 2006.

Riders in the Sky, Raymond-Scott-Style, "Synth Room" effect, 2006.

Now you have three versions of my Scott-style Riders in the Sky. Am I generous, or what? If you have a favorite among the sound-shapings, let me know. I'm stuck between these two. Last night, I thought the first one (in the previous post) was the bomb, but a day can change a mind.

Lee

Start your Monday with "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky"!

Four versions, including my own, which was arranged in the style of Raymond Scott, "one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century." At least, that's what it says on the jewel case of Columbia/Legacy's The Music of Raymond Scott.

I like the way it came out. The MAGIX sound-shaping makes all the difference....

Riders in the Sky (Stan Jones), Morton Gould and His Orchestra, 1954 or 1955. From Columbia LP.

Riders in the Sky, Spike Jones, 1949. From RCA Victor 78.

Riders in the Sky, Al Caiola, 1964.. From U.A. LP.

Riders in the Sky (In the Style of Raymond Scott)--Lee Hartsfeld, 2006.


Yippie-i-yooooo!!!!


Lee