The Quests’ Go Go ReQuests album (pictured above) — well, you can see for yourself how fabulous it is. One of the songs on the album is “Ding Dong Twist,” which sounds like either a new Hostess snack product, or an obscene gesture. Sing Along With the Christones features a band of young, hip, Asian priests — each wearing one of those little white & black priest collar things. Four Hits, also from the Quests, has a very soulful-looking pointing finger on the cover — appropriately, to illustrate their song “Soul Finger.” Now, that’s a song I want to hear.
Off Beat Cha Cha
Some of the albums look funky, like they may be soundtracks to obscure Thaispoitation films… others look like the Ravi Shankar’s schtick re-arrived back home after being filtered through the Beatles… and lots are clearly light, fluffy Go-Go dancing frothiness, complete with smiling, happy girls. Well, except for Off Beat Cha Cha, which has three girls who are clearly dancing under court order and are miserable about it.
Don’t take my word for it, go check out the entire gallery of albums for yourself at David Greenfield’s photo site.
Here at Junkyard Clubhouse we love all things junkyard, and right at the top of our list are Junkyard bands.
And Fat Albert has one of the rockin’est Junkyard bands ever. The groovy kids record blog Way Out Junk has gifted the Internet with not one, but TWO rips of classic Fat Albert and the Junk Yard Band albums: Creativity and Rock N’ Roll Disco.
The famous junk yard band is organized when the kids are unable to afford musical instruments
Listening to these records will convince you that real-life junkyard instruments can sound just like the smooth sounds of studio musicians! Actually, while the pictures of the Junkyard band are pretty sweet, there’s not much in the way of classic Fat Albert music on either of these albums. The Rock N’ Roll Disco in particular is pretty bad. Hmmm. Now I’m wondering why I even bothered bringing it up. Here, watch the opening of the Fat Albert Show instead.
Alright boychiks and goyim, get ready for some righteous reverb from the chosen surfers:
Meshugga Beach Party at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge
Meshugga Beach Party played at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge’s first anniversary party this weekend (which was a blast, by the way… here are my pics). I hadn’t heard of them before, but quite a few folks in the crowd had. From my photo above, you probably have them pretty well figured out — they perform traditional Jewish folks songs as surf tunes. And they perform in full Hasidic regalia (those beards must get awfully itchy). But the best part: they’re really good. I’m not a surf music aficianado, but I run in a pretty surf-savvy circle, and there was high praise for Meshugga Beach Party all around.
Meshugga Beach Party perform Zemer Atik (not filmed at Forbidden Island)
In 2002, the band Ween was approached to write a jingle for one of Pizza Hut’s Desperate Product Reconfigurations of the Month, the Insider pizza. The Insider pizza was the one where they put a layer of cheese inside the pizza’s crust. Never has a new pizza design so captured the imagination of the nation, with the possible exception of the P’zone.
Pizza Hut wanted to hire an edgy band come up with an edgy jingle for their very edgy new product, hence Ween. Ween came up with a funk-infused ditty, “Where’d the Cheese Go?” Click play to hear it:
Pizza Hut didn’t like it, or any of the other attempts that Ween made at giving them what they wanted. They wrote, they re-wrote, and finally, tired of it all, they wrote “Where’d the Motherfuckin’ Cheese Go At?”
Where’d the Mutherfuckin’ Cheese Go At?
In case the title doesn’t make it obvious, that one’s NSFW, unless you’ve got headphones handy. And thus, Ween’s association with Pizza Hut ended before it even really started, probably to the delight of all.
1971, Cindy und Bert sing “Der Hund von Baskerville”
German singing sensation duo Cindy und Bert sing a song about the Shelock Holmes story “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” in German, to the tune of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid.” German youth dance, morosely. An utterly un-houndlike dog yawns. Cindy und Bert sing with all the fiery passion that might go into ordering a bowl of potato soup. The camera tries, valiantly but unsuccesfully, to perk the scene up with some violent zooms in and out of the “Hits-a-Go-Go” logo.
I’d never heard of Cindy und Bert, but apparently they were all the rage in Germany and the Netherlands in the ’70s. Just so you don’t think they were all doom & gloom, here’s a much perkier Cindy und Bert, in 1973.
When I was very, very young (but I can’t remember how young) … I had some vague memories of the Banana Splits that were not quite right. All my Banana Splits memories were from when I was pretty young, but I seemed to have memories of the Splits looking different than they normally do. All this time I had chocked it up to fuzzy, incorrect memories due to my little kid brain. But just a few years ago I came across The Wombles on the Internet, and then it all made sense. I recognized the characters faces and the hats immediately. Those early memories weren’t of the Banana Splits, they were of the Wombles. Who knew the market for fuzzy characters in costumes singing Bubblegum was so big?
I have no idea how I saw it as a kid, since it seems like it was shown primarily across the pond. Does anyone out there remember seeing The Wombles?
It’s always a great feeling to put to rest fuzzy mysterious memories that have been lingering in my head for decades.
Humu’s last post about Floratina’s Funny Face cup reminded me of Way Out Junk’s post about Goofy Grape Sings. After all these years it’s so great to finally match a voice to that Funny face … and it sounds like Boris Badinov. Yes, all the voices are done by Paul Frees. The songs are available for download, but personally I just like the album cover.
A post on the super-nifty blog Neato Coolville got to one of my weak spots: The Banana Splits. And it reminded me of some other rare collectible Banana Splits stuff I had seen.
Here’s Neato Coolville’s Window Clings of Fleegle and Bingo:
And here’s something really wild that I’ve never seen before. The Banana Splits done up as the band KISS. I have no idea who made it or where it came from. This was on an ebay auction that another (at-the-moment-defunct) blog found.
No celebration of cheesy Irishness is complete without Lucky the Leprechaun:
The first Lucky Charms commercial
This is the very first commercial for Lucky Charms. This was done by Bill Melendez — before he started his own studio to produce the Peanuts specials, he did a lot of work on animated commercials. This commercial is from about 1964.
Kites are fun!
I love this one because it reminds me of Kites Are Fun, by the Free Design:
Because the POWER of Luie Luie’s liner notes is just too overwhelming to the average unsuspecting Junkyard Clubhouse frequenter … we have DISTILLED its power into digestable, bite-sized quotes of WISDOM that will change DAILY. And change you daily.
Yes, every day at midnight the Luie-matic 5000 will pick a random sentence from off the back cover of the “Creator of TOUCHY” album and serve it up in a little box on the left-hand sidebar on JYC. Included with the quote is the paragraph and sentence number where the quote appears, if you’d like to see it in context. Not that you’d need to, because just about every sentence is, in and of itself, unfiltered magical brilliance.
We hope that by displaying a random quote daily, you’ll be seduced slowly by these affirmative truisms that remind you that the Power of Touch and the Power of Music is indeed powerful power. If you think you can handle it check out the entire transcription. You’ll be glad you did. Otherwise, check our sidebar for this little daily gift.
