Continuing with the tropical music theme, let's move on to something a bit more authentic than Mouseketeers in muu-muus, and take a look back at that all-too brief period of time in the early 20th century when Hawaiian slack-key guitarists and ukulele players fused island rhythms and melodies with swing and ragtime to produce a happy hybrid jazz that had toes tapping and hips hula-ing all over the U.S. mainland. Even if you're unfamiliar with Hawaiian bandleaders like Lani McIntire, Augie Goupil, or Andy Iona, you'd probably recognize many of the tunes they played as genre classics.

Re-read this fine article on the history of Hawaiian music I linked to a while back [Link], or have a look at this extensive Hawaiian sheet music cover gallery [Link]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Like a lot of American boys in the 60's, I had a serious crush on Annette Funicello. I suspect it was the juxtaposition of her cute Disney mouse ears and tight angora sweaters that drove us pre-pubescent lads wild. In addition to her stint as a Mouseketeer, she also appeared in a whole slew of lame beach movies, which I nevertheless attended religiously (I remember forcing my dad to take me to see Beach Blanket Bingo while we were living in Iran back in 1966).

Here's HawaiiAnnette warbling Pineapple Princess by Robert and Richard Sherman, who went on to win an Academy Award for writing the Mary Poppins' song, Chim Chim Cheree. Note how they totally rip off the bassline from Brazil.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If he hadn't committed suicide back in 1967, last Wednesday would've been the 77th birthday of legendary record British record producer, audio visionary, and certified loony, Joe Meek. While he's best remembered for the instrumental hit, Telstar, he was also the first producer to record Tom Jones, and was responsible for capturing Screaming Lord Sutch's most memorable monster mash, "'Til The Following Night", on vinyl.

Meek performed and recorded his own music as well, and Comfort Stand Recordings has thoughtfully made 26 demo tracks available as a sharity. His songs are filled with catchy lyrics and neat hooks, along with some pretty amazing sound effects. Unfortunately, you'll also find that his tone-deaf singing renders a lot of it damn-near unlistenable unless you're already a fan of off-key chanteurs like, Larry (Wild Man) Fischer. Still, you gotta admire Joe's passion and enthusiasm.

Happy Belated Birthday, Joe! Hope you're up there in Heaven singing with the angels (who're probably wearing earplugs).

[Link: Meek's Demos]
[Link: Meek's bio]
[via Fudgeland]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This post over at Dumb Angel [link] got me thinking about the mystical convergence of five things that I love: surf music, tiki, monsters, kustom kar kulture, and old beach movies. Now when I say beach movies, I'm not talking about that safe-as-milk Frankie and Annette crap, I'm talking about horny-teen, drive-in schlock like Del Tenney's Z-grade classic, Horror of Party Beach [link], a solid-gold cinematic turkey that billed itself as, "The First Horror Monster Musical" and managed to incorporate at least three of the genres I mentioned above. Once you've seen it, you'll never forget the Del-Aires' [link] performance of their monster-surf classic, Zombie Stomp, or the cheesy radioactive monster who looks like he's got a mouth full of hot dogs [link].

Nowadays, there are any number of excellent bands carrying on the monster-surf-kustom kar tradition, and those swingin' undertakers, The Ghastly Ones [link], have even sunk their fangs (somewhat tentatively, I admit) into Polynesian-pop culture by hawking "tiki" pendants [link] and contributing tunes to the Halloween episode of SpongeBob Squarepants [link].

If you dig those Ghastly sounds, here are a few other bands you should check out: The Moon Rays [link], The Route 66 Killers [link], Monsters From Mars [link], Atomic Mosquitos [link], The Coffin Daggers [link], and just because I like their name, The Space Turds From Butt-Tron VII (AKA The Outlanders) [link].

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Sebastian of PCL sent an interesting request out to several bloggers recently, asking them to stick their noses into their favorite vinyl LPs, inhale deeply, and report back to him on how they smelled. He got some pretty interesting responses. I decided to share the sordid tale of how I came to possess the celebrity vanity album, Way Out West, featuring that overstuffed sexpot, Mae West, croaking out gawdawful Beatles covers with a garage band called Somebody's Chyldren.

[Link: Vinyl Sniffers]
[Link: Way Out West]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A couple of years ago, one of the more Teutonically inclined denizens of the talk.bizarre newsgroup sent me the original cast recording of Hair...in German. I loved it, and was intrigued by the possibilities of other musicals lurking out there in strange and exotic tongues. I searched for a few months, and eventually turned up the Japanese version of Hair, but I never found anything else, unfortunately.

Today, I decided to post a sharity of these two fine recordings for your listening pleasure, so here's the song "Donna" side by side in German and Japanese for comparison purposes.

[Link: Deutsch] [Link: Nihon-go]

(To ljd, wherever you are tonight, danke sch�ne, baby, danke sch�ne.)

Update: the mighty COOP hepped me to the fact that WFMU posted the soundtracks to both Jesus Christ Superstar (Japanese) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Norwegian).

Posted by MrBaliHai at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)