Greetings, fellow seekers of the rare, the unusual and the dirt-cheap!
Today, I offer another small collection of themed music, acquired during my recent travels through the milk crates and dusty old boxes of our nation’s thrift stores and flea markets. This edition focuses on a kind of rock and roll that I posit has completely vanished from our rockular landscape: the novelty tune. To be specific, I don’t mean things like “The Monster Mash.” I mean the weird novelty sub-genre that featured groups of semi-talented teenagers bashing away on a groovy riff for a few bars, then suddenly stopping to utter some kind of mysterious word or two. Where have all these kinds of songs gone?
When Mockcarr and I were in college, I had a Pebbles comp that featured a strange little song of this ilk, entitled “Roo-Buh-Doo-Buh-Doo,” which we enjoyed laughing at and “singing” whenever the mood struck. Well, fast-forward (cough) years later, and I still find this kind of silliness quite amusing — which is why I was happily surprised by a single I scored at the local flea market by a band called the Revels. I slapped the A-side down and was pleased to discover the following tune, “Vesuvius”.
Then, I flipped the beast over and was *thrilled* to find this next song, “Church Key”. I don’t mind telling you I actually bust out laughing.
Today, for the first time in a few weeks, I hit the Goodwill near my pad, and found another amusing number, by The Kingsmen of “Louie, Louie” fame, entitled “The Jolly Green Giant”. What I want you to pay particularly close attention to are the backup vocals — the next best/weirdest thing to a Captain Beefheart record!
I look forward to your comments.
HVB
“The Jolly Green Giant” is pretty darn catchy! Those other tracks…I’d rather hear them as instrumentals. I’m not a big fan of that single word punchline genre. The music was good, though.
My favorite part is towards the end where the guy whose job it is to interject vegetables into the song, gets to “carrots”… and somewhat resignedly adds, “and peas”.
Yes! And there’s something about the voice the guy uses which also adds to the general hilarity. My personal faves are “celery stalks” and “artichoke hearts.”
“He stands there grinning with his hands on his hips, and then he hits you with a can of beans!”
Genius!