Fantasies of a Country Clown

File under Comedy/Fantasy: Miserable Moe Bandy's 1979 vinyl turd, It's a Cheating Situation.

Sorry, Moe, but you're dreaming. That said, I doubt your sister (or right hand) will mind.

For the Birds (and Goodwill Bins): Cock Robin

At the height of the 1980s cock rock phenomenon emerged cocks of a different feather, the inimitable, though short-lived synth-pop sensation COCK ROBIN. Owing nothing to the sausage fest sounds of Hollywood's Sunset Strip, this American band had to cross the Atlantic to achieve cock stardom. And achieve it they did, if only for a boner's duration.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers: Both Sides of the Covenant Four

And the Grammy for Most Laughable Use of a Picnic Tablecloth on an Album Cover goes to...

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers No. 89

"GOODBYE, JANNA."  - Jesus

Fat Stevens

Following the photo shoot for Swedish folk singer Cornelis Vreeswijk’s homage to Evert Taube, the six-string acoustic cradled in the sweaty embrace of Cornelis’s ample, unburdened loins required months of intensive counseling and a full refinish. So traumatized was the guitar, nicknamed “Raggmunk” after Cornelis’s favorite potato pancake recipe, he (yes, it's a he) never played the same again. Some say that the humiliation Raggmunk was forced to endure at the hands of a hack photographer bent on transforming his subjects into steamy sex symbols caused Raggmunk to lose his will to carry a tune. Nevertheless, the guitar remained close with his owner, Vreeswijk, often spending many hours with him on the couch—not playing, though, but watching their favorite films, Lee Hazlewood’s Cowboy in Sweden and Torgny Wicket’s Anita: Swedish Nymphet. And when Vreeswijk succumbed to liver cancer in 1977, Raggmunk mustered the strength to perform an elegy to his mate at his funeral. Appropriately, it was a meditation on the song “Nudistpolka” (no translation necessary) from the infamous Cornelis sjunger Taube LP (“sjunger” means “sings”). It was also Raggmunk’s last performance. As he downstroked the final chord of his poignant tribute, Raggmunk did so with such cathartic force that his strings snapped, filling the mouse-quiet cathedral with a ringing cacophony of profound sorrow. Raggmunk then collapsed on the altar, just a few feet from Vreeswijk’s coffin (a reinforced refrigerator box), his neck breaking off in the process. Sobbing, Cornelis’s brother, Gard, scooped up the broken and now deceased Raggmunk and placed him tenderly in the cardboard casket atop the corpse of his brother. Luckily for Raggmunk, this time Cornelis was wearing pants.

Yes, this is a work of fiction. No need to get upset.

Cat Fancy!

Wilco dropped a surprise free album last week to the delight of dad-rockers everywhere. I love the band's choice of cover art, although I don't love it as much as the cover of Gas Huffer's Just Beautiful Music from 17 years ago. I prefer the music on Gas Huffer's record, too, but I've always been partial to this defunct Seattle garage-punk band, plus I only just started listening to the Wilco album. (I'll give Wilco's latest opus some more time to make itself at home in my fatherly middle-aged brain.) Anyway, seeing Wilco's new Cat Fancy-approved record only makes me miss Gas Huffer even more. Perhaps one of these days I might work up the energy to pen a fitting tribute to the band. I doubt I will, though. I have a hard time writing about the things I love; my mind just gets constipated with incoherent thoughts that never quite mature into anything of use. So for now I'll just say that if you haven't huffed from the potent catalog of Gas Huffer, there's no time like the present now to start. Begin your journey with 1991's Janitors of Tomorrow (Empty) and keep right on trucking all the way through the band's final album, 2005's Lemonade for Vampires (Estrus).

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers: Summer Sausage Edition

Summer is here, ladies and men! And Michael Henderson (known for his electric bass work with Miles Davis, among other more notable accomplishments) has waxed up his ... um ... surf board and is expecting you to join him (and his junk) for a little summer frolic and fun on the beach of Lake Flaccid. Won't you come? I love that this masterpiece is titled Slingshot. I guess it could have alternatively been called Packin' Heat or Holster or Banana Hammock or Summer Sausage Fest or Low-Hanging Fruit Cocktail or Love Cradle or P-Junk or Strapped On. Yeah, Slingshot seems to do the trick. By the way, there's a tune on this record called "Geek You Up." Not quite sure what to make of that. I suppose I could have listened to the song, but why spoil the mystery?