Category Archives: WTF?

WTF Records: Bobby Walker is Yodeling For Jesus

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I’d like to thank/curse BizarreRecords.com for this truly bizarre sonic oddity which might just be my favorite weirdo record discovery of the week (aside from the Traveling Torture Show record mentioned here earlier.)

OK, I’ll admit it–a lot of times when I find WTF records, I feel what I consider to be an appropriate rising contempt–sexist, racist, clueless and just plain crass album covers give me a big ol’ dose of bile. But when I found THIS and listened to the accompanying MP3, I could not help falling in love with this insane, misguided-but-fun record.

It doesn’t hurt that the track was recorded well, actually performed with skill and a sense of humor about itself that’s quite lacking on a lot of southern-friend gospel albums. You could EASILY hear this playing in the background of your favorite 70s drive-in exploitation car chase movie.

And that’s the part that I curse BizarreRecords.com for–once this gets heard, it will be stuck in your damn head for several hours, a brainworm that refuses to die. You WILL hear this guy yodeling for Jesus in your head tonight. I PROMISE you.

And now you get to SHARE MY PAIN. Just listen once and you’re infected.

WTF: Vinyl Vulgarity and 8-Track Smut?

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by Joe Wallace

This post is perhaps not terribly safe for work. You have been warned.

I am a follower of author William Gibson on Twitter, and recently he mentioned finding 8-track tape erotica at southern truck stops. The very idea of this was mind-numbing. Could such weirdness actually exist?

Apparently it’s not enough to get naughty videos and vinyl records. Somebody decided there was DEFINITELY a market for dirty goings on delivered via eight-track tape.

The concept seems so odd that I became obsessed with seeing them for myself. What do these things look like? Who buys them? What on earth do they get out of them? Well, that’s a totally stupid, harebrained question as we all know what you get out of them.

But looking at the packaging for 8-track tape pronorama makes me think that the very last thing on earth these would do is turn somebody on. Thinking of somebody producing smut for an 8-track audience doesn’t make me envision high production values…it makes me visualize a corrugated tin shack somewhere with a Radio Shack microphone dangling from the ceiling while a couple of 19-year old high school dropouts force out grunts and wheezes between shifts at the local In-N-Out Burger.

No pun intended.

I mention all that to say that after being turned on (heh) to the concept of 8-track tape erotica, I actually found some images of these no doubt classics of the recording industry:

And according to William Gibson’s Twitter posts, if I read him correctly you can STILL PURCHASE THESE DAMN THINGS as under-the-counter, on-the-sly finds in the deep south.

Let me repeat, I am certainly no prude–you should be able to listen to any damn thing in any old format you want as long as your eyes are on the road and BOTH HANDS are on the wheel. But these can’t POSSIBLY raise so much as an eyebrow, can they? Not having heard them, I’m guessing they’re as erotic as a reading of De Sade’s 101 Nights Of Sodom by Ted “Lurch” Cassidy.

Not Metal Album Covers…Yet

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While searching for actual bad album covers, I ran into a site that promised to reveal some awful metal album covers–but the majority of the images seemed more like band publicity photos and/or black metal fans posing for the cameras.

None of these seem to be actual covers for vinyl LPs, but it seemed only right and good to post them here because, damn, look how much time they spent putting those faces on. Vinyl or not, that much effort deserves some kind of recognition.

One could say that certain persons who write for Turntabling don’t really “get” black metal–and that would be 100% accurate.

 

WTF Album Covers: Rodney Carrington King Of The Mountains

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Never mind how appallingly, redneckity-sexist this album cover is. Forget about how stupid the album cover concept might be, and dispense with all your well-founded objections over it being simple-minded and flat out DUMB. Just for a second.

See if you can guess what kind of a record this is just by looking at that idiotic “please laugh at my jokes” expression on Rodney Carrington’s southern-fried face for a moment.

That’s right, kids, Rodney Carrington is perched on a woman’s breasts in order to sell his particular brand of “comedy”, which seems to entail a sort of sub-Jeff Foxworthy redneck-in-the-city schtick, complete with an “aw, shucks” delivery in the most contrived tractor pull accent he can muster.

And to make things worse, he’s a SINGING comedian, too. Oh, lord, please kill us all now in a torrent of nuclear fire so that we never, EVER have to endure another listen to this crap. It’s not just funny, it’s offensively not funny. As in, these jokes are so stupid you’ll actually get offended that someone is trying to sell an album full of them.

Here’s a direct quote: “”The zoo is so dayumm boring, they need to make it more exciting…take a Slim Jim, stick it in the ayuss of a death row inmate and haive heyum rum thraw the lion cage widdowt geddin beeyut.”

Effing HILARIOUS, to somebody somewhere, probably. But not anywhere near an area with a population greater than three.

Don’t get the wrong idea–we’re not in favor of whitewashing comedy in favor of an all PC landscape free from anything that might be “wrong”. Transgressive humor is funny because, well, because it’s not supposed to BE funny. But there’s a big difference between pushing boundaries and brick-in-the-face DUMB, which really gets the hackles up for certain writers who discover these things while idly surfing the internet for bizarre recordings.