Tag Archives: WTF records

What is a WTF Record?

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by Joe Wallace

If you’ve read this site for any length of time you’re no doubt familiar with our obsession for WTF album covers. There is something wonderful about horrible, misguided, even offensive album covers. Trying to get inside the minds of the people responsible for the atrocities that grace album covers is half the fun of looking that them.

Naturally, the other half of the fun is exposing other, unsuspecting people to this stuff and watching them hurt themselves laughing.

But at some point, the album covers are not enough, and hence Turntabling has expanded its search for the bizarre, the unusual and seemingly from-outer-space records, too. I call them WTF records because that is basically your first reaction.

A WTF record doesn’t have to be BAD to qualify. There are plenty of good, quality WTF albums out there in the same way as there are enjoyable WTF movies, artwork, any consumer production you can think of.

Sometimes a WTF record is truly awful, and that’s how it earns the label. For example, who would want to listen to an entire record of Slim Goodbody nutrition sing-a-long music? But as a WTF album, Slim Goodbody’s “Health Is Wealth” is a real find–where else are you going to hear tracks like “Large, Lovely Liver” or “You Don’t Need a Brain”?

Sometimes the WTF factor is connected to who recorded the album. A record of Beatles covers is nothing new, but when Shatner does it, you’ve GOT to hear it at least once. The WTF value is at an all-time high when someone famous for things other than their relative merits as a songwriter is at the helm.

Isn’t that why the Grasshopper album by David Carradine is so collectible? Or Leonard Nimoy doing scary versions of old folkie tunes?

Then there are the weird records that provide a shock of recognition–maybe you didn’t know that before Dinousaur Jr. took off, they were just called Dinosaur.

When you spot the Homestead Records compilation The Wailing Ultimate featuring the track “Repulsion” by Dinosaur, you’ll get that WTF look on your face when you hear J. Mascis open his mouth and start in on his trademark wail.

Or perhaps you weren’t expecting to see a vinyl record featuring none other than Aleister Crowley? Discovering “Blue Sunshine” by The Glove is actually a side project by The Cure is a WTF moment for some.

And some of the most fun WTF albums are by far the weird ones–Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is The Massage, Moog reworkings of 70s butt rock classics, Sun Ra, TV preachers on vinyl, you name it. But whatever your WTF vinyl record poison, these albums are often neglected, unheard, or so obscure as to not get their proper due.

Turntabling aims to change that, one record at a time. So in addition to WTF album covers, we’ll be including a lot more coverage of WTF records here, too. Stay tuned, folks. It only gets weirder from here.

WTF Album Covers: Tankard Disco Destroyer

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It might be time to redefine the WTF album covers to include stuff like this–album covers that do not suck, offend or insult, but are simply effing hilarious; beautifully illustrated by this German thrash metal group, Tankard, and their album cover for Disco Destroyer:

When you listen to the preview MP3s of this album at Amazon.com, the title track is by far the most fun–it’s clear this band doesn’t take itself too seriously–a major crime for metal acts, to be sure. In fact, this group would probably be at its most demented on a double bill with Stormtroopers of Death. Did this ever happen? Even once? The brain cell casualties from alcohol and headbanging at such a show would be legendary.

Metal is not a genre that gets much attention at Turntabling, but with album artwork like this how can you not give it a once-over listen? This is a WTF album for sure, but definitely not thanks to the usual causes–an axe destroying a disco ball is just plain funny.

WTF Records: Pink Panther, Frankenberry Disco and Paul Klee

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by Joe Wallace

I am a rabid fan of bad album art, but I am also a collector of weirdness on vinyl. Sometimes weirdness manifests itself by goofy juxtapositions of style and content–the Ethel Merman disco album or the Lord of the Rings Disco Theme are two great examples. And then there are the vinyl record projects that are so brain-crushingly odd they defy reason.

For example, why did the artists choose to create an album where they musically interpret the work of abstract painter Paul Klee? That’s exactly what The National Gallery decided to do on the record titled “Performing Musical Interpretations of the Paintings of Paul Klee”.

What’s more, it’s going for upwards of $65!! Apparently Chuck Mangione–famous in the 70s for being a horn blower in the same way Kenny G was famous in the 90s for saxophone warbling–wrote some of this. What I want to know is WTF exactly was going through their heads (acid?) when they decided the project should be committed to vinyl. Maybe it sounds awesome–I have no idea, but as a CONCEPT it’s amazingly left-of-center. Bravo.

What would you say if you were sitting in your record executive’s office and someone approached you about releasing a vinyl LP, presumably aimed at the kiddies, featuring a then-famous cartoon character? Good idea, right?

But there’s just one problem with Pink Panther Country as a concept–the Pink Panther character in those original cartoons NEVER SPOKE. And on top of that, the music the show was known for was a very jazzy, hepcat sort of sound–not country. Regardless, somebody saw fit to issue this little nuttiness on vinyl–as a picture disc to boot!

And finally, there’s my favorite of the bunch in this post–something which now seems so wrong-headed and insane that I can’t imagine it ever looking like a good idea unless you were in the middle of a bag of blow.

In the 70s, when disco exploded and everybody and their grandma dropped ‘ludes and wore silver lame, some marketing genius thought it would be a good idea to get the KIDS emulating their drugged-out parents in some fashion, no doubt pretending the local Rotary Club was Studio 54. If only they had thought to combine quaaludes with breakfast cereal, this might have actually made sense in a sort of Doctor Evil context:

The breakfast cereal monsters snort coke off naked hookers! The breakfast cereal monsters crash a car into a concrete pillar on the highway after too many highballs and spliffs in the men’s room! The breakfast cereal monsters hallucinate spiders crawling all over them after taking one too many toots from a bag of cocaine laced with angel dust! So none of that actually happens on this record–but it SHOULD have.

I do not own ANY of these records…yet. I am now on a mission to locate them so I can report more fully on the contents. This nonsense deserves to be heard. Credit where credit is due–I discovered ALL this insanity at the super-awesome FrankLaRosa.com vinyl gallery, which is fearsomely impressive. My mind has been permanently damaged by his collection of amazingly weird records. I highly recommend a visit.