Tag Archives: WTF?

Vinyl Blogs We Love: Waxidermy

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In a never-ending quest to find bizarre, out-of-print, and rare vinyl, the journey takes strange and wonderful turns.

One of the most enjoyable as of late? Waxidermy, a vinyl blog dedicated to out-of-print rarities and oddities that has an outstanding section called Incredibly Strange that will not only change your life, but might actually ALTER it substantially. It’s MIND BENDING.

Proof? The too-short-by-a-mile post on the vinyl record titled “Fist” Goodbody’s Traveling Torture Show, which has sent Turntabling on a torched-earth bughunt for this WTF record. It cannot be said that it must be owned, “whatever the cost” but there is a definite interest in procuring this vinyl freakshow for permanent installation in the Turntabling Collection. If you own a copy of “Fist” Goodbody’s Traveling Torture Show you want to sell, by all means get in touch.

Waxidermy is a massive, massive site and there is so much to explore that you might just fall over dead before getting through it all, which is never a bad thing. Waxidermy must go on and on forever, because it’s simply too awesome not to. Done gushing now…just get over there and have a look. You won’t be sorry. Your brain may be damaged forever by the Incredibly Strange section, but that just means Turntabling will have plenty of company.

–Joe Wallace

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.

WTF Album Covers: Not Even Gustav Holst Is Safe

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The Planets by Holst gets a cheeseball marketing spin, cooked up by someone who clearly believed that if you just put a sci-fi theme and plenty of cleavage on the album cover, stupid kids will buy it thinking maybe it’s some kind of new wave record or science fiction LP.

Can’t you just hear the board room conversation around this one? “Hey, dead guys don’t get paid royalties, right? These kids today love spaceships, right? Let’s CASH IN!”

And doesn’t the hero in this picture look like someone out of Wall Of Voodoo? I wonder what Sir Adrian thought when he saw this little beauty come out with HIS NAME ON IT.

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NME’s “Worst Ever” Album Covers

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The NME jumped on the WTF album cover bandwagon with a list of its own “Worst Ever” album covers, but this once cutting-edge music pub has clearly fallen out of touch. Naming the Beatles (Magical Mystery Tour), Black Sabbath, and a few other luminaries in their worst-ever list was not only lazy, but a little bewildering. There are PLENTY of MORE awful LP covers than the ones they pictured…

For example, get an eyeful of the boring, stupid, but ultimately NOT “worst ever” cover for a Chris Brown recording called Graffiti,

Now granted, I don’t know anything about Chris Brown aside from the fact that he beat the living daylights out of his girlfriend a few years back and that his music does NOT appeal (give us old-school Isaac Hayes funk over reheated me-too hip hop any day of the week), but this album cover certainly is NOT one of the “worst ever” in spite of what the NME staff coughs up.

Granted, NME gets points for the Chumbawumba “live birth” album cover for Anarchy, and one from Royal Trux which is so vile it beggars belief. If NME were running a “three worst album covers ever” post, they might have something, but the other 47 or so are nowhere near close to being the worst ever made. No, this is just sad, lazy and pretty weak. Not to get all record nerdy about it, but five seconds worth of digging will come up with far more horrifying images, believe me.

NME doesn’t even get a pass on the sourcing of these covers, as many other collections of “best ever” and “worst ever” photos are tagged “as voted by you”. Not so on this particular group of awful album covers…ahh, NME, once upon a time you were tops in your field. Today?

And when it comes to “worst album covers”, with few exceptions, none of the records in the NME collection come close to being topped by this:

You may commence screaming now.