Showing posts with label Rod McKuen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rod McKuen. Show all posts

Wednesday 11 March 2020

Rod McKuen ‎– "Rod McKuen Takes A San Francisco Hippie Trip" (Tradition Everest ‎– 2063) 1968


This extremely fucked up copy of Pound-Shop Kerouac Rod's spoken word Psychsploitation trip to San Francisco,should just about manage to turn anyone 'off' rather than 'on'.Play this to the Grateful Dead,and they'd probably all join the army.Then some kind benefactor could have paid the special assassination squad of the Viet-Cong to shoot the fuckers in Cambodia.Like a reverse,dee-psychedelicised Apocalypse Now.....I'm on it.....got the first page of the script written already.Gerry Garcia is to be played by Charlie Sheen,but the special effects budget is so minuscule that i'm afraid the beheading scene is left to the last day of filming...and it ain't good news for Charlie....let's just say, he won't be surfing no more,but at least he died for his art rather than from AIDS.
Sounding as square as ever, Rod revives his beatnik character from his "Beatsville" album,on the look out for some 'Chicks' to get some free loving from,strictly no strings attached.(although someone reckoned that Rod was on the other team when it came to sexy-time?)....he was, a trained actor after all?
All this and he wrote "Blank Generation" for Richard Hell too....i'm not gonna let this go.I'm like a dog with a bone where Richard Hell's concerned.

Tracklist:

A1 I Dig Sausalito 1:26
A2 Kranko's Hippie Party 4:33
A3 Love Child's Lament 9:15
B1 Ode To "The Warm One" 1:30
B2 - Of Girls - 5:20
B3 - Of Me - 2:19
Grant Avenue Reflections 6:50
B4a This Boy -
B4b How Does It Feel?
B4c Just For Kicks
B4d Games
B4e Flying Home
B4f Talent?
B4g Confucious Say
B4h Here's To -


Sunday 8 March 2020

Bob McFadden & Dor ‎– "Songs Our Mummy Taught Us" (Brunswick ‎– BL 754056) 1959


Who's this Bob McFadden you may ask; and who the Fuck is Dor?...Well as 'Dor' is 'Rod' spelled backwards,the answer becomes blatantly obvious..yep, it's Rod McKuen,doing what he did best, parodying current trends for the maaaaaaan.
Backed up again, by Bill Haley and his Comets on the obvious tracks, this album is actually genuinly hilarious.
Everyone gets it, Rock'n'Roll,Beatniks,Exotica,marching bands,Horror movies...er...thats about it,there wasn't much of a wide pallet of choice in 1959.
The Fall,and their beatnik singer, did a rather good version of "The Mummy" I recall, during their wilderness years in the nineties.And this maybe where the Cramps got their debut album title from.Everyone stole from this record it seems,'cus Richard Hell's Blank Generation tune is here too,with different words, however.
Did Rod ever get any royalties from Hell's blatant rip off I wonder?


Tracklist:

A1 The Mummy
A2 The Sheik Of Araby (Shreik Of Agony-Cha Cha Cha)
A3 Sing Along With The Mummy (Shake, Rattle And Roll)
A4 I Dig You Baby
A5 Frankie And Igor At A Rock And Roll Party
A6 Noisy Village
B1 Son Of The Mummy (More Sing Along With The Mummy)
B2 Hound Dog
B3 Bingo
B4 The Children Cross The Bridge - Colonel Bogey March
B5 The Beat Generation
B6 The Beverly Hills Telephone Directory Cha Cha Cha


Saturday 7 March 2020

Rod McKuen ‎– "Beatsville" (HiFi Records ‎– R 419) 1959



In 1959,like in 1968 for 'Psych' bands and 1978 for 'Punk', the record companies fell over each other,desperately scrambling to get a 'Beat' act on the roster.All the Kool Katz had been snapped up the year before.Miles,Bird,Kerouac,Chet,Mingus,Kookie,Fabian, and a tsunami of synthetic Beatniks bedecked in sweaters with holes in,worn out jeans with paint blotches on,sandals,uncombed hair,talking Jive and carrying a well thumbed copy of Lolita.
"Like...er...hey baby, i don't dig the man comin' on all the time.... get me?", said the Beatnik fresh out of drama school...looking suspiciously like Rod McKuen.A Beatnik by numbers.
He'd obviously just read "On The Road" after his manger bought him a copy with the words..."Read This,then come to my office in the morning kid."
New independant label, Hi-Fi records, supremo, Richard Vaughan was there with a contract and a pen,and "Beatsville" was born.
The suggestions of casual sex, misogyny,drug abuse,violence, was undoubtedly 'Shocking' in 1959,but,incredibly its just as shocking in the modern era,for the opposite reasons.This album is full of racism,sexual exploitation, misogyny,upon a raft of politically incorrect fakery.A Beatsploitation masterpiece.
Rod would do vitually anything to sell records,and believe me he had around 6 or 7 albums out every year for at least a decade and a half....and this wasn't the only Beatsploiting platter in his truly horrible, but vast, canon.The public were frightened,so Rod's main job was primarily turning the Beat scene into a joke,just as 'they' did with Hippies and Punks in the coming decade.Even Rod did a Psychsploitation album ten years hence.He never managed a punk album,praise be to his masters Gods.Although, his single,the B-side to novelty smash 'The Mummy', "Beat Generation",as backed by no less than, Bill Haley and his Comets(!) is a beatsploitation masterpiece,Which is in effect, where Richard Hell got his "Blank Generation" song from....so maybe by default Rod even got in on the Punksploitation market too.That is some kind of genius.It also explains where Hell got the idea of sweaters with holes in,messy hair,and writing shit poetry from?A deadly mixture of Bowie and Beatnik was our silly Richard."Like....er...LOL baby!"
So called 'Beat poet', WS Burroughs, like to write about control systems, but like later 'fads',Beatnik was just another insideous male instigated control system,to cajole women into bed.Which ,apart from war, is the only reason Men do anything.
"...Hey baby!Wanna come and ball at my crazy pad,I dig chicks who swing,y'get me?"..."Wow! Krazy Pops!"...Beat girls were far too 'Kool' to simply say...'oh fuck off you creep!'
"Wow! Krazy Pops!"


Tracklist:

A1 Co-Existence Bagel Shop Blues 1:00
A2 Bearded Ladies 3:16
A3 Haiku Poems 1:53
A4 No Pictures Please 2:21
A5 Back To Sausalito 1:29
A6 Three Songs For 'S' 2:44
A7 Joue 1:20
A8 R.S.V.P. 0:18
A9 Reflections On A Plane Trip Home 1:05
B1 Life Is 0:41
B2 The Elegant Prison Downstairs 2:14
B3 The Bird Boy 2:04
B4 Grant Avenue Square Dance 0:19
B5 A Gallery Of Assorted Beats 4:04
B6 Get The Hell Out Of My World 3:14
B7 Like 0:39
B8 What Is A Fabian? 3:47
Bonus Tracks
18 The Beat Generation 2:05
19 Six Songs For The Sun 5:27