Hello, partygoers, and welcome back to party headquarters. As always, we appreciate visitors to the Listening Party rumpus room!
This week, Mary and her dad tackle side two of our final novelty song mix tape, and Mary questions her dad’s rather broad definition of a novelty song. Despite some complaints at the beginning of this series, it wasn’t so bad, was it?
It was?
Well anyway, pull up a comfy chair and settle down for some more novel songs!
- The Chips – “Rubber Biscuit” – Josie single b/w “Oh Little Darling”, 1956 – 13:21
- Carla Thomas & Otis Redding – “Tramp” – King and Queen, 1967 – 29:29
- The Parade – “Frog Prince” – A&M single b/w “Hallelujah Rocket”, 1967 – 41:45
- The Book of Changes – “I Stole the Goodyear Blimp” – Tower Records single b/w “Suddenly I’m Desperately in Love”, 1967 – 48:30
- Roy Wood – “When Gran’ma Plays the Banjo” – Boulders, 1972 – 59:51
- Bull Moose Jackson with Tiny Bradshaw’s Orchestra – “Big Ten-Inch Record” – King Records b/w “I Needed You”, 1952 – 1:14:10
- Bit A’Sweet – “2086” – Hypnotic 1, 1968 (also a single on ABC Records b/w “A Second Time”) – 1:27:22
- Biff Rose – “Evolution” – Children of Light, 1969 – 1:41:34
- Sagittarius – “Hotel Indiscreet” – Columbia single b/w “Virgo”, 1967) – 1:47:44
- The Fugs – “Wet Dream” – Tenderness Junction, 1968 – 2:24:18
- The Move – “Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited (Edit)” – Shazam, 1970 – 2:48:14
- Wanda Jackson – “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad” – Rockin’ with Wanda, 1960 – 2:55:07
- Belle and Sebastian – “I Love My Car” – Jeepster single “I’m Waking Up to Us” b/w “I Love My Car” and “Marx and Engels”, 2001 – 3:04:08
Also spinning on the old Victrola:
- The Devons – “Honda Bike” – Decca single b/w “Free Fall”, 1965 – 1:54:45
- Sagittarius – “My World Fell Down” – Columbia single b/w “Libra”, 1967 – 2:00:55
- The Byrds – “Draft Morning” – The Notorious Byrd Brothers, 1968 – 2:09:21
- Gary Usher – “Virgo” – The Astrology Album, 1967 – 2:17:48
- Gary Usher – “Pisces” – The Astrology Album, 1967 – 2:20:21
Thanks for listening.
Dept. of Freebies:
If you’d like to listen to an uninterrupted collection of novelty songs, you can find Dave’s original mix here.
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Apologies for being delinquent in my writing to Listening Party! In no way does this reflect that I haven’t been listening to every episode and downloading the music you’ve shared (Thank You!), I’ve just been severely unbalanced by writing to the flagship show and not to you and Mary.
The novelty episodes have been a blast! I hang on every song and every story, particularly your knowledge on The Move in this episode. Sometime last year when I took my own deep dive into Toytown Psyche, thanks to your featuring “Curly” in episode 50, I also discovered “Shazam” and the single “Blackberry Way.” I enjoyed them so much I posted them on Facebook asking friends if they’ve ever heard of this band The Move. It didn’t take long before an old high school friend of mine who is an ELO superfan told me, “You do know The Move was the early ELO with Jeff Lynne.” I could hear it in “Blackberry Way” and it all sunk in. So thanks for the segment on The Move because I’d rather hear you school me on music than look it up and fall asleep reading about it on my computer. I think I was a fan of ELO before I even discovered The Beatles, being a fan of orchestra music, something about the way they integrated it into rock has always sounded right to me. Bring on more music from The Move anytime!
Being a HUGE film score fan I immediately perked up when you discussed Randy Newman who I collect for his scoring work. Did you know he’s related to Thomas and David Newman and their father Alfred Newman? Alfred Newman scored many of Hollywood’s films from the golden age as well as the 20th Century Film theme. Alfred’s sons, Thomas and David have become successful film score artists and Randy is their cousin, together they’ve known as the Newman Film Score Dynasty with a wide array of film music. I’m quite a fan of all their work.
I’d have to say I enjoyed the 60’s novelty music more on episode 61. “Frog Prince” and “2086” were my favorites. I think I even had the 45 of “Rubber Biscuit” by the Blues Brothers when I was a kid so I enjoyed the original version by The Chips.
“Let it All Hang Out” was very familiar from the soundtrack “Elizabethtown”, I get all excited when you play something I recognize and then I get to hear the story behind it.
“Evolution” reminded me of Tiny Tim…how is it he didn’t make it into these mixes?
I thought of one novelty song to pitch to you. What I met my wife she was very much into Tori Amos, so she played her music all the time and even took me to one of her concerts. Being a reader of Neil Gaiman, I was familiar with her through their friendship but I really got a full dose of Tori when I met my wife. She has a short song titled “Mr. Zebra” that I absolutely love, it’s only a little over a minute long and it feature a short burst of orchestration which is what sold me on it. Novelty song? Listen and be the judge: https://youtu.be/kiVJsl6gUFw
If pleases the Listening Party Court, I’m a Sagittarius and would love to hear my Gary Usher rock-astrology reading! I hope he doesn’t tell me wear any bright colors…
Loved listening to the Zodiac tracts— especially Virgo. I liked it so much that I ran the podcast backwards and let co-workers listen to the Virgo tract (we have a lot of Virgos on staff at the library). Our only Aries wanted to hear her tract so off to YouTube we went…. only to discover that there is a different Zodiac album released in 1967 called Zodiac: Sounds of the Cosmos. It is apparently music inspired by the twelve astrological signs. Here is a link to that album: https://youtu.be/9sbm4-3Ef3c
I do have one question, though. Does the Zodiac album featured on the podcast suggest all men wear plaids? Sporty checks, humble plaids, good grief!
While my staff was curious and interested in listening to the tracks for each of their signs, our library patrons were not and the party quickly ended as soon as people started coming in to the facility.
Although Dave’s next birthday won’t exactly qualify as ‘golden’, I’d like to highlight that, in UK date format – day / month / year – it’ll be a numerical palindrome comprising twos and zeros: 22/02/2022. Sounds fairly special to me!
On starsigns, I’m also Sagittarius, so that ship has sailed. Interestingly, one of our characteristics is scepticism so, naturally, we believe astrology to be a pile of centaur poop! Unlike numerology, which is real, obviously.
Despite my early kvetching, the novelty episodes have been a highlight of the whole listening party experience. Keep on grooving, daddy-o, and, er, daughter-o!