THE RUDY SCHWARTZ PROJECT-BOWLING FOR APPLIANCES, LP, 1990 (RECORDED: 1987), USA
You could really whittle a description of this one down to two words: casio Zappa. Yes, it's a snarky and reductive soundbyte, but it tends to tidily encapsulate both the blistering yet smurfy arrangements at hand and the obsession with the detritus of 70's/80's American TV pop culture (awash with references to the likes of The Newlywed's Game's host Bob Eubanks, Earnest Borgnine, episodes of Bonanza etc.) that suffuses this album, though Zappa's doo-wop predilections have been supplanted by detournments of Lynyrd Skynard and Michael Jackson, horrific rap parodies and Colegate toothpaste ads. Endorsements from the likes of the Rev. Ivan Stang and Zoogz Rift should give you a good idea of the sensibility at work here and the crowd it attracts. Austin Texas' Joe Newman has been plying these ludicrous light-speed dada rock assemblages since the mid-80's as one of the more visible proponents of the 80's cassette underground and my first experience with his doings was via encountering the cassette version of this album (here reissued on Doc Wor Mirran's Musical Tragedies imprint) at the time of it's original issue. I'll admit, some of this seemed rather more hilarious as an impressionable teen, but that does nothing to diminish the fact that much of the contents here are still, at their best, absolutely fucking insane sounding, with frequent guests appearances by two widdley-widdley-ing flash guitarists that help to flesh out these ice cream headaches of compacted whimsy.
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5 comments:
Whoa. Amazing. Extremely sophmoric, but somehow somewhat obliquely so. (I.e., it's not as blantantly 14-year-old-boy-humorish as, say, "Bobby Brown Goes Down.")
And, a la Zappa or TMBG or, more obscurely, Harry Merry, dork-rock like this always goes down real easy when such obvious musical and technical talent is on display.
Thank you!
Thanks for all the great music! One question - I can't get track 5 to uncompress with WinZip. It gives me the message "Error: invalid compressed data to inflate." Is anyone else having this problem, or is it just me?
That has GOT to be the ugliest fuckin' album cover I've ever seen in my life. I've seen some pretty nasty gross things on album covers that were repellent -- but this is the one I don't particularly want to look at ....
keef-What? You don't like 'ol Earnest Borgnine? :-) Seriously though, this is nothing. There's some well known hyper-realist cartoonist known for his images of Rondo Hatton (i'm forgetting his name right now) whose has far more frightening images of Ernest Borgnine mid sex-act with Ethel Merman, but having to excuse himself, 'cause "he's got the runs".
Image stained my brain for life....
I had a copy of this one back in '88 or so. If you like Negativland, The Residents, Zoogz Rift and Zappa you have to check this out!
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