The Atrocious Music Collection: #33 in a series
Artist: Various
Album Title: The Rhino Brothers' Greatest Flops
Category: Floppy Compliation
Years: 1983
Cover art style: Corny Dad-Humor Joke combined with Word Play Joke
Audio:
- Freehold, NJ: Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow
Click on picture for full-sized image
You should read the insert provided with this record, because it shows how seriously Rhino took this project (both this specific record and the totality of their work in this “genre”). The large-sized images (just click on the small ones above) are completely readable, To give you a sense of the full effect, let me add that this is printed on a nice firm card stock, and despite the passage of some 35 years, it remains in fantastic shape – not even a hint of yellowing. The insert beings:
"The Rhino Brothers, enthusiastic musicologists themselves, were very impressed by the likes of Chris Strachwicz and other ethnographers who took to the wilds of the rural South in search of legendary or never-before-heard-of bluesmen…Inspired by these true pioneers, the Rhino Brothers outfitted the Rhinomobile and decided to dedicate the rest of their lives to discovering the most bizarre, insane and outrageous musical acts in the known world.”
Let me start by talking about Freehold, New Jersey. Freehold is the hometown of Bruce Springsteen, the county seat for Monmouth County, NJ, wherein lies my hometown, Matawan. Freehold is where the Battle of Monmouth (mentioned rather prominently in the musical Hamilton) took place, and it is where my parents currently reside. However, despite all the history and my proximity, I have to take it on faith alone that this record really does include a recording made by the people of Freehold, all of them or just a really good portion of them, singing Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow. It sounds like a lot of people, but they are doing a much better job than I’d expect a collection of townspeople of any central-Jersey borough to do, so I'm a tad suspicious. But that is, in fact, what the recording claims to be.
I’ll be honest - this is a hit-or-miss record, and some of these flop tracks are just stupidly silly or worse, and not what the Collection views as truly Atrocious. There are quite a few imitation acts – The Bombay Beach Boys, and (in the same vein) The Bakersfield Boogie Boys (covering I Get Around), the faux Beatles group the Qworymen, and an entire Elvis-impersonator competition.
Of these, I’m partial to the Qworymen’s Beatle Rap, if for no other reason than faux-George’s line, “I’ll sing if you want me to sing, and I won’t sing if you don’t want me to sing.” There’s truth in that.
There are a few truly original pieces, and the best of the bunch is Wild Man Jr.'s I’m the Creature of Outer Space. Wild Man Fischer has come up here before – he is one of the most notable outside artists in the music scene, and, as such, he provided the inspiration for the creator of this track, Barry Levine (who dubed himself Wild Man Jr.). It is a fine homage to the original artist known as Wild Man.
I also have a soft spot for Red Square’s Blacklisted (From Your Heart), which might be entirely due to my nostalgia for both their '80's musical style and for the good old last-years-of-the-Cold-War when gags like this seemed appropriate. It seemed right to fight the Soviet's with mockery because you couldn't fight them with bombs (because of the whole destroying the Earth thing) or with misinformation on social media (because it didn't exist yet).
Me and My Vibrator (Suzie Seacell – get it?) is pure novelty, but frankly, I suspect Xaviera Hollender’s My Faithful Friend (on the Incorrect Music cassette) is the true original in this...genre?... and Suzie's being a bit of a copy-cat.
Cover tunes with a …well, let’s call it a “twist”- things like an entire town singing Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow - include the opener, 2001 Sprach Kazoosrta, by the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra. If you know the work of the TCKO, it’s probably from their rendition of Whole Lotta Love, also made… “famous” seem too strong a word here, so let’s try “known” ...by Rhino Records.
I cannot recommend the rest of the cover tunes. There’s Gefilte Joe & the Fish, whose group name riffs on Country Joe & the Fish, but whose cover song, Walk on the Kosher Side, sends up Lou Reed’s classic. I do not like the KGB Chicken's (really the San Diego Chicken of mascot.. “fame”) cover of Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy. And the take-off on Cindy Lauper’s hit about girls and fun, dubbed Wrestlers Just Wanna Bust Heads (by Shell Shock Shannon) is just a poorly executed spoof, in my opinion.
The two festivals that take up large parts of the disc are corny and heavy-handed in their attempts at humor, and therefore I explicitly exclude them from the Collection. Both the Beverly Hills Blue Festival and the International Elvis Impersonators Convention go for the easy jokes, which are also tired, old gags. The Elvis bits are the worst, trucking in cultural and national stereotypes. Honestly, I think most of these jokes were offensive when the record came out, let alone now. It’s a bit surreal to listen to these again three decades later and hear how tone-deaf they are.
So, excuse me while I cue up Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow again – just some good, clean, all-American music from an all-American town.