got a minute?

[kip_w]

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We're busy people, am I right? We don't have time to mess around. Finding good music just takes too much time, and most of us just give up. Well, WFMU's "Station Manager Ken" had a contest for remixes, 60 seconds and under, of known songs. Here are 161 of them.

I already have a set of 45s that came out years ago, called the RCA Victor Listener's Digest -- versions of the great classics that take up, at most, two sides (for a total of eight or ten minutes). This version seems better than that one. (I loaned my Listener's Digest to WHRO once, so that I could request the mini-Scheherazade from them. They didn't have a 45 spindle, though, and Dwight placed the platter on the turntable as well as he could. The result was not what I'd set out to achieve.)

Anyway, WFMU does it again, with the aid of listeners. It's terrific. Start off with In-a-gadda-da-vida and see where that leads you. Maybe to Paradise by the Dashboard Light, or Take Five, or Stagger Lee, or Ring Of Fire. I could go on.

For you specialty lovers, here's Who's On First, almost short enough, War of the Worlds, Shatner's Lucy in the Sky, a Bach Prelude by Glenn Gould, Ravel's Bolero (that's two versions), or 20 years of anti-drug PSAs.

Try and fit these into your schedule. I know I will. Gotta go.
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Comments

[meggins.livejournal.com]

These are surprisingly addictive--and many of them surprisingly good. The condensed version of "Paradise By the Dashboard Light" managed to get all the key elements of the narrative in. Also liked the dueling Who/Sex Pistols of "Anarchy in the Generation."

However, going from a "60 Minute Man" to a "60 Seconds Man" must have ruined someone's party.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to...

(A friend/former roomie back in Colorado had a swell LP called "Man on First Bass," which was blues-type stuff by the principal bass player of, I think, the Denver Symphony. Not an easy record to find; he lucked onto it. I don't remember much of what was on it, but it had "You are not the iceman / You are the iceman's son / But you can fill my box / Until the iceman comes" and "I'm a one-hour mama / and a one-minute papa / don't mean [snap] to me." When my friend's house burned down, the record was in it. Friend was okay, though he has since dropped off the face of the earth.)

[meggins.livejournal.com]

The iceman lyrics remind me of "Dr. Longjohn," which Bette Midler used to do in concert. Dental double entendres. "You thrill me when you drill me" and so on.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

The folks at archive.org have a huge number of "double entendre party records" in their audio > music & arts > 78s category. Benny Bell, Ben Light, Cliff Edwards (aka "Ukelele Ike," aka "Jiminy Cricket") even has a couple. For more by Edwards, visit redhotjazz.com -- and while you're there, look up "Organ Grinder Blues" by Clarence Williams. There are two vocal versions that are in the great tradition under discussion.

Some of my favorites at archive include Ben Light and his Surf Club Boys doing I'm Going To Get a Robot Man and The Full-Her Brush Man, and Benny Bell giving it his all for Everybody Wants My Fanny, Go Take a Ship For Yourself, Why Buy a Cow When Milk Is Cheap, and the ubiquitous (for any Dr. Demento listener) Shaving Cream.

For some reason, searching the site for "double entendre" or "doubleentendre" or even "party" doesn't bring up more than a fraction of what I found by prowling through the listings in order a couple of times, but it can provide a starting point. Many of the artists who recorded them are represented by a single entry, "Collected Works Of _______," which can have anywhere from one or two do several dozen individual files inside.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info!