From Merriam-Webster Online:
| Main Entry: kitsch Pronunciation: 'kich Function: noun Etymology: German : something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality - kitsch adjective - kitschy /'ki-chE/ adjective |  |
So here are a few of my kitschy favorites (no order at all):
Strange Music:
1. The Golden Throats collections: Rhino Records, I love you. You have assembled for me some of the worst of the worst. I own Volume One and am planning to add to this very soon with Vols. 2-4.
2. Prozak for Lovers: I own this. I love it. I am also planning to buy Volume 2 very soon..... a must-have!
3. The entire Ultra Lounge series. There is just something about weird "exotic" music -- or at least what passed as "exotic" music in the late 50s and early 60s. I kind of have this weird thing about this time frame -- I love it. I think it would have been kind of cool in a weird freaky way to be a hausfrau during this time, to have cocktail hour every evening with some of Hubby's business friends, to have a Tiki room for entertaining ... think Sissy Spacek in Blast from the Past. Yeah, I know. Bizarre, right? Still......
Bizarre album covers:
I do miss album covers. That's something that the CD medium has taken from us. Back in those days, it was another way for the band to express itself -- by having jam-up covers or wacked-out ones. I personally was very fond (at the time) of the rip-it-open, full-length cover for John Travolta (back in his "Ba-ba-baaaa-ba, Barbarino" days). Here are some sites with some strange (and sometimes some laff-yer-ass-off) covers.
1. Mental Drippings' List -- for some of the worst of the worst! And do NOT forget to press "next entry" to see even more. The one that will have me laughing and crying in little time, every single time? "The Many Facets of Roger" (his commentary -- oh my God!)
2. Nick DiFonzo -- author of 2 collections of Bad Album Covers. GREAT stuff here!
3. Show and Tell Music -- this, folks, is my very favorite site. It isn't that the covers are all bad -- on the contrary, some in the "exotica" categories are in fact rather good (especially for their time and the usually bad music contained therein). This is a HUGE collection, everything from lounge stuff to Christian records (usually homemade).
More kitschy-type stuff to come!!
2 comments:
OMG!!! My ears!!! You know a CD's really bad when the best thing on it is Mae West singing "Twist and Shout"! Thanks a lot! Now I've got a Leonard Nimoy singing "Proud Mary" earworm! :-)
Long live kitsch.
Especially Golden Throats and Prozac for Lovers.
All this rumination about so-bad-it's-good music reminds me of how much I miss The Annoying Music Show which used to run on GPB. It was a weekly affair which ran all of five minutes, but not a second of it was wasted.
Yeah .... kitsch! If it weren't for low-brow, I'd have no brow at all.
-TG
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