As I wrote back in '06: In 1995, The Phoeniz (AZ) New Times received a demo tape from one John North Wright. The tape began with the growly voice of a middle-to-senior aged man announcing, ""Hi, I'm John Wright. Uh . . . all these songs are copyrighted 1985, words and music by myself. Uh, conceptually, they form the songs for a, uh, rock video opera I have written in my mind. It's set mostly in Hawaii and the Orient. It's called Teenage Volleyballers." What follows is an interminable tuneless guitar & voice meditation on, yup, teenage volleyballers, with little to say about them except that they're "out of sight."...Obsolete slang, hilariously inept music, and a generally creepy pedophile-ish aura all come to together to create the stuff of outside-music legend.
John North Wright Soundcloud page Wright was an anti-Semetic paranoid conspiracy-theorist and Dylan-influenced singer songwriter (tho he blamed Dylan for telepathically stealing his woman) from Port Huron, MI (he pronounced it "Port Urine") and left this world back in '04, but thanks to the good people at Hott Lava, 15 songs (and possibly more to come) are now up for free listen/download. All the old 'hits' are featured, like "Teenage Volleyballers" and "Down In The Land Of Evil" which, as I wrote in a Wright update, has something to do with Satan's, er, "schlong." Some great new tracks have been added - "I'm On Medication" really is as good as its title. Outsider essentials.
I think it's safe to say that, of all the thousands (millions?) of albums ever made, this is the only one of it's kind ever recorded.
From the late '70s comes this traditional bluegrass band singing most un-traditional lyrics about "Eck," which was apparently some kinda New Age offshoot of Hindu - songs like "The Sound Of The ECK" are nearly impenetrable to the uninitiated. Weird and funny as you might expect, but very well played if you're into bluegrass. Which I am not (sorry, Steve Martin), but the vocal harmonies on "River Of Light" totally rule, even as they sing things like: "Look to the light of the living Eck master, he will guide you." Probably wouldn't go over so well on "Hee Haw"...
A Klingon death-metal band. Just think about the sheer awesomeness of that concept.
"Trekkies 2" is a 2004 documentary about the most extreme 'Star Trek' fans, produced and hosted by, of all people, Bing's granddaughter Denise Crosby. The soundtrack album features some funny bits of dialogue from the film, a few soundtrack cues, and lots of entertaining fan songs. Somehow Fred Schneider of the B52s ended up on here as well. Maybe he's a Trekkie? Wouldn't be too surprising.
As for the musical acts, who pretty much only perform at 'Trek'/sci-fi conventions, Warp 11 are quite good in that Descendants/Bad Religion/Green Day-style of melodic punk. "Everything I Do, I Do With William Shatner" really is as good as it's title. No Kill I: The Next Generation (yep, that's the band's name) make a great Devo-ish New Wave ruckus. Ash Productions are two charming teenage girls. Reminding us of Trek fan history, Leslie Fish does it old school: a solo acoustic "filk" (sci-fi folk) tune. And then there's death-metalers Stovokor, who not only dress up as Klingons, but they sing in the Klingon language.And if you ain't down with that, well, pally, you have landed on the wrong blog.
I don't know much about 'Trek" beyond watching the original series ("TOS" in Trek talk) as a kid, but it's inside nature is what I like about this stuff. Fan music, like song-poems, make me realize how generic most music is. Frank Sinatra couldn't have sang about "Star Trek" (or what his favorite color is, or who he supported for President) because he had a general audience, so we just got lots of love songs since, presumably, that's a human universal. So it's fascinating to me to hear people singing passionately about something very specific. They can only exist in the rarefied world of fellow fans, or, in the case of song-poems, they just put out tiny pressings of private recordings. They don't have to worry about what the music biz (even the "indie" end of it) thinks.
1. Since I Was Zero - Denise Crosby 2. Beam Me Up - Fred Schneider 3. The Worst Time To Call - Gabriel Koener 4. Italy Theme - Billy Sullivan 5. Channeling Roddenberry - Karl Miller 6. Red Alert - Warp 11 7. A Girl Came - Brian Dellis 8. Everything I Do, I Do With William Shatner - Warp 11 9. We're Niners - Michael Leon 10. Boldly Going - No Kill I: Deep Space Nine 11. Extremities - Gabriel Koemer 12. Vulcan Mind-Meld - No Kill I: Deep Space Nine 13. Low Frequencies - Jason Lewis 14. For The Glory Of Qo'nos - Stovokor 15. Klingon Santa Claus - Denise Crosby 16. Life In Exile - Stovokor 17. My Rank Is Commander - Renee Morrison 18. Arkansas Theme - J.J. Holiday 19. Ever Hear Of Filking? - Denise Crosby 20. The Expendable Guy (Live) - Ash Productions 21. A Typo - Kathleen Sloan 22. Banned From Argo (Live) - Leslie Fish And Friends 23. What's Normal - Dave Smith 24. No Kill I Theme Song (Live) - No Kill I 25. Auk - Jean Whitehead 26. Tranya (Live) - No Kill I 27. Remain Calm - Allen Maxwell 28. Data And The Beta (Live) - No Kill I: The Next Generation 29. Starbase Dentist - Denise Crosby 30. We Are The Borg (Live) - No Kill I: The Next Generation 31. It's Just Good - Jon Garrison 32. Germany Theme - Billy Sullivan 33. Ethan's Aliens - Ethan Philips 34. Beam Me Up (Instrumental Reprise) - Fred Schneider 35. Lame Reality - Ward Young
(Vote for "M4M Idol"! You've got 'til Oct. 6.) A welcome recent trend in Mexican and Mexican/American music is playing instruments made out of recycled garbage. Apart from looking real cool and producing new sounds, it's another example of the resourcefulness of low income people (see also The Congo's Konono No.1, and Staff Benda Bilili.) So far as I know, there haven't been any recordings of this stuff yet, but there are a few YouTube vids featuring the Sparkletts bottle/garden hose (or PVC pipe) "tuba" and plastic 2 liter soda bottle "trumpets." I say "so far as I know" because the comments are all in Spanish and I'm just not bilingual enough to understand it all, e.g.: are there any recordings featuring these instruments? And the last video demonstrates how to make a water jug tuba - can anyone out there translate it for me? I want! Muchas grassy-ass.
First up, the border style known as norteña music. The flatulent sound of this tuba makes me laff!:
Slightly better sound quality on this tune; note the European polka beat, the mark of the norteña (Northern) style, aka Tex-Mex:
South of the border for some Coke bottle mariachi:
Judging by other videos, it seems pretty basic: garden hose or pipe, connects to bottle (e.g.: 12 oz soda bottle), connects to big jug. But - que? - this vid makes it seem more complicated:
As I wrote back in '06: In 1995, The Phoeniz (AZ) New Times received a demo tape from one John North Wright. The tape began with the growly voice of a middle-to-senior aged man announcing, ""Hi, I'm John Wright. Uh . . . all these songs are copyrighted 1985, words and music by myself. Uh, conceptually, they form the songs for a, uh, rock video opera I have written in my mind. It's set mostly in Hawaii and the Orient. It's called Teenage Volleyballers." What follows is an interminable tuneless guitar & voice meditation on, yup, teenage volleyballers, with little to say about them except that they're "out of sight."...Obsolete slang, hilariously inept music, and a generally creepy pedophile-ish aura all come to together to create the stuff of outside-music legend.
