A-Nit Pickin' and A-Grinnin'

Out on runway number nine
Big 707 set to go
While I'm stuck here on the ground
With a pain that ever grows

Those lines are from one of Gordon Lightfoot's most famous songs, Early Mornin' Rain.  But did you know that Lightfoot made a technical error when he wrote the lyrics to that song?  A later verse goes like this...

Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver bird on high
She's away and westward bound
Far above the clouds she'll fly

Do you see it?  It's such a glaring mistake, it makes you wonder how he could possibly have missed it, doesn't it?

... (Crickets) ...

Okay, for the benefit of those few of you who might not be familiar with the ways of aviation, runway numbers are based on the compass direction in which the runway faces.  Runway 36 would face to a heading of 360 degrees (north).  Runway 27 would face to a heading of 270 degrees (west), but runway number nine faces to a heading of 90 degrees.  That's due east!  Any airplane taking off from runway number nine would be away and eastward bound, not westward.  Apparently, the song's protagonist was cold and drunker than he realized!

What makes it even sadder, is how easily this could have been fixed; just change the word "westward" to "eastward". 

Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver bird on high
She's away and eastward bound
Far above the clouds she'll fly

There. Perfect. 

Alternatively, if the airplane really must be going westward for some obscure reason, you could alter the earlier verse instead, like this ...

Out on runway twenty-seven
Big 707 set to go
While I'm stuck here on the ground
With a pain that ever grows

Now the plane can happily be away and westward bound in the other verse.  But, personally, I prefer my first suggestion because, although the first and third lines of the verse don't need to rhyme, Out on runway twenty-seven just doesn't roll off the tongue as effortlessly as Out on runway number nine, does it?

In Lightfoot's defense, he's not alone in making these lyrical faux pas.  In fact, I could point out a few more obvious ones (and you know that I will).

One of Chris de Burgh's best-known classics is a song named A Spaceman Came Traveling.  It starts out...

A spaceman came traveling on his ship from afar
T'was light years of time since his mission did start

D'OH!!!  Only the second line and he's already wrecked the song!  Okay, surely nobody missed that one, right?  Light years is a measure of distance, not of time.  Specifically, a light year measures the distance that light travels in one year.  Who wrote those lyrics, the same guy who said that the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less that twelve parsecs?

Once again, easy fix...

A spaceman came traveling on his ship from afar
T'was light years away that his mission did start

And .... done.

One more example.  This time, I'll pick on Neil Diamond and his well-known song, Play Me.  (Note that I'm not picking obscure songs that nobody has ever heard of here.  Every single example so far has been taken from one of the singer's best-known songs!)  Consider this verse ...

Songs she sang to me
Songs she brang to me
Words that rang in me
Rhyme that sprang from me

"Brang???"  What the hell is "brang"?  That's not even a word!  If you mean the past tense of "bring", Neil, the word is "brought".  Of course, that doesn't rhyme, so this is a bit trickier to fix.  Hmmm, let's see now ... how about ...

Songs she sought for me
Songs she brought to me ...

No.  That doesn't really work, does it?  What if we change the tense?

Songs she'd sing to me
Songs she'd bring to me
Words would ring in me
Rhyme would spring in me

Yes!  There you are!  So Gord, Chris, Neil, now that I've done the heavy lifting for you, I expect you to use my new and improved lyrics any time you perform these songs from now on.  In fact, maybe you could nip into the studio and record revised versions of all three using the "proper" lyrics.  I don't think that's asking too much.

Cordially, Your Friendly Neighborhood Halmanator

Confessions of a Recluse

I have a confession to make.  I believe that I've weathered this pandemic better than most, because I have certain distinct advantages.  For one thing, I'm not a moron.  This has helped me to avoid getting infected.  Unlike those so-called "anti maskers", I understand that the novel Corona virus does not gave a rat's patootie about my personal rights and freedoms, so I follow the protocols.  I wear a mask when in public spaces, I try to maintain a distance of 2 meters or more from others where possible, I sanitize my hands regularly and I avoid unnecessary outings.

 I'm lucky enough to work for a company that has been designated an essential service, and so has remained both open and profitable, so my earnings have not been affected.  And yet, my job is not the kind of job that potentially puts me in harm's way like our doctors, nurses, personal support workers, truck drivers, grocery store clerks and Wal-Mart greeters.  

I also avoid socializing unnecessarily, and here is where I have another distinct advantage. As I've said more than once in this blog, I'm a natural introvert.  I actually like keeping to myself and staying in most of the time.  My idea of a fun evening is sitting at home in my easy chair watching something on TV - even something I've seen before.  Goodness knows, I have lots of movies and TV shows in my Blu-ray and DVD collection.  I don't even subscribe to Netflix or the Disney Channel.  I do subscribe to Crave TV because I'm apparently not happy unless I'm vastly over-paying for my recreational media (okay, so maybe I am a bit of a moron in some respects).

I have a fairly large music collection and I often enjoy listening to it.  By this I mean really listening.  Not just playing it in the background whilst doing something else.  I mean sitting back in that beloved easy chair of mine, the same one from which I watch TV, turning on some music, closing my eyes and just listening, savouring every note, every lyric, every nuance.   

Before the pandemic hit, I had been invited to a wedding that took place last November.  Because of the pandemic, the newly-weds had to scale back their guest list, so my invitation was revoked with regrets.  Was I offended or even just bummed out?  No sirree!  I felt like I'd been let off the hook.  I don't generally like going to weddings.  I'm not even looking forward to my daughter's this year!  If I could find some way of staying home and playing Duke Nukem Forever instead of attending, I'd do it in a heartbeat!

I don't even have Zoom or Skype chats with my friends and family.  I do use Skype, but just the text messages, no voice or video.  If I want to actually talk to someone (which is rare enough), I use a good old-fashioned telephone.  I don't need to see their faces.  In most cases, I know what they look like.  I don't have all that many friends and those few that I do have, I keep in touch via e-mail (and/or Skype).  I don't even have a Facebook or Twitter account.  Anyone who wants to keep track of me on social media can do so by reading this blog plus they get the added benefit of my wit and wisdom (and humility).

Some have suggested that the isolation forced upon us by the pandemic can be detrimental to mental health (or just detri-mental for short).  I just made up that contraction, but feel free to use it, royalty-free.  Just be sure to always follow it with "(c) Halmanator, 2021".  I think, if anything, the social isolation has improved my mental health (full disclosure: there are those who would note, at this point, that this is no grand claim as it had no-where to go but up anyway).  

Most people think of introverts as socially-handicapped recluses.  I prefer the Myers-Briggs interpretation of the term.  Myers-Briggs defines an introvert as someone who gets his or her energy from solitude rather than social interaction.  Thanks to this pandemic, my batteries are fully-charged!

Tubular Mike

One of my regular readers (yes, I do have some ... no, really, I do!) pointed out that I haven't posted anything new to this blog in quite a while.  What can I say but "guilty as charged"?

Okay, so maybe it's time for me to come out of my blogger's exile again, but I need a topic.  What to write about?  It may surprise you, Dear Reader, to learn that I am sometimes my own biggest inspiration.  What I mean is that, when I'm short on topic ideas, I often peruse my own past posts (not to mention practice my alliteration).  Reviewing my own writing somehow tends to stoke the flames of my creativity.  Besides, I must confess that I like re-reading my own work. I'm one of my own biggest fans (cue heckler: "You're your only fan!")

Browsing through my previous work in search of inspiration, I noted that I often tend to write about the things that matter to me; my favorite things, you might say, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and the like. So then, quickly reviewing my profile, which provides a handy list of my "likes"...

Computers: Done it.
Airplanes: Check.
Sci fi: Check.
Computer gaming: Check and double-check.
Comic book heroes: Check-a-roonie.
Toys: Check.
DVD and/or blu-ray movies: Check mate

Ah!  Here we are.  Mike Oldfield.  Okay, I've mentioned him, but I think he merits his very own post.

For those who aren't familiar with Mike Oldfield (which is to say most of the North American continent), he's an English composer and musician; primarily an instrumentalist although he has been known to do vocals as well.  Those who do know him probably know him best for his seminal work, Tubular Bells; a complex instrumental work that was released in 1973 and a small snippet of which was used in the soundtrack of the 1973 film, The Exorcist.  Tubular Bells was not written specifically for that film.  It was simply used because, presumably, the director, William Friedkin, felt that it lent an appropriate ambiance.

Tubular Bells is split into two parts, simply entitled Part 1, which runs for 25 minutes and 34 seconds, and Part 2, which runs for 23 minutes and 18 seconds.  Each of the two parts took up an entire side of an LP vinyl record.  Oldfield played all the instruments himself, which involved a lot of over-dubbing.  In fact, at one point, the tape apparently broke from the wear, which probably explains the "Piltdown Man" section of that album.

So here's the deal:  A young, unknown musician wants to record an instrumental work that runs over 49 minutes in an era when most radio stations won't play anything longer than 3 to 4 minutes in length, and he wants to play all the instruments himself.  What chance would most people give that idea of succeeding?  Indeed, Oldfield did cut a demo tape which was rejected by almost every studio he presented it to, until it came to the attention of Richard Branson who was looking for new and interesting material for his fledgling recording studio, Virgin Records.  In fact, Virgin Records itself was actually launched along with and because of Tubular Bells.

What I like best about Oldfield is that he is hard to pin down in terms of style or genre.  He constantly experiments with new ideas.  One never quite knows what to expect from him next.

There are those who would disagree.  I know there are many who would categorize him as a new-age, avant-garde, largely electronic instrumentalist. Such people tend to labor under the false misapprehension that all of Oldfield`s work sounds like Tubular Bells.

It does not.  Not all of it, anyway.

Granted, he has done his share of long, complex recordings, but he has also ventured into the mainstream.  His second-best-known work, next to Tubular Bells, is probably either Moonlight Shadow or Family Man, both of which are light, pop songs featuring vocalist Maggie Reilly and both of which got substantial air play on mainstream radio stations everywhere.  In fact, some reading this may be scratching their heads at this moment thinking "Family Man?  Wasn't that Hall and Oates?"  Hall and Oates did indeed cover that song (and, perversely, their version may be more often recognized than Oldfield's original version).

Aside from pop, Oldfield has also done traditional, celtic and even orchestral music.  Tubular Bells was not the only one of his works used in a movie soundtrack.  In fact, the entire musical soundtrack for the 1984 Roland Joffé film The Killing Fields was written and performed by Mike Oldfield.  Unlike Tubular Bells, that work was specifically intended to be used as the soundtrack for the film.

The orchestral and Killing Fields links above also refute another popular misconception about Oldfield.  Many believe he's strictly electronic.  Although he does use electronics (synthesizers, vocoders, electric guitars) he also uses a great variety of acoustic instruments and sometimes wrings unusual sounds out of items which aren't normally considered to be "instruments" at all, such as shoes and, in one case, a toothbrush.  The list of instruments used in recording Tubular Bells includes acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, farfisa, hammond B3 and Lowrey organs, flageolet, fuzz guitars, glockenspiel, "honky tonk" piano, mandolin, piano, percussion, "taped motor drive amplifier organ chord", timpani, vocals, plus tubular bells.

From time to time, Oldfield exhibits a quirky sense of humor.  It's first apparent in some fine print that appeared on the sleeve of the original Tubular Bells album, which read "In Glorious Stereophonic Sound – Can also be played on mono-equipment at a pinch. This stereo record cannot be played on old tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with. If you are in possession of such equipment please hand it into the nearest police station".  Often the humor seeps into the music itself, such as a flippant little number called The Rite of Man which appeared on the "B" side of the Moonlight Shadow single, or Don Alfonso, which appeared on one of Oldfield's compilation releases entitled Elements.

In his latter years, Oldfield has increasingly favored revisiting his earlier works over releasing new material.  His last new and original work was his Man On The Rocks album, released in 2014.  That was three years ago.  Apparently Oldfield has taken to making new albums about as often as I post to this blog.  Other than that, his more recent albums have been mostly re-masters and/or re-mixes of his earlier work, still enjoyable for his die-hard fans like myself, but perhaps somewhat disappointing to those looking for new material from this talented musician.

The Boot Falls Silent

"Stompin' Tom" Connors, a bona fide Canadian icon, has passed away.  This will likely mean very little to most people outside of Canada.  However millions of Canadians who grew up hearing his folksy, uniquely Canadian songs have lost one of their favorite ambassadors.

Connors was an unlikely legend; a foster child who ventured out onto Canada's highways and byways on his own at the tender age of 14.  Legend has it that he found himself in a bar one evening, just a nickel short of the price of a beer.  As he had his guitar with him, the bartender offered to give him a beer in exchange for playing a song for the patrons.  Connors agreed, and that one song grew into a 13-month contract to entertain at the establishment.

First and foremost, Connors was a staunch Canadian patriot who loved his country as much as he did his music and who sang about the everyman and the things that make Canada, Canada; from Bud the spud from the bright red mud (Prince Edward Island potatoes) to Lester the Lobster (again from P.E.I.) to nickel miners letting their hair down on a Sudbury Saturday Night and, of course, the Good Old Hockey Game.

I recently attended a local OHL game between the Kitchener Rangers and the Owen Sound Attack.  Near the end of the third period, the arena speakers blasted Stompin' Tom's "Hockey Song".  As they did so, I heard a young girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, directly behind me, happily singing along at the top of her voice:

OH!  The good old hockey GAAAAME!
It's the BEST game you can NAAAAME!
And the best game you can NAAAAME!
Is the good old hockey GAME!  OH!.....

I can offer no better evidence of Stompin' Tom's wide appeal to everyday Canadians from all walks of life than the sound of that girl, young enough to be his great-granddaughter, belting out his seminal song with a huge smile, revelling in all that's best about being Canadian.

Vinyl Time Capsules

My mother's birthday falls this week.  Like many people, the older she gets, the harder she is to buy gifts for.  I mean, she's had a good life, rarely wanted for anything, sired the kind of son that most parents can only dream about and basically has pretty much everything she wants.

Mom doesn't own a record player and hasn't owned one for years now.  The one and only turntable that she ever owned was built into one of those all-in-one stereo cabinets; you know, the kind that has a receiver, turntable, tape deck and speakers built right into it, with compartments to store a few records and tapes thrown in to boot.  This wasn't the kind of modular sound system that's been the norm for the last 30 years or so; this was a stand-alone piece of furniture.  They were popular back in the seventies.  However, that old relic was finally taken to the curbside in front of mom's house some years ago, to be replaced with a much more diminutive stereo/CD player. 

Being the pack-rat that I am, I,  however, still have an old Dual turntable and a sizable collection of vinyl records to go with it so, having no further use for her old records, mom gave them to me.  I'd always had this idea that some day I might hook up the turntable to my computer and convert my favorite old records to CD, and I thought that mom might like me to do the same with her old records as well.  It was just one more of the many personal projects that I never seem to have the time for.

That's where I got the idea that maybe it was time to take the plunge and give mom a little trip down memory lane for this birthday.  So I dug out my old Dual, hooked it up to a computer and chose three titles out of mom's record collection that I thought she might particularly enjoy.  There was Harry Belafonte live at Carnegie Hall (mom was always a big Belafonte fan; I get a little embarrassed when she Calypso dances in public, particularly after a few glasses of wine), a German singer who goes only by the name of "Lolita" (no, it's not what you think - apparently that's a perfectly acceptable name among certain ethnicities) and, finally, the lady who's depicted at the top of this post; a fairly obscure Canadian country songstress by the name of Jean Pardy.

Jean Pardy was actually never one of mom's favorites, but I chose to convert the album for its nostalgic, sentimental value.  You see, I`d purchased it for mom back in 1973, when I was still but a young lad of ten years.  Records were still something of a novelty in our household at the time as the old stereo cabinet was still brand, spanking new so I decided to get mom a record for her birthday.  I didn't know much about music in those days.  I had no records of my own and I only listened to the radio when it happened to be on in the background so I marched down to the local Woolworth's department store, found the section where they sold records and scanned the rows of album covers for something that looked appealing.  The only reason I can offer today for choosing Jean Pardy is because I was a big fan of Popeye cartoons back then, and she appears to have shopped at the same fashion outlets as Olive Oyl.

As the album title suggests, most of the songs are tributes to Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders, Jean being herself a native of that maritime island.  Several of the songs sound as though they may well have been written by the iconic Canadian country/folk singer, "Stompin' Tom" Connors, with a few well-worn (even at that time) country favorites such as `D-I-V-O-R-C-E` thrown in for good measure.  Listening to the album during its recording (because analog recordings can only be duplicated in real time after all) I realized that I had forgotten how astoundingly bad this album really was.  Let`s just say it`s no mystery why Jean Pardy isn`t exactly a household name down in Nashville nowadays, or even in Thunder Bay for that matter (maybe in Corner Brook though).

And yet, I couldn`t help feeling a certain nostalgic pleasure as I heard those whining slide guitars, the wheezy concertinas and the clickety-clack of the spoons (yes, those are considered musical instruments among certain people of Celtic and Gaelic origin) and I waxed a little philosophical as I so often do, thinking how the music that I thought had been lost for all these years had been right there, safely stored away among the peaks and valleys that form the floor of the spiral grooves that are pressed into the two faces of that vinyl disc.

My thoughts have wandered off along those lines before when listening to my stereo.  It's sometimes incredible to me to think that an electronic box can reproduce any music that a person might imagine.  Beethoven, Caruso, AC/DC, Rolf Harris, Mike Oldfield, Lady Gaga... you name it, this box can faithfully reproduce any of their masterpieces without "knowing" anything about music.  More than that, it could even, theoretically, play compositions that haven't even been conceived yet much less written, if we could only feed the correct sequence of magnetic signals to it.  This idea is somewhat akin to the "Infinite Monkey" theorem which states that a monkey banging on typewriter keys for an infinite amount of time will eventually reproduce all of Shakespeare's writings.  If you fed random electrical signals to your stereo receiver for an infinite amount of time, it would eventually play any music you can name.

And now, having transitioned from the nostalgic to the silly and, finally, the completely whimsical, the nice men in the white coats tell me that it's time for my sedation.  I'll try not to stay away for so long this time, faithful readers.

Coolest/Worst Album Covers

CDs are better than vinyl records. They're smaller and therefore take up less shelf space and they're not affected by minute flaws like the old vinyl was. Unless you have a very bad scratch, a ten-year-old CD sounds just as clean and pristine as the day that you bought it, unlike vinyl records, on which a speck of dust in the wrong place could mar your music with an unwanted pop or click. No matter how carefully you looked after them, vinyl records tended to deteriorate with time. Even if you were able to keep them 100% clean and scratch-free, the physical dragging of the stylus over the vinyl bumps and grooves tended to wear them down gradually, causing the sound quality to deteriorate ever so slightly with each playing. Unlike two-sided vinyl records, which necessitated pausing and turning the disc over half-way through your favorite album, CDs store all their content on a single side, so that you can listen to an entire album without interruption. Direct digital track access makes specific songs much easier to find and queue. Yes, CDs are superior to the old vinyl records in almost every way.

For all that, there is one thing that I miss about the old vinyl records; well, two things really. The first is the supplementary material that was often enclosed along with the record itself; large photographs, lyric sheets, extra artwork and so on. The second is the large, cardboard jackets in which the records were stored. These jackets were often adorned with colorful, imaginative graphics. Many of the most memorable album covers were arguably works of art in their own right.

Of course, these are usually represented, in a much-reduced size, inside the fronts of CD jewel cases, but it's just never the same as having those nice, full-size, 12.4-inch-square jackets. What`s worse, I fear that iPods and digital music players and the growing trend toward electronically downloading music is quickly making even CDs a thing of the past and, with them, any sort of album cover artwork at all.

Of course, not all album cover art was good. There have been many examples of mediocre album covers, and a few that were just outright bad. So today, I'd like to pay tribute to some of the coolest, and worst, examples of cover artwork ever to enclose an LP record.  Of course, I`ve posted pictures of all the album covers listed so that you can enjoy them for yourself.  Clicking on them will give you a much larger image that you can admire at your leisure.  These, incidentally, have been mostly copied from various web pages and it goes without saying that the copyrights belong to the original artists, publishers or distributors.

The Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd

You don`t always have to be flashy to be interesting.  Pink Floyd`s landmark ``Dark Side of the Moon`` is simplicity itself - a prism on a black field with a white beam of light entering one side of it, and the refracted rainbow colors emerging from the other.  This is arguably one of the most instantly recognizable album covers of all time. 

In Through The Out Door
Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin`s ``In Through The Out Door`` bears the distinction of being one of the more imaginatively packaged records of all time. It originally came wrapped in an outer sleeve that looked like a plain brown paper bag.  Inside the paper bag sleeve was one of six different pairs of album covers (one for the front and one for the back) each of which depicted the same bar scene, but from a different perspective.  Because of the paper sleeve, the buyer never knew which cover artwork they were getting.

Finally, for the proverbial icing on the cake, each scene featured a lighter-colored brush stroke across its middle, as though the jacket were dust-covered and someone had wiped away a section of dust.  If you moistened this ``brush stroke``, it became suddenly colorized.  Try that with a CD!  Here are some of the versions of the inner album cover.

Sticky Fingers

The Rolling Stones

Also in the category of ``creative packaging`` we have The Rolling Stones' ``Sticky Fingers``.  The original ultra-suggestive vinyl album cover featured a working zipper and mock belt buckle.  When you pulled the zipper down, you could even see cotton briefs behind it.  This album cover was apparently designed by pop art legend Andy Warhol (you know, the ``Einstein sticking out his tongue`` and ``technicolor Marilyn Monroe`` guy), supporting my earlier observation that some of these album covers could be considered art in their own right.

Tubular Bells

Mike Oldfield

I couldn`t call myself a Mike Oldfield fan if I didn`t include the cover of his seminal album, ``Tubular Bells`` in this collection.  This is right up there with Pink Floyd`s ``Dark Side of the Moon`` on the recognizability scale.  The bent tubular bell has become Oldfield`s de-facto personal logo over the years and will be forever associated with his unique ambient musical textures.

Eve

The Alan Parsons Project

Alan Parsons must have been very disenchanted with women when he made this record.  The title recalls the Biblical woman who was, ostensibly, responsible for man`s fall from grace.  Song titles such as ``You Lie Down With Dogs`` and ``Ì`d Rather Be A Man`` are anything but flattering to the fairer sex, and the cover certainly completes the message.  This is one of the all time great double-take photos.  At first glance, it simply looks like a pair of high-fashion ladies.  Then you look closer.  Wait a minute!  That spot isn`t on her veil, it`s on her face!  And that`s not just a shadow, it`s a crease!  Even the title`s lettering degrades and decomposes.  Unnerving, a little repulsive, but very nicely done.

Long Distance Voyager
The Moody Blues

I once had a large wall poster of this album cover artwork.  It`s only when viewing a very large print of this that one can properly appreciate the subtlety and detail in it.  The artwork encompasses both the front and back covers of the record jacket.  You need to open up it and lay the cover face down, so that both front and back are facing upwards, to take in the scene in its entirety.  This scene ostensibly depicts a travelling musician; a one-man band, as it were, performing for the townsfolk of a small community during the Victorian era.  A closer examination reveals a myriad of subtle details.  The track list (complete with song lyrics) that adorns the inner face of the album cover associates each title with a section of the blue-tinted, pointillistic scene.  To wit...

The Voice

Talking Out Of Turn

Gemini Dream

In My World

Meanwhile

22,000 Days

Nervous

 
Painted Smile

Reflective Smile

Veteran Cosmic Rocker

and, yes, that is the Voyager space probe that you see incongruously floating in the sky over this Victorian scene, just underneath the album title (you caught that, right?)

Sgt. Pepper`s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles

No list of classic album covers would be complete without ``Sgt. Pepper`s``.  Featuring the Beatles, dressed in psychedelic military uniforms and standing amonst a host of life-sized cardboard cutouts of famous people including the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando, H.G. Wells, Shirley Temple, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, several Indian gurus and wax models of themselves in their usual garb, this album cover truly deserves a place among the classics. 

Whipped Cream And Other Delights
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

My personal pick for the coolest album cover ever would have to be ``Whipped Cream and Other Delights``, by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Taken at face value, the titular ``Whipped Cream`` is, of course, the name of the album`s title track; one of the Tijuana Brass`s best-known and most popular songs, and the ``other delights`` would be the other songs on the album. However, the album cover, which features an attractive Spanish lady, covered in whipped cream and, apparently, nothing else, gives new meaning to the term ``double entendre`` not to mention casting a whole other light on those ``other delights``, all of which make this, in my humble opinion the best album cover EVER!

So iconic is this particular album cover that it has inspired several parodies, a few of which I offer here.  (Thanks to the Unified Manufacturing blog, from which these images were borrowed).

Okay, since we`re getting a little silly, let`s move on to some of the worst album covers of all time.  Before continuing, I wish to make it clear right here and now that none of the following are to be found in my personal record collection, so I can`t offer an opinion on the music itself except to say that, if it`s anywhere near as bad as the jacket cover that encloses it, best leave it be!

On this Spanish album cover, Anni-Frid, Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha look like they`re out on a day pass from some federal penitentiary.

 

If I worked for the Hawaiian Tourist Board, I`d lobby to have this record banned.

Memo to record distributors:  Naked fat guy wallowing with a pig under a title that screams of beastiality does not generally boost record sales.

Jesus to The Faith Tones ... ``Er ... pass``.

If you really feel that you must...

Now don`t go giving Latoya any ideas...

 

If this is a childrens` album, some poor little tykes are liable to be scarred for life!

Just because they can does not mean that they should!

No!  No no no no no no no no no no no!  NO!!!

 

I don`t have anything to add to that.

 

The only thing scarier than the religious right is the religious right wielding an axe.

She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

Yesterday, I returned home with my family, having been out shopping for wedding dresses for my wife and daughter (that is to say dresses that are appropriate for attending a wedding, not the white ones generally worn by the Woman Of The Hour) to find the neighbour lady, Diane, wandering forlornly between her house and ours, looking somewhat distressed. As we got out of the car, she approached us and explained that she had locked herself out of the house. She had stepped outdoors for just a moment and a self-locking door swung shut behind her. All of her other doors happened to be locked as well.

Diane explained that her bathroom window, which could be slid open and had a fly screen that could be removed without even so much as a screwdriver, was the most promising point of entry, but she herself was unable to pass through it. With the lower pane slid upward as far as it could go, the window offered a rectangular opening roughly two feet high by three feet wide and Diane, being a rather portly woman, couldn't even lift a leg up over the lower sill, which hung some three feet off the ground, let alone fit through the opening.

I tried to climb through. I did somewhat better than Diane, as I was at least able to get a leg over the lower sill. Although I don't exactly boast the most svelt of physiques myself, I might have been able to squeeze through if I could have somehow levitated myself feet-first through the opening in a prone, horizontal position. Unfortunately, I'm also not the most limber of people. Once I had one leg over the sill, I found it absolutely impossible to bend my torso in such a way that it would fit through the opening without contorting my leg in a manner that would have resulted in dislocating my hip joint.

So I called upon my daughter, Jessica. Now, the open window was small enough to pose a challenge even for a seventeen-year-old teenage girl, especially one who's in no danger of becoming anorexic herself it you take my meaning. Robust waistlines appear to be a common trait in my immediate family. Even our cat is fat, although I do grant that she could have easily fit through the open window. I had considered tossing her inside but it's extremely unlikely that she would have obliged us by unlocking the front door for us. More likely, she would have raided an open pantry or amused herself shredding Diane's finest woolen afghan (yes, she still has her claws) or perhaps she would have simply contented herself with a general exploration of Diane's unfamiliar dwelling but I can assure you that the purpose for which I sent her into the house in the first place would have been the farthest thing from her feline mind. Cats are self-absorbed like that.

So it fell to Jessica, as I say, to climb in through the window, with a little help from myself. She lifted both legs up and through the window, so that she was sitting on the lower sill and then laid back her upper body in a horizontal attitude, with me supporting her, so that she was able to slide the rest of the way through. It was still a tight squeeze, even for Jessica, who later commented that the narrow lower sill of the window had cut into her back most uncomfortably, but she made it inside.

I wonder if the Beatles realized, in 1969, that they were writing about my daughter, who wouldn't even be born for another 24 years?

How To Be A Rock Star

Ever had dreams of becoming a famous rock star, up there on the stage, guitar in hand, idolized by millions? Many of us have.

It takes a convergence of many important talents including musicianship, showmanship, music composition, poetry (lyrics) and, yes, even a certain amount of business sense (rock and roll is a business, after all). All of the most famous rock stars since rock and roll's early days have demonstrated the above talents in varying degrees but there is one secret that seems essential to success. One characteristic seems indispensable if you're going to make it in the "vicious game" that is rock and roll, as April Wine's Myles Goodwin so aptly put it. All of the rock legends that you see below had it. Can you guess what it is?

Billy Joel

Bob Dylan

George Thorogood

Jimi Hendrix

Mark Knopfler

Mick Jagger

Ringo Starr

Steve Tyler

That's right, it's a full set of large, meaty lips. I'm not completely sure why this is, but it probably has to do with the proper enunciation of the word "Baby".