homemade candy: big sugar

homemade candy is back with big sugar, and it's sweet, too, too sweet. There's "bucket of sugar," "sugar box," "sugar shaker," and "sugar shift." There's "pure cane," "beet it," and "stirring molasses." There's "adrift in powder," "puckery," "sweet tea kisses," and "sour lip lemonade." "There's "candy thermometer," "hot formed," "molten sweetness," "sculpted syrup," and "stirring."

Rumor has it that the organ grinder died during studio production, but whatever the case, homemade candy has cooked up another carnival of delight.

super

It's really big, so big
It's really huge, so huge
It's enormous, so enormous

Super duper, super duper
It's super
Super duper, super duper

And then I think of you

It's really big, so big
It's really huge, so huge
It's enormous, so enormous

Super duper, super duper
It's super
Super duper, super duper

And then I think of you

singing negative

there's hat a with horse a on man a there's
horse bronze that hat that statue
horse the on sat that man a there was
shadow the know you know who those
wearing horse bronze a on hat a wearing

sam i am

Is it Dr. Seuss or Son of Sam?
What's it like to be blind Sampson?
Whose sentence out of mouth
Lingers in its rough.

"I like green eggs and ham."
The neighbor's dog barks sometimes.
Wild at Heart.
"I like green eggs and ham."

Then, "Merry Christmas, Kitten,"
Joe Christmas toothpaste, Mary.
You talk too much, but--
See the pretty ornamaent.

Acai Berry: Spice Up Amorous Dish

Since the release of her eponymous debut album in 1995, Acai Berry
has established herself as one of the most accomplished performers
of the digital age.

The wife of a Nigerian prince, Acai has pioneered online marketing
in the music industry. She has sold over 40 million albums
worldwide strictly through email advertising.

Her 15th studio album, Spice Up Amorous Dish, is already the
best-selling album of 2009. It comes on the heels of 2008's "You've
Received a Greeting Card" that included the hit dance track "You Can
Wear Cartier Watch Now."

The track listing for Spice Up Amorous Dish is as follows:

1. Virtualization Webinar
2. Let Your Love Stick Grow (Radio Edit)
3. Career Advancement Opportunities
4. Winning Notification
5. Possible Friendship
6. Credibility by Maximizing Your Productivity
7. All-Night Love Cascade
8. Increase Your Member
9. Qualitative Drugs For The Cheap (Bonus Track)
10. Let Your Love Stick Grow (Junior Vasquez Remix) (Bonus Track)

Milk and Cookie: Plate of Glass

Songs for the children? Not hardly. This album was to be an Andy Kaufman tribute, but due to the popularity of "Elvis Impersonator" and "Along to Hum the Record," songs like "Everybody on the Bus (It's Time for a Milk and Cookies Road Trip)" and "Let's Wrestle" were cut from the album in favor of tunes like "Blue Hawaii" and "Hubba Hubba." How the current album cover and title fit into this marketing strategy is anyone's guess.

The Artichokes: choke on this

From the album cover, it's not hard to guess the theme of this band, but the intended audience is another story. Are The Artichokes a Nickelback re-do? Not to fear, your five-year-old will not get tossed out of kindergarten for repeating the lyrics on this album--at least not if the kindergarten wouldn't toss them out for Three Stooges material such as "just for the halibut" or "you artichoke."

Now, "choke on this" is a heady title, but the song of the same name is not on this album. But I take that previous statement back--"Eat Your Vegetables" does concern ritual zombie sacrifice. Perhaps your five-year-old shouldn't listen to this album after all.

There's also controversy on this album as two songs address the apparent lack of coherence in grocery store classifications of fruits and vegetables: "my tomato" and "gourds have seeds."

Except for three songs about trains and one about Seattle, this album keeps to theme. My favorites are "Mama's Pumpkins" and "The Neighbor's Zucchini."

Check it out.

palm: island breeze

Half an album dedicated to bongos! I tell you this album is a bongo headache. It's one big I Love Lucy medley. But there's one song I like. I hate having to buy an album for one song, but I couldn't find this tune on the iPod site.

island breeze, mainland sleeze

you can't escape your problems if you pack them in your luggage
you won't be happier when you go home if your account is overdrawn
you have been in that chaise longue since ten this morning

it's time to party, it's time to party, it's time to party

in the island breeze, the smell of the mainland, the mainland sleaze
you won't escape death in the palms, but the surf's worth trying
she's not a bird you can buy, but tell her a lie: she likes stories

it's time to party, it's time to party, it's time to party

...

And a special treat: three tunes featuring the conch shell.

yup: yup yup

On this album, the strong suit, at least for yup fans, is the "yup yup" song:

yup yup
yup yup yup

Tuesdays I get drunk, and I yup yup.

yup yup
yup yup yup

Fridays I don't feel nothing, but I yup yup.

yup yup
yup yup yup

When Sunday comes along, I'll need a new line for my song.

yup yup
yup yup yup

...

Critics have assailed the "yup yup" lyrics as an AfroMan rip-off, but most of the songs on this album remind me of Jimmy Buffet tunes.

However, there's the "Christmas in July" party tune that might get more airplay if it weren't "Christmas in July":

When Honey dresses up as Mrs. Claus, I get her a cool sangria
And rub her down in Coppertone so she smells like coconut

...

A nasty song, but it reminds me of The Eagles.

And for booze hounds who like calypso, there's also "inflatable doll" and "drool bucket."

And more.

flashing red ahead: incurable

The radio seems to be picking up something strange--
I'm coming down with the flu,
But you don't have your seatbelt buckled

The rain makes for a slick road

Do you recognize the dead?

There's a forgotten thought in my aching head
The police are waving, and the victim's dog is escaping
No more cartoons--I promise

dorisdey: wahwahrolizeme (live at the batgrave)

dorisdey is a postindustrial-garage-pop-core band from spanimure (zk) consisting of delores spivey (guitar/vocals), beverley medrano (guitar/vocals), edyth provino (guitar), eulalia stumpf (keyboards, programming), candace dixon (drums). this live was performed at the batgrave pub in burgess (tl) on july 23, 1986: electric violence in spicy boots!

track list:

01 - akimbo crude bowery

02 - stayer slayer

03 - thwack tact reach

04 - jerked micro choosy jerked

05 - wail appal record

06 - crude micro

07 - overly grease me

08 - tact choosy

09 - juror crude

10 - oozy priced

11 - fable beautiez

12 - withal clown

13 - twit me

14 - buffo plenty

15 - uproar stress shorn

16 - preliminary plague

17 - tocsin exile

18 - bora bora bang bang

19 - ear wig

20 - divided stomach and bellyaches

makes me happy: freedom

crazy vitamin

I didn't get a prescription for my condition
I didn't, and I won't
I'm happy as a two peckered billy goat

The White Squares: No Gigs Past 8

The White Squares topped the charts by going where no other band has gone - to bed, early at night, alone.

Band frontman Bereth 'Blacken' White jokes, "Some say White is the envy of the world". Pressed for an explanation in one of his rare interviews, he adds: "It's not that we're living in a magical square, just the usual suburban oasis no trains reach after 8pm, that's all."

---
Karyn Eisler & Dorothee Lang

window soul: glaze

The cleaners are coming,
Coming to smash the glass.

The cleaners are coming,
Coming to break the glaze.

Look this way, you'll see
The cleaners are coming.

lettuce: we're toast

Sometimes, it's all about being ironic, and sometimes, ironic comes off as being plain silly. Sometimes, it's just about the salad, but sometimes, the salad is blue cheese on iceberg, which doesn't compensate for the overpriced steak being half burned and greasy.

Here's a band that has a horrible name and several misguided attempts at sponsoring popular causes to their (dis)credit, but an allowance that gives them the right kind of marketing and the ability to eat at restaurants of their choosing.

"we're toast" contains original tunes like "floating island sauce" and
"pomme de terre is French for potato, but pommes frites are French fries, not apple fritters," but it also contains a series of parodies. Indeed, for Peter Frampton fans, there's the parody "croutons, croutons," and for Beatles fans, there's "Lick Me in the Otter Eye and Scream, King of Diamonds."

But who can forget the "no wassabi, please" line in "sushi in my pants"? Really.

math perv: senior skills

The studio group that put this album together wanted out of their contract so much that they were never heard from again. It's also uncertain whether the name of the group was "senior skills" or "math perv" (or "math pervs").

Whatever the case, this album features such tunes as "1 + 1 + 1," "differentiate this," "function," "I Like pi," and "group theory."

inland boatmen: living room

What happens when a band that plays cover tunes at weddings lands a boat salesman for a promoter?

The Starlite Bookstore: Richard Brautigan's Library

This album is a purely themtic set of lamentations. Based on the conept of the library in Richard Brautigan's The Abortion, the songs here chronicle the fate of unread books stored in a cave in the mountains.

Tracks include "Richard Brautigan's Library"(a tedious explanation of the concept), "My Dog, Rusty," "Working with Linoleum," "Thoughts About Movies," and, of course, the eponymous and often confusing track, "The Starlite Bookstore," which is, however contradictory (as a flip on the main theme developed in "Richard Brautigan's Library"), about readers looking for books that do not exist.

One critic even claims that this very concept--the one developed by Richard Brautigan, not by The Starlite Bookstore--is the very basis of The Eagles hit "Hotel California," but more skeptical critics say "roach motel," meaning "what you check in, no one checks out."

So, treat the playlist as the sign-in sheet to Richard Brautigan's Library.

momma tracked: mirror realm

It's hard to believe that this band started out by recording the sounds they made while playing with tinfoil and wax paper.

scooter: autoped

The lyrics are all about biking, but they're in Dutch. The music is, however, big hair, hard rock.

beneficiary: scary

beneficiary was planning to issue an album called white shroud, but when lead guitarist Keith Trendoune died in a drinking contest, benficiary changed the working title of this album changed to back in white after the better known AC/DC album.

En route to the funeral, the surviving members of beneficiary were all killed (except for keyboardist Rodrick, who had forgotten the funeral) when their limousine was struck by a train, a miraculous feat given that beneficiary was not country and western.

beneficiary issued this album, now titled scary, posthumously.

Tunes on scary include "AM Radio," "Sitting by a Window and Staring," "Apologies to Your Husband," "Thrash Trailer," and "Forever Boredom."

Record company spokeswoman Jennifer X-Ray said, "Don't expect a tour any time soon."

Lacoste (Benita Bécquer)

Lonely Dream: the message

The band members never spoke. They were a concept and a coming-together. They were events in a lonely dream. Their collective sense of each other was a faint echo. They each made their own music, but their music fell together in a lonely dream. And the experience of that lonely dream is the message, pieces of which are entitled "lincoln" and "dirty dog."

our zoulz: wishing

One of the children of one of the band members believed that his favorite drive-thru restaurant was offering a fabulous new treat called the wishing. It wasn't, but the name gave Reggie Whittaker a great idea, an album entitled wishing. Here's to wishing!

Genesis, Skabacab

No too many know about prog-pop supergroup Genesis's all-ska project, Skabacab. Recorded at Dynamic Sounds Studio in Kingston, Jamaica, the summer 1981 after the sessions for their 11th album, Abacab, the sessions were all-reggae and ska takes on the tracks from the Abacab project. Dissent in the Genesis ranks prevented the tracks from being included on the 2007 reissue of the Abacab album, but hardcore fans, who have yet to hear the reggae version of "Man on the Corner" and "No Reply at All," hold out hope that the tracks will resurface some day.

sprout: jump for joy

This geriatric troupe of nursing home escapees has to be the happiest band ever, and no one in the band is under eighty years old.

Consider the tunes on this album:

1) jump for joy (if your walker can handle it)
2) F U Nurse Ratchid
3) if the nursing home van is running, set off the smoke alarm
4) I've eaten dog that tastes better than this
5) rough, rough, rough
6) here's an adult diaper joke on you
7) what's that? what's that? (louder, louder, louder)
8) sleeping pills
9) no, you listen
10) denture raffle
11) grannies and granddads unite!
12) what's wrong with my television?

rtsts: фотоснимок

rtsts put the Russian word for "photograph" on an abstract album cover and the critics loved them, but there was apparently no correlation between the cover and the content. Indd, th crtcs wrnt s hp 2 th "txt sngs." Asked one critic, "Is this another horrible joke on Stephen Hawking?"

Sng lst:

1) Tk m pctr
2) Rn fr Yr lf
3) Dck nd Cvr
4) Sml
5) Sml on M
6) Slbt
7) Scnsn
8) Gng Hm
9) Frst Fr
10) Kll Kll Kll
11) Jlpy
12) Drk

THE SLEEVES: MAYA HEADS

THE SLEEVES perform and play their music with the[ir] clothes on backwards and their instruments behind them. The singer turns his back to the audience or microphone.

I would like to see this, wouldn't you?

Cosmic Zombietron: Space Brains for Breakfast

Cosmic Zombietron, North Hollywood's top-notch gothic-pop ensemble, is ready to relieve you of your oblongata. You'll swear you were out of your mind to buy this album while listening to tracks like, " Dead, Undead, then Dead Again":

(exerpt)

Blood red went the engine
then the engine went dead
then the head went southward sailing
sailing graveward -- stars unfed
cerebellum, cerebellum
bread and butter, gut her dead
underneath my car's umbrella
cerebellum, engine's red

Other brain numbing numbers include:

Spinal Fluid Groove at 0:200
Lobotomy with Lobster Sauce
Cortex Vortex
Full Frontal Lobe
Aurgh gurgh arrRRGGHgh

and of course, the title score:

Space Brains for Breakfast

which is pretty much the national anthem of slackers, marijuana addicts and self-proclaimed vampires worldwide.

Make up your own mind about this thalamus-axing musical blood-bath, or at the very least, die trying.

(*Not recommended for children under 12)

opera buffs

Dissing this and dissing that, warring with each other, warring with their fans, occasionally killing off their rivals, but for such art warriors as these, death, even a faked death, is the end of the struggle. But not so for opera buffs.

Opera buffs answer to the opera gods, and to cross an opera buff is to face a fate worse than death.

Think you know the best Carmen? Listen to these biddies battle it out.

Who is better, Maria Callas, Tarja Turunen, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, or Ann Sofie von Otter? Be prepared to die a million deaths if you answer wrong, or worse, lose your season tickets at the Met.

Yes, a full fifteen minutes of Wagner critiques--and don't dare to mention the name Nietzsche, not even as a joke.

Think you can get away with coughing twice at a Philip Glass opera? Listen to this true tale from an unsuspecting patron of the arts.

Finally, there's twenty minutes devoted to the need for castrati.

Think you don't like opera? Get this album and give an opera buff discussion a listen.

Ezra: The King of the Bingo Game by Ralph Ellison

Not sure of the exact title of the Ralph Ellison story, never quite sure if the first "The" was erronous, James Ezra named his first album The King of the Bingo Game by Ralph Ellison. Of course, he named his first band "Ezra."

Entralled with the "can't win" statement in the Ellison story, James Ezra then read Catch 22. And then he read Of Mice and Men. And then he read that more people lived in cities than in the country. And then he realized he could not get a simple job. And then he looked at the sky and he wept because he had no farm to work.

This album is a James Ezra delusion, a series of paranoid rants about the demise of the farmer and the end of the agarian lifestyle all over the world. Two of the tracks here, "Snake in the Garden" and "Pol Potted Plant," are the death metal tunes that comprise the soundtrack for Living Amnesia, the movie and the game.

Finally, "Kerosine Rooster in the Corn" is the current chart topper from the smash hit movie Burn Down.

Are you ready for your delusion?

Shadow Master Medicine Show: Numinous Brew

This album cover was originally shipped without the album, and the album still went platinum. Said Love Potion band member Cheryl Velvetpants, "That's the power of Numinous Brew."

The Richard Feynman Club Band: prankster

Here they are, songs dedicated to computing, nuclear physics, californication, and Richard Feynman. If you liked QED from The Richard Feynman Club Band, you will love prankster and the forthcoming Nerds in Topless Bars. As one band member asks, "What couldn't Richard Feynman do?". and the songs here reflect that admiration (mostly). The music has improved too--not everything sounds like the bar music from Star Wars on this album. Plus, there are experiments in bongos and American Indian drumming featured throughout the improvisational scores.

Here's the playlist:

1) Klaus Fuchs Car
2) 27-18-28
3) Dance and Chant
4) A Topless Bar Called "The Voyage of Discovery"
5) Ofey
6) O-Rings
7) Prankster ("Ha-ha, Nobel Prize Winner, I tricked you.")
8) My Maya
9) Los Alamos on the Weekend
10) QED
11) I Didn't Drop the Bomb (a song that threatned to split the Oxnard fan club)
12) Bongo Man
13) Neils Bohr and Friends
14) Safecracker ("1 left, 1 right, I don't have to be here all night.")

This album is a must-have for any Richard Feynman Fan Club. Personally (and we all know Richard turned away from alcohol so as not to dull his brain), I think 27-18-28 makes a great drinking song.