DOWNHOME MUSIC

Two great songs to attract your attention !

Two links below to find out more about the artists !

http://www.grantgrieves.com/bio.html

http://www.museumofthegulfcoast.org/Content/Personalities/Music_Legends/Johnnie_Allan

Grant Grieves - Shake It Baby


Johnnie Allan - Promised Land

Get On Your Knees And Pray

Two songs to amaze and titillate your senses in the NRE. You can find the Donnie Jacobs track in the Ace Records collection 'Another Saturday Night' and I must admit it's one of my favourites.

The second offering is from Frank Starr aka Andy Starr, originally released on the Lin record label in 1955 and is pretty easy to find on various artist comps.




Donnie Jacobs - If You Want Good Lovin'

Frank Starr & The Rock-A-Way Boys - The Dirty Bird Song

This Is Where It Began

As the title states 'This Is Where It Began' and hopefully for those of you who have followed my suggestion you may be hearing this beauty for the very first time.

Enjoy......................................................

Billy Davis and the Legends - Spunky Onions

It's Open Again

Well I have decided to open up the Emporium for a short period and to post the odd track now and again plus I have also turned on the tape player.

I don't have the time anymore for many in depth postings but when I do finally post I really hope whoever listens to the track gets some enjoyment from it.


Big Ed & His Combo (Eddie Burns) - Biscuit Baking Woman



Cheers
The Rock & Roll Doctor

Sorry Closed

Unfortunately I have decided to close the The Novelty Rock Emporium Blog as I have not found the time to continue both this and it's sister site Spunky Onions. Therefore as from today there will be no music.
Thanks for tuning in and maybe someday I will open the archives once again.

The Rock & Roll Doctor

A Song Poem For Adults Only

I have had this track in my mind for quite awhile now but somehow I have either never got around to deciding whether to post it in this blog or I wasn't too sure whether I should. I came across it over a year ago whilst wasting time downloading a few tracks from the net and I was instantly taken by it's simplicity and also it's lyrics which had to be some of the most bizarre I had heard this side of G.G Allin.

'Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind' was a ludicrous line invented out of sheer boredom when John Trubee worked as a cashier in a convenience store in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1975. He'd scribble some poems and weird phrases on a legal pad and then sometime in the spring of 1976, he bought one of those sleazy tabloids you find in supermarkets by the check-out stand, keeping up to date on any UFO sightings and mass hatchet murders.
In the back pages of the magazine he scanned the little ads and saw: Co write on a 50-50 basis, earn $20,000 royalties, send your song poems to ..." some outfit in Nashville, Tennessee. Apparently he thought to himself, wouldn't it be fun to send those people the most ridiculous, stupid, vile, obscene, lyrics to see their response ? so he wrote the song 'Blind Man's Penis'.

Several weeks later he received a letter from the Nashville Co-Writers stating 'We have just received your lyrics and think they are very worthy of being recorded with the full Nashville Sound Production. ... I am enclosing a contract of acceptance. Please sign and return along with $79.95 to cover the cost for each song to be completed' ...

He signed the contract of acceptance and returned it with a check. Several weeks later he received a 7-inch record that had a label and grooves only on one side. Typed on the white label was the title 'Peace & Love'. The recording was as he has later stated the lamest, most minimal country track with a hack country singer singing the lyrics he wrote. One line was changed, they made no mention of Stevie Wonder and had the singer croon repeatedly 'A blind man' instead. Also enclosed with the disc (actually an acetate) was a photograph of Ramsey Kearney, the guy singing. He wore a butterfly-print polyester shirt, Ramsey looked like the perfect man to sing these demented lyrics.

Enigma Records eventually released John's version adding it to their catalogue and christening it with the new moniker 'A Blind Man's Penis,' and here it is.....enjoy !


John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors Of America - Blind Man's Penis

My mind was beautiful, and I was free
I Got High Last Night on L.S.D
My mind was beautiful, and I was free
Warts loved my nipples because they are pink
Vomit on me, baby
Yeah, yeah, yeah
A blind man's penis is erect because he is blind
It's erect because he's blind
It's erect because he's blind
Let's make love under the stars
Watch for UFOs
If little baby Martians come out of the UFOs
We f**k them yeah yeah yeah
And the gelatin oozed electric marbles zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis
Mother's titties died in Hell
And the Nazis want to kill, kill everyone
A blind man's penis is erect because he is blind
A blind man's penis is erect because he is blind
It's erect because he's blind

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Country Hix's

T.Tex Edwards is a native Texan and as his name suggests he has evolved from being a Punk Rocker with his band The Nervebreakers in the late '70s to a rabid Rockabilly rebel with The Loafin’ Hyenas in the late '80s.For his first solo LP, however, Tex decided to try his hand at Psycho- Country, covering the songs of previous masters of the genre together with the brilliant Out On Parole as his backing band. He joyfully sinks his teeth into 13 tales of murder and love gone bad. It is a record that brings together a selection of Country music's bleakest moments. T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole was really a one-shot studio project helmed by Mike Buck of the LeRoi Brothers. Essentially, Pardon Me, I've Got Someone to Kill — the title is taken from an old Johnny Paycheck song, it is a novelty album but it is one that is done exceptionally well. All of the songs, from Leon Payne's 'Psycho' to Porter Wagoner's 'The Rubber Room,' are major lynchpins in the cult of 'psycho country' songs, and the performances are thoroughly entertaining. The album was originally released on Sympathy For The Record Industry Records (SFTRI43) sometime in 1989 but I think was later re-released by the French Record label New Rose. T.Tex also issued 'Lee Harvey Was A Friend Of Mine' as a single on SFTRI which was written by today's other featured artist below.


T.Tex Edwards & Out On Parole - Psycho




Homer Henderson - Lee Harvey Was A Friend Of Mine

Homer Henderson is the self-proclaimed 'Amazing One-Man Band' he is the country version of Weird Al Yankovic, writing and singing funny songs on a number of politically incorrect subjects and he also writes anthems for all the losers, loners and little people in the world. In reality, this is only one side of his musical makeup, his output also encompasses hard Jimmy Reed-blues and electronica. Other songs written by Homer include 'Pickin' Up Beer Cans on the Highway,' 'I Want a Date With a Cowboy Cheerleader,' and 'Hillbilly Pecker'. He collaborated with the Rock writer Nick Tosches on the album ' Greatest Flops And Golden Filler'. Nick had previously written 'Hellfire' a great biography of Jerry Lee Lewis. The album itself is was probably great fun to record, with some solid music in between the laughs.

According to the Dallas Observer in 1998 his "Lee Harvey Was a Friend of Mine" may come to be remembered as the greatest song ever written, better even than Springsteen's 'Highway Patrolman.'

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Five miles out of London on the Western Avenue

I'm certain as you travel through the world of music blogs someone else will have posted this track before me, mainly I think because it is a hidden gem amongst Mr Costello's back catalogue. The track first surfaced on the F-Beat Records 1980 Costello B-side compilation 'Ten Bloody Mary's & Ten How's Your Fathers' since then it has appeared on many of his re-mastered CD's that you can find in your local record emporium or on the net. It is nostalgic for me because The Hoover Building on Western Avenue, Perivale West London is a fine example of Art Deco architecture designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners who were a British architectural partnership responsible for the design of many Art Deco buildings in the UK in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike many such buildings in London it survived the war and demolition. Of course nothing remains as it once was and now it is used as a fucking Tesco's supermarket.

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Hoover Factory

Green for go, green for action
From Park Royal to
North Acton
Past scrolls and inscriptions like those of the Egyptian age
And one of these days the Hoover factory
Is gonna be all the rage in
those fashionable pages

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I Don't Mean To Be Mean

Rex Griffin

A Last Letter

In a genre overflowing with sad songs, Rex Griffin's "The Last Letter" may be the saddest of them all. Written and recorded by Griffin in 1937, "The Last Letter" has been covered many times since. It remains country music's most disturbing suicide song, deeply affecting in its plaintive simplicity.
Rex Griffin was born August 12, 1912 in Gadsden, Alabama. Not much is known about Griffin's life, but accounts paint him as a lonely, troubled man beset by diabetes and alcoholism before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 47 in New Orleans.
Griffin began his singing career in the early 1930s, working at radio stations throughout the South. Like many performers of the time, he began his career imitating Jimmie Rodgers, but soon developed a sincere, unadorned style of his own that had a measurable influence on honky tonkers like Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams. His career peaked in the late 30s when he recorded a total of 38 songs for Decca Records. None of them were big hits, but his songwriting was admired enough to get him eventually inducted into the Nashville Songwriter's Hall Of Fame. After his recording career ended, Griffin continued working at radio stations into the 1940s before health problems ended his singing career.
Even though "The Last Letter" remains Griffin's best-known song, he also wrote other country classics, including "Just Call Me Lonesome," which was later a hit for Eddy Arnold, and "Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon," recorded by Griffin's friend Hank Penny, who made it his theme song. Griffin also recorded the first country version of "Lovesick Blues." While Hank Williams was familiar with minstrel yodeler Emmett Miller's earlier rendition of the song, Williams modeled his version after Griffin's.
The sparse instrumentation, simple melody and Griffin's plaintive, anguished vocals transform those desperate, forlorn lyrics into something uncomfortably real and immediate. Even now, nearly 60 years after Griffin recorded it, the heartfelt pain expressed in "The Last Letter" deeply resonates.
Like the rest of Griffin's recordings, "The Last Letter" wasn't a big hit, but other artists quickly recognized its worth. It was covered a little over a year after it was recorded by the Blue Sky Boys, whose close-harmony singing and mandolin-guitar interplay gave the song the feel of an old mountain ballad, and the Carter Family performed it on the powerful border radio station XERA, with Sara and A.P.'s daughter Janette on vocals.
Later in the 1960s, Willie Nelson and Connie Smith both recorded the song.

Thanks to Twangin' for the information on Rex.

http://www.steamiron.com/twangin/

Rex Griffin - The Last Letter

This track can be found on the above CD - see link below for further information :-

http://www.bear-family.de/tabel1/backor/internat/g/griffin_rex/griffinr.htm

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Millionaires And Teddy Bears

If you hadn't heard of Kevin Coyne before you read these notes then shame on you but on the other hand if you have come across him before then I bet you will admit, just like I do that he was never a real easy listen and he had the knack of putting you on edge whilst listening to his music and often making you feel damn uncomfortable at times. He had a bluesy voice that was rough around the edges but was always powerful and often painful.

Before his untimely death in Germany in Dec 2004 he had released around 40 LP's on a variety of record labels, he also was a painter and a writer. My favourite book that he published was from 1990 and was called 'The Party Dress', it was a book of short stories with some drawings and if you want to enter the world of Mr Kevin Coyne then this book is a great place to begin. 'Eastbourne Ladies' can be found on his classic LP from 1973 'Marjory Razorblade' or on a kind of cobbled together early best of 'Sign Of The Times' from 1994.



Kevin Coyne - Eastbourne Ladies

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Dixie Peach Parade

I've never really been a big fan of the modern day trend for 'Tribute' albums and personally the only album of this type to really hit the mark for me was the Roky Erickson tribute 'Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye'. Today though I feature a track from another tribute record, 'More Oar A Tribute To The Skip Spence Album' from Birdman Records.

For those of you out there who are completely unaware of Skip Spence and might ask why anyone would want to record a tribute to him, well he was an early member of both the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Jefferson Airplane. Skip ignited the three-guitar frontline of the great, psychedelic rock band from San Francisco, Moby Grape, whose 1967 self-titled debut is considered by many critics and fans alike to be one of the greatest albums of its era.
While recording the next Moby Grape album in New York (1968's Wow), Spence landed in Bellevue Hospital's prison ward after an incident involving an axe and a bandmate's hotel-room door. Freed six months later and eager to record a collection of songs he'd written in Bellevue, Skip headed for Nashville, where he wrote, played all the instruments on, and produced one last album as a functioning artist -- his so-called masterpiece, Oar. For the next 30 years, he drifted in and out of institutions, a diagnosed schizophrenic who basically disappeared and later died at the age of 52 .

Jay Farrar ex-Uncle Tupelo & Son Volt along with the Bottle Rockets' Brian Henneman with Dade Farrar sawing away on stand-up bass (aka the Sir Omaha Quintet) sound somewhere near perfect on their version of one of Oar's best songs, 'Weighted Down (The Prison Song)'.



Jay Farrar & The Sir Omaha Quintet - Weighted Down (The Prison Song)

This is by far the longest track I have ever posted on the NRE so I just lie back and enjoy it !

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Pick Of The Crop

A forgotten English band that failed commercially Stackridge were nevertheless an interesting footnote in British Rock history of the 1970's. Orginally called Stackridge Lemon (the Lemon was soon dropped !) their classic line up released three LP's from 1971 until 1973, Stackridge, Friendliness and The Man In The Bowler Hat which is where today's post can be found. The music was often a mixture of English Music Hall, Folk, Pop and Jazz mixed together with a West Country feel. They are famous for playing at the first ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970 and this writer cannot forget their first appearence on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973 when they performed this song.



Stackridge - Do The Stanley

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