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This can of Song Food has stared at and inspired many a singer at my place including Bob Dylan, James Brown, Cyndi Lauper and hundreds more. I’ve never owned a canary (though my trained parakeet, Pepi, was one of my favorite pets ever), but the can has sat atop every pair of speakers in my recording studio since my very first hit. It first adorned a set of Auratones, excessively cheap but vital sound boxes that no matter how great of speakers you had you always had to play your mixes through to know what they’d sound like on the radio.  It’s still sitting on one of my Mackies today.

I love the side of the can that says “MASTER RADIO CANARIES ARE FED EXCLUSIVELY ON HARTZ MOUNTAIN BIRD FOODS.” What’s a Master Radio Canary?

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And I love the top where you can send away for a free “canary care” booklet. They had the same offer on the cans of parakeet food. I ordered at least 20 of them and read aloud to Pepi all the time.

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This may be my most favorite can I own.

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Although it’s all a little worn, this Panasonic Panapet 9V R-70 is one of the most popular transistor radios in history. Music boomed through it throughout the ’70s and it continues to hiss out AM reception like the day it was born. The 4″ high Panapet came in white, red, blue, yellow and green as well as a much rarer lavender and was known for having less static than other transistor radios. It fit comfortably in your palm but if you were really cool you used the handy chain to hang it on your pole lamp or doorknob.

I had a bunch of these but through the years my lust for round electronics focused more on portable hanging ball Videosphere  TVs with matching radio/8-track players. Each TV had its own matching Panapet.

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Donny Osmond may have won Dancing With The Stars and a whole lotta money for his favorite charity but a whole lotta money was the last thing that was spent on manufacturing this toy microphone and song sheets set at the height of the Donny & Marie Show frenzy in 1976. Despite the claim on the package that you too can “CREATE YOUR OWN SONGS • MAKE YOUE OWN MUSIC” the non-working plastic mic attaches to nothing and won’t get you much farther than singing into a candle or a shoe or anything else remotely microphone shaped.

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The “song sheets” are literally blank sheets of paper that you write the notes to your own song on should you have enough songwriting chops to pull one out of the blue and be blessed with the knowledge of how to notate music, the latter of which I don’t even know how to do.

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To make matters worse and even lower-rent, the song sheets are stapled together at the top and the bottom and it’s next to impossible without surgical instruments to remove the staples without ripping the one-ply-thick-thinner-than-toilet-paper paper it’s printed on.

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Made in Hong Kong during the heyday of the bro/sis acts’ ABC variety show by the family’s own Osbro Productions and distributed by Gordy International (how did Motown get into the act?) it also appears that Donnie got the shaft on the shaft of the microphone as Marie’s name got bumped up to all caps and Donny’s remains crushed into diminutive lower case letters.

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All around, this belongs in an express elevator up to the Penthouse of Kitsch because it is sooooo totally and completely cheaply made, meant to be dumped into bargain bins at all of the dollar discount stores that were just starting to get a smelly toehold on the American merchandising scene.

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Last night Donny Osmond bagged an almost perfect score doing the Cha-Cha to my song, “September”, on Dancing With The Stars. In his former life as an Osmond he and his brothers took on my follow-up Earth Wind & Fire hit, “Boogie Wonderland”. What makes the latter performance in Provo, Utah in 1980 kwalify as Kitsch isn’t so much that Donny’s singing is uncharacteristically off, flatter than an iceskating rink in spots, but that the lyric changes made to suit Mormon sensibilities are so odd:

Original Boogie Wonderland: “You say your prayers though you don’t care. You dance and shake the hurt.” / Osmondized: “You never felt vibrations quite like this in Wonderland.”

Now, not only am I not against lyric changes when someone covers my songs (after the original, correct version is out), I’m rarely concerned with preserving the sanctity of the original record and always more interested in the individuality expressed in a new version. But I don’t understand what was so offensive about the original Boogie Wonderland lyric. I guess it was the word ‘prayers’ and the fact that you might momentarily not have faith in them when your life has crashed to the ground as the lines previous to it set up: “Midnight creeps so slowly into hearts of men who need more than they get./Daylight deals a bad hand to a woman who has laid too many bets./ The mirror stares you in the face and says ‘baby, uh uh, it don’t work…”)

Original Boogie Wonderland: “I chase my vinyl dreams to Boogie Wonderland.”/ Osmondized: “I chase my crazy dreams to Boogie Wonderland.”

I guess they thought vinyl was some kind of sex costume or toy…  I meant vinyl as in plain ol’ 33-1/3.

To Kitsch in Provo and Donny winning the prize!

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In my formative years of being a songwriter, the Captain and Tenille covered the AM radio landscape thicker than astroturf. Even their bulldog, Elizabeth, was part of the act that made wearing a dorky captain’s hat and walking around with a bowl haircut that looked like it had marshmallows stuffed in the curled under ends fashionable. But for whatever can be said about their ultra bubblegum, cringingly cute look, Captain and Tenille made equally as cute yet great Pop records like “Love Will Keep Us Together”, 1975 Record Of The Year, and the evermore schmaltzy “Muscrat Love”, a song with a great melody whose arrangement featured scrunched-up-rat’s-nose synthesized rodent sounds.

This Toni Tennille doll is a “fully poseable fashion doll” that’s 12-1/4 inches tall and features “cut out accessories”, which means you have to cut out cardboard shapes of Elizabeth the bulldog’s bones and bowls and then play with them flat on the table.

Ms. Tenille was made in 1977 by C&T’s own Moonlight and Magnolia, Inc. in association with Mego Corp, maker of some of the most popular and cheesiest dolls of the 1970s as evidenced on the back of the box where photos of other dolls in their TV Starz series feature Tenille’s identical face.

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Vintage 1970’s cardboard Mahalia Jackson church fan, courtesy of the Robert L. Parks Funeral Home of Cedartown, Georgia. When Jackson, the original Queen of Gospel, passed away in 1972 this fan with her likeness, made by the A. Sheer Company, flooded Black churches in America to join the rest of the church fan flock of Martin Luther Kings, sentimental portraits of African-American families and pastoral scenes courtesy of mostly funeral homes, cleaners and and car dealerships.

Church fans are still in heavy use today and Mahalia is still there waving with the best of them.

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How-To--Dominican-BlowoutDoobieAs most of you know by now, I’m one of the few songwriters who loves when their songs are used or performed inappropriately as it turns the songs into masterpieces of Kitsch. I never set out to write Kitsch as I love music too much but if I leave it in the hands of all the people who love to see themselves on YouTube I’m rarely disappointed.

As opposed to a performance, this is someone who’s chosen to verrrry sloooowwwwly show us how to achieve a Dominican hairdo using two Earth Wind & Fire songs as background music, “After The Love Is Gone” and “Boogie Wonderland”, the latter of which I co-wrote and the significance of neither in regards to the the subject matter make any sense.

With pixelated effects that happen in the first few seconds of the video and never occur again in the 9 minutes and 13 torturous seconds it takes to get the damn rollers out and hair wrapped, this is a directorial masterpiece in the filmic language of Kitsch. Among other highlights is that absolutely nothing happens in rhythm to the music, the “wind machine” only functions in one “scene” and the label on a jar of product appears backwards so you can’t possibly see what it is even if you wanted to achieve this look. Also excellent is the fact that ‘doobie’ doesn’t mean what we think it does and is apparently some kind of barrette or bobby pin.

I got excited when it was apparent that the final hairdo was going to look like a Fez. At this point, over 7 minutes in, “Boogie Wonderland” is in full throttle instrumental. That hair should have been whipping around to the strings and horns, combs and doobies flying. But alas, the Fez just gets pulled tighter and tighter, smoother and smoother, totally defying the intention of the music. And why would something be called ‘blowout’ that’s actually deflated and increases in value the flatter it gets?

Even I had trouble making it through to the final strand but from a Kitsch perspective this is a Top 10 hit!

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This thing kills me. Not only does it still reek of the scent of the powder that was pumped into it five decades ago but it exemplifies a common marketing tactic taken by some of the most brilliantly kitschy products when a staunchly middle of the road company attempts to be hip and takes on a pop culture trend. In this case, it’s The Fuller Brush Company attempting to cash in on the folk singing craze of the early 1960s by covering a bath mit in fabric that looks like something that would have been stretched over the armrest of an Ethan Allan Early Americana couch.

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I don’t even know what half of the instruments are let alone what a Declaration of Independence type scroll, leaves or half of the other icons on this have to do with Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary or anyone else who  inspired teenagers and young adults to buy acoustic guitars, don turtlenecks and rip into a chorus of “If I Had A Hammer”.

The box is as brilliant as the mitt. I love the backdrop of musical notes, although I have no idea what the melody is as despite the copious number of hit songs I’ve written I don’t know how to read music. But that story’s for another time. What’s important here is the illustration of a pert and sunny sorority looking girl who’s more apt to be dancing in front of her TV with American Bandstand on than attending a Hootenanny while she’s being serenaded by the Ray-Ban man and  someone else whose pants are way too short.

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Anything that has Disco in the title is assured of shelf space at my place but the fact that the Pegtoy Corp. of Westport Connecticut calls this a “play style” means it gets a nice warm spot up front. With tiny little earplugs that might fit into the ears of an ant and a play cassette as thin as a communion wafer, this Disco Rock Radio has as much chance of actually emitting sound as a Pet Rock.

I especially love that the Disco Rock dancers look more like they’re doing the Riverdance than anything that might’ve gone on at Studio 54. I’m especially fond of the male dancers jumpsuit and high heel cowboy boots.

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Nothing wrong with Roberta Flack (other than so many of her songs were so slooooooooow) and nothing wrong with puzzles. But Roberta Flack so doesn’t seem like the type of celebrity who a puzzle seems the right match for. J.J. Walker maybe, The Partridge Family or Fat Albert, but Roberta Flack?!
Made in 1972 by Let’s Save The Children, Inc., USA, this is one product I’m happy they made so the shape of Roberta’s afro could be preserved forever. I love afros that are round and massive but then the back is sheared as flat as a wall. I also love how the afro on the standup bass player’s head fuses into Roberta’s giving hers that extra oomph at the top.

Nothing wrong with Roberta Flack (other than so many of her songs were so slooooooooow) and nothing wrong with puzzles. But Roberta Flack so doesn’t seem like the type of celebrity who a puzzle seems the right match for. J.J. Walker maybe, The Partridge Family or Fat Albert, but Roberta Flack?!

Made in 1972 by Let’s Save The Children, Inc., USA, this is one product I’m happy they made so the shape of Roberta’s afro could be preserved forever. I love afros that are round and massive but then the back is sheared as flat as a wall. I also love how the afro on the standup bass player’s head fuses into Roberta’s giving hers that extra oomph at the top.

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