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28Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Pigmy Will in “Chainsaw Hair Salon”

28Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Pigmy Will in “Chainsaw Hair Salon”

For any of you reading this who might not know “Pigmy Will” because this is the first animated one of the under-60-seconds series we’ve done in quite a while, it’s a horribly drawn/ much beloved chronicle of Pigmy Will, a diminutive yet eternally optimistic being whose best friends with a palm tree named Feathers and a pineapple on a tricycle named Whiska. They’re all the creations of me and Prudence Fenton, much more heavily tilted toward the latter, who IS Pigmy Will as she possesses an unnatural ability to thrust her voice into the ozone and come out with a sound that makes dogs hide under the nearest couch. If you remember the hi-pitched voice of the flowers in the window box in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse that was Prudence (who also created Penny). We write these, record them, voice them, score them, direct them and work with our animator, Alfonso, and engineer, Scott, to finish them. Here are two of my favorite “Pigmy Will”s:

“See My Dive”…

…and “The Counter”

Usually Pigmy Will appears twice daily as a still on his Facebook pages as well as on pigmywill.com, which we really just use as an archive. Both Prudence and I are fanatic photo takers so the Pigmy finds himself, Feathers and Whiska in a variety of exotic locales and situations. These aren’t even my favorites and none of them show off his foreign travels but they were sitting in an open folder so I just grabbed them to give you some idea:

I just realized that none of these stills contain Feathers or Whiska so am giving them their close-ups now.

Feathers…

…and Whiska:

I asked Pigmy Will where he’s taking all of this and here’s what he said: “I’m available for TV, film, magazine, newspaper and web syndication, coffee mugs, washrags, salt ‘n pepper shakers, sneakers, flip-flops, T-shirts, night shirts, hair shirts, hats, goggles, intimates, lamps, rugs, shower curtains, tricycles, surfboards, cutting boards, pie franchisings, and TicTac spokesman.”

Deet deet deet deet!

27Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Mr. T A-Team Transistor Radio

27Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Mr. T A-Team Transistor Radio

mr-T-radio_4616

I was never into The A-Team when it came out in the 1980’s. But lately, as I flip through channels in the wee hours of the morning trying to find something to fall asleep to, I’ve gotten completely obsessed with the reruns on Centric. I love all the low camera angles as truck tires screech by and slam dirt into the camera and explosions blow up right in your face. The direction has a clear POV and things that hover near the ground get as many close-ups as the actors do. And, of course, there’s always Mr. T, whose memorabilia I’ve slowly but surely collected over the years – banks, gold chain bubblegum, coloring books, puffy stickers, lunchboxes, air fresheners, and this Mr. T radio I recently received as a gift.

I have no idea what the significance of the shape is but I love that there’s a wrist strap so Mr. T can always swing by my side.

I’m one of the few songwriter/musician types who actually loves to hear their own music coming out of something as lo fi as this. In the old days, before the mid ’90s, it was imperative to listen to mixes of your songs over really crappy speakers so you could hear them as the average person was going to hear them. Most people, including myself, had little Auratone speakers in their recording studios, all in an effort to hear which instruments and vocals were audible and which weren’t in case someone was still pumping the sound out of one of these little Mr. T-like pocket jobs. Here I am in my studio in 1981 with one of my Auratones.

To test how a record would sound out of a more expensive radio, I had my first boombox, the heavier-than-a-bowling-ball/ first-of-its-kind stereo Sony cassette player that all the guys in Earth, Wind & Fire had the day I met them and started “September”. I bought myself one the next day, a huge extravaganza as I was broke, but it felt like the musical waters were shifting and I was on the brink of my first hit so the purchase felt justified. So as soon as I’d finish a mix I’d listen to it coming out of the Aurotones, then I’d pop a cassette of it into the fancy Sony and, last but not least, if I had any way of rigging an input into one of my transistor radios, I’d listen on that. Just to the other side of the Auratone in the photo was my collection of vintage transistor radios. It’s not a tragedy that they’re out of camera range as Mr. T was not yet among them. These, however, were:

By comparison, my Mr. T radio is pretty down and dirty basic. It doesn’t have fancy rhinestone eye dials like the owl or a wing that lifts to reveal the speaker like the ladybug. But it does come with a belt clip, which would be an excellent feature were it not for the fact that by using it the speaker holes would be jammed up against your body muffling what little sound this thing puts out in the first place.

These days people own Mr. T Flavorwave Turbo Ovens. I’m content with my 1983 A-Team radio and reruns.

27Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 7

27Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 7

The kids at Fairview High do a noble job of singing and a much more ambitious job dancing than a lot of other high schools I’ve seen do “September” on Youtube. But, as the Grand Pooh Bah of Kitsch, the standout for me is the performance by the horn section. Either someone didn’t do their homework before they came to band practice or they’re just plain tone deaf. What it really sounds like to me is that the horn players got the big riffs down after the choruses and just figured they could coast through the single note accents. Which would have been fine had they managed to find the key. Far be it for me to not encourage someone to go farther in music because they’re un-schooled. I still don’t know how to read, notate or play a note of music, including “September” and anything else I’ve written, so I’m all in favor of doing it just for the love of it. I’m just sayin’, the horns are a standout, wayyyyy stand out.

For a more through exploration of my “365 Days Of September” mission as well as details of how the song was written, go here. Until tomorrow, ba-de-ya!

26Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 6

26Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 6

The Bakersfield High School Chorale is much more in tune and way more in the swing than most high school groups I’ve seen who attempt “September”. Whoever wrote the school chorale arrangement they all seem to sing felt the urge to throw in an abnormal amount of distinctively Caucasian “hey, hey, hey’s” as well as some very-suburban-no-soul-within-ear-range harmonies. Thankfully, the Bakersfield High School Chorale limit the “heys” to the intro and actually sound good despite the liberties taken with the harmonies and chords. I also love how excited the audience gets over the “ba doo doo’s” at the end of each chorus. I do have one question about the lyric though. Having written it, I know that the third verse begins “Now December brought the love that we shared in September/ ONLY BLUE TALK AND LOVE, remember…” yet these kids sing ” was it Jew taught me love, remember” or maybe they’re saying ” was it you taught me love, remember”? Either way it’s wrong. So I wish that the person who was hired to write the arrangement all these high schools sing would think of themselves more as a transcriber than a co-author, especially if they get the gig on another one of my songs. In the meantime, enjoy the best version of the corrupted arrangement I’ve seen so far – The Bakersfield High School Chorale.

For a more through exploration of my “365 Days Of September” mission as well as details of how the song was written, go here. Until tomorrow, ba-de-ya!

26Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bagels and lox in Texas, 1979

26Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bagels and lox in Texas, 1979

license-plate---bagel_3066

Every Sunday morning growing up the ritual was to go with my dad to the deli and buy bagels, lox, cream cheese, tomatoes, onions and white fish, the latter of which I never liked but all the foodstuffs named prior to it remain my favorite meal in life. The smell of bagels toasting in the kitchen, especially on Sunday, has remained intoxicating to me ever since. Had I lived in Texas in 1979 I would only hope that this would’ve been the license plate slapped on the front of my ’55 DeSoto. Seeing as it belonged to someone else I can only assume they had similar such love for the Jewish baked good by giving it such props as to adorn their car with it.

These days their license plate, acquired on Ebay, hangs in my kitchen over the toaster and has lots bagel friendly kitchen utensils to bond with, like this bagel knife and cream cheese spreader.

I don’t know why bagels always look so fake on bagel themed items. Like what’s the yellow ooze melting out around the cream cheese?

I’ve always thought that the bagels on this oven mitt look burnt, more like bagel chips than their legitimate older brother bagel self.

I think my matzoh oven mitt looks much more realistic.

I’m so completely exhausted by the activities of the last week, which included not only the release of my thankfully amazingly viral video, “Jungle Animal” by Pomplamoose and Allee Willis, but rehearsing conducting an imaginary 300 piece marching band in front of 82,000 imaginary people to get ready for my trip in a week and a half to my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, where the real 300 strong marching band is going to play three of my songs, “September”, “Boogie Wonderland” – both hits in 1979 when this BAGLS license plate hung on a car from which these songs were most likely pouring out of the radio – and “I’ll Be There for You (the theme from Friends)”, as I conduct them in front of 82,000 real people at the Homecoming football game. You would think that this would come natural to the writer of the songs, and bouncing around to them certainly does, but I don’t read a stitch of music, and marching band versions differ from the records, and I’m going to conduct them two separate times, first at the tailgate party and then inside the stadium to kick off the show. So I intend to spend a large chunk of the day today making sure I have all the accents down cold.

As my normal Sunday stay-at-home routine is either to hunch over my computer barely moving as I catch up on work, or to lie in bed watching TV, even thinking about the amount of exercise I’m going to get from conducting makes me hungry. So I’m going to do warm up exercises – I’m going to stand up, stretch, walk into the kitchen and work my upper arm muscles by sawing through some bagels, stretch my arms by reaching for the toaster and give my lats a workout by using the fake bagel looking cream cheese spreader to smooth a layer of the white stuff across insides of the bagels once they’re toasted, and then repeat the entire exercise again. Then I’m going to take what will probably be a long hike around my house to find the two missing bagel salt shakers that go with these two loyal bagel pepper shakers.

It’s going to be a bagel kind of day.

25Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 5

25Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 5

Asian mariachi version titled “HALF OF CHEWING GUM BAND INSTRUMENTAL” by Nino, Chino and Paulo. They actually play it great despite the fact that a song consists of more than an intro. If it were me I’d squeeze in one more stringed instrument and move on to the verse and chorus. I always love when musicians play the melody in their head and assume the audience can hear it.

sept-http-www.youtube.comwatch-v=NnfSD-dcd_A

For a more through exploration of my “365 Days Of September” mission as well as details of how the song was written, go here. Until tomorrow, ba-de-ya!

24Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 4

24Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 4

The Vertigo inducing ‘can I offer you some strobe?’ lighting and overuse of a smoke machine provide the perfect environment for “Margarita and the boys”, some of whom are clearly girls, to dance to “September” on this, Day 4 of the 365 day YouTube marathon. In searching for people “borrowing” my song “royalty free”, I can’t believe how many line dances there are to it. I always thought line dances were for country songs but now I know that line dances are for happy songs.

For a more through exploration of my “365 Days Of September” mission as well as details of how the song was written, go here. Until tomorrow, ba-de-ya!

23Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Tiger Paw Vibrating Back Scratcher

23Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Tiger Paw Vibrating Back Scratcher

backscratcher-tiger_2433

I used to love back scratchers as a kid, the long skinny brittle plastic kind that the hand snapped off of if you jerked them along your back too fast. I always loved the little lifelike looking clawed hands, fingers curled for maximum scratching action. I remember the first time I saw one of the battery-operated ones. I had already been made aware of similar looking battery-operated things though those didn’t have aluminum arms and teeny little hands attached to them. And none of them were near as elegant as this tiger skinned vibrating gadget.

One of my favorite things was that the little hands and fingers had such incredible detail to them. From a Kitsch POV, I like this one even better because in order to make it look like a tiger paw, the fingers have taken on the look of little kernels of corn and the palm looks like it has a big blister in the middle of it.

Once assembled, the tiger paw back scratcher is almost 18 inches long.

The base of it is really heavy, making it uncomfortable to scratch yourself for too long.

I haven’t interacted with my vibrating cordless electric Tiger Paw in quite a few years. I really only stumbled across it because I was combing through my decades-old-and-counting Kitsch kollection looking for jungle themed items to go along with my just released “Jungle Animal” song, video and game with Pomplamoose that’s racked up over 80,000 views on YouTube in less than two days.

I’ve spent the last few months working on this thing, hunched over my desk, breaking my back. So the Tiger Paw is going to stay close at hand now and keep me company as I can definitely use a good scratch every now and then.

23Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 3

23Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 3

How happy am I that neither rain, sleet nor snow could keep the Kennett High School Marching Band from playing my song, “September” back in January of 2007?! I’ve been especially aggressive tracking down marching bands playing “September” as in a couple of weeks I have the great honor of conducting the University of Wisconsin marching band at the Homecoming halftime game when they play three of my hits, “September”, “In The Stone”, an Earth, Wind & Fire song that has grown to mythical proportions in marching band repertoires, and ” I’ll Be There for You (the theme from Friends)”, which I have no idea as to why it’s on the program when “Boogie Wonderland” or even “Neutron Dance” would seem more appropriate to drum the spirits up for the big game.

http-www.youtube.comwatch-v=_4EqFuZbu1M&feature=related-sept

Despite the fact that I (co) wrote everything, I can’t read music and thought that maybe if I watched a few marching bands play the songs it might better prepare me as these arrangements always differ slightly from the records. I’m not sure how much I can really learn from the Kennett High band other than to always wear galoshes in inclement weather and to remember to practice so I can hit the notes. I will say that the rain makes an excellent percussive intro.

For a more through exploration of my “365 Days Of September” mission as well as details of how the song was written, go here. Until tomorrow, ba-de-ya!

22Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 2

22Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 2

Yesterday marked the first day of my year-long series featuring YouTube videos with people singing, playing, marching to, dancing to, massacring, auditioning with, acting idiotic in the presence of and otherwise performing my very first hit song, “September“. For a more through exploration of my “365 Days Of September” mission as well as details of how the song was written, go here. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy The Davis High Jazz Choir’s performance of the song, especially the choreography, as much as I do. Babeya!