There has never been a recording artist quite like Marcy Tigner. Equal parts gospel singer, children's entertainer, amateur ventriloquist, and cottage industry, during the 1960s and 1970s Tigner released some 40-odd LPs, books, toys, and souvenirs showcasing the devoutly Christian messages she transmitted via her impossibly high, childlike singing voice and her impossibly freaky ventriloquist dummy Little Marcy.

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http://www.weirdomusic.com/artists/littlemarcy.htm

Say you've read some Williams James and you want to see God on nitrous oxide, too. Why should the father of modern psychology have all of the sacred fun, after all? What music will give you that right lift, that selfless synergy with the One? Or perhaps you are so abject as to be committing brain-cell genocide with some low-deadly inhalent, seeking some hole of thanatopsis into which to crawl. Where are your huffin' rag blues? Where is your chorus-line of dancing temple-monkeys? Your long, frenetic stock-car race of the soul?

Huffin' Rag Blues, the latest release from Nurse With Wound, is an album-length meditation/deconstruction of source material that has inspired Stephen Stapleton for decades: lounge music. Fans of Enoch Light, The Three Suns, Esquivel, Edmundo Ros and Ray Martin, among others too plentiful to name here, will love this disc. Those ignorant or dismissive of such influences and their deeply experimental roots may feel as lukewarm as some critics have been in their reception of this album. Sure, by this time there has been an abundance of experimental and plunderphonic "bachelor pad jazz" reworkings, notably the Organ Transplant discs from Stock, Hausen & Walkman and the cartoonish jazz detonations of J.G. Thirwell's Steroid Maximus releases. The challenge for an avant weirdo artiste like Stapleton is to riff on source material that is already deeply and irrevocably bizarre and experimental in its own right. He does this with loving care, in wonderful hebephrenic stereo.

Granted, Huffin' Rag Blues has its problems. Lynn Jackson's vocals on a few tracks are lackluster and patience trying. Some have criticized the album for sounding too produced, apparently ignorant that such hyper-production, with its attendant gimmickry, is typical of the this venerable genre and entirely appropriate for a tribute/send-up/riff. Sadly, it seems ironic that Stapleton's greatest departure in years is being lambasted for not sounding enough like other NWW releases, though alleged purists may take comfort from the epic "The Funktion of the Hairy Egg," which is gorgeously freaky and builds into a psychotomimetic stampede of wildlife, including some wild-assed goat bleats presumably recorded live at Stapleton's Coolorta, Ireland goat farm.

Stephen Stapleton, Andrew Liles, Frida Abtan, Colin Potter, Diana Rogerson and Peat Bog, among many others have created something wonderful here, an unlikely hybrid of sophistication and chaos. Those ostensible hipsters who only know "bachelor pad jazz" from its faddish and shallow revival in the '90s may scratch their uglies in befuddlement at this release. For a disc jockey who has been mixing Nurse With Wound and Stereo Action-style releases for a couple of decades, it seems like a natural development. Just as Angelo Badalamenti employed similar sounds from earlier decades as a springboard to create progressive, experimental soundtracks, Stapleton and company have cooked up a lounge sound for the new millennium, a shiny monument to future possibilities of Dadacoustics and Cacaphonics.

- Steve Aydt

More reviews here.

Hi everyone,

Two new reviews have been added to Weirdomusic.com:

Andrew Liles & Jean-Hervé Peron - Fini!
http://www.weirdomusic.com/reviews/andrewliles.htm

T.A.G.C - Digitaria
http://www.weirdomusic.com/reviews/tagc.htm

The complete reviews index can be found here:
http://www.weirdomusic.com/reviews.htm

best wishes,
Marco

Various Artists - Good for what ails you: Music of the medicine shows 1926-1937
(Old Hat Records/Enterprises, 2005)

Harry Smith, consummate hipster, occultist and field-recording anthologist, is credited by some with lighting the fuse that detonated the first wave of Punk rock with his Smithsonian Anthology of American Music. A weirdo by any standard, Smith maintained that the strangest, most vibrant American music was that from the dawn of electronic recording history. It's no exaggeration to suggest that this 2-CD anthology, with 48 songs and a vibrant 78-page (a single page for every revolution it takes to spin that old Shellac), History of the Medicine Shows, is the most likely heir to Smith's rich legacy. Like Punk, these old cuts are often politically incorrect, raw, perverse, utopian and funny as hell.

Welcome to the lost world of root doctors, pitchmen, minstrels with bootblack faces, rubes, sharps and Johnsons. While their Elixir Vitae may have been little more than granny's grain alcohol laced with cocaine or laudanum, the absolutely true (and spurious!) tonic secret of eternal youth was in the scratchy cuts, cats. Step up and lend an ear! You ma'am- you look as though you have a bad case of what the Greeks called electronica. Take these two discs and spin them daily. Let those 78 RPM scratches smooth the wrinkles on your agitated cerebellum. Hark to songs about resurrection, insurrection, miracle cures, horny heathens, stubborn mules,wayward pussies and Jimbo-Jambo Land (shut up, kid- I had a layover there)! Don't make me chase you with the bald-headed end of a broom, lady! Step up and hear the miracle! Tar-heels, Skillet-Lickers, Georgia Crackers and the giddily-named Johnson-Nelson-Porkchop are ready to shake your ragged soul until it shines like the seat of your pants. Pass those fins to the front! Waste no time in getting the finest 'tween wars collection of eccentricities to ever percolate down the pike. Things just ain't this weird no more. Tell 'em the New Lowdown sent you.

- Steve Aydt

More reviews on http://www.weirdomusic.com/reviews.htm

New free download on WM Recordings:

So, you really like Weirdomusic.com? You think the site looks great, don’t you? And that downloads page is really something, huh?

But hmmm, the reviews section isn’t updated very often, is it? And where are those long-promised artist bio’s?

Well, we think our site could use a bit more quality content, and that’s where YOU come in! Do you want to review the latest Jandek album? Or that cool Martin Denny record from 1959?

Weirdomusic is looking for reviewers and writers who would like to contribute some stuff every once in a while. We won’t make you rich, but your writings will be seen by lots of people and we’ll link to your website, blog or whatever.

So, if you’re interested, please drop us a line (either through MySpace or by mailing to marco@weirdomusic.com).

Hope to hear from you!

best wishes,
Marco
webmaster Weirdomusic.com