Disc 14 / 48

Timothology:  Strange Aeons Disc 14 / 48
Theme:  Gimmick songs
Label phrase:  "Confuse the man who is mad at you!"

01)  You've Got to Have a Gimmick Today / The Checkmates
02)  Kargyraa Moan / Paul Pena
03)  Rockit / Herbie Hancock
04)  Stout Hearted Men / Shooby Taylor
05)  The Martian Hop / The Ran-Dells
06)  Wipeout / The Fat Boys with The Beach Boys
07)  Witch Doctor / David Seville
08)  Ready to Rock / Pianosaurus
09)  Rat a Tat Tat, America / Dick Kent
10)  Underwater / The Frogmen
11)  This Beat Goes On / The Kings
12)  Switchin' to Glide / The Kings
13)  99 Luftballoons / Nena
14)  Forward to Death / Nomeansno
15)  Chacarron... Macarron / La Yanta
16)  No Better Than This / John Mellencamp
17)  Little Red Monkey / Frank Chacksfield's Tunesmiths
18)  Hey Jude / The Templeton Twins
19)  Let's Twist Again / Chubby Checker
20)  Uncontrollable Urge / Devo 2.0
21)  Philosophy of the World / The Shaggs
22)  Lawnmower / Los Straitjackets
23)  A Glorious Dawn / Carl Sagan
24)  The Elements / Tom Lehrer
25)  Telstar / Joseph Welz
26)  Math Song / Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
27)  I Can Hear You / They Might Be Giants
28)  Free As a Bird / The Beatles

This disc was a lot of fun to compile--each track has a gimmick; some kind of novelty value to it that was meant to give it a leg up in the marketplace of ideas (or at least the top 40 charts, for the tracks that were meant to chart).

In order, they are:

01)  Joe Meek's follow up to "Telstar"; other record producers claimed he was just using a bunch of gimmicks to hit #1 with a record he cut in the kitchen of his flat. So he made this record, a three minute middle finger to other producers and artists that he felt weren't giving him enough credit. He mentions them by name and makes fun of their standard bags of production tricks to boot.

02)  Paul Pena was a blind blues guitarist who taught himself Tuvan throat singing after hearing it on the radio and becoming fascinated with the art form. He competed in the Tuvan national throat singing competition and was nicknamed "Earthquake" by a vastly appreciative audience.

03)  This is the song where ten million white kids first heard record scratching. Herbie Hancock was a jazz musician primarily, but with this track he brought hip-hop culture to millions of previously boring suburban homes.

04)  Shooby Taylor paid a fly-by-night recording studio in New York City to tape his self-taught scat singing over tapes. The engineers taped it for their own amusement and it crawled out to the tape-trading scene from there. He is having more fun than anyone ever has singing this.

05)  Beeping sound effects at the start and finish! Goofy voices! A dance craze song! The noises at the beginning are "pure hemi-sync tones" according to the liner notes of the Rhino Records science fiction box set. Whatever that means.

06)  Bubblegum rap with a guest appearance by the Beach Boys.

07)  Goofy sped-up voices thanks to playing around with the tape speed (later to be monetized by Ross Bagdasarian (a/k/a David Seville) with the Chipmunks.

08)  Pianosaurus was a band that used children's toy instruments.

09)  Song-Poems are a mutant art form in which people who don't know what they're doing send in poems to scammers who tell them that they're bound for Hollywood songwriting stardom if they cough up 200 bucks for one (1) copy of their song. Dick Kent is one of the people who makes a living recording song-poems for the naïve and desperate. Honestly I think he's got a nice voice.

10)  That croaking sound? It's a guiro, a percussion instrument that helped this song be the first surf track to chart in the hot 100 (at #93, in 1961).

11)  "This Beat Goes On" and "Switching to Glide" were released as a single where the A and B side were two halves

12)  of the same song, requiring radio stations to play both halves together. Which was a way to double royalties and halve chart performance.

13)  This track was released in English and German simultaneously. I used the foreign-language version because it's more exotic. Like "Sukiyaki" back in the sixties.

14)  A capella cover of the Dead Kennedys? Sure thing.

15)  If you believe what you read, this track happened because the rapper had a backing track and a chorus but hadn't thought of any lyrics. The engineers said his nonsense space-filler syllables sounded fine--probably while trying not to laugh--and it was released as a single. Which turned out to be a smash hit.

16)  This song was recorded in mono with a portable tape recorder in the same room in the Sheraton Gunter Hotel that Robert Johnson recorded "Sweet Home Chicago".

17)  This is the first pop song to use the clavioline, the battery-powered keyboard most notable for its use in "Telstar" by the Tornados.

18)  "This sounds like they recorded it in 1910 or so" is a gimmick.

19)  Going back to the well--Chubby Checker made a sequel song to his original smash hit, "The Twist".

20)  For some reason, a music manager at Disney thought that preadolescent children singing Devo's songs of lust, alienation, and frustrated hatred about American civilization would be a good idea.

21)  The Shaggs practiced for years with each other and not with anyone that could teach them to play their instruments. Or even tune them. They have a sound that is utterly unique, completely naïve and unlike anything else you're ever gonna hear.

22)  This song features a one-string guitar.

23)  Snippets of audio from the "Cosmos" series and AutoTune mean that Carl Sagan's singing a track about the vastness and wonder of the universe from beyond the grave.

24)  The lyrics to this song are the periodic table (out of order, so it will rhyme).

25)  Snippets of news reports and mentions of the Telstar satellite are sampled for this cover of "Telstar".

26)  The lyrics of this song were an equation (with "solve for degrees, not radiens" after it) in the liner notes to the album.

27)  They Might Be Giants recorded this song at the Edison laboratory on a wax cylinder, using no electricity (and without electric instruments).

28)  The surviving Beatles finished a John Lennon vocal track for this one. I figure it's as good a way to finish the disc as any, and honestly it's quite a decent tune. "New Beatles Song" is a hell of a gimmick.