Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?

Subject: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Peter T.
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 02:21 PM

As a connoisseur of hilarious liner notes, I recommend (also for friends of Spinal Tap and The Rutles) my new acquistion: "Freddie and the Dreamers: The EP Collection", See For Miles Records Ltd. (SEECD299). The funniest liner notes I have ever read, because they are more or less serious. Only a sample:

1963 Derek Quinn recalls: "Musically we weren't that good. We thought that if we did daft things, it would stop people noticing our faults. People came to see us because Freddy would leap all over the place. We actually got worse because we concentrated too much on the dance routines".

Mitch Murray recalls: "'I'm Telling You Now" was a really bad record, but in those days a song could defeat a really bad record."

Gil King's notes on the first EP contain the implausible observation that "their antics are spontaneous, and not 'stage' in any way." A staple number of their stage act was a cover of the Royal Teens' US success, "Short Shorts". Freddie recalls: "We did a show at the Stockport County Football Club and the other folks wanted something like 'Autumn Leaves'. Someone put a pair of football shorts on the double bass and we remembered the song and went "He wears short shorts". We then started doing it but the song was a load of crap. I'm sorry that I'm stuck with it. People still expect me to do "Short Shorts" but I hate it. I get fed up with pulling my trousers down, although obviously there's a time and place for it."

Another two rock'n'roll favourites from the album found their way onto their "Over You EP". "Kansas City" a US hit for Wilbert Harrison was one. When actor/singer Tim Whitnall was appearing in 'Only In America' he asked the composer Jerry leiber what was so special about Kansas City. "Nothing", replied Leiber, "It's a dump, just a lot of sugar refineries."

Freddie and the Dreamers were featured alongside John Leyton, Mike Sarne and the Mojos in the film "Everyday's A Holiday"(US Title: "Seaside Swingers"), photography by Nicholas Roeg. The promised "16 smash hit numbers" proved to be a hollow boast, but the film was better than "Cuckoo Patrol" in which Freddie and the Dreamers played dim-witted boy scouts.

Freddie Garrity says: "Really, I was born 30 years too late. I should have been in vaudevilled. My all time hero is Al Jolson. He liked to see his audience, and I'm the same. I did a summer season in Blackpool once called 'Jolson Sings Again'. I heard a couple talking on the train, and one of them said -- 'What's Freddy Garrity doing playing Al Jolson? Al Jolson didn't wear glasses!'".

Freddie has maintained his youthful looks and he is proud of his thick curly locks: "Actually, it's hair fusion. People want to see me as I was in 1965, so I've got to look younger. A hair clinic in Rathbone Place made a three foot rung which they then fused to my own hair in eight places. I have to have a haircut every three weeks as my own hair grows and raises the hairpiece."

And so on.... Freddy as a shoe salesman, "Short Shotrs" groupies, the "Manchester sound", pages of it. Priceless. Notes by Spencer Leigh, from BBC Radio Merseyside.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Peter T.
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 02:22 PM

Sorry, should be "rug". Of course!

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Gary T
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 02:43 PM

...he asked the composer Jerry Leiber what was so special about Kansas City. "Nothing", replied Leiber, "It's a dump, just a lot of sugar refineries."

What kind of crap is this? I live in Kansas City (Missouri), and I've never seen one sugar refinery. Hummmph.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Peter T.
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 02:58 PM

I spent much of my childhood in Kansas City! I loved it. I don't remember any refineries either, but it is a good story.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Kim C
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 03:02 PM

Riders in the Sky usually have some pretty good liner notes.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: LR Mole
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 03:20 PM

The notes on the first Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album are fairly intriguing (From memory): "Like a 'trip'...like meeting John Lennon at Disneyland...like your first taste of snails...the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has to be seen to be believed!!!" This was pre-"Will the Circle Be Unbroken",when someone was trying to market them as a sort of psychedelic thing, despite them being basically a West-Coast Kweskin-Band copy, though I believe they were also employing Jackson Browne now and then. Why do I remember this so clearly, when I can't find my boots in the morning?

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: NightWing
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 03:26 PM

Gary T,

I was wondering that myself. Spent six years in KC (all on the Missouri side) and don't recall there being any sugar factories. Maybe he was thinking of Colorado?

BB,
NightWing

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Peter T.
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 03:41 PM

St. Louis, I think. Lots of sugar refineries. Or used to be.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 27 Nov 00 - 11:44 PM

The most hilarious liner notes I've ever encountered have been on albums by the arch-conservative "Up With People" crowd. Every so often I'd dig out my (stolen) copy and re-read the good things said on the back by Pat Boone, Walt Disney, and John Wayne. Flag-waving at it's best.

Rick

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Wavestar
Date: 28 Nov 00 - 01:28 PM

Not folk, but...

From the liner notes of a Type O Negative album _Bloody Kisses_ : Never mistake lack of talent for genius.

Hey - if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

-J

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 02:38 AM

The only note on my LP of a farting competition say's "For Mature People."

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 05:03 AM

I'd have to go with Leo Kottke's first album, "6 and 12 String Guitar". I don't have it in front of me, but there was a line about Kottke's voice, which "sounds like geese farts on a muggy day. Fortunately, Kottke's voice does not appear on this album. His guitar does." (There, how's that for a segue from chanteyranger's post?) I heard an interview with Kottke recently on the online Kent State U. folk radio program (a great site, by the way), and he is still very funny, in a dry and slightly twisted kind of way. And on the same label (Takoma) was the highly inventive and moderately bizarre story on John Fahey's first album. Was it "The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death"? Something like that.

One advantage of LPs (or EPs, as our transatlantic friends say) over CDs, is that you didn't have to break your fingernails trying to get to the liner notes.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 08:46 AM

My favourite nots were from an LP called "Le 5 string banjo par Steve Waring". I do not read French, but the sleeve notes were in some strange form of half-french half-english (what Miles Kington coined as Franglaise). I am sure that the intention was serious, but the overall effect just read as bisarre.
GtD

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: LR Mole
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 09:13 AM

Suddenly realized the NGDB notes said they had to be EXPERIENCED to be believed. After all, what's to see in snails? Also, didn't then-Presidential hopeful Hubert Humphrey write the liner notes to Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover" album?

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 09:59 AM

Another gem from the Freddie album:

Freddie recalls: "After 'If You Gotta Make A Fool of Somebody' we realized that we would have to continue dancing. We were doing 'Bachelor Boy' on stage and we had a routine that depicted a man lifting his feet out of a muddy field. We applied that to 'I'm Telling You Now'. The dance routine made that record because our sound was very thin and weedy."

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Grab
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 10:37 AM

Anyone read the sleeve notes on "Supernatural"? Boy, Carlos Santana is on some serious gear...

Grab.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Marion
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 08:11 PM

I like the Leonard Cohen album where there is a picture on the cover of Leonard dressed up fine, and he notes: "I rarely look this good, or this bad, depending on your politics."

Marion

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 08:48 PM

Marc, "EP" is not a British alternative to "LP". As I recall, an EP (Extended player) had four songs on it, really just an oversized single. Were EP's mot released in the States ?

Murray

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 10:48 PM

No, Murray, not as far as I know. I never knew there was a difference...thanks for another dose of Mudcat enlightenment! Bet we could do a fun thread on audio recording media...my dad used to have a set of 78's that were recorded only on one side. Wonder who first invented the flip side? Speaking of which, does anyone remember that on 45 singles the title of the second song was usually preceded by the cryptic annotation "b/w"? Took me years to figure that one out. OK, OK, I'll creep on out of here.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: ddw
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 11:10 PM

Murray, EPs were definitely issued in the States — I've got several of them from the time we were just switching from 45s to 33 rpms. I'm not sure if it's what the record companies intended, but I always thought it was an attempt to sell records to people like me who couldn't always afford whole albums. At the time 45s sold for about 50 cents and albums were about $2. EPs, some of which had six songs in the days when LPs almost always had 12 or 14, sold for about a buck.

david

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: ddw
Date: 29 Nov 00 - 11:15 PM

I notice Mark says he never saw them — which makes me suspect he's a little younger than I am. They were on the market in the late '50s and early '60s. Something else that I didn't mention — some EPs were in the 45 format and others were 33s. I've got both.

david

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: BigDaddy
Date: 30 Nov 00 - 01:08 AM

For some fun, off the wall liner notes check out Fairport Convention's "Full House," and Steeleye Span's "Below The Salt."

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 Nov 00 - 11:02 AM

what does b/w stand for? By the way? yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: drew nelson
Date: 30 Nov 00 - 11:59 AM

The Kottke album is indeed world-class, but is eclipsed by the notes to Blodwyn Pig's first album "Ahead Rings Out." The cover features a pig wearing headphones, sunglasses, and smoking a handrolled something. I don't have the liner notes handy, but they're pretty bizarre--deliberately so--in kind of a Mark Leyner way. And if you haven't read Leyner, run out and get a copy of "Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog," tout sweet.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 30 Nov 00 - 06:06 PM

John Fahey's booklet with his album about the gretchells (can't remember the name) have my vote. Oh, and the Volunteers cover, with its strange patriotic American family.

Subject: RE: Funniest Liner Notes Ever!?
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Nov 00 - 06:11 PM

backed with (this is short for "the title of the song on the flip side of the 45 is as follows:")

Alex