More Ark Music Factory "artists."

So after diving ankle-deep into Rebecca Black's abysmal "Friday," I had a look at the other silly little girls making "music" thanks to Ark Music Factory. The company's name is apt, as each of these songs is interchangeable with more than a couple featuring the "ARK" name intoned at the beginning of the fricking song.

Which leads me to ask, if you're the rich-ass parents of these kids sending them off to record shitty music in hopes that you can then ride their coattails to fame and fortune, why the hell would you pay to have a song written and recorded that does nothing but promote the so-called "label" (which it isn't) in the actual song? All I can say is please stop wasting your money, even if you have it to waste. Your kids aren't going to make it like this. If they have real talent, help them nurture it and encourage it, but don't go whoring them out just because the music business is currently in its death throes and will give head to anything with an auto-tuned vocal in it. That's part of the reason why the biz is in the shitter. But you wouldn't know anything about that because you're too eager to cash in your own kid's happiness for your gain. Fuck all y'all.

Anyway, here's four more terrible Ark products for you to compare. Alana Lee's "Butterflies," Abby Victor's "Crush On You," and Sarah Maugaotega's "Take It Easy." Then get ready to top it off with the frightening "Ordinary Pop Star" sun by CJ Fam. One of the YouTube commenters writes, "This is the next radio masterpiece. soon everyone will know of CJ's true skill. I have heard this girl sing live, she is no fake.  The real deal."

"True skill"? More like true disaster. Enjoy your parents' dementia, kids.

That whole Rebecca Black and her "Friday" thing.

I know. Another blogger talking about this chick who really can't sing at all and her terrible song that her mom lovingly got for her to record and the evil Ark music dudes who are going to reap the "benefit." Well, this isn't about all those things, per se.

What it is about is the video of Rebecca appearing on Good Morning America performing the song. And it's not so much the song I want you to focus on the people in her band and the dude who gives the high-five to someone off camera after the second round of "partyin'" or whatever the hell that bit is.

Was the high-five really done as some sort of gesture of "Yeah we did it!" mentality, or was it more of a "Yeah, I can't believe this garbage is really popular!"? Whatever the case may be, I seriously need to start figuring out how I can literally become famous overnight on YouTube and finally make my fortune.

Camel Ike podcast births again!

I'm a couple days late posting about it here. Yes, what kind of blogsmith am I, right? But, feel free to head on over to the Camel Ike podcast page for another groovy episode of music to dig. Rock on.

I have finally seen the worst movie ever.

People love movies that are so bad they're good. Two of my faves are The Van featuring Danny DeVito and nobody else and Stallone's Cobra, which has dialogue you can quote for years. I'll also throw in Vanilla Ice's abysmal Cool As Ice and From Justin to Kelly. These are the the kinds of bad flicks you can laugh at and enjoy.

But over the course of yesterday and today, I finally watched what I consider to be the worst movie I believe I will ever see, and it wasn't funny at all in a bad/good way. That it was supposed to be funny makes it even more painful. Ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking about the crap pile known as National Lampoon Goes to the Movies (a.k.a. National Lampoon's Movie Madness).

The culprit.

Now I haven't had faith in anything National Lampoon in ages. Would it be fair to say that European Vacation was the last truly funny film cranked out by said factory? At least I can say I grew up in a time when you could rely on the magazine still being amusing and getting to enjoy such flicks as Animal House and the first couple of Vacation movies. But this one was actually released in 1981 - straight to video - because the reviews were so terrible that MGM/UA didn't see any point in torturing the country with it.

Not good in anything.

So let me just list some of the things that are in this movie. Basically, the flick is made up of three short films, each parodying a certain genre. None of them are good or work. See if any of these items strike you as even mildly entertaining:

A guy makes his wife leave so they can both "grow." She becomes successful while he becomes a plant doctor and loses some of his kids along the way.

Gang rape by old dudes with sticks of butter.

A serial killer who leaves copies of his driver's license on all his victims' bodies.

Joint smoking, liquor swigging cops.

Robby Benson.

Henny Youngman doing his "Take my wife, please" routine yet again.

Rhea Pearlman in a cameo as a prostitute.

Peter Riegert having an affair with a 14-year-old Diane Lane.

Ann Dusenberry once again looking like a lost Gyllenhaal and wasting time in another "racy" flick.

Christopher Lloyd and Robby Benson singing "Feelings."

Richard Widmark cashing in with no payoff.

Oh, Robby.

I tell you, this movie is plain shit. I got to abuse myself with it thanks to it being OnDemand (TM). It was so bad I had to break it up over two days, and it's not even 90 minutes long. I literally fell asleep during the last 15 minutes or so. I thought I had seen bad National Lampoon flicks before, like any number of the one's they're still churning out these days, or even stuff from back in the '80s like O.C. and Stiggs, but this outdoes them all.

Not even Teresa "Goin' my way?" Ganzel's bare tits can save the day. And if anything, this movie solidified my belief that Ann Dunsenberry is one of the worst actresses of all-time. If you've never seen Basic Training, consider yourself lucky. That was another OnDemand disaster she was in. It also had Rhonda Shear. Ugh.

You can't spell "groovy" without two Cheerios.

Hey man, do you know where the kids score Cheerios around here?  Man, I heard they can make you feel "groovy."  You know I'm into any far-out trip like that, man.  The kids are really with it these days, too.  If it weren't for LSD, draft dodging, and Steppenwolf, who knows what the youth movement may have become?  Probably no movement at all, man.  Anyway, let me know about those groovy Cheerios, because I got the message.  The hidden message, man.  It's all right here:

"Crosby"

"Crosby"

all you could say
was "john lennon".
man, what the hell
were you on?

crawlin' around
with a joint clenched
between your teeth
dude, what were you thinking?

you almost cut your hair
but instead you freaked out
boatloads of blow
so déjà vu

when jon lovitz
portrayed you as a
burnt out freak
on saturday night live
i laughed hard

(c) 2001 by Jason Thompson

The Pink Floyd I love.

That good time band, Pink Floyd!

I don't give a crap about Syd Barrett. I never have, and I never will. I think the music Pink Floyd recorded with him, save for a couple of tracks was nothing comparable to what they did after her fried his brain with acid and was booted from the group. And rightly so. Who would want to be dragged down by someone who can't get their shit together when there are untold fortunes to be reaped? So all the fans can go and and keep clamoring about his "mad genius" and all. You can keep it. Dave Gilmour knew how to rock and that was that.

Of course, my vote for fave Pink Floyd album is one that the band itself hates. Ranks it right down there with Ummagumma. Now, I dig the live portion of that album, but I'm fully with the Floyd in dismissing the studio half as crap. But really, I'm not sure if any other band at the time had as an interesting a trajectory to superstardom the way Pink Floyd had, what with the personnel changes, oddball movie soundtracks and general finding themselves. It's true that Syd had a huge influence on them and left them at a loss as to what to do after his ousting, but nonetheless it made for interesting listening.

But my pick for favorite Floyd LP is the very first one I ever heard. Once again, I was a young kid, and I can't recall if I was in school yet or not. If I was, it had to have only been kindergarten or first grade. Anyway, I would often beg my older brother to give me any albums he no longer wanted as I got tired of listening to my kiddie records pretty quickly and wanted some real music.

So one day he hands me Atom Heart Mother.

It had a lovely cow on the front, and a few more on the back. You opened it up and there was a black and white picture of more cows in a pasture. I read the song titles. I saw that the first side was just a big piece and had portions titled "Breast Milky" and "Funky Dung." Even at that age, I knew what that all meant, so it seemed like it was going to be weird.

I recall dropping the needle on it for the first time and distinctly thinking that it sounded like some kind of outer space music. Indeed, I wound up taping the album and taking it outside to the back yard where my swingset was. I played it as I swung about, listening to the "Atom Heart Mother Suite" and pretending that I was on some spaceship exploring the galaxies.

Funny how I learned later when I officially "got into" the band that some of what they did was indeed termed "space rock."

I enjoyed the second side of songs as well, especially Rick Wright's "Summer '68." I found the weirdo sounds of the faceless man scarfing his cereal like a pig on "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" to be repulsive and funny. It was an album I would regularly spin.

The think tank thinking it over.

But after a while I sort of forgot about it, and it wasn't until that I became enamored with everything Pink Floyd via Dark Side of the Moon in my teen years that I revisited it. At that point, I found that I really loved Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun," which seemed to strike some deep resonance in me at age 16. So again I thought this was pretty wonderful yet was always surprised to read that the band members hated it. Apparently they thought it was recorded "in a rush" and that it didn't really work. But I always thought it was groovy. I still do. I'll take the suite any day over Meddle's "Echoes," too.

At any rate, Pink Floyd may have wound up making albums after Atom Heart Mother that they liked more, or sold in the zillions, or were technically cooler, but I'll always have a soft spot for those damned cows. As a final note, I also remember feeling really weird the first time I heard Roger Waters sing the line "If I go insane, please don't put your wires in my brain." Yeah, they never did get away from Syd, did they?