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Weird as fuck songs

Started by Nice Relaxing Poo, June 07, 2019, 08:16:23 PM

Previous topic - Next topic
I don't necessarily mean abstract noise or try hard craziness, I mean songs that were earnestly created but ended up for whatever reason being strange, weird or unsettling.


Let's start with L Ron Hubbard's- Thank You For Listening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTUhN__FRk

As someone in the comments says, he sounds like Leonard Nimoy on Quaaludes and the backing sounds like a stock song from a cheap Bontempi organ. This song is from a classic album of Scientology songs called The Road to Freedom with contributions from John Travolta and Sly Stallone's brother.

JesusAndYourBush

I've heard that before (as a tiny realaudio file on a Geocities page), but nice to hear it again in decent quality.
The last verse sums up Scientology in a nutshell!

OMG this is nuts!...
L. Ron Hubbard - Space Jazz (1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbNaqh4PLME

purlieu

Quote from: Nice Relaxing Poo on June 07, 2019, 08:16:23 PM
Let's start with L Ron Hubbard's- Thank You For Listening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTUhN__FRk
'You're My Best Friend' by Queen sung by a half-asleep Paul Robeson.

My vote goes for Leonard Nimoy's 'The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins'. I have no idea who thought these chords would sound playful, but the chorus resolves really horribly and it ends up sounding sinister in a really queasy way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC35cQKHwzg

Sin Agog

So genuine Outsider Artists, going in with the intention of making popular music, but who broadcast on such a strange bandwidth that this was never on the cards for them?

I'll nominate Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson Parker and her public health warnings about the dangers of mosquitos (our cousins): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QHeeYDwYqZs

a duncandisorderly

L Ron owned a mellotron which, I believe, is still the property of his 'church' & exhibited somewhere.

weird as fuck songs that were hits? or not?
because close to the top of my list of the former would be "macarthur park", by the genius jimmy webb, who also managed to write a hit song about a comms engineer, lest we forget.

BJBMK2

Guess it doesn't so much count as a "song", but Shooby Taylor (The Human Horn) certainly had aspirations at mainstream success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX_120DMFDQ

I suppose he did eventually, in the Ed Wood/Tommy Wiesau sense of "success".

Chriddof

For me the all time example of this is W.L. Horning with "Rockin' And Rollin'":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM53wkAnG3c

Apparently constructed with a pre-recorded backing track played too fast with vocals dubbed on top. There are frequent and very noticeable recording pauses where he's edited in the same recording playing again from an arbitrary previous point just to extend the song. His vocals are not what would come to mind when you think about rock 'n' roll.

(The video is something the uploader threw together to make it more weird or something, which cheapens it a bit - focus on the audio!)

Then there's "Fluffy" by Gloria Balsam. Has to be heard to be believed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fedoPm6Vg9o

MidnightShambler

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on June 07, 2019, 08:37:21 PM
I've heard that before (as a tiny realaudio file on a Geocities page), but nice to hear it again in decent quality.
The last verse sums up Scientology in a nutshell!

OMG this is nuts!...
L. Ron Hubbard - Space Jazz (1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbNaqh4PLME

I actually really like Funeral Of A Planet, quite atmospheric. Took me by surprise that, even if the ropey trumpet or whatever the fuck it was in the middle of it ruined it for a minute.

the ouch cube

So there's a French post Dillinger Escape Plan noisecore group called Comity, and their 2003 album "The Deus Ex Machina As Forgotten Genius" ( don't look at me like that, I didn't name it) features a track which is mixed totally inaudibly compared to the others: it is musically of a piece (the usual RAAAAARGHH-deedle-deedle-RAAAAARGH) but you can hardly hear it: it is clearly intentional but makes no sense, and as such is truly unsettling.

Any of the songs on Rudimentary Peni's 'Death Church" album; it thinks it's regular anarcho punk, but it's not, on the grounds that Nick Blinko is genuinely mad, and not in an entertaining eccentric Julian Cope way, either.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Nice Relaxing Poo on June 07, 2019, 08:16:23 PM
This song is from a classic album of Scientology songs called The Road to Freedom with contributions from John Travolta and Sly Stallone's brother.

Also with contributions by half of Return to Forever and Edgar Winter.

There aren't many bands and artists I feel I need to defend my liking of, but it does get a little bit difficult when Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke or Edgar Winter's names come up...

sweeper

I've never understood what Kevin Coyne was doing with this. Maybe it's intentional wackiness, but it always struck me as sincere. I've never bothered to find out, or anything about the man, and I've only ever listened to the first to tunes on the album this is off.

https://youtu.be/ELzZPt4VkcQ

hummingofevil

Quote from: Nice Relaxing Poo on June 07, 2019, 08:16:23 PM
I don't necessarily mean abstract noise or try hard craziness, I mean songs that were earnestly created but ended up for whatever reason being strange, weird or unsettling.


Let's start with L Ron Hubbard's- Thank You For Listening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTUhN__FRk

As someone in the comments says, he sounds like Leonard Nimoy on Quaaludes and the backing sounds like a stock song from a cheap Bontempi organ. This song is from a classic album of Scientology songs called The Road to Freedom with contributions from John Travolta and Sly Stallone's brother.


This without doubt the weirdest song ever commited to tape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrTz5xjmso4

What the fuck IS it? I love it but my god. A reggae pop song that urges suicidal thoughts that became a fucking mega sing-a-long. Half a billion watches on Youtube. Fucking weird as fuck.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: sweeper on June 07, 2019, 11:50:19 PM
I've never understood what Kevin Coyne was doing with this. Maybe it's intentional wackiness, but it always struck me as sincere. I've never bothered to find out, or anything about the man, and I've only ever listened to the first to tunes on the album this is off.

https://youtu.be/ELzZPt4VkcQ

I saw the great man a few times, once at the borderline less than a yard in front of me. like joe cocker's mad little brother, he was... once had andy summers in his band. this number, even in the greater context of his other works (which I urge you to explore) still has a weird hint of some sort of tourette's about it. live versions are wilder, with more of the darkly-hinted sexual aspect.
he was big in germany for some reason.

I still miss the man.

here he is with summers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNmNnDfT14c

& the classic 'good boy'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goNOCSOSdtc

& this, about the biz-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnCey2iwVss

a duncandisorderly


I'm a great fan of weird as fuck songs hiding in plain sight.

For example, set aside the notoriety of the artist and the decades of being overplayed in sports stadiums, and "Rock & Roll Part 2" is a pretty fucking weird hit song.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on June 08, 2019, 05:28:00 AM
I'm a great fan of weird as fuck songs hiding in plain sight.

For example, set aside the notoriety of the artist and the decades of being overplayed in sports stadiums, and "Rock & Roll Part 2" is a pretty fucking weird hit song.

he & mike leander won an ivor novello award for that composition, pioneering use of a drum-loop in the process.

Lordofthefiles

Something about this song always weirds me out.
I love it but it's all over the place musically.
It's not Beefheart mental and it's got a great narrative with a killer twist, but there's definitely something weird happening within it.

Mike Hart - Arty's Wife

https://youtu.be/J7bd43XIMz4

Avril Lavigne

Dolores Catherino's polychromatic compositions are equally weird and beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8re6rFj7q10

PlanktonSideburns

Quote from: Avril Lavigne on June 08, 2019, 05:58:18 PM
Dolores Catherino's polychromatic compositions are equally weird and beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8re6rFj7q10

holy shit - what a great sound!


Absorb the anus burn


A soothing collaboration between Frank Zappa and Burt Ward (TV's Robin from Batman)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I95q03tYGC8

gilbertharding

It's all relative. For instance, I often find this is a useful benchmark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hEn_rEDzp0

Listen to it. A number 2 hit single in 1981.

flotemysost

Little Children by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas freaks me out a bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRE3jeAYzMw

I know there's absolutely nothing intentionally Yewtree-esque about the lyrics, as several comments there are keen to point out. It just feels creepily twee and retro, it weirds me out in the same way that something like a really naff brown patterned tea cosy from the same era might make me feel a bit queasy. I mean imagine if you heard a contemporary song like that on the radio today.

Also, this is an absolute stone cold choon and probably an obvious choice, but I guess it is a little odd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJmKStqugMc

Tikwid

Worzel Gummidge's debut single, Worzel's Song, has everything you might expect from an anthem for the titular scarecrow, with lyrics that namecheck all the key characters and Worzelisms from the show, wrapped up in a jaunty musical backing that effectively utilises the theme tune's central leitmotif. Lovely stuff.

But the sequel, "Worzel's (Jon Pertwee) Warning"? A cheapo Casio keyboard backing with cod-mariachi trumpets and a weedy childrens' chorus? A chord sequence and vocal melody that don't even resolve properly? Fearmongering lyrics that play right into the worst of 80s stranger-danger excess? That weird bracketed title? That last-chorus key change? And that fucking cover art???

MATE.

greenman

Quite a lot of non spacerock mid period Floyd comes to mind in the " half trying to make something conventional but ending up slightly strange", something like Crumbling Land from Zabriskie Point....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZVWrh_oiHo


olliebean

Quote from: flotemysost on June 11, 2019, 11:10:29 PM
Little Children by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas freaks me out a bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRE3jeAYzMw

I could see that being performed at half the speed in the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks.

Inspector Norse

'60s teen gets given a shot at recording a song as a Bar Mitzvah present.

Result is more weird and psychedelic than it would have been if they'd actually been vaguely competent. Note freaky extra vocals that fade in and out at random intervals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QrT1q6_1wQ

Phil_A

Need I mention our old friend Maxine Swaby and her masterpiece "Pardon Me"? Might as well since it comes up in every one of these threads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dbU2f90OAw

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: greenman on June 12, 2019, 08:22:51 AM
Quite a lot of non spacerock mid period Floyd comes to mind in the " half trying to make something conventional but ending up slightly strange", something like Crumbling Land from Zabriskie Point....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZVWrh_oiHo

yes, they'd definitely left syd far behind when they recorded this... damn fine album, that s/t.