6:00pm, Wayne & Shuster

Wayne and Shuster by Dollarbar

 

One of the best television timeslots I remember during my early and formative years. 

 

Wayne and Shuster met as high school students at Harbord Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Canada in 1930 and later they wrote and performed for the theatre at the University of Toronto while studying there. Then in 1941 they debuted on radio with their own show, The Wife Preservers, where they mixed household tips with comedy.  This exposure resulted in their own comedy show on the CBC Trans-Canada Network as Shuster & Wayne. In 1942 they enlisted and performed for the troops in Europe during World War II, and later in the Korean War.  They returned to Canada to create the Wayne and Shuster Show for CBC Radio in 1946 and eventually went on to a television sitcom.

 

The duo first performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958, setting a record by appearing there 58 times over the next 11 years.  After having a weekly television series in the 1950s, they began a series of long-running, monthly Wayne & Shuster comedy specials on CBC Television in the early 1960s, which continued for over two decades. In the late 1980s, many of their comedy skits were repackaged in half-hour chunks and syndicated around the world under the title Wayne & Shuster.

Their comedy often used classical or Shakespearean settings and characters as well as television programs.  One of their most well known sketches was called Rinse the Blood off My Toga, which retold Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in the style of the police procedural detective series. This sketch spawned the popular catchphrase, "Julie, don't go!" which appears in Dollar Bars song.  The duo treated their sketches the way singers treat their most popular songs by performing new renditions many times over the years.

 

Dollar Bar has not been the first band drawing influence from Wayne & Schuster, in 2000 the music group The Avalanches created a track called "Frontier Psychiatrist", built on various samples of previously recorded material, most noticeably the Wayne & Shuster sketch "Frontier Psychiatrist" among others.  Frank Shuster's voice is especially prominent on the track.

Buy Dollar Bars "Wayne & Schuster" on their Hot Ones high quality digital album, or get the 12" vinyl LP delux pack (with tote bag and badge!) at:  http://dollarbar.bandcamp.com/

Sing along:

Six o'clock TV just ain't what it used to be
Whatever happened to Wayne & Shuster?
He was short, promoted as handsome
All the way from Maryborough to Gladstone
And now it seems I dream of a Panasonic screen
Always too much green, maybe I just wanna see
A Keyop or Tiny, or some re-runs of Kenny

Julie don't go, Julie don't go

Well you can't do that with Canadian brats
And those laser beams sticking out of your arse
C'mon c'mon come and get it
Taking Five with the Brubecks
And we're soaring high in the sky
It's the perfect day to not go outside
You, you need a helping hand
Born from an egg on a mountain top

Rinse off the blood, rinse off the blood

Hey countrymen lend me your ears
I've got a sackful here
I told him "Julie don't go"
He said "C'mon it's the Ides of March already"
And we're taking five

Well you can die five times before Gallifrey's gone
And there's no sign of Rog and the AA Squadron
It all ends here, with the voice of Max
And none of you guys have got nothing on Frank Shuster

Swedish Wars

Jim Hensons Dead

 

 

 

Nude Girls Fighting

Let's Get Fight by SOD, a spin off of the group AKB48

 

 

 

The Japanese are far more honest in their approach to what their audience wants to see when it comes to watching music video clips.

 



Lion-Eating Poet

The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is a 92-character tongue-twister poem written in Classical Chinese by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982). Because Chinese is a tonal language, it is possible to take a tongue-twister to the extreme in Chinese, where all the words have the same sound but vary only in their tones.

Traditional Chinese:

施氏食獅史
石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。
氏時時適市視獅。
十時，適十獅適市。
是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。
氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。
石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。
食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。
試釋是事。


Pinyin (phonetic translation):

Shī Shì shí shī shǐ
Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

English Translation:

Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den
In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

 

 

Psycho Santa

 

 

The Night Santa Went Crazy by Weird Al Yankovic.

 

Marvin Sings

This months LP is not an LP but two singles: Marvin as well as The Double B Side.

Not to be confused with the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy theme music (a condensed version of Journey Of The Sorcerer by The Eagles) the Marvin singles were produced by John Sinclair. John was a friend of Stephen Moore (The voice of Marvin in the radio and TV series). They worked together on the songs (Douglas Adams was credited but wasn't involve in the writing of the songs).

The first single, Marvin was released in June 1981 on Polydor Records and included Marvin and Metal Man. The single reached number 52 in the British charts. The second single called The Double B Side consisted of Reasons to be Miserable and Marvin I Love You. This second single wasn't as successful as the first one, and a third single (which included a Christmas song!) was recorded but never released.

 

For the Hitchhiker movie's soundtrack, a new version of Reasons to be Miserable was recorded by Stephen Fry (singing in the third-person).  In the Hitchhikers radio series Marvin sings a lullaby commonly known as How I Hate the Night or Marvin's Lullaby (not to b confused with Marvin's Lullaby from the TV series How I Met Your Mother).  The lullaby was published in the book Life, the Universe and Everything, in which it is described as "a short dolorous ditty of no tone, or indeed tune."

 

"Now the world has gone to bed
Darkness won't engulf my head
I can see by infra-red
How I hate the night

Now I lay me down to sleep
Try to count electric sheep
Sweet dream wishes you can keep
How I hate the night"

The line "try to count electric sheep" is a reference to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which inspired the movie Blade Runner.  According to Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Douglas Adams wrote a guitar tune for the lullaby, and thought it should have been released.  I think I agree.  In the radio series, Stephen Moore sings the words to a tune resembling Abendsegen from Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel.

The British group Radiohead named their 1997 song Paranoid Android after Marvin.  The Spanish electronic music producer Daniel Canelo named his musical project The Happy Marvin Project also in reference to the character.  The German band Pastell used Marvin's lullaby as the basis for their song Marvin, a tribute to Marvin. As it happened, the first public playing of the song was just after Douglas Adams left the earth so the song seemed to take on somewhat of a new meaning.

Here's Pastells Marvin, a tribute to Marvin:

 

"Life. Don't talk to me about life."

Temperature Fish Hat

Misheard lyrics from Sean Pauls Temperature.

 

Actually I think these may be the correct official lyrics.

Sean Paul doesn't even come from Angola.

Murder and Music

Helter Stupid by Negativland.  Released in 1989 it was their third concept album.

 

The first half of the album is composed of the tracks "Prologue" and "Helter Stupid". The two together form an extended piece lasting over 22 minutes. The concept, and some of the sampled material, came from a San Francisco television news program that was taken in by a media hoax perpetrated by Negativland while promoting its previous album, Escape from Noise. Other samples used included those from Rev. Estus Pirkle (further samples from the same sermon used in the band's signature song, "Christianity Is Stupid"), an interview with Charles Manson, and "Helter Skelter" by The Beatles.

 

  

Parts of the "Perfect Cut" tracks on Side 2 draw from samples of "The Winning Score", a 1977 presentation by TM Century, producers of radio jingles and imaging.

In 2000, the band Chumbawamba, in reply to the EP The ABCs of Anarchism, used this album as one of their main sampling sources of WYSIWYG.

 

Sausage Samba

By Friendly Rich & The Lollipop People, the first single from the 2014 full length release "Bountiful".

 

 

"The regulated sausage
 Is made from
 Gypsy meat
 From the Jean Talon market.

 

 Mortadella meat
 Is dead donkey.

 Mortadella meat
 Is dead donkey.
 

 Pigs are bacon
 Cows are veal
 The tenderloin is lean.

 

 Pigs are bacon
 Cows are veal
…And you’re my Schnitzel Queen.

 Pigs are bacon
 Cows are veal
 The tenderloin is lean.

 

 Pigs are bacon
 Cows are veal
…And you’re my Schnitzel Queen.

 Pigs are bacon
 Cows are veal
 The tenderloin is lean.

 

 Pigs are bacon
 Cows are veal
…And you’re my Schnitzel Queen.

 

 When it’s all said and done
 We all become our father’s father
 Genetic code is cut from genes, why do we even bother?

 

 We all get wrapped so tightly in our very own intestines
 Every man is destined for the same fate in the end.

 It’s a cruel cruel world
 Full of cruel cruel girls and boys.

 It’s a cruel cruel world
 Full of cruel cruel girls and boys.
 

 It’s a cruel cruel world
 Full of cruel cruel girls and boys."

Here's the link out: Friendly Rich.

Cello Wars

Cello Wars by The Piano Guys.

 

 

The Piano Guys official site.

 

 

A Dwarfs Hole



Diggy Diggy Hole by Yogcast

 

You can get the T-shirt and download it on ITunes is that's what you're into.

2D Dragon

Nijigen Complex by My Dragon

 

 

Nothing can be said.

 

Official site: Kiryu

 



Sweep the Leg

Ankle Injuries by Fujiya & Miyagi

 

Ankle Injuries is made entirely with six sided dice! The origins of the band's name (Fujiya & Miyagi) come from a character in the original The Karate Kid movie and a brand of a record player.  The band seems to often sneak in Karate Kid references into many of their songs.

 

 

True Skin

Shot entirely in Bangkok and set in a future where human augmentation is the norm. “Naturals” are  being phased out in favour of more cutting-edge models.

Warner Bros has picked up the option for a full length feature.
Here's the official website: True Skin Film by N1ON.

Dressing Down

Take Off Your T-Shirt If You Can't Name A Song By The Band That's On It by WWIII

 

 

I think this is one of my pet peeves, or maybe just ignorance in general.

The One Donut

 

One Donut to rule them all,

One Donut to find them,

One Donut to bring them all

and in the darkness bind them.

 

 

 

 

Well made but somewhat annoying. Here's a link to the ten hour long version.

 

 



Two Finger Vengeance

Vengeance Rhythm by Two Fingers.



 

Two Fingers composed the theme music for the TV series Orphan Black, which is a damn good show.

Elektronik Supersonik

Elektronik Supersonik, according to Zladko "Zlad!" Vladcik, "is a melodic fusion combining hot disco rhythms with cold war rhetoric."

 

 

Created by Australian comedian Santo Cilauro, Zladko "Zlad!" Vladcik is the unofficial mascot of Molvania.

 

 



Celebrity Makeup

Musicians don't even need makeup to change their appearance these days, it's all CGI smoke and mirrors. 

 

I never leave the house without touching up my face with Photoshop.  If you were wondering, the song is Nouveau Parfum (New Perfume) by Hungarian singer Csemer Boglarka more commonly known as Boggie, the lyrics are in French.