Yeah, I know those are geese, not ducks. That’s not the point.
It appears that one of my favorite websites, Your Daily Awesome, has turned off its lights for good as of last Tuesday. In respectful memory, here are a handful of my favorite YDA posts, in shout-out fashion, and not in any particular order:
Many others can be found in the archives. Thanks for all the awesome daily entertainment, Chas. Although I never met you, it still feels the same as if I never had. Here’s to last Wednesday’s yesterday, and we wish you well on your long road ahead.
According to Arbroath, this was Guiness’ most expensive television advertisement to date, costing 10m pounds (about $2.1 million US bucks). Filmed in a village in Argentina, the whole town came out to watch. If our crack webminers can find a link to a “making of” video, we’ll update this post, but it’s more likely we’ll just tip a stout and be done with it.
Totally unrelated to the video above, our crack webminers turned up a video from 1970, from the Flip Wilson Show. This broadcast changed my life… or at least a good part of it.
The band appeared at Woodstock. Yes, that Woodstock, 1969. These guys played alongside Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Crosby Stills & Nash, Mountain, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe & the Finch, Richie Havens, Carlos Santana, Joni Mitchell, Melanie, Joan B. Depressed, Bobby Bieber and the SlimJims, Brittney Spears, etc.
Bunk was too young to attend Woodstock, but Bunk was allowed to watch TV. This is what Bunky witnessed at his grandparents house and loved it. ShaNaNa was IT.
This was Bunk’s introduction to DooWop. ShaNaNa sent me on a mission to hear the original versions by the Marcels, the Paragons, Dion, Gene Chandler, the Isley Brothers, the Zodiacs, the Del-Vikings, the Chips, the Chords, the Channels, Harvey & the Moonglows, Shep and the Limelights, the Ronnettes, the Shirelles, Leon Redbone, Led Zeppelin, Dread Zeppelin, Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Police, the Ramones, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, the Stray Cats, Frank Zappa, the Aquabats, the Skatalites, Moms Mabley and the Beat Farmers (featuring the late Country Dick Montana)… and not necessarily in that order. Oh, and I forgot the Solid Voidz featuring Big Don P.
Fill in the band(s) I might have missed in the comments section.
The original “Shout” by the Isley Brothers of Blue Ash, Ohio, limp-sinking in 1959:
Then white people in the recording industry decided to like it. Joey Dee & the Starlighters had a minor hit with it in 1962. Here’s the Shangri-las’ version, from 1963(?). No wonder it didn’t make the charts:
Then it was resurrected by Otis Day & the Knights, from National Lampoon’s “Animal House” in 1978.
As a bonus, here’s your favorite “Animal House” scene:
Alternate .mp3 version of “Wooly Bully” is available at here along with some other freebees. Rhino Records put out a Best Of compilation on vinyl decades ago, and it’s prolly available on CD.
“Hey there, Little Red Ridin’ Hood… You sure are lookin’ good… You’re everthang that a Big Bad Wolf could want… Ooooooow!”
Sorry to pop your bubble of modern-day belief, but Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, was NOT a celebration of Satan’s birthday. It was a pagan custom designed to keep evil spirits from taking possession of their souls. The evil dead walked on this night, searching for souls to take. The preventative antidote was to dress up as the evil spirits themselves, and thus confuse them through the night so that they could take no souls.
Then Disney came along to give 5-year-olds nightmares with this:
Zappa’s line up back then was amazing. Might be Jean Luc-Ponty on the invisible violin; Terry Bozzio on drums; Ruth Underwood on xylophone; maybe Roy Estrada on bass. Zoot Allures era.
Any FZ fans wanna leave comments to clear this up?
Zappa was only on SNL once, and was banned for mugging too much in the skits. You can find the two other SNL/Zappa vids on the Utubage if you hunt for ’em.
“…they’re pretty good musicians, and the musicians are pretty good…”— FZ, from “Green Rosetta.” Make a muffin really betta.
[UPDATE: Something yanked the link to the video originally posted. Here’s the same video from a different source. –Bunk]
[UPDATE 2: Seems that anything posted from SNL is now verboten. I’ve added a new version of my favorite Peaches. Slightly lesser quality video, but let’s see how long this one lasts. –Bunk]
The music of the late 1970’s was terrible. FM radiowaves were flooded with over-produced theater/stage rock (Yes, ELP, ELO); annoying pre-packaged disco (Chic, Bee Gees, Donna Summer); run-of-the-mill commercial rock (Bob Seeger, the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd); and New Wave/Punk (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, the Ramones).
Okay, I’m not denying that I liked that last category. At least it was different.
But right in the middle of all this garbage was the shining star known as Leon Redbone. He came out of nowhere, playing acoustic guitar versions of 1920’s and ’30’s songs while remaining a mystery to his fans. (Some wags speculated that he was really Frank Zappa, undercover.) When I heard Mr. Redbone’s version of “Sheik of Araby” I was hooked.
Here’s Mr. Redbone with three songs, back-to-back, from about 1977.
Mr. Redbone, you are invited to Bunk’s house for mint juleps and peach cobbler any time.
Tacky Raccoons 
