Alan Watts – "This Is IT" (MEA – LP 1007) 1962

With an album cover that looks like its made with the included graphic design software on your brand new Windows 98 PC, Alan shows us all how to empty rooms as well emptying the after-life with some truly horrible,but hilarious primal screaming,ecstatic chanting, and general middle class tomfoolery that would send your soul banging their ghostly fists  and screaming to be let in at the gates of Hell.Only to be informed that they were already there,and were victims of all that christian,Islamic,Jewish and Buddhist propaganda.The punchline being that the former underworld of eternal punishment was in fact the best place to be post-mortem.In other words This was NOT....IT!

Listening to the opening 'spontaneous musical happening', as Alan calls it, was indeed an experience of great joy on my part.So much so that i simply had to play it again.Hearing university drop outs, expunge all that middle class Caucasian guilt by speaking,or in this case shouting, in tongues to a tabla backbeat, is enough to make one trot along joyously to the nearest new age happening at the local community centre.As well as screaming like a lobotomized buffoon,you can keep one eye open watching your fellow inductees gurning and idiot dancing to a CD of indian percussion.Stifling the wrong kind of laughter.....that is unless they're watching you with one knowing eye open too of course.Which is better,because then you can go down the pub together afterwards and have another laugh.See you next week John?...er...yeah?

No spring chicken in the sixties,Alan Watts (RIP) sported a distinguished Guru look,that proved very successful with the ladies...so I am Told....but not surprised.This blog is full of tiresomely similar stories. I may start a cult....it's an earner,no work involved, and you get laid.....,no strings! What's not to like....oh yeah, the fucking awful music!

I have a trustafarian Belgian friend, who was the victim of some pretty horrific sexual abuse as a child,and he has tried everything new age that has been invented, or will be invented.He's done Ecstatic Dancing, Primal Scream,re-birthing, and south american 'shrooms;his favourite being the very popular fuck-up magnet,the 'Ayahuasca' experience. Suffice to say that all this has helped the flashbacks not one iota ,yet neither has conventional Psychiatry either,so the logical conclusion is to do neither but use the time honoured, and very unfashionable, male method of 'Not Talking About It'. Build a compartment in your mind ,put all the fucking rubbish in there and throw away the triggers.

So my answer to your mental torture is simply to compartmentalize,while playing idiotic proto-hippie nonsense like anything by Alan Watts,and cheer up for fuck's sake! You only live once....and its very short.

There was a box set called "The Essential Alan Watts",released after his migration to eternal paradise in 1973.

I think the word 'Essential' is some-watt un-essential in this context?

The other best track on here is "The End" by the way.

THE END.

Tracklist:

A1 Love You 3:15
A2 Onion Chant 4:40
A3 Gagaku-Ku 0:50
A4 Fingernail Poem 2:20
A5 Umdagumsubudu 7:40
B1 Metamatic Ritual 14:00
B2 The End 6:00

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Charlie Mingus and langston Hughes ‎– "The Weary Blues With Langston Hughes" (MGM Records ‎– E3697) 1958

Ouch! Me Brane 'urts.....we're drifting very dangerously near the jagged rocks of Hip Hop and its regrettable birth. 
Kool Kats rapping over a cool bebop soundtrack,talking not singing,was,without doubt the beginning of the most monotonous music ever to fuck you up the arse and describe the act as they're doing it to you......all in simplistic rhyming couplets to rub your face in it.
"Did I die and go to hell(?)", you scream.There's no need to go anywhere when the mountain can come to Mohammed. Satan brings Hell to your own doorstep,with free home delivery. Like Pollution, it gets everywhere,ain't going nowhere,and lowers your IQ.

Tracklist:

1.Hey (Night) / Too Blue / Ballad of the Fortune Teller
2.Commercial Theater 

3.The Weary Blues

4.Blues at dawn

5.Six Bit Blues
6.Morning After
7.Could Be / Bad Luck Card / Bad Man

8.life is fine

9.hey Hey Morn

10.Testament
11.Consider Me

12.Warning: Augmented

13.Motto / Dead in There

14.Final Curve

15.Boogie: 1 a.m.

16.Bedtime

17.Daybreak

18.Tell Me

19.Good Morning / Harlem

20.Same in Blues / Comment on Curb

21.Democracy / Island / extract from Warning: Augmented / Jump Monk

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Don Morrow ‎– "Grimm's Hip Fairy Tales as dug by Don Morrow" (Roulette R-25146) 1961

Maaan do I dig this? 
Don Morrow, right wing TV Host and narrator, had a go at defusing the dangerous world of the Beatnik,by that time-honoured tactic of 'Taking the Piss'. The world of 'Beat',basically, represented Satan to right wing christian fundamentalists...with emphasis on the 'Mentalist' part of the word Fundamentalist. The next album Don would make was a tribute LP to the Green Berets!?......sounds like fun (...damentalism)?
Don,and an uncredited chick, do a very fine job at lampooning the very easy target of the Hipster. The aforementioned 'uncredited Chick' is worth the entrance money herself.
Not that Beatniks are renouned for laughter. Lenny Bruce excepted,so i'm told?Not that he ever made the smallest muscle in my fizzog twitch however;but the first three tracks achieve this effortlessly. Yeah cats...it's a gas...but not as much a gas as it could have been with a little more effort like filling tracks 4 to 11 with more beat talk versions of fairy tales.Instead what we get are eight tracks of smooth jazz to fill up the rest of the LP. Not Cool.
Perhaps Mr Morrow's fee was too high for the labels budget?

Tracklist:

1.Like Hansel And Gretel 5:29
2.Like The Shoemaker And The Elves 5:00
3.Like Rumplestilskin 6:18
4.All That Jazz 2:01
5.A Little Night Music 2:07
6.Like Wow! 1:51
7.Two Little Kooks 2:03
8.Two-Beat Beatniks 2:14
9.It Ain't Grindlesteig 1:55
10.Gossip 1:44
11.Kerouazy 2:04

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Babs Gonzales ‎– "Tales Of Manhattan: The Cool Philosophy Of Babs Gonzales" - (Jaro International ‎– JAM 5000) 1959

One suspects that this Cat ain't joking? It sounds like a parody,but just maybe Babs means it?
There's a part of me that hopes he's serious,so for the sake of this narrative I'm treating this as the real deal pops.This is a less eloquent,and cliched black bloke, version of Jack Kerouac on happy pills,with a cooool Be-Bop backing band.
Jazz writer Jack Cooke explained that Gonzales "assumed the role of spokesman for the whole hipster world... [becoming] something more than just a good and original jazz entertainer: but the incarnation of a whole social group."

Sheeeet...this cat was serious!?

He really did see himself as thee cool Philosopher of 'Hip'.Maaaan that's the Mostest!

Sheer Joy.
There is,however one negative amongst all this pleasure:
Mother Earth was pregant for the ninth time....could this be the moment she was impregnated with the Hip-Hop virus?

Tracklist:

A1 The Hat Box Chicks
A2 Broadway - 4 A.M.
A3 You Need Connections
A4 'Dem Resolution Liars
A5 Manhattan Fable
B1 'Dem Jive New Yorkers
B2 The Squares
B3 A Dollar Is Your Only Friend
B4 The Cool Cat's Philosophy
B5 Ole Braggin' Freddie

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Edd "Kookie" Byrnes ‎– "Kookie Star Of "77 Sunset Strip" (Warner Bros. Records ‎– WS 1309) 1959

Well, I think this is one of the best albums ever made!? It sounds like a soundtrack to a John Waters movie,but is in fact a cash in release , staring the most popular character,"Kookie", from a detective show on late fifties American TV, "77 Sunset Strip".
Gerald Lloyd "Kookie" Kookson III (Edd Byrnes), was the rock and roll-loving, wisecracking, hair-combing hipster and aspiring PI who initially worked as the valet parking attendant at Dino's, the club next door to the detectives' office.
He was mentioned in the lyrics to Bob McFadden and Dor's "The Mummy" 45,when the Mummy in question came back to life specifically to buy a copy of "Kookie,Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)",but people were afraid of him...all,except the hipster at the end....."Like....er... Help!"
All you need to learn how to be a Hipster is listen to Kookie, and that album on "How to speak 'Hip'" by Del Close and John Brent.
This is one of the Ginchiest records from the massive Beatsploitation tidal wave of 1959,....like...er... wow!
Stand-out track "Like,I Love You" is just the mostest daddio.A window to a world where life was almost perfect.
I may be stuck in 1980 for what remains of my lifetime (at least until COVID 19 gets me), but I really wish i was stuck in a groundhog day situation in 1959.Although,It just might be possible that I've just defined Hell!?...but it'd be just wild for the first few thousand years at least.
On a heavier note:

Important Die or DIY? Health Advice Annoucement: Don't Wash Your hands,touch your face,and other faces as often as possible,sneeze openly, and hang out in large crowds. Usually I self-isolate as much as possible, but on this occassion i may accept invitations to shake my tail feather at the hop,like normal people do.
I didn't think there'd be anything after Brexit and Trump to further lower my opinion of human society, but this blind panic about a less deadly than influenza virus has done it.I went to the supermarket this evening to get some toilet roll.....none left because the fuckers have been panic buying....no bread either!!!!?
So bad news for the amazon rain forest,as bog roll sales have doubled,those trillion acres of silent, birdless eucalyptus trees planted in place of rain forest in Brazil,will want to expand.Eucalyptus wood is good to making stuff to wipe the shit off fat human arses the world over.Pity it can't wipe the shit from their brains as well?
One bit of good news,though not,as yet confirmed by fact checker, is that China have banned the hunting and killing of wild animals for food or medecine.This includes the gorgeous Pangolin,which i try sporadically to raise awareness of in these columns. This is a desperate bid by the Chinese Govt to avoid making COVID 20 next year....if anyone's still alive to catch it that is!?


Tracklist:
A1 Hot Rod Rock
A2 Kookie's Mad Pad
A3 I Don't Dig You, Kookie
A4 Saturday Night On Sunset Strip
A5 The Kookie Cha Cha Cha
A6 Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)
B1 Like I Love You
B2 Kookie's Clock
B3 You're The Top
B4 Square Dance For Round Cats
B5 "A" You're Adorable
B6 Kookie's Boogie

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Del Close & John Brent ‎– "How To Speak Hip" (Mercury ‎– OCM 2205) 1959

Hey, Katz.....ever wondered how I got to be the Kool Daddio I am today?? 
Lemme clue ya to this disc to show you kids how to split out of squaresville and get a gig on the scene, that's where's it's at Dad. So go get this from a record man,hide it under a Charlie Parker album,and that'll be the last square thing you'll ever do.You're hip! Just don't mention this conversation again, you dig?...Kool.

Bare with me,i'm just slipping out of character.....NOW!

Boy,its hard work being a kool kat and a poet,but this Beatsploitation guide to the absurd world of the Beatnik on the cusp of the sixties is essential.....if not for a guide on how to be and speak 'Hip',but for a jolly good laugh.
Yeah baby, it's another one of those exploitation tools as put forth by the Maaaaaan, to turn the rebirth of cool into something tepid and nothing but a harmless joke.


Tracklist:

A1 Introduction 1:13
A2 Basic Hip 1:15
A3 Vocabulary Building 4:15
A4 The Loose Wig 2:45
A5 The Riff 5:50
A6 The Hang Up 3:18
B1 Put On, Put Down, Come On, Come Down, Bring Down 5:50
B2 Cool 3:51
B3 Uncool 1:00
B4 Field Trip No. 1 1:30
B5 Field Trip No. 2 1:12
B6 Field Trip No. 3 1:15
B7 Summary 1:27

DOWNLOAD to impress jazz musicians, high school drops and the criminal fringe HERE!

Bob McFadden & Dor ‎– "Songs Our Mummy Taught Us" (Brunswick ‎– BL 754056) 1959

Who's this Bob McFadden you may ask; and who the Fuck is Dor?...Well as 'Dor' is 'Rod' spelled backwards,the answer becomes blatantly obvious..yep, it's Rod McKuen,doing what he did best, parodying current trends for the maaaaaaan.
Backed up again, by Bill Haley and his Comets on the obvious tracks, this album is actually genuinly hilarious.
Everyone gets it, Rock'n'Roll,Beatniks,Exotica,marching bands,Horror movies...er...thats about it,there wasn't much of a wide pallet of choice in 1959.
The Fall,and their beatnik singer, did a rather good version of "The Mummy" I recall, during their wilderness years in the nineties.And this maybe where the Cramps got their debut album title from.Everyone stole from this record it seems,'cus Richard Hell's Blank Generation tune is here too,with different words, however.
Did Rod ever get any royalties from Hell's blatant rip off I wonder?


Tracklist:

A1 The Mummy
A2 The Sheik Of Araby (Shreik Of Agony-Cha Cha Cha)
A3 Sing Along With The Mummy (Shake, Rattle And Roll)
A4 I Dig You Baby
A5 Frankie And Igor At A Rock And Roll Party
A6 Noisy Village
B1 Son Of The Mummy (More Sing Along With The Mummy)
B2 Hound Dog
B3 Bingo
B4 The Children Cross The Bridge - Colonel Bogey March
B5 The Beat Generation
B6 The Beverly Hills Telephone Directory Cha Cha Cha

Oh yeah....like...er...wow....it's strictly DOWNLOADsville right HERE daddio!

Rod McKuen ‎– "Beatsville" (HiFi Records ‎– R 419) 1959

In 1959,like in 1968 for 'Psych' bands and 1978 for 'Punk', the record companies fell over each other,desperately scrambling to get a 'Beat' act on the roster.All the Kool Katz had been snapped up the year before.Miles,Bird,Kerouac,Chet,Mingus,Kookie,Fabian, and a tsunami of synthetic Beatniks bedecked in sweaters with holes in,worn out jeans with paint blotches on,sandals,uncombed hair,talking Jive and carrying a well thumbed copy of Lolita.

"Like...er...hey baby, i don't dig the man comin' on all the time.... get me?", said the Beatnik fresh out of drama school...looking suspiciously like Rod McKuen.A Beatnik by numbers.

He'd obviously just read "On The Road" after his manger bought him a copy with the words..."Read This,then come to my office in the morning kid."

New independant label, Hi-Fi records, supremo, Richard Vaughan was there with a contract and a pen,and "Beatsville" was born.

The suggestions of casual sex, misogyny,drug abuse,violence, was undoubtedly 'Shocking' in 1959,but,incredibly its just as shocking in the modern era,for the opposite reasons.This album is full of racism,sexual exploitation, misogyny,upon a raft of politically incorrect fakery.A Beatsploitation masterpiece.

Rod would do vitually anything to sell records,and believe me he had around 6 or 7 albums out every year for at least a decade and a half....and this wasn't the only Beatsploiting platter in his truly horrible, but vast, canon.The public were frightened,so Rod's main job was primarily turning the Beat scene into a joke,just as 'they' did with Hippies and Punks in the coming decade.Even Rod did a Psychsploitation album ten years hence.He never managed a punk album,praise be to his masters Gods.Although, his single,the B-side to novelty smash 'The Mummy', "Beat Generation",as backed by no less than, Bill Haley and his Comets(!) is a beatsploitation masterpiece,Which is in effect, where Richard Hell got his "Blank Generation" song from....so maybe by default Rod even got in on the Punksploitation market too.That is some kind of genius.It also explains where Hell got the idea of sweaters with holes in,messy hair,and writing shit poetry from?A deadly mixture of Bowie and Beatnik was our silly Richard."Like....er...LOL baby!"

So called 'Beat poet', WS Burroughs, like to write about control systems, but like later 'fads',Beatnik was just another insideous male instigated control system,to cajole women into bed.Which ,apart from war, is the only reason Men do anything.

"...Hey baby!Wanna come and ball at my crazy pad,I dig chicks who swing,y'get me?"..."Wow! Krazy Pops!"...Beat girls were far too 'Kool' to simply say...'oh fuck off you creep!'

"Wow! Krazy Pops!"

Tracklist:

A1 Co-Existence Bagel Shop Blues 1:00
A2 Bearded Ladies 3:16
A3 Haiku Poems 1:53
A4 No Pictures Please 2:21
A5 Back To Sausalito 1:29
A6 Three Songs For 'S' 2:44
A7 Joue 1:20
A8 R.S.V.P. 0:18
A9 Reflections On A Plane Trip Home 1:05
B1 Life Is 0:41
B2 The Elegant Prison Downstairs 2:14
B3 The Bird Boy 2:04
B4 Grant Avenue Square Dance 0:19
B5 A Gallery Of Assorted Beats 4:04
B6 Get The Hell Out Of My World 3:14
B7 Like 0:39
B8 What Is A Fabian? 3:47
Bonus Tracks
18 The Beat Generation 2:05
19 Six Songs For The Sun 5:27

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