Canadian Parliament Cassette

In 1995, I was 9 years old and mostly stayed at home and watched Nickelodeon. But my brother was 14 and hung out with cool older kids who played in bands and teased me.

Really the only one who made fun of me, mostly for always watching cartoons, was Alec Roberts. Right now he drums for a band that’s getting a lot of local press, Nacho Business, but back then he drummed in this band Canadian Parliament.

I think they only put out this one cassette. It was recorded in 1995 at Profound Sound, which used to be in the new Bows & Arrows building.

The whole tape is pretty great, but “Jesus Called But He Got the Machine” is clearly the best and silliest (and anachronistic).

I had all the lyrics for this and the rest of the tape memorized when I was a kid. In fact, this was probably the first local underground band I listened to. Now I still stay home and watch cartoons, but I go out to local shows, too!

Members: Alec, Aryeh Krause-Nadler (vocals, guitar), Brendan Van der Mei (bass), Chris Fernandez (guitar, vocals)

The 7-Up “Uncola” Song

I’ve been sorting through some of my brother’s old stuff, and I found this 7-inch by a ’60s band called Fifth Street Exit. The A side is a slow jam featuring Holly Penfield, and the B side is a 7-Up endorsement song, “Uncola.”

The sleeve says “A Macy’s / 7-Up Production.” I’m sad that huge companies don’t release product-placement 45s anymore. I’m sad that 7-Up doesn’t use the Uncola campaign anymore. But mostly I’m sad that fewer and fewer kids know who Cool Spot is and what an awesome SNES game he had.

I was going to share an awful 7-Up ad from the ’70s, but this is way cooler:

Voice Warp Cassette

Last weekend at the Curtis Park neighborhood rummage sale, I paid 15 cents for the best found sound cassette of my career:

It turns out Mad Science is an educational entertainment company that offers after-school programs, workshops and birthday party services, with a franchise in Sacramento. One of their party activities is a voice warp generator, advertising the ability to “sound like a Munchkin, Darth Vader and more!”

The McDonald’s Menu Song

My friend Elise brought us to the Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair last weekend. Amid $900 Kurt Vonnegut first-pressings and 1950s gay and lesbian paperback romances with names like “Homo Hotel” and “Oriental Lesbian,” Sean found a goldmine of a free pile, and this was hidden within.

In 1988, McDonald’s distributed 80 million of these 33 rpm flexi discs, featuring the “McDonald’s Menu Song,” a lyrical list of every single item on their menu at the time. On 79,999,999 copies of the disc, the chorus trips up and can’t complete the tongue-twisting song. Whoever got the copy with the complete song won $1 million.

The copy I found had clearly not been played before (what if it was the winning one?!), but it still sounds like shit. Enjoy!