Bear's Lair

I have a pretty diverse collection of music, 7000 albums plus, I can listen to just about anything! Captain Beefheart, King Uszniewicz, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Esquivel, Martin Denny, Yes, The Cure, Wanda Landowska, Harry Nilsson, The Pretty Things, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Perez Prado, Glenn Gould, Charles Mingus, Lucia Pamela, The Beach Boys, Bert Kaempfert, The Kinks, The Mothers, Otis Redding, Korla Pandit, Fats Waller. I can listen to anything (except for country and post 1996 Rap) but I can't figure out this group called:

The Mom And Dads.
They sound awful, like the band that's playing in some Moose lodge to a bunch of old 65 year olds in the back in the 70's. Their instrumentation consists of accordion, piano, alto sax, and a 3 piece drum set (snare, bass, and floor tom. No cymbals or rack tom, this guy has a row of temple blocks on top of his bass drum). They have [scratching head] 3 platinum albums, one that went double and four gold albums, who in the fuck bought them?! I want to know. Their music is terrible. Everything is played slow, whole note melodies, the drummer playing the same "clippity klop" tempo on every song. These guys make Mantovani sound like Monk. I got Trout Mask Replica after the second listen, it's one of those albums that has to sink in before you get it. I remember playing it in the living room with my sister present back in 1977. She was into her Dan Fogelberg/Stephen Bishop phase at the time. I'll wonder in the living room and pop my Trout Mask Replica 8-track in the family's Zenith Allegro stereo, and then blast her with Captain Beefheart in all of his off kilter glory. After 10 minutes, she had tears streaming down her face crying for me to take it off, she couldn't take it or get it, or both. TMR is one of those albums that you have to get, listen and absorb it's goodness, once you do you get it. That is how I feel about the Mom And Dads, I don't get them. Every song sounds the same with the flatulent sounding sax, Myron Floren on Lunesta accordion, a piano that plays just half notes, and a drummer that taps on on wood blocks doing his klippity klop thing. It doesn't make me cry but I get the urge to get plastered like the audience at the Moose, it's the only way you can listen to it. The Mom & Dads makes those 50's era Jackie Gleason albums with the kitschy girlie covers sound like Motorhead in comparison. The Mom & Dads serve one purpose in my collection, to run people out of the house after a all night party. Yoko Ono used to serve that purpose at one time with her voice that sounds like somebody swinging a cat around by it's tail. I wonder if I played the Mom & Dads to drive everyone out, they would stay and get the urge to drink more.

Labels: record collecting