The official release of Jan and Dean Carnival Of Sound arrived today.
It's their Smile, left in a vault for 40 years.
It's a really weird record.
It starts with Jan's post-car accident music.
One of the weirdest songs I've ever heard is his sitar-infused tribute to Laurel and Hardy.
It sounds like a frog sang the intro.
I guess while Jan, paralyzed from the auto wreck, was in the hospital his dad set up a projector and ran Laurel and Hardy reels to pick up his son's spirits. It worked. Albeit in a strange way.
Rollercoasters on a rainbow,
Running on like endless time,
With Stan and Ollie in the front,
And Maharishi back behind
The demo version is reeeeeaaaaally weird.
It's The Wrecking Crew backing two whole minutes of Jan, who can barely speak from paralysis, singing "La la la" in and out of key. The third minute is a psychedelic freakout with Jan screaming "NO! NO! SO HELP ME! SO HELP ME!" and so on.
There's an ode to marijuana sung to the 1963 backing track of "Little Old Lady From Pasadena" called "Tijuana."
Everybody wonders what she's got in her pot now
(Go granny, go granny...)
She's got a bunch of bananas that'll blow your mind
Everybody knows that there's nobody stronger
Than the little old lady from Tijuana
Then they finish the album with the pre-accident songs, most of them are just pointless throwback covers like "Stay" and "Yakety Yak," but there's an odd 60's support-the-troops Vietnam tale called "Only A Boy."
Only last June he got his diploma
In just a short while training in Oklahoma
Learnin' to shoot
To salute
Shine a boot
Takin' orders
Fixin' mortars
Guardin' our borders
Set sail for Vietnam to help out our nation
Trying to put down the red infiltration
Fightin' in trenches
Out in drenches
In stenches
Shootin' headlong
At a throng of Vietcong
He thought about his folks
He sure missed his girl
As bullets and shells around him started to swirl
One ripped through his shirt
Blurt spurt
And it hurt
He spun around fell face down
Head to the ground
The next song is "In The Still Of The Night."
I listened to it all day.
Verdict: Win
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