10 mind-bending novelty records inspired by Batmania!

The hills are alive with the sound of Batman!

The 1966-1968 Batman series is, without fear of exaggeration, one of the great accomplishments of Western Civilization in the Twentieth Century. I need hardly list its many attributes here, but one of the best side effects of the show was that it created a merchandising bonanza whose impact is still being felt on Ebay today. Everybody wanted a slice of the Bat pie, so to speak. Naturally, this included the always-greedy music industry. The show's indelible Neil Hefti-composed theme song became a Top 10 smash hit for the Marketts (a surf rock combo whose "Out of Limits" is prominently used in Pulp Fiction) and was covered by a whole host of artists in a variety of styles. But that was just the beginning! Batman-related novelty singles and albums flooded the market in 1966 and 1967 -- some of them recorded by people in the show's cast, others recorded by opportunists looking to cash in on the fad. Here's a sampling of some of my personal favorites:

1. Dickie Goodman - "Batman and His Grandmother"



Dickie, formerly half of the duo of Buchanan & Goodman, was the king of the so-called "break-in" records. These were audio comedy skits which take the form of fake news reports and use clips of pop songs in place of people's answers. Both with Bill Buchanan and on his own, Goodman used his "break-in" records to comment on seemingly every political and cultural trend in America between the 1950s ("The Flying Saucer") and the 1980s ("Hey, E.T.!"). You didn't think he'd skip the Bat fad, did you? By the way, that weird clip which is used to represent the grandmother (the high-pitched "Ah! Ah! Ah!") is from "Juanita Banana" by Henri Salvador, who in turn cribbed the melody from the "Caro nome" aria from Verdi's Rigoletto.

2. The Scaffold - "Goodbat Nightman"



The Scaffold were a satirical British musical trio of the 1960s who enjoyed several years of chart success in their native country, including the #1 hit "Lily the Pink." Their records are funny and well-made and still hold up pretty nicely today. All this would be pretty impressive, until you consider that one member of the group was Mike McGear, a.k.a. Mike McCartney, brother of Paul. With that perspective, the accomplishments of the Scaffold seem sort of insignificant. For you Monty Python fans, another member of the Scaffold, Roger McGough, makes a cameo in The Rutles. He's the Liverpool poet who only gets to say two words before Eric Idle cuts him off.

3. Burt Ward - "Orange Colored Sky"
4. Burt Ward - "Boy Wonder, I Love You"





It seems almost inconceivable, but somehow Burt Ward -- Robin himself -- teamed up with one of the leading lights of avant garde rock, Frank Zappa, to make these records back in 1966. At the time, Zappa was preparing the debut LP of his band, the Mothers of Invention, for MGM Records when he was hired as an arranger and composer for these sessions. "Orange Colored Sky" is a warped, wildly off-key take on an old standard, while "Boy Wonder" is a hilarious Zappa original.

Here's a whole article (not by me!) about the Ward/Zappa connection. Enjoy!

 5. Adam West - "The Story of Batman"



While this article is mainly about Bat songs from the show's heyday, I had to make an exception for this unreleased 1971 single which Adam "Caped Crusader" West recorded for the Dunhill label. Truly, this song puts the "bat" into "bat shit crazy" with West giving listeners some less-than-practical advice about what to do with their 45s. Batman only lasted two seasons, but West could never quite hang up the cowl for good. He reprised his signature role on Legends of the Superheroes (a two-part live-action special from 1979), and voiced the Dark Knight in several animated series, including The New Adventures of Batman (1977) and Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show (1984-1985). More recently, West has occasionally been called upon to play Batman (in addition to playing "Mayor West," a fictionalized version of himself) on Family Guy. Speaking of which, please watch this montage of Adam's best moments on that show.

6. Link Wray and His Raymen - "Batman Theme"

I promised I'd limit myself to just one remake of the famous theme, so I chose this blast of unruly gutbucket guitar by one of the pioneers of loud, ugly rock & roll, Link Wray. Link more or less paved the way for punk and heavy metal with an instrumental called "Rumble" in 1958, which heralded the arrival of the so-called "power chord" and which ushered in the era of intentional distortion. (Link supposedly helped create his signature sound by punching holes in his amplifier with a pencil.) Link's songs, always a favorite among juvenile delinquents, were heavily used in the early films of John Waters. The music that plays over the opening credits of Pink Flamingos, for instance? That's Link. His combative version of the Batman theme is especially notable because it features some spoken dialogue, with Link himself portraying the Caped Crusader. ("Right again, Robin!")

7. Frank Gorshin - "The Riddler"



Along with Burgess Meredith and Cesar Romero, impressionist Frank Gorshin was one of the B-list celebrities who suddenly found himself attached to the hottest show on television when he guest starred as The Riddler on Batman. Naturally, he wasn't going to let this opportunity pass by without recording at least one cash-in record. He basically just talk-sings some "joke book"-type riddles over a rockin' beat. The song goes very well with the Batusi dance, too.

8. Peggy Lee - "That Man"



This record is an example of how pervasive Batmania truly was in '66. Peggy Lee was a phenomenally popular jazz singer (plus songwriter and actress) for decades, but even she couldn't resist the siren song of the Bat. But our Peggy plays it a bit cooler than most. Notice the song is called "That Man" and not "Batman." Still in all, the song's lyrics are unmistakably inspired by the series. She not only copies the template of Robin's "holy!" catchphrase ("Holy popcorn!"), but she tosses in some of the show's trademark onomatopoeia for good measure.

9. Sun Ra and the Blues Project - "Joker is Wild"

This one takes a bit of explaining. Sun Ra (1914-1993) was unquestionably one of the most eccentric and bizarre musicians of the last century. Born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, the jazz bandleader/poet/philosopher took on the extra-terrestrial "Sun Ra" persona and claimed to be from Saturn. Nevertheless, he had a nearly six-decade career as a respected and cultishly-adored figure in the music industry. From the 1950s onward, he led a constantly-evolving ensemble generally known as the "Arkestra." And, as you can probably guess by now, several of these folks decided to get in on the Batman trend in 1966. Only they didn't record a mere single in the crimefigher's honor. Oh, no. They did a whole album! Credited to "The Sensational Guitars of Dan & Dale," it was titled Batman and Robin and featured comic book-style graphics on the cover. The selection above is only one of twelve cuts.

10. Jan and Dean - "Robin, The Boy Wonder" (and so much more!)



You know who else decided to devote an entire album to Batman? Yep, those golden gods of surf pop, Jan and Dean, who released Jan and Dean Meet Batman that fateful year of 1966. J&D may be familiar to modern audiences because of their hits like "Dead Man's Curve," "Surf City," and "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena," but if you spend any quality time perusing their discography (highly recommended!), you'll soon learn that these guys had a profoundly goofy sense of humor and did not take themselves one bit seriously. While the Beach Boys were changing the face of pop music with Pet Sounds, Jan and Dean were releasing an entire LP's worth of songs and skits about a costumed superhero. Imagine a band doing anything like that today! Jan and Dean Meet Batman is such a weird pop culture curiosity that I've decided to leave you with a few more selections from it:





Isn't the Internet a marvelous thing?

A couple new ZOMBY! cartoons, plus a musical tribute to Mr. Christopher Columbus!

First, let's get the unpleasantness out of the way...

Quite amusing, I'm sure. Now, then, let's continue.

Columbus: And he was handsome, too!

Today, October 8, is Columbus Day. That used to mean something in this country, friends. Well, no, that's not true. For as long as I can remember, Columbus Day has always been one of those B.S. holidays that postal workers and some lucky school kids had off but which no one ever really gave a second thought. I have the day off today myself, which is why I can lounge in bed and write this very post. But it's safe to say that in my lifetime, Christopher Columbus' legacy has completely disintegrated. We weren't exactly taught to love Chrissy C as kids, but we still regarded him as a more or less a hero. After all, he "discovered America." Except, of course, he didn't. Other explorers had been here before, and besides, the land was already, uh, occupied. All Columbus really brought to America was disease, genocide, and oppression. Nowadays, I'm told, Columbus is treated as a villain in our elementary schools. Kids now think of him as a one-man combination of Hitler and the Black Plague. And who knows? Maybe that's what he deserves. But what a bummer for Columbus! He made it as far as the 1990s with his reputation intact -- 500 years! -- only to see it come crashing down in the last two decades. I honestly didn't see that coming for the poor guy. In fact, if I were to name the two societal trends which have surprised me most during my time on this planet, I would say the widespread acceptance of tattoos and the complete downgrading of Christopher Columbus.

But what a run he had before that, huh? In order to commemorate the Columbus that was (but really wasn't), I'd like to present this selection of songs written in his honor.

First up is a song called, simply, "Christopher Columbus." It was written in the 1930s by Chu Berry and Andy Razaf and has been recorded by many jazz and pop performers over the years. It's often done as an instrumental,  which is how I first heard it (in a recording by Benny Goodman), but here it is with words. And even better, it's done by one of the seminal groups of the Twentieth Century, the Ink Spots, a vocal quartet whose sound was a major influence on R&B and rock. Give this one a chance. It's really catchy.



Next up is a selection by legendary American satirist, voice-over artist, and adman Stan Freberg. It's called "Christopher Columbus Discovers America," and it's a track from his landmark 1961 LP, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume One: The Early Years, a musical in album form which covered our nation's history from 1492 to 1783 through songs and sketches. This portion includes one such song, "It's a Round Round World," performed by Freberg himself as Columbus and character actor Jesse White (the original Maytag repairman!) as King Ferdinand.



This next one is not so familiar to me. It's an educational song about Chris, and it's credited only to the mysterious Miss Healy. I'm  including it here because it's largely representative of the image I had of Columbus as a kid. You know, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and all that jazz.



And last? Well, it's a song by Guy Mitchell (1927-1999), a Detroit-born crooner who was intensely popular and successful in the 1950s in the US and the UK but who is all but forgotten today. This particular number, titled simply "Christopher Columbus," hit #27 on the charts back in 1951. It was just one of his nine hit records that year, and Guy's monster hit ("Singing the Blues") was still five years away.



It didn't seem right to end the article without presenting the opposing side, so here to do just that is Winston Rodney, OD a.k.a. Burning Spear, legendary Jamaican reggae singer and Rastafarian evangelist. Since this song makes heavy use of Jamaican Patois, I have included a transcription of the lyrics beneath the clip. The refrain is unmistakable, though: Christopher Columbus is a damned blasted liar. We sometimes forget that Christopher Columbus is given credit for "discovering" Jamaica, too.

I and I old I know
I and I old I say
I and I reconsider
I and I see upfully that
Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar
Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar
Yes Jah

He's saying that, he is the first one
who discover Jamaica
I and I say that,
What about the Arawak Indians and the few Black man
Who were around here, before him
The Indians couldn't hang on no longer
Here comes first Black man and woman and children,
In a Jam Down Land ya
A whole heap of mix up and mix up
A whole heap a ben up, ben up,
We have fi straighten out,
Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar
Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar
Yes Jah

What a long way from home
I and I longing to go home
Within a Red, Green, and Gold Robe
Come on Twelve Tribe of Israel
Come on Twelve Tribe of Israel
Out a Jam Down land ya
A whole heap of mix up mix up
A whole heap a ben up, ben up,
Come on Twelve Tribe of Israel
Come on Twelve Tribe of Israel
Out a Jam Down land ya  Yes, Jah! 

Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar
Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar
Yes Jah, he is a liar
Yes Jah, he is a liar
Yes Jah, he is a liar
Columbus is a liar
Yes jah Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar
Columbus

A new "Zomby" -- plus lots of wrong Batmen

First, the new Zomby cartoon:

Okay, now here are the wrong Batmen:

And here are some more:

Why did I make all these wrong Batmen? Well, there's this site, see, called Blind as a Batman which challenges people to draw Batman with their eyes closed. The scribbles you see above are my attempts to draw the Caped Crusader in Microsoft Paint with my eyes closed. As you can see, I tried over and over again without success. I took some of my failed Batmen, colored them in, and grouped them into collages.

Yeah, I don't know either.

10 more grotesque pictures of "Spitting Image" puppets!

Another hideous Spitting Image group shot

Your nightmares begin here. Yesterday, I posted a group of photos of puppets from England's gone-but-not-forgotten satirical TV series, Spitting Image. Guess what, folks? Those were the cute ones. Today, I'm bringing you the rest of the pics, and it's here where we venture into some very dark territory indeed. Sadly, many of these photos are too big to be reproduced at a decent size on this blog, so I've had to shrink them. Consider yourself lucky. These are some very unpleasant puppets. Keep in mind, my original scans of these images are absolutely huge, so I've viewed them in excruciating detail. I will warn you: the image of Whoopi Goldberg's face floating in what appears to be a bowl of milk is not something to approach lightly.

Princess Di and Fergie

Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Meryl Streep

Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud

Mikhail Gorbachev

Cyndi Lauper

Madonna

Michael Jackson

Mike Tyson

Tina Turner

Whoopi Goldberg

A gallery of grotesque celebrity puppets from "Spitting Image" (1987)

A group shot of royal puppets from Spitting Image

England's bizarre satirical puppet show Spitting Image ran for an astonishing 132 episodes on ITV from 1984-1996. With its extremely topical parodies of politics and show business, the program was something like our Saturday Night Live... only with a much nastier edge and with all the celebrity parts being played by foam and latex doppelgangers of the rich and famous. These three-dimensional, often unflattering caricatures became the show's trademark. Although the original British series never quite caught on in the States, the puppets did have a brief window of notoriety in America thanks to their appearance in the "Land of Confusion" video by Genesis in 1986 and a few prime time network specials. Although America's interest in the show was short-lived, the fad did manage to produce at least one souvenir book. 

In 1987, Harcourt Brace Jonavich published Spitting Images, a collection of photographic portraits of some of the puppets, with accompanying text by National Lampoon's Sean Kelly. In the interest of preserving pop culture history, I have decided to scan some of the better ones. The captions are directly from the book. The photos are by John Lawrence Jones

Bette Midler: America's Happiest Camper

Bruce Springsteen: For unto Us a Savior is Born in the U.S.A.

Johnny Carson: He Do Re-run-run-run, He Do Re-run-run

Bill Cosby: Call Him a Doctor? Okay. He's a Doctor.

Clint Eastwood: Dirty Harry Says, "Have an Ice Cream. Or Else!"

Jack Nicholson: Not Invited? But I'm Always Invited!

Mick Jagger: Rolling Stone Youth Formula: Removes Lines, Wrinkles, Moss!

Muammar Al-Qaddafi: Radical Sheik

Leonard Nimoy: To Be Spock or Not To Be Spock? That Is the Question.

Pee-wee Herman: Disney Just Drew Mickey Mouse. Pee-wee Is Mickey Mouse!

Prince Charles: The Dunce and Future King

Richard Pryor: A Blazing Talent Gone to the Dogs

Queen Elizabeth: A Scepter is Haunting Europe

Ronald & Nancy Reagan: What Did the President Know and When Did She Know It?

Sylvester Stallone: All He Wants Is for His Country to Love Him As Much As He Does

Barbara Streisand: The Biggest Star So Far (By a Nose)

Margaret Thatcher: A Tory Party Animal - A Minister in Her Prime

Woody Allen & Mia Farrow: Hanna and Her Sisters Meet the Brothers Karamazov

If you enjoyed this article, here's the sequel.

Koko, a Talking Gorilla (1978)

 

Penny Patterson and Koko in 1978

NOTE: Over at her movie review blog, Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense, my dear friend Emily Intavia is devoting the month of September to the theme of Animals Doing Human Stuff. She asked me if I might want to write something about this topic, and I decided it would finally give me the excuse to write about a 1970s documentary I might not otherwise cover on this blog. Enjoy.

We really want animals to be human, don't we? We talk to them and sometimes pretend that they are talking back to us. We give them names. We dress them up in "people clothes." We ascribe all kinds of emotions to them. In fables, comics, and cartoons, we routinely use animals as full-fledged stand-ins for people, generally rendering them in humanoid form in the process. (Does Mickey Mouse look or behave like any actual mouse you've ever seen?) Comics historian Don Markstein once traced this literary tradition of "funny animals" back to the fables of Aesop. But how much are animals like us really? How "human" can we make them? And should we be doing this at all?

Poster for Koko, a Talking Gorilla

These are among the questions considered in Barbet Schroeder's involving yet not entirely satisfying 1978 documentary entitled Koko, a Talking Gorilla, which focuses on the controversial and possibly groundbreaking work of Dr. Francine "Penny" Patterson, who supposedly taught American Sign Language (ASL) to Koko, a female gorilla born in captivity. More has been written about Penny and Koko over the last 40 years than I could ever hope to relate to you. If you're interested in the saga of this remarkable gorilla and her adoptive "mother," this essay provides a good overview.

The gist of it is this: Koko was born in the San Francisco Zoo in 1971 but was sickly as an infant. She was placed in the care of Penny Patterson, a grad student then in her mid-20s. Instead of returning Koko to the zoo, Patterson decided to use Koko as the center of an unprecedented, decades-long language experiment which continues to this day under the auspices of an organization called the Gorilla Foundation. Patterson now alleges that Koko has a vocabulary of roughly 2,000 words and can respond to spoken English as well, but these claims are not universally accepted in the scientific community. Oh, and in 2005, there was a very strange sexual harassment suit filed against Patterson by disgruntled ex-employees of the Gorilla Foundation who claim they were pressured to expose their breasts to Koko in order to satisfy the gorilla's "nipple fetish." I'm not making this stuff up.

I'm not sure how valid this experiment has been, but I can tell you that I found Penny Patterson to be an absolutely mesmerizing character, much more fascinating in her own way than Koko. Flawlessly pretty with long, blonde, wavy hair and smooth, doll-like features, Patterson absolutely does not look like the kind of woman you'd imagine catching a gorilla's urine in a cup (straight from the source, no less). But there she is, on camera, cheerfully doing just that. Director Schroeder also narrates the documentary and makes a point of the fact that Patterson has no children of her own, never takes vacations, and must be with Koko every morning and evening. He never explains why the doctor has to be there every time the gorilla wakes up or goes to bed, but he seems impressed by her dedication to the project. By the end of the film, Schroeder has given up all illusions of neutrality and is openly endorsing Patterson's work.

One wonders how Werner Herzog might have handled this same assignment. If nothing else, Koko, a Talking Gorilla might make an interesting companion piece to Herzog's much-less-sentimental Grizzly Man. The other film I was thinking about while watching this documentary, of course, was King Kong. In every cinematic iteration of that story, Kong has become enamored of a human woman. And all of these women (Fay Wray, Jessica Lange, Naomi Watts) have been blondes, just like Patterson.

Penny and Koko in the early days

In fairness to Schroeder, it's easy to fall under Patterson's spell. She's sweet-natured and enthusiastic, and how can you not love a woman who blithely cruises past used car lots and fast food restaurants with a giant gorilla in the passenger seat of her car? A great deal of the film is devoted simply to showing Patterson and Koko spending quality time together, and they do seem to have a genuine mother-daughter bond.

This is a 1970s PBS-style documentary, so there are also occasional minutes of screen time devoted to earnest scientists talking in a rather dry fashion directly to the camera about the language capabilities of various primates. These are "groovy," Jimmy Carter-era scientists, though, and they have beards, turtlenecks, and Prince Valiant haircuts, so you know that they're not some uptight squares, man. The only real opposition to Patterson the film presents is a brief interview with a zoo owner who believes Koko should be back in a zoo environment and not raised as a pseudo-human child by a (possibly) crazy lady. Even this gregarious man, though, knows his opinions will not be popular with viewers and sadly acknowledges he will likely come off as a villain in Schroeder's film. And besides, we don't want to see some boring dudes yakking away at the camera. We want to see Penny teaching Koko to wear makeup! Or Penny dressing Koko in a red sweater! Or Penny and Koko just wrestling around on the floor!

Can Koko really use sign language and understand spoken English? Eh, it's debatable. She does seem to be able to make a few unmistakable signs (she's got "toothpaste" down pat), and she seems to be able to identify pictures of various animals in a book after Penny reads their names aloud. But through all of this, it takes a lot of coaching from the pretty young doctor. A lot of times throughout the film -- and in the other, later documentaries about Koko -- we only really know what the gorilla is thinking because Penny tells us. Certainly, some of the project's success exists only in Patterson's mind. How much, I don't exactly know. There's an interesting scene in this film when Koko starts to misbehave and Penny has to chase after her. The doctor seems a little rattled and says the word "cut." Is that some kind of command to the gorilla, or is she telling Schroeder to turn off his camera?

All in all, Koko, a Talking Gorilla (which was actually given a Criterion DVD release a few years back) is definitely worth 85 minutes of your time. It's not as emotionally satisfying as a Herzog documentary might be under the same circumstances, but it nevertheless provides valuable insight... not so much into gorillas but into human beings and our desire to see ourselves reflected in the animal kingdom.

Vivian Stanshall (1943-1995)

Vivian Stanshall, a.k.a. The Ginger Geezer

If I could give you but one piece of advice this fine September day, ladies and gentlemen, it would be to explore the life and work of Mr. Vivian Stanshall, an eccentric yet brilliant British comedian and musician perhaps best work for his days leading an anarchic 1960s musical collective called the Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band. 

I first heard of the Bonzos through their personal and professional associations with The Beatles and Monty Python, and my curiosity ultimately led me to track down a greatest hits album by the Bonzos. Before buying it, I'd only actually heard one of the ex-Bonzos, Neil Innes, performing a solo version of the group's lone hit single, "I'm the Urban Spaceman," in the film Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl. I'd never heard any of their studio recordings and had not experienced in any way the work of Mr. Stanshall. 

Friends, I was stunned by what I heard on that greatest hits disc. Here was a man with the wild, surrealist humor of Python but with the dapper, distinguished manner of a true English gentleman. "Finally," I thought, "an old-money aristocrat has started a rock band! It's about time!"

I can't begin to summarize what Vivian did, but I can give a sample of his work. Here's an Elvis-inspired tune from his days wih the Bonzos, entitled "Canyons of Your Mind":

"Newly Wed" by the Orchids (Parrot Records, 1955)

Frank Zappa's favorite record. I've heard it dozens of times, and it never gets old. Hope you enjoy. BONUS: Try and figure out exactly what's happening in this song. I've never been able to.