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God Awful Record Shop

"Very awful!"

About Me

Do you like to read? Enjoy cartoons and pictures? Then go to Comic, J.W.E. today!
THE REVIEWS ARE IN AND, BOY, ARE WE EVER AWFUL!
“IT SUCKS BIG TIME, WRITE TO God Awful Record Shop and tell them they SUCK, AND TO NEVER SING AGAIN, or do anymore music EVER!!!!” – JB, Lucky Town, Pennsylvania
“This is amateurish noise.” – PSF, Online Music Magazine
“Brilliantly unlistenable!” – L, Berlin, Germany
“Your music is really great. “She says it's not a crime if I touch my Richard Nixon”.” – J, Chicago, Illinois
“I hope he was on drugs when he was making that version of Ramrod. He sounded so pained and creepy and desperate.” – VM, Boston, Massachusetts
“It kind of sounds like Yoko Ono with a fake British accent.” – R, California
“Ha ha ha, makes me laugh, Shaft is one bad cop !!!!!!! Lovin' it!” – P, London, England
“I love it, it's amazingly awful. Hank Aaron would be very proud.” – R, Zambia
“Holy fuck. I have tears (of joy?) in my eyes listening to “Shaft.” – KS, Redmond, Washington
“Really, really, really bad! I love it!!!” – R, Belfast, Northern Ireland
“I Love it!!!!! And I was described by a reviewer as the ninth circle of musical hell. . . . . I think I lost that title!” – BOM, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania
“Actually, I got a kick out of this. It’s what I imagine listening to the Dr. Demento show on acid would be like. But I’m not sending off for the CD or anything.” – BG, Near The Condos, Georgia
“Nasty, but very nice.” – M, The Hopper Ward, South Yorkshire, England
“I have listened to “Shaft” about ten times. It brings tears of laughter to my eyes every time. It’s kind of genius.” – ER, Ballard, Washington
“I just listened to “Snowman” - it rocked my world. Fuckin’ genius!” – J, Manchester, England
“Man, that is some crazy music.” – PF, Mount Kisco, New York
PICTURED BELOW: “SHAFT” by JEREMY W. EATON. SEE THE ORIGINAL ART TO ALL OF JEREMY EATON'S EXCLUSIVE ACCOMPANYING ILLUSTRATIONS, currently for sale at COMIC ART COLLECTIVE
PRESENTING THE FIRST GOD AWFUL ART CONTEST WINNER!
Rachel , from Campbelltown, Australia, submitted this brilliant, dense, and wonderfully visceral interpretation of Willy Blanefield III's frigid acoustic punk anthem, Snow Man. She claims she's not very good at drawing Sam Cooke, but we wholeheartedly must disagree, she's captured the look of the emotional singer, a certain fearful expression one can't help but equate with the tragic story of his mysterious 1964 murder at the Hacienda Motel in South Los Angeles. Nice work, Rachel! Your fine art now graces the gallery walls of our new FRIENDS ART album, where it will hang with glory, for all time, a testament to the ever-widening presence of Willy and his decidedly unique and unifying music.

2/18/08 • At long last, we can finally welcome you to the God Awful Record Shop. After months of feverish preparation; stocking the shelves, sweeping the floor, fumigating the basement, replacing those wonky lighting fixtures, and hanging our shingle (surprising how time-consuming that can be), we are now officially OPEN FOR BUSINESS. Yes indeed, but let it be clear that the God Awful Record Shop is not exclusively a commercial enterprise, rather it is a resource center, a meeting place, one where devotees of primitive musics can experience the strange, compulsive, hermetic, mostly tuneless, often youthfully abrasive (but equally humorous) “non-songs” of a man named Willy Blanefield III.
Above: A recently-unearthed photograph of Willy Blanefield III, embracing the trash in downtown Pittsburgh, circa 1981.
THE WILLY BLANEFIELD III STORY
As a teenager, living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Willy recorded literally hundreds of his self-styled songs, released on dozens of cassette tapes under a variety of names and personas, from the years 1978 to 1983. Naming his label Heritaga Records, an apparent misspelling of Heritage that stuck, the obsessive and obstinate young artist utilized half a dozen cassette recorders in order to multi-track his improvised, primitive outbursts, child-like ruminations and overtly indifferent cover versions of genuine songs. Humored by his friends and tolerated by few others, he braved scorn and even physical harm, strolling the streets of downtown Pittsburgh, a boom box upon his shoulder, blasting his abrasive, naive sounds to all within earshot. One must remember, Pittsburgh was a no-nonsense, working class city, one where the breadth of musical taste ranged from Van Halen to Ted Nugent.
“I first met Willy at a house party in 1981,” explains cartoonist and illustrator Jeremy Eaton , a long-time friend, who has graciously agreed to exclusively provide a new visual interpretation for each of Willy's songs posted on this site. “There was a local punk band playing in the basement. I remember making my way down these dingy, beer-stained steps to see this skinny kid, in what looked like a bus driver's cap, slashing his hand across the bass guitar like he wanted to remove the strings. It was, of course, Willy. He'd shanghaied the bass player's instrument during a break and had somehow convinced the rest of the band to play along with his insane riffing. It was a furious mess. Willy spent the rest of the night showing off the massive blood blister where his thumb used to be.”
Willy apparently ceased making his homemade tapes sometime in late 1983, becoming a wanderer, traveling wherever his modest earnings would take him. Losing touch with most of his old friends, his music became something of a legend to the few who had experienced (endured) it. It wasn't until the summer of 2006, when Eaton, who'd moved to Seattle in the early 1990s, contacted the offices of the A Very Limited Recording Company about Blanefield, that Willy's music was heard again, after more than two decades of silence. Having tracked the elusive Willy to a small town in Northeastern Ohio, Eaton had met with him, convincing him that the world was now ready to hear his songs, that the internet had created a far more catholic environment than he'd experienced back in the late 70s and early 80s. A subsequent deal was struck with AVLRC to release his extensive back catalog, all of which Willy had carefully stored in a suitcase he kept under his bed. Preferring not to have his own name used, we came up with God Awful Record Shop, a term Willy had first used while working for an actual record retailer.
Spending the last two years digitally re-mastering Willy's exceptionally low-fi recordings, we are now thrilled to begin presenting them to this new century's generation of adventurous music enthusiasts.
Along with regular new postings from Willy's vast library, each accompanied by one of Eaton's unique illustrations, we will be bringing you other bits of Blanefield ephemera; photos and old cassette art, along with comments from Willy himself. Most exciting of all, Blanefield began to record new material in 2006, using one of his oldest monikers, The Myself Band. AVLRC was proud to release “We're Back”, the first new music from this isolated pioneer in over twenty three years, which ushered in a new appreciation for the determinedly unschooled musician's unusual world outlook. Subsequent releases, On The Inside, Looking In and the just-released Hell, My Name Is... are showing that Mr. Blanefield still has a few odd tricks up his musical sleeve. It is our hope that the God Awful Record Shop's unveiling of his very earliest sonic madness will offer new insight into his current creative output. So, please join us here, as we regularly offer new chestnuts from Willy's uniquely bizzare body of work.
– Jimmy Brown, A Very Limited Recording Company

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 7/5/2007
Band Website: myspace.com/themyselfband
Band Members: Willy Blanefield III
Influences: Superman, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Boy George, Richard Nixon, Petula Clark, Hank Aaron, Bruce Springsteen, Isaac Hayes, John Lydon, Shirley Temple, Flipper, Minnie Pearl, Little Richard, Tiny Tim, Mark E. Smith, Randy Newman, Elvis Presley, Gary Numan, The Monks, Soupy Sales, The Fat Boys, Katherine Hepburn, Lemmy, Sgt. Slaughter, The Extravagant Bachelor, and, of course, Richard Brautigan.
Sounds Like: “NOW PLAYING”: SONG ONE: “SHAFT!” • THE STORY: Willy takes on Isaac Hayes and clearly dominates in the testosterone department. STYLE: Impeccably sexy! ORIGINALLY APPEARED: 1980. SONG TWO: “MY DRUG WIFE” • THE STORY: Willy gets curiously tender in this odd ode to a drug-derived friendship with a man whose wife supplies all of the drugs. “My wife’s been baking some bread, so just sit down and relax your head, she’ll fix you up a nice supper, she’ll fix you up give you an upper, or some coke to take on the way” offers the husband in question, encouraging the protagonist to come on in from the cold, before continuing his winter journey. The song then slides into an ever- increasingly downward spiral of hallucinogenic sentimentality, offering seemingly nonsensical lines like “Look at the table, it’s brand new, we carved it with our hands”, which becomes a bit cryptic if one dwells on the apparent heavy drug intake involved. STYLE: A perplexing combination of madly-strummed acoustic guitar and a hyper, jazz-dizzy piano, at times creating a sound that comes across like the sound of John Fahey’s simple brother, falling down a mineshaft, clinging to his collection of Dr. John LPs. It’s weird folk, for weird folk, folks! ORIGINALLY APPEARED: 1983. Hard as it is to believe, this one appears on the final, untitled release of Anton Dumbovic, Blanefield’s angry, angry, Eastern Bloc answer to Iggy Pop. Apparently the madman had a mellow side. SONG THREE: “FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE” • THE STORY: A raw, emotional, even fierce, rendition of the American popular song, originally published in 1904 and credited to Hughie Cannon, this murder ballad of love gone wrong has been recorded more than 250 times, by the likes of Lead Belly, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, and Stevie Wonder, a distinguished roster to which now can be added Willy Blanefield III. STYLE: Willy offers one of his more emotive performances to this violent tale, singing with a throaty conviction, accompanied by a delirious battering of percussion created with a variety of pots and pans. ORIGINALLY APPEARED: 1980, on side two of The Hari Armi Experience's only release, “Paisley Cave Boys”. SONG FOUR: “SNOW MAN” • THE STORY: Basically this one adheres to the classic rock/punk subject: getting laid (or, more appropriately, of wanting to). The lyrical gist seems to indicate that the protagonist is having a chilling effect on the objects of his interest, the more he tries to explain himself the colder his chances become. His claims not to be “Bob Dylan, Sammy Davis, George Peppard or Joan Collins” are best left to the listener's interpretation. Blanefield himself is offering no explanation. STYLE: A caustic, guttural, punk-tinged vocal performance, accented by Blanefield's trusty one-string acoustic (affectionally named “One-String Newman”, presumably after one of his heroes, Randy Newman). The cheap guitar is amplified by securing the microphone of a portable public address system inside the hollow of the body, creating vibrational cacophony and feedback. Note the final expulsion of breath to end the song, in which the snow man's frozen breath is brilliantly personified. ORIGINALLY APPEARED: 1983. Appears on the final, untitled release of Anton Dumbovic, Blanefield's angry, angry, Eastern Bloc answer to Iggy Pop. SONG FIVE: “RAMROD” • THE STORY: Really, this is a pretty horny little song about a gearhead and the gal of his lustful regard, one that tries a parting grasp at responsibility by mentioning “a little chapel nestled in the pines”, apparently suggesting the romeo has truly fallen for his girl, or perhaps the chapel is just another cozy spot for more piston-fueled fun? Only Bruce Springsteen knows, as this is a cover of his same-titled song from The River, his double LP of 1980. “My brother had the Springsteen record,” explains Blanefield. “I read the lyric sheet and thought the words were pretty funny so I decided to give it a try. I didn't bother to listen to the actual song. I still haven't heard it to this day. Why bother? I love Bruce Springsteen!” STYLE: Here Blanefield offers one of his most affected, child-like singing forms, amusingly bringing in a British accent, by way of John Lydon. He places this off-kilter reading over the minimal plucking of one of his handmade string instruments, a two-by-four, strung with fishing line attached to finishing nails. ORIGINALLY APPEARED: 1980. Appears on side two of The Hari Armi Experience's only release, “Paisley Cave Boys”. SONG SIX: “SEXY COTTAGE INDUSTRY” • THE STORY: A song about a son whose father hounds and pesters him to take on the family business, which the young man, seemingly derisively, refers to as a “sexy cottage industry”. Literally escaping into Canada, the son is pursued by a bounty hunter named Fung, hired by his relentless father to bring him home. STYLE: Utilizing Blanefield's child-like vocal approach, sung over the odd playing and multiple rhythm tracks from a tiny PT 1 Casiotone player. ORIGINALLY APPEARED: 1981. Exact release unknown. One of a few dozen Blanefield tracks found at the ends of an assortment of industrial safety and medical aid tapes, which the artist often salvaged from dumpsters to facilitate his recording needs.
Record Label: A Very Limited Recording Company
Type of Label: Indie