Really weird, strange, abnormal, or extremely unusual LPs/Albums

Name some of maybe your favorite weird, strange, or extremely unusual LPs/Albums.

These have to be legit releases, not bootlegs. But they could be releases that were intended to be legit - but some "something" happened.

I have searched for a similar thread and cannot find one - but if there is one I missed - let me know.

Like for example - a vinyl LP that had nothing on the flip side (not just one anomaly but where many LPs were released like that).

Or an album that was recorded 100 miles underground.

Has to have been physical at one point in time (not just digital).

I guess for fun we can include the container/packaging it was in. And since I mentioned the word 'recorded' we can included how it was recorded.

And why you think it was strange.

Just saying..."well the Rolling Turtles released their first album where all the records were colored blue".....isn't going to fly here as that is not unusual enough.

I know I do not have strict boundaries or clear-cut rules set here apparently, but I don't care. I just want to hear what you have to say.

My first offer (and another example) is:

The Beatles Versus the Four Seasons

WTH??

How does that happen? Imagine a release today titled "Taylor Swift vs Rihanna"

Actually some folks would probably like that.

The Beatles Vs The Four Seasons

 

Meet The Residents

 

Ooops... i guess you won’t like my post...

 

This is definitely on of the weirdest records I have. Interesting and fun, but not on regular rotation!

 

George Harrison: Electronic Sound

 

Not many will beat this triple set, methinks.

Zweistein - Trip - Flip Οut - Meditation

 

Would Monty Python's "Matching Tie and Handkerchief" LP qualify? Side One was mastered with the standard single concentric groove while Side Two had two parallel concentric grooves so that depending on which groove the stylus landed in while playing you might hear the same material repeated several times or you might hear the material in one groove and the next time it was played you'd hear the material in the other groove.
The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief - Wikipedia

 

I don't have a copy of it, or even know the name, but Mike Kandel of Tranquility Bass had a truly weird record, it was a 1960's instructional record made for child psychologists; it might have been pressed up for a convention of child pyschologists, he wasn't quite sure. The album had audio clips of interviews with children talking to their psychologists, about their inner feelings and saying all these profound and deeply metaphysical things -- in voices that sounded uncannily like vintage Peanuts characters. It was downright spooky how weird it sounded. Mike found it in a bag of records on the porch of a thrift shop on Lopez Island, off the coast of Washington, that had a "take something, leave something" area on the porch where stuff was free. He used samples from the record on his Let The Freak Flag Fly album. The voices on it were absolutely eerie, I've never heard anything quite like it. No idea how you would even find something like that today.

 

This album by Ben Vaughn was supposedly entirely recorded in a Rambler automobile.

 

I didn’t realize this was some sort of competition?

 

This 1983 LP by Sun Ra, which I was lucky enough to buy in the 1980s, is unusual even by Sun Ra's standards. The title track, which is 20 minutes, 52 seconds long, and takes up one side of the LP, is one of the strangest pieces of music I have ever heard. It cannot be classified. It sounds like nothing else.

 

Then there was Johnny Winter's "Second Winter" which was released as a double album with no songs on Side 4 making it a "three sided LP."

 

And, of course, this. If you like "Fellini meets a young fledgling photogentic rock and rock and roll group", here you go...




Just the visuals immediatedly tell you that this isn't your everyday rock and roll record. And yet the sound of this thing may be more bizzare still!

 

I miss that dude. We used to trade music until his untimely passing.

 

But actually, there's a hidden conversation track on side four.

 

A man by the name of Michael Viner made an album called The Best of Marcel Marceao, who was a mime.

From Wikipedia:
Viner produced a record in 1970 called The Best of Marcel Marceao, a joke album produced for under $50 and consisting of nineteen minutes of silence followed by one minute of applause on each side of the record, purportedly recording performances by the famous mime artist Marcel Marceau, his name intentionally misspelled on the album for unstated reasons.

 

Not aware of this one, I shall have to check it out!

 

Jacob Kirkengaard: 4 Rooms

1. Church
2. Auditorium
3. Swimming Pool
4. Gymnasium

"This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the 'Zone of Alienation' in Chernobyl, Ukraine, recorded in October 2005".

"The sound of each room was evoked by an elaborate method: Kirkegaard made a recording of 10 minutes and then played the recording back into the room, recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones"

"From a technical point of view, Kirkegaard's "sonic time layering" refers back to Alvin Lucier's work "I am sitting in a room" [1970]. He recorded his voice in a space and repeatedly played this recording back into that same space. In Kirkegaard's work, however, no voice is being projected into the rooms: during the recordings he left the four spaces to wait for whatever might evolve from the silence",

 

I love stuff like this, but do not have a lot of it. That psychiatry record sounds pretty interesting, I'd really like to find something like that. I have some stereo demonstration LPs and reels that have odd sound effects and speech, and some of the LPs even come with bossy diagrams that show you how you need to arrange your speakers in your living room with indicators of the proper heights and angles needed to ensure the "full stereo enjoyment." I also used to have a weird 1990s-era CD that had a recording of a children's play or radio program. Some of the tracks were repetitions of the entire play but with one or two voices omitted, apparently this was so that kids at home or on-air could take part in the "program" by contributing their own voices. Sadly I have no idea where it wound up.

 

Moby Grape - Wow. The last track on side one plays at 78 rpm. This is announced on the record before the track starts. You have to get up, move the needle on and change the speed to hear it.

I love the album but it's not worth it!

 

"This is the first album playable at any speed. Being all-instrumental music, there are no voices to affect the realism of the orchestrations. Thus the album becomes a collection of electronic concertos, each movement being defined by the speed of the turntable. A turntable with speeds of 33, 45 and 78 rpm, creates a different ratio within the pieces, yet maintains a familiar melodic drama".

 

This thread is incredible.