Slim Goodbody

Artist: Slim Goodbody

LP: Inside-Out

Song: "Imagination" 
[ listen ]

Song: "The Body Symphony" 
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Martin and I popped into the Second Chance Thrift Store when we passed through Raymond, WA (it's where Nirvana played their first show!) on our way to the coast last Friday. They had some interesting LPs for sale, including this one from John Burstein, who goes by the name Slim Goodbody when he puts on his $4,000 flesh-colored unitard covered with guts. Discogs says the album was released in 1974 (with a different cover), but Wikipedia says Burstein first appeared as Mr. Goodbody in 1975, so I don't know what's going on. What I do know is that people were able to borrow this album from the Public Library in Clatskanie, OR between the summer of 1983 and the end of 1988 (what I don't know is the proper pronunciation of 'Clatskanie'), and I know that copies of this particular record sell for $15 online! What I admire most is that Slim Goodbody managed to release a children's record that includes repeated references to drugs, pills and liquor. That takes some serious balls, even if Slim chooses not to display them on his unitard.

[ Slim Goodbody ]

[ Martin at the Second Chance Thrift Store — Raymond, WA ]

Luisa Fernandez

Artist: Luisa Fernandez

LP: 7" single

Song: "Lay Love On You" 
[ listen ]

This past weekend I escaped the big city for a little mini-vacation in Long Beach, WA with Martin, a new special friend. I poked around in the dusty thrift shops and antique stores of the area and picked up some interesting records, but my favorite find is probably this 1978 German single by young disco star Luisa Fernandez, which I dug up during a return visit to Rainy Day Records in Olympia on our way home. (This time I took my own photos of the place.) As you can read in German here (and English here), darling Luisa was only 16 years old when she won a talent contest in an Alveslohe disco, paving the way for a handful of Luisa Fernandez singles in the '70s and '80s that were especially popular with the Austrians.

 [ Rainy Day Records — Olympia, WA ]

[ Luisa Fernandez ]

The Keller-York Quartet

 
Artist: The Keller-York Quartet

LP: The Keller-York Rendition of Popular Gospel Aires [10" EP]

Song: "Keep On the Firing Line"
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Song: "Climb Them Golden Stairs"
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Here's a neat rare 10" EP by The Keller-York Quartet of Terre Haute, Indiana, a group I featured here several years ago when posting from a Zondervan label compilation. (Incidentally, it seems the Keller-York Quartet were performing in western Florida about 61 years ago, according to an announcement I found from the February 25, 1954 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, included below.) I found the Keller-York's "Popular Gospel Aires" record today at the big downtown Seattle Goodwill after breakfast. I'd stopped there with my friend Theresa, since we had an hour or so to kill before I dropped her off at her friends' place on Beacon Hill at noon. All this took place just before I went to catch an afternoon matinee of the Oscar-nominated Mauritanian film TIMBUKTU, in which a troupe of Islamic fundamentalists arbitrarily comes up with a host of new laws for local townspeople to obey if they'd like to avoid being sentenced to death, whipping, stoning, etc. And just yesterday I watched video footage of 21 solemn young Egyptian Christian men in orange jumpsuits who were kneeling on the beaches of Libya before having their heads chopped off by Islamic radicals. What can you say. "Keep On the Firing Line?" "Climb Them Golden Stairs?" Thank god for religion. What on Earth would we do without it.

 [ The Keller-York Quartet in St. Petersburg, Florida — 1954 ]

 [ The Keller-York Quartet ]