Put the crimson in me, Jimson

The other day at the Wax Trax used vinyl store I came across an album (well, only 6 songs, so more of a mini album/EP) by Nervous Norvus. I remembered a few of his songs - Transfusion and Ape Call to be specific - from one of those old K-tel or Ronco albums of novelty songs that a friend of mine had when I was a kid. If you're an old guy like me, you might remember these albums that seemed so prevalent in the 1970's. They always had a title like Funky Favorites or Looney Tunes, and featured old novelty songs like Witch Doctor, Charlie Brown, Purple People Eater, and more than a few Ray Stevens "classics." If you were lucky, the album would have a few more (then) contemporary tunes like The Streak, Mr. Jaws, or Junk Food Junkie. They even advertised these things on television, you could find them in drug stores, and some were available by mail order.

When I was 7 or 8 years old I received a tape recorder for Christmas. It was a neat little red Panasonic, square with rounded edges, and I was incredibly proud of it. My best friend also received a tape recorder that year (a black rectangular one, not nearly as cool), and we ran around taping everything. For whatever reason, lots of kids thought it was neat to tape television shows back then. I remember taping both nights of The Six Million Dollar Man adventure where Steve Austin battled Bigfoot! Not that I ever listened to it, or any of the other TV shows I taped. More understandably, it was also really common to tape your favorite songs off of the radio – you’d just hold your tape recorder up to the speaker and press ‘record.’ In this same fashion, I made a tape of my friend's album of novelty songs. I'd wander around happily playing this tape of novelty tunes on my little red tape recorder - this was prior to my discovering the Beatles and Kiss, so at the time I thought these tunes were the greatest. This was before boom boxes and walkmans were available, so I remember it not being that uncommon seeing people out in public playing their crappy little tape recorders (or AM transistor radios - I had one from Radio Shack shaped like Batman).

One evening I took my tape player to choir practice. Yes, you read that right, choir practice. Against my will, my mother had insisted that I join our church's youth choir. It gets worse - the name of the choir was The Joyful Generation. How awful, no wonder I’ve suppressed memory of it for so long! When I look back, it served mainly as another opportunity for me and several of my friends to misbehave and get into trouble. When practice was over that particular evening, I walked outside with my friends to find our ride home. I had turned on my tape player, and I even remember that it was playing Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow by the Rivingtons. One of the other kids said something like “look at Hamp, he thinks he’s so cool” and tried really hard to push me down. I caught myself before I fell, put down my tape player, and ran up and punched this kid in the face! Looking back this is pretty surprising, as this guy was one of the older kids in choir. He was 3 or 4 years older than me, and nearly a foot taller. I remember his glasses flying off (yeah, I know, you should never hit a guy with glasses, but he almost made me drop my red tape player so he had it comin’!), and he started blindly groping around for them. Seeing that, I immediately felt guilty – it was one of the first and only times in my life I threw a punch. At this point our ride showed up, and nothing else happened with this kid. He never tried to get even with me, and I don’t recall that word ever got back to my parents about the incident.

I hung onto that tape player all of the way through college, and it still worked and looked great (I remember using it for a school project, and being told by an interviewee that it was one of the coolest tape recorders he had ever seen!). When I moved to Seattle, I put it in a box and hid it for safe keeping in a drawer in an unused room in my parents’ house. When I looked for it a few years later it was gone – I asked my parents about it, and my mom said she had given it to my niece who had broken it. Oh, I did buy that Nervous Norvus album – Transfusion is still a hoot, but the rest of the tunes aren’t all that great. At least it dredged up this goofy story from my past – just thought I’d share it here.

By the way, Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow is still awesome.