Enjoy the stereo sounds of a fully automatic mechanical nickelodeon glockenspiel player-piano robot beast from Belgium. It’s also a very strange and ornate piece of furniture.

At the time that this album was recorded this Muppet Show from hell was located at a weird roadside attraction called The Gay Nineties Village located in Sikeston Missouri. This item was sold as a keepsake to the many that visited the attraction. We found this record while digging through bins at a rummage sale.

“The Gay 90s Village, Inc. was in business since the 1950’s and was initially involved in acquiring and displaying Eakins collection of machines at the Million Dollar Museum in Sikeston and The Gay 90s Melody Museum located in St. Louis. Both museums were closed when Eakins sold the bulk of his collection to Walt Disney World in the late 1970’s.” (source)

Here’s the first track as recorded right off the vinyl. You are likely to find it familiar.

The record has a full Discogs entry. Here is the track list.

I love having this LP. The record is a pretty red color. The cover art is fun, That being said, there are some concerns.

The audio has digital noise artifacts. Odd that we would hear digital noise on an Analog record. I question the sourcing and production quality here. The same problem can be found on the flip side. Side B contain’s Elfman’s score for Back To School. It is not nearly as good as the Pee Wee score.

The vinyl record is on a record label that I never heard of called Varese Sarabande. I wonder how they got their hands on the licence to make these. I would prefer an official release from Warner Brothers but I am still keeping this odd thing.

Wacky Alex

Wally Pleasant is a folk-rock musician from Michigan. He writes and performs humorous songs with 60s rock influences. Throughout the 1990s he was a fixture in the Greater Lansing Michigan indie-rock scene. The picture on the right was taken in the mid 1990s.

I first heard his music on WDBM, the student radio station in East Lansing. Shortly thereafter I was lucky enough to see him perform outside on a small stage in front of the Coffee House and Pizza Place. I was in college and I used to hang out with the punks, artists and potheads that frequented the area.

Wally was a teenage Republican. He wrote a song about it. In fact he first showed up at Michigan State University in East Lansing as a Political Science major. He had never played much music before college. He found that his powers of wit and observation carried over to song writing and his music career was unexpectedly born.

Wally was a few years older than I. I was also involved in the indy rock scene to some extent. I had helped organize two cafe crawl events. I got the bands booked at multiple venues in East Lansing. At some point I needed to create some business cards.

That’s when I ran into Wally. We were both at a Lansing OfficeMax copy center. He was making flyers. I was looking at business card options.

I was star struck but I had enough balls to say, “Hey, Aren’t you Wally Pleasant?”

We talked for a bit. I asked for an autograph which he gladly provided. He also suggested that I use the pizza guy logo for my business card. I’ll never forget it!

Now I am glad to be a part of a radio station that plays his music! Thanks Wally!

Check out his Discography at Discogs.

– Wacky Alex