Far Out There Character Soundtrack: Blip

Oh… Oh dear… I do believe this may be the worst thing I’ve ever done as a human being. It randomly came up in conversation recently that Blip didn’t have a character soundtrack, and you know how my brain works. If you hit me with an observation like that, I’m gonna take it as a challenge. And oh my, did I ever rise to meet that challenge. There’s a reason this soundtrack is going out on April Fools Day, it’s not so much a musical statement as it is an endurance test. I already doubt that anybody will actually bother checking out the YouTube playlists for these things, but this is one case where I TRULY can’t imagine anybody managing to listen all the way through from beginning to end. If you actually manage to absorb the whole thing, no skipping or fast forwarding, all in one sitting, let me know. You deserve some kind of reward for your patience.

For, you see, Blip is a loud, shrill, annoying object, so it only stands to reason that his musical tastes would be… a bit odd. A bit weird. A bit… really REALLY annoying. Anybody remember how I designed to Tax’s soundtrack to me intentionally obnoxious, with occasional lapses into unexpected artiness? Well, imagine everything about that sent of songs cranked up by a million percent. Blip’s soundtrack is an abrasive mess of legendarily bad songs, intentionally off-putting novelty tracks, and a smattering of dissonant avant garde pieces. This is a soundtrack where the most conventionally listenable song is probably “Dog Police” by the band of the same name. Yep, that’s one of the most NORMAL songs. It’s all downhill from there.

Continuing on from “Dog Police,” let’s continue with the Dr. Demento fodder, since that really is the least difficult to process. Power Salad presents one of the best songs Weird Al never wrote, “My Cat Is Afraid Of The Vacuum Cleaner,” while the legendary Barnes & Barnes contribute both their immortal signature tune “Fish Heads” and also the criminally overlooked “Pizza Face.” Additionally, Swedish novelty act Caramba provides the insidiously catchy nonsense chant “Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot,” while the great Frank Zappa chimes in with the immortal “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?” In retrospect, any Frank Zappa song, even the crude novelty ones, are demonstrably more listenable than “Dog Police,” but that was just too good of an opener to waste.

Moving on from the songs that are how they are as a knowing decision by their creators, we move on to the songs that are… just how they are. Songs that simply should not be, but are anyway. Songs that Blip would enjoy simply for their severe sensory stimulation rather than any objective quality. I am talking, my friends, about legendarily bad songs. I’m talking about “My Pall Foot Foot” by The Shaggs. I’m talking about “Stout-Hearted Men” by The Human Horn, Shooby Taylor. I’m talking about “I’ll Be Your Death” by literal grade schoolers The Death Killers. I’m talking about “Paralyzed” by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, a.k.a. That One Song Every Radio Station Busts Out During Charity Drives And Won’t Stop Playing Until You Donate Enough. These are just bad songs, these aren’t just So Bad They’re Good songs, these are songs that transcend all notions of goodness or badness as we know it and exist in their own impossible realm of transcendent zen. Songs that gain their place in history not just in spite of the fact that their creators didn’t know any better, but BECAUSE they didn’t.

At least, some of them do. As with so much So Bad It’s Good art, it’s sometimes a bit hard to tell how much the artist was actually in on the joke. I mean, I’m pretty sure Norman Odam, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, has been playing a character from the start, even if he is dedicated to the bit. Likewise, another famously terrible standard on Blip’s soundtrack, “Fluffy” by Gloria Balsam likewise reeks strongly of ironic performance art, and The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra “2001 Sprach Kazoostra” was recorded by an outfit called “The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra” for crying out loud. That’s not some overly-long gimmick name to attract attention, they were literally just a bunch of dweebs in tuxedos playing kazoos. Though speaking of overly-long gimmick names, Let’s Get Out Of This Terrible Sandwich Shop were every bit as bad as their name, and their song “Hatchet” is early-aughts lo-fi indie-twee at its most obnoxious. And finally, we have the mysterious Erkey Grant & The Earwigs. There’s very little information about this short-lived Merseybeat band, so it’s hard to judge from a historical perspective if the A-side to their lone single “I Can’t Get Enough Of You” sounds the way it sounds because their lead singer (presumably the titular Erkey) was making FUN of bad singers or because he was one. I mean, the B-side “I’m A Hog For You” is genuinely great, but “I Can’t Get Enough Of You” is so abrasively bad that, even if it IS all a joke, it’s still a painful one. But really, pain is all Blip asks for, because pain and pleasure are just sensations to him. Blip is basically a Cenobite.

But enough of that charming mental image, there’s still one more grouping of songs on Blip’s soundtrack: the truly ARTSY ones. Not stuff like the ones in previous paragraph that just claim they were incompetent on purpose, I’m talking about the songs that were very carefully and intelligently constructed to sound… off.

“Moisture” by The Residents is probably the most normal of this bunch, having a kind of New Wave nerviness that would fit in well with the Barnes & Barnes tracks earlier. But the others… Look, I’m not enough of a philistine to accuse “Five Per Cent of Nothing” by Yes of being BAD. It clearly sounds exactly like what it’s supposed to sound like: a short Jazz Fusion experiment in unconventional melodic structure and syncopated rhythms. It’s just that it’s what many critics would diplomatically refer to as “a challenging listen.” It’s written by Bill Bruford, who would later go on to join King Crimson, and that explains a lot. Then there’s “Harry” by Big Brother & The Holding Company, a.k.a. Janis Joplin and a bunch of randos. “Harry” seems to be an attempt at the same sort of Rock Meets Free Jazz experimentation that “Five Per Cent Of Nothing” does, only nobody in Big Brother & The Holding Company were ever gonna join King Crimson. Again, though, I can’t really say “Harry” is BAD because it’s not like it’s supposed to be catchy or anything. It’s supposed to be atonal and disorienting, so it’s technically a success. And then there’s… the big one.

The climactic centerpiece of Blip’s entire soundtrack is a monstrosity known by the rather simplistic but accurate title “The Most Unwanted Song.” A collaboration between composer Dave Soldier and conceptual artists Komar & Melamid, “The Most Unwanted Song” is an extension of the latter’s People’s Choice project, which saw them creating works of art directly based on polling companies findings on what the populations of a country liked most, or least, at the case may be. “The Most Unwanted Song” manages to sound pretty much exactly like what you’d expect a comprehensive list of what Americans in the mid-90s found most annoying, mashed together in a concoction that’s entirely competent technically, yet also absolutely unlistenable for its full run time. We have an opera singer rapping over a bass line performed on a tuba, a children’s choir singing holiday advertising jingles, country ballads, political ranting, all dragging on and on for an unfathomable TWENTY-TWO MINUTES. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve only sat all the way through “The Most Unwanted Song” once in my entire life, and I’ve sat through the entire “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” drum solo on numerous occasions. It really is like the product of some insufficiently-advanced songwriting algorithm capable of stringing together notes but incapable of comprehending the end result. I already don’t expect most of you to bother listening to this playlist, but even among the few who do, I can’t fathom anybody willingly sitting through the entirety of “The Most Unwanted Song” without some kind of distraction to drown it out. If you actually make it through the whole thing, let me know. You deserve to be congratulated for your show of endurance.

As far as April Fools jokes go, Blip’s is probably a bit of a failure. Honestly, I SHOULD have described something really amazing, then sprung the actual songs on you without warning. But I’ve never been that good at the whole “deliberately lying” thing, have I? Besides, you’d be able to immediately see you’d been had the second you saw the videos on the YouTube playlist. Honestly, I just wanted to troll some unfortunate listeners with the most annoying playlist I could think of. Oh, but I HAVE held on to one little surprise. “The Most Unwanted Song” isn’t actually the final track on Blip’s playlist, I reserved one more tune to be the REAL wrap up. I won’t spoil it here, but rest assured that if you DO sit through ever second of the whole playlist, it’s the most appropriate conclusion possible.

(Not a whole lot to add about stringing together the videos here, other than there’s a bit more actual VIDEOS than usual. Hey, I can’t in good conscience play Barnes & Barnes and not show the demented visuals they concocted to accompany the audio. Look at the not-famous-yet actors! On a different note, I made the somewhat odd choice of representing “Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot” with an AMV rather than any regular posting of the song. But if you’re anything like me, then the only way you encountered “Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot” in the first place was by seeing that El Hazard AMV at an anime convention. And if you’re not, I just had to spread the experience along. Finally, I was in between a rock and a hard place with a few of these songs, since the videos I posted are actually edited down, but those edited versions are more accurate to what people know about the songs than the “real” ones. The version of “Fish Heads” here is only half the length of the official video posting, but half that video’s run time is just Bill Paxton wandering around town until the song starts. Also, that “mystery” final track is technically only half the full song, but there’s no way anyone would tolerate anything else. Heck, I’m already taking a bit of a risk by linking to a remastered version of the clip and not the potato-quality original.)

Blip's YouTube Playlist