Let’s All Go To The Circus

 

Yes, when I was 5 years old, I liked to comb my hair so it looked like the Bank of America logo.

 

That’s me at my 5^th birthday party. At that party, apart from the Johnny Lightning Race Car Driver Helmet and Goggles in the picture, I received a small record player. It was by no means a quality piece of audio equipment, but it wasn’t a toy either. It was about the size of a very small suitcase; in fact it had a handle on it and a clasp to keep the lid shut when not in use. It was made of what I think was wood and was covered in a leather-textured contact paper, the bottom half blue, the top half white.

There were 4 speed settings on the record player and I was taught how to tell which speed I should put it on for each of the records I had gotten with it. There was the 45rpm, which was used for the smaller small records with the large hole and 33rpm, for the larger records with small hole.

But there were two other speeds as well: 78rpm and 16 rpm. I would later learn that 78rpm was an old standard speed that even then, in 1969, was about 40 years obsolete. But I was prepared, in the unlikely case I got bit by the Rudy Valee bug, say, in second grade. I have never seen or heard of a record that needed to be played at 16 rpm

But I took advantage of all four speeds. Sure, I enjoyed all my records at the proper speed, but change the speed and you arrived in comedy heaven. Any given artist could be converted to The Chipmunks with just a flip of a lever. A song meant to be played at 33, sounded silly when played at 45 or 16, but it was almost pants-wetting funny at 78. Similarly a 45 of The Lion Sleeps Tonight, played at 16 sounded remarkably like something you might hear a whale say on a National Geographic special.

I blatantly ignored my parents’ and my brother’s warnings of “You are going to ruin your records doing that.” I didn’t care, I loved it. I even learned that I could turn the records the wrong way with my finger and a whole new world of silliness opened up to me.

I should point out here that I have never outgrown this. To this day, I still find Spike Jones’ Cocktails For Two played backwards on my computer to be one of the funniest things ever.

I received several records that same day, what good is a record player if you don’t have records, and I was thrilled to have my own music, as bad as it was.

And it was bad…

One of my favorite records I received was called Look Out For The Batman and recently, through the glory of the internet, I became reacquainted with the song. Give it a listen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnRoEQFBWwA

 

I forget the other records I got with the exception of one: Let’s All Go To The Circus by The Big Top Singers. I don’t remember the songs at all, and when I found them on the internet, the links to mp3’s brought me to a page saying that the FBI had shut that site down due to copyright laws. That’s good use of the FBI’s time don’t you think? Never mind organized crime, it’s important The Big Top Singers don’t get screwed over)

But oh, I remember that album cover…

 

Imagine my horror!!!

 

Keep in mind that the actual album cover was 12”x12” and you can imagine the horror. That clown used to creep the ever lovin’ piss out of me. I remember having nightmares about that smiling bastard. The tiger never bothered me much. Yes, he was roaring and baring his fangs, but to me it was like he was warning me to stay away from that clown. If you look to the right of the clown’s collar, it appears that the international logo for the men’s rest room is trying to fend him off as well. Even the elephant has reared up and is spitting little red and pink balls at him! I always perceived the trapeze artists and the ladies on the horses as being in some sort of combat with the clown as well.

The seal should be commended for his ability to line up the red/yellow border of the ball with the red/yellow border of the backdrop, but to me, that is not a circus act, that’s just him being anal retentive. I was never quite sure what the guy in the powder blue tux was doing, but he seemed to be very firmly attached to the seal. The woman next to him seems to be saying “Hey, this is all we got folks, take it or leave it.”

But my favorite part of this album cover is the monkey. He just has this air of calm pleasant indifference about him. It’s like he’s saying “Yeah… well, I only have to put up with this stuff for another year, then I’ll have enough tuition money to go back to law school.”