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Crazy & Obscure
by Michaelangelo Matos
Trikont is an independent label that began as an offshoot of an anarchist bookstore in München, Germany. It has put together some of the most adventurous and wide-ranging various-artists collections of any record company in the world, due in equal parts, one imagines, to more relaxed German copyright laws, the obscurity of its source material, and a genius licensing department. My two favorites are both ostensibly good for comedy, but as it turns out, American Yodeling 1911-1946 is a conscientious survey of early country and blues records featuring yodels -- genuinely entertaining, though hardly a barrel of laughs.
The other record is a different story altogether. Part of the six-volume Flashbacks series, Novelty Songs 1914-1946: Crazy & Obscure is one of the most shameless albums ever put together. For one thing, the tunes are amazingly catchy: Most of these jokes started as songs rather than the other way around, and only a couple -- the Viennese Seven Singing Sisters'
a cappella deconstruction of "The William Tell Overture"; Spike Jones's fad-puncturing "Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai (Hawaiian War Chant)" -- were previously well-known. Moreover, at least as far as pop culture was concerned, these songs date from a time when irony was something you did on Mondays, after the wash had dried on the line. This stuff is boffo, boisterous, waggish.
It is also varied: One can listen to all 72 minutes without exhaustion setting in, thanks to the equal footing given silly songs by serious artists and the portfolio expansions of comedian-firsters. It sets familiar cuts in perspective -- the Andrews Sisters' "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" is such a time-capsule piece by now that it's easy to forget how deliberately comic it is. And nearly everything hits its target -- societal, farcical, especially musical -- like a well-aimed cream pie.
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