"Bald" Bill Hagan And His Trocaderons

"Bald" Bill Hagan And His Trocaderons - Music to Strip By

I must admit I skipped over this one more than once when I was scouring the dollar bins. The album was actually in surprisingly decent shape, and the jacket was okay. The absence of an insert wasn't a big deal - most of the stuff I was mining from the cheap stacks didn't seem to have all of their parts, although I suspect in this case there weren't any notes or missing pieces other than a paper liner. I bought the album because I thought it would be silly kitschy fun. "Party Fun Songs from the Golden Age of Burlesque" indeed.

As you may have guessed I did eventually lay down my loonie and a few cents to cover taxes and bought the album. It came home and was carefully cleaned (who knows where this had been) and then put it on my pile of records awaiting their turn on the turntable.

It sat there for more than a year and my pile had grown past my ability to keep up, and while I was making progress I wasn't exactly following the FIFO inventory model. It was more of a WTF do I feel like listening to model. This is also why that Osmonds double record is still in the pile. I just need to be in the mood.

Well, today I was in the mood. I had to look for a bit before I found it in the pile because the fine folks at Somerset didn't put a label on the spine. I wonder if that was deliberate so the kids wouldn't find the record in their parents' collection. Who knows, it was 1966 (to be fair there was no date on the record or jacket so I just assumed Discogs was correct) and the image of the nearly exposed butt cheek and the dangling brassiere was probably more enticing than the Sears catalogue underwear section.

So yeah, I'm thinking it was deliberately left blank, like a plain paper bag.

There's not a lot out there on ol' "Bald" Bill Hagan And His Trocaderons. It's sort of a weird case of self-authentication. I know that Bill Hagan existed because I have this album, and I know he put out records because I have this record ... but finding any information about Bill Hagan is pretty thin and mostly just points back to this album. Who knows it may have been a pseudonym sort of like when I used Stuart Pedasso as an alias for a while. For all I know "Bald" Bill was a pet name for the guy's penis. Having said all that this one does appear to be up on the streaming sites but it's the only thing by "Bald" Bill.

Whatever the case, the album is a pretty fun jazz record that leaned into the burlesque. The "Stripper Song" is probably the most famous example, but some of the titles here were pure gold,

"Bumps and Grinds"
"G-String Twist"
"Girdles Aweigh"

Although I'm a bit creeped out by the growling trumpet (think "Minnie the Moocher" played by a flasher) on the album's closer "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" which is absolutely not a song I want to envision a woman stripping to. Oh the humanity.

Regardless, this was way more fun than I expected. Stripper music is an odd concoction of Dixieland and little big band, and the band delivered the goods with a healthy dose of swagger. Who knows how this was recorded, but I get the sense it was live from the floor.

I'm sort of glad I was listening by myself in the basement. When it was over my shirt was in one corner and my socks and pants were scattered on the floor.

Party fun indeed.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continued to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self-titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner, who had been with Gary from the b...

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