Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       This is actually a "what if" by AEC. As follower of this blog know, I am a big E.L.O. fan. I was working on the idea of what would the second album be like if co-founder Roy Wood had stayed. While looking up things I found that the Albums Back from the Dead blog had not only already done it, but I thought it was great. The songs chosen and front cover are from that, all I did was make a booklet and tray card for it. Check out the original blog here:   Albums Back from the Dead: Electric Light Orchestra -- "The Lost Planet" and here is the playlist: ELO The Lost Planet - YouTube

       There are many love songs compilations one can purchase. There are even ones that are just Bee Gees and Beatles love songs. What if there as an album about people that are no longer in that blissful stage. Here is my version of one. The illustration on tray card is from the February 1975 issue of National Lampoon. WARNING: the songs get harsher as you go.   NOT Love Songs - YouTube

            When a movie was going to be made of Neil Simon's Play "The Sunshine Boys", Red Skelton and Jack Benny were cast as the leads. Since the characters were aging vaudevillians the casting seemed perfect as both actors had started in Vaudeville. However, Skelton backed out and Benny had health issues, in fact he died a short time later. Benny had recommended his friend George Burns for his part and he filled it well. The movie started a renaissance for Burns, the film roles kept coming, including the classic Oh, God!  with Burns in the title role. In an interview promoting The Sunshine Boys  George joked that the last time he made a movie was 36 years before and "they must have liked me because they brought me back." I can only imagine if Jack Benny had lived longer and played the role, he would joke that they finally gave him another chance after his flop The Horn Blows at Midnight .      Here is the make-up test of Benny a...

      When I was younger, I was disappointed that there was no soundtrack released for the movie Harold and Maude . When Cat Stevens released the greatest hits album Footsteps in the Dark,  I finally had all of his songs from the film and I made my own soundtrack, including the Tchaikovsky piece that plays when Harold's mother is swimming in the pool while her son pretends to be drowned.      I was going to make the soundtrack one of my blog posts but while looking some things up I found that an official soundtrack was released in 2022! It even included Tchaikovsky's concerto and dialogue snippets. Now I just need to find a different blog idea.

      My friend Wayne is partly responsible for this blog. We were both fans of Nick Lowe, I had the LP of  Labour of Lust  and he had Pure Pop for Now People . By extension I got into Dave Edmunds and Wayne told me about the troubles they had putting out an album together as Rockpile, since they both were under contract to different labels. Looking at the Rockpile album they did release I saw that Lowe, Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Terry Williams made up the band; the same people playing on Labour of Lust . Researching this on the internet I found that the four of them Lowe's album and Edmunds' album, Repeat When Necessary  where recorded at the same sessions and were essentially Rockpile records. I combined the two to make it a proper Rockpile album. Rockpile - Repeat When Necessary 1979 - YouTube