Monday, November 5, 2007

A Street That Rhymes at 6 A.M.

For your wonderment, below is a clip of criminally-obscure folk inamorata Norma Tanega performing the eponymous song from her long-lost LP "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog." This dazzling record was the only non-Mitch Ryder release on producer/mogul Bob "Generation" Crewe's very short-lived label New Voice and was one of only two albums put out by Tanega before she disappeared back into the ether. Pretty absurd she's not more well-known, let alone appreciated for contributing such a headtrip of a folk-soul breakdown totally uncharacteristic in the glacial fudge crop of hung-up protest troubadours in the mid 60's. As the back of the jacket proclaims:
It could with reasonable certainty be supposed that the "Sixties" will leave us drowned in the seas of Protest and Dissidence. We had seen Tom Dooley (h)ung, the Death Of An Angel, Patches, and 1,247 Teen-agers have lost their lives in song. More recently, we have perched on the Eve of Destruction, and it has become hip to dig war ballads.

Early in February of this year [1966], a movement toward the positive side was begun by a young lady Walkin' Her Cat Named Dog. Her name: Norma Tanega.


I could go off on a tangent here about the inexcusable, MAOI-induced lameness of current "oldies" radio programming and why entrancing, warm-sweater jams like this aren't crashing the total butthole cologne music regime is but one true indicator of the fucking toiletburger sub-species presently in supposed control of the western mind; however, I digress in lieu of our beloved leaders' intentions to perpetuate the flabby status quo as humiliating reward for "Longest Tour of Duty!"