Thread by @SethAbramson

(🔐) NEW: For just the second time, the Lost Classics of the 60s series has a subscriber-only entry. It took a lot of work, and is the series' strangest-ever entry. It's about novelty songs—but not like you think. I hope you'll subscribe, listen and share. sethabramson.substack.com/p/lost-classic…

1/ Included in this article is everything from a 20-minute story-joke-protest song to a song about a cartoon character, from heavy metal music with yodeling to an album about Middle Earth, from "wizard rock" to a song in a made-up language. And much more. Novelty music is so odd.

2/ What I try to do here is show how much more novelty music became in the Long 60s than just the sort of Justin Timberlake spoof—linked to here—we find in INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS. There was innovation in some such songs, a lot of "meta" content, and the birth of new genres of music.

3/ Comedy-rock was born in the 60s—and spawned a host of genres of music that still exist today. Certain artists used novelty touchstones to innovate within their genres, which is how we got the inimitable "Hocus Pocus" by Focus. And some novelty songs were just... *good music*.

4/ I was nervous about doing a "novelty" entry in a music series at PROOF that's become popular, because I worried people would think, "Oh—'Monster Mash.' Yeah, got it... I'm all good." But this genre is so much bigger than that. Even staples like Tiny Tim sound *haunting* today.

5/ But the big point I try to make in the essay introducing the entry is that we have *more* novelty music in 2021 than they had in the 1960s—it's just become mainstreamed. Music that is born to be "memed," like Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus's "Old Town Road," *is* novelty music.

6/ It's for this reason that "The Tweekend" and "The Novelty Box" are the two in-series "specials" I now intend to continue—because there's a *lot* more work to be done to unpack what "novelty" music really is. Here's "The Tweekend," if you missed it (🔓): sethabramson.substack.com/p/lost-classic…

7/ In any case, for those wondering whether or not to dive in—wondering whether maybe I, as an ex-DJ with a specialization in 60s music, nevertheless only play the "standards"—uh... no. The first present in this "Novelty Box" is from this obscure 60s band:

8/ The second track in the Novelty Box is from the first band to tour with a synthesizer—which also named its theremin "Lothar," made it the "leader" of the band, and called the humans in the band a mere backing group (the "hand people" operating Lothar).

PS/ I looked for Toby Goodshank's "My Uncle Used to Love Me but She Died" cover—off his 2006 LP Di Santa Ragione—but couldn't find it. If you can, let me know. For now, here's his "The Death of My Enemies." The only lyrics: "I have you now / It's amazing!"