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Sunday, April 01, 2012

April Fool

Sonny Bono sings "Laugh At Me"- Original Footage!!! 1965

YES! This is so GREAT!

If you haven't heard Sonny's entire "Inner Views" LP.... you need to! It's a masterpiece of art. Or at least a piece of something...

3 comments:

Jonathan F. King said...

What makes this clip so transcendent? Is its Sonny's ridiculous appearance? The song's painful, quasi-anthemic lyrics ("Why do they try to make me run/son of a gun")? Our awareness of the deep opportunism that motivated his every action? What we now know would be his ultimately absurd fate? Yes, yes, yes, and yes, but above all it's the faux intensity of his delivery and, even moreso, the glitchy vocal track. Is this a rare instance of a performer with an open mike accompanying himself over a pre-recorded vocal track? Those of us familiar with the original recording are compelled to listen closely to the double-tracked vocal, if only to determine if Sonny might actually sound *worse* in the absence of studio magic, and even so press on where silent mouthing would more than suffice. These factors combine to produce an artifact that can't be dismissed entirely with respect ot the tenets of conventional aesthetic judgment. It is truly sui generis.

Dick Cannon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dick Cannon said...

You pretty much said it all. I've studied this LP. Seeing this performance was like uncovering a holy relic. The doubled voice is intriguing and seems that it is just cheap production where Sonny didn't even have a track without vocals to sing to. The black void in which he sings, the SCREEEEEAMING girls you never see. It's like a Twilight Zone episode.