Dancercise your blues away!

Must be fun. Look at all those big smiles!

That guy is Ed Allen, who had his own show called The Ed Allen Exercise Show, aimed at housewives. He seems to have been another Jack LaLanne. Barbie was his second wife, who did routines on his show and on her own.

See? Ed Allen. :p

Always with the smiling...

Think anyone dancercises anymore? 

More info on Ed here. Can't find much on Barbie, though.

P.S. This album was also printed with the name Dance/Exercise. I guess they felt the need to explain the combination of words? :p

K-tel's Great Truck Drivin' Songs

Nice eye-catching cover. :) 

Standard plain back...but with a couple of twists! K-tel seems to have rarely used pictures on the back of their albums, let alone a color one. Nice touch! More on the lower left later...

Ah, now this is a cool addition, good buddy! I wonder how many of these terms are still used today... This, plus that picture of the rig, really set this compilation apart from most K-tel releases. :)

It's all portable if you try hard enough!

A friend e-mailed this to me and I thought I'd share it with youse guys. 

...it just pooped in my hand!

Charles Barkley has interesting taste in music. I can't believe I snagged a small part of his collection in a small thrift shop in a small town in Ontario! ;)

What, no covers? :p According to his site, "More than 500,000 copies of Mike's album Thank You For The Dove have been sold, making it a Gold Album."

Ronco's Funny Bone + Pure Awesomeness!

Cute cover.

Nondescript back cover...but ooo, what's that at the bottom left?

YES! :D They did a great homage/lampooning of this product on The Simpsons' episode "Radio Bart."

See Ronco's ad for Mr. Microphone (and other niceness) here:

"Popular" is relative

If only such things were still popular with the kids of today... *sigh*

Do they even have actual dance parties anymore? I'm not talking about the flailing around crumping or simulated sex nonsense on the dance floor that's popular today, but real dance parties with real, proper dances. I'm sure there are services for people to learn, but I'm afraid this general sort of thing died off long, long ago.

Maybe I'm just watching too much Leave it to Beaver lately and feeling nostalgic for a time I didn't even live in...

Spoiler alert!

Just a note to say that I'm currently adding my collection to Discogs.com. You may see some stuff that will be added in the future, but for the most part...you won't. ;) That's because a lot of my more obscure and/or regional stuff isn't listed. I'll probably add a bit of it to the site, but for the most part, expect stuff in this blog that isn't there yet. Haha.

Ripplin's Discogs.com collection (check out the Releases section to the left)

Feel free to post links to your collections too! We can also add each other to our friends lists at Discogs. :)

Roncool!

I'm definitely more of a K-tel guy (TeeVee has its moments too), but this Ronco record was too good to pass up!

I don't know if I like the B-52 headphones or vinyl fighters better. :p

Pretty lo-fi back, and the tracklist isn't my cup of tea either, but whatever!

Before Mavis Beacon, there was...

...Brother's audio typing lessons!

Dig that groovy color!

A few visual aids on the back.

I still have an electric typewriter, but this album doesn't really make me wanna drag it out. Haha.

I would imagine number 6 must be the hardest to get used to for a lot of people.

It also comes with a booklet of practice drills.

They get rather complicated...

I think I'd rather play The Typing of the Dead. ;)

Making eyes at Lena

I had no idea who this was when I saw it, but I picked it up because it looked interesting. Littlest pop star sort of thing, I guessed. From her wiki page: "With her album Ma! (He's Making Eyes At Me) at ten years of age, she is the youngest person in history to have an album in the top ten of the UK Albums Chart." Well!

I was looking at the tracklist and thought 'wow, "River Deep - Mountain High"!' The Deep Purple cover of that tune was an instant favorite of mine. She does a nice job with it.

She was a talented kid who unfortunately died very young. Quite a sad story. More info on her here and here. 

Listen to her rendition of "River Deep - Mountain High" here:

No, the other Babe Ruth

SCORE! :) Didn't know this band when I saw this cover and just had to grab it! I'm glad I did.

Neat-o logo.

Such a nice back cover, you might've thought it was a religious-themed album, but no, it's British 70's hard rock. Very powerful stuff, not only guitar-wise, but from their female singer, Janita Haan.

More info on the band at their official site, here. Check out the History section to see their amazing pedigree!

And listen to their first single, the hard rockin' "Wells Fargo", here.

And yowza, you gotta hear "The Mexican" too, here!

I wish I'd've known about these guys way sooner than this...