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| Best Record In The World Released by CalPOP What does one get when one crosses Pink Floyd's "The Wall" with Kiss and Saturday Night Live? Well, one gets a new concept album called "Best Record in the World" released by Los Angeles based band "CalPOP". That's right, CalPOP, the largest internet server company in Los Angeles. The CalPOP album is the brainchild of eccentric CalPOP data center CEO Lynn Tracy a/k/a "Cruciface" (because of the Kiss style make-up which features two crosses over his eyes.) Lynn, or shoud I say Cruciface, is the lead singer for CalPOP. Apparently Cruciface is a vampire who just had his 1, 000 birthday - but that's another story. The concept album is no doubt the real-life story of Lynn Tracy, a Defcon linux computer hacker who sells his soul to get signed to a record company and win the heart of a fictitious female rock star named Shelia Surrender that he discovers on MySpace. But being a signed musician isn't all it's cracked up to be. After winning back his soul, the love spell is broken on Shelia and then she soon gives him the old "Let's be friends" speech. By the end of the record Lynn Tracy has sort of come to grips with his situation only to discover that his mentor, an old man, is in fact his future self. The concept album is composed of 36 tracks (18 tracks on Part 1 and 18 tracks on Part 2) about half are songs and the other half are skits which sit between the songs - many of which contain innovative, entertaining, and humorous anecdotes. There are no less than 25 character voices done by Lynn Tracy himself including "Barley the Wonder Horse", "Little Honka", "The Old Man", "Nigel Benson", "Long John Silvers", "Mission Control", "Romulynn Tracci", "Party boy #1", "Party boy #2", "Dave Kimbel", "Good Times", "Hip", "Hop", and "Tagger", "Commercial Announcer", "The Ice Queen", "E.V. Hill", "Sister Olevia", "Nazi Guy", "French Guy", "Fast Food Kid", "The Genie Irukandji", "Ghost of Pu$$% Past", "Ghost of Pu$$% yet to come" and "Lynn Tracy" himself. The voice of Shelia Surrender is provided by Lex Covato, prominent Pittsburgh Neo-POP Surrealist Artist - she also provided the Album cover and over 15 paintings for the 20 page CD booklet which details the concept album story. The album contains at least 4 commercials "Anders Prosthetics, Appetite Brand Cat Food, 24 hour Beauty Supply, and a commercial for what else, CalPOP dedicated servers." Part 2 of the album contains a diet plan called the Live-It Diet! Which again has Lynn Tracy as "Romulynn Tracci" an infomercial guru touting the Live-it Diet plan! The album is not without interesting scientific ideas, for example, the album suggests installing solar collectors on the cold side of mercury and that the energy collected be beamed back via laser. The album even contains sounds on the track "AMT Mosquito Repellant" that are supposedly only audible to people under 30 such as 16MHz or 18MHz sounds. This same track contains a sound sample said to be designed to drive away real-life mosquitoes when played. (AMT stands for Anti-Mosquito Technology) Meanwhile, the music is outstanding. The guitarist, Stuart Casson a/k/a "Christmas Tree" (because of the Kiss style make-up which features a purple Christmas tree on one side of his face) is also the guitarist for Winzenried and was formerly a guitarist for The Meatmen. The bassist, Danny Biondo is the former singer of the NYC Blues Devils. Joel Patterson is also the drummer of Sky Parade. Although mostly in English, the album does have some Japanese, Spanish, Croatian, German, and Russian on it too - making it have a little more global appeal than your typical record. These foreign languages are often hidden within the skits- for example the singing elf, performed by CalPOP employee Lana Sostarec is actually singing "Trade your dollars for euros" in Croatian - and the Russian is spoken by Sergey Mishyn, who just happens to be CalPOP's network administrator. "Best Record in the World" is available via digital download on two parts Part 1 & Part 2 from Amazon.com and should be available from iTunes by Christmas. It will also be around X-mas when the first CDs are available from the BestRecordInTheWorld.Com website. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Jazz News :: home page |