Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! To celebrate this joyous day of the year, here's the 24,376th adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol"!
Produced in 1977 by Peter Pan Records, this is about as straightforward an adaptation as you can get. If you thought "Mickey's Christmas Carol" was incredible with how they crammed the entire story into a half-hour, you'll be blown away by how this record squeezes the tale into a whopping eleven minutes... and that includes Peter Pan Records' trademark looooong pauses between pages!
Once again the initial digitization was provided by the awesome folks over and Under Design.
Depending on how you feel about Raggedy Ann & Andy, you could either find this record endearing or annoying.
The 1981 Read-Along set has a wonderful premise: Ann & Andy give the listener ideas for Christmas gifts that don't cost much (or any) money to show your loved ones that you care about them; things such as offering to do someone's chores for a week, or instructions on making homemade trinkets using items already around your house.
The execution, however, has a lot to be desired. The production on this record was so poor. Clipping can't be avoided, and the choices for Ann & Andy's voice-over artists are abysmal. The music is just a handful of notes pounded out on a piano for the duration of the record. The entire album feels like it was recorded in a single take (which, who knows, could be the truth).
If you or your little ones can power though these 7 minutes and get some cute Holiday gift ideas out of them, my hat is off to you!
I'm not ashamed to admit I adore the trainwreck that is the "Super Mario Bros." live-action movie. It's definitely a product of its time... plus I'm biased because, as a massive fan of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", knowing that Bob Hoskins was playing my favorite video game character made little 10-year-old Me stoked beyond belief!
Walt Disney Audio Entertainment released an accompanying "Audio Poster Pack" to celebrate the release of the film, which included a huge poster with 3D elements, King Koopa-inspired 3D glasses, and a 45-minute fully-dramatized story cassette.
There are a few recordings of this cassette on YouTube, but most are either fuzzy, too loud, or just in poor quality. What I'm sharing here is yet another digitization by Under Design with final cleanup by myself, and it sounds fantastic. Come to think of it, there are times where I enjoy this cassette MORE than the movie itself!
Narrated by the great Chuck Riley, this story is pretty darned thrilling, loaded with great voice-overs, music and sound effects. It's an absolute treat for anybody else who's brave enough to say they love the SMB movie! Enjoy!
How does nobody have this available anywhere by now? It's absolutely adorable!
"The Story of Jingle Bells" was released by Disneyland Records & Tapes in 1987, and is the story of a horse named - you guessed it - Jingle Bells. The story exists as a vehicle to incorporate the classic Holiday tune, and includes the full song at the end (the exact same version Disney would also release on their "Sing-Along" VHS and DVD series).
It's a warm and fuzzy tale, with soothing narration and no major action outside of a horse race in the final third of the book. Absolutely perfect to sip some hot chocolate to while hanging out in the the living room with the kids on Christmas Eve. Give it a listen!
Here's something that, quite honestly, I know little to nothing about.
Back in the late 1990's I had a friend make me a few cassette copies of albums my poor self couldn't afford. One of those was a copy of Primus' "Rhinoplasty". However on the B-Side of the cassette, to fill out the remaining run time, they added a few tracks from a Wilmington, Delaware band called Bag Of Nickels.
The 3 songs were written down as "Debut Demos" and had a date of 1999 written alongside them. The songs are pretty good, with obvious influences from Faith No More, Sublime, and of course Primus (which is why, I assume, my friend tacked these tracks on in the first place).
Researching this band has shown me that their existence is sporadic; after releasing two full-length albums they disappeared until around 2011, and then disappeared again until they released their third album "Amen" via their Bandcamp, and since then they've disappeared yet again.
Some pictures and secondhand listings exist pertaining to their other two albums, but absolutely nothing exists online that tie into these 3 supposed demos outside of a music video uploaded onto YouTube:
Even the image I used for this cassette's album art comes from a photo album titled "old school" on their Facebook page, which hasn't been active in years.
Maybe somebody somewhere has more information on these songs. But until then, just sit back and enjoy the tunes!
I had a pretty busy week, so I didn't do a whole lot of thrifting outside of stopping at a local flea market one day before heading to work.
Luckily, my gut feeling paid off; I stumbled across a bunch of comic books, including SIX (!) copies of "Spider-Man" #1 from 2016, the first solo series for Miles Morales!
While it would've been crazier to find six copies of "Ultimate Fallout" #4 in the wild, coming across easily Near-Mint copies of this is still pretty incredible... especially since they were only a buck apiece.
All of these will be getting pressed and graded in the near future, and a few may appear on the Sanctum's eBay store. Keep your eyes peeled both on the store, and when you're out thrifting; you never know what you'll find while you're out and about!
In honor of this festive season, every Friday this month I'll be sharing something related to Christmas! I'm starting off with one of my favorite Holiday records, 1977's "Friendly The Snowman", released by Peter Pan Records (and re-released in 1981).
My childhood copy was in absolutely horrible condition, and over the years it seems nobody anywhere has been able to digitize a copy that didn't sound like it was horribly scratched or covered in Vaseline. So I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a factory-sealed copy to digitize... and what resulted from this endeavor is the cleanest rip of this story ever to hit the Internet!
This charming little story is about a little boy named Michael who can't quite get the hang of ice skating, feels embarrassed to be around his brothers, and decides to build a snowman... and, yep, you guessed it, he comes to life and helps Michael overcome his fears of failure. It's simple, but it's sweet, and it's a very enjoyable tale.
The only gripe I had with this record growing up was something that ended up being a staple of Peter Pan Read-Alongs around this time period: extremely long pauses between pages. I mean exceptionally long. It almost felt like you could go to the bathroom after hearing the "turn the page" tone. So to help those who may have shared my pain, I'm including a "shortened" version of this record alongside the traditional rip, where I cut down the pauses between pages. It actually removed a solid 30+ seconds from the final MP3!
So without further ado, to kick off the Christmas season, here's "Friendly The Snowman"! Enjoy!
Well THIS was a surprise! A very generous follower named Andrew Wilmot sent me a decent-sized stack of games!
Prior to starting this blog, I ran a YouTube channel where, throughout the year, I would stock up on games for the AbleGamers charity. AbleGamers is a nonprofit public charity that aims to improve the overall
quality of life for those with disabilities through the power of video
games.
Several of the titles Andrew sent me will be put in next year's donation box, and a few others are replacements for games I currently own (you should see how wrecked my old copy of RE4 is!).
To thank Andrew for their generosity, I'd like to direct other Dwellers to their book "The Death Scene Artist", which can be purchased HERE. It's a pretty awesome premise: the recounting of a love affair with someone who has figuratively lived hundreds of lives. Check it out... and Thank You again, Andrew!
Here's one that was a personal favorite as a child, and one I had previously digitized for the Children's Records and More blog (which is sadly gone now).
"High Wave Robbery" is the only "Darkwing Duck" - related audio adventure released by Disney, and the only one to feature the villainess Frequencia. Who knows, maybe she'll make an appearance in the upcoming DD reboot!
As I said earlier, I had digitized this once before... however, it was through a cheap Walkman knockoff via Aux cable, so it sounded really airy and tinny. This time, however, I incorporated the help of Under Design Digital Conversion once again, and what we've produced is the crispest, cleanest digitization of this tale on the Web.
If you're a DD fan and haven't heard this adventure yet, you're in for a real treat. LET'S GET DANGEROUS!
