C/D: Tiny Tim

i picked up "God Bless Tiny Tim" this past xmas, mainly as a novelty record. i brought it home to taunt my fiance with Tiptoe Through the Tulips. we had guests stay with us and that record became the soundtrack for the week. at first it was just to laugh, but then we really got into it. the production and arrangements are amazing. it's seriously like a demented psych pop album. i'd say it even rivals (not quite, but close) Van Dyke Park's "Song Cycle".

and when's the last time you heard someone sing a duet (I've Got You Babe, even!!) fufilling both the male and female roles?

but the beginning of the second side, where he laughs for a good minute and kinda orgasmically coos at the end -- definitely creepy.

You are a true gentleman, Tim.

Around the mid 90s. He was playing "Tiptoe Through The Tulips" and had a heart attack as far as I know.

Just downloaded "God Bless", and yeh - I reckon it's creepy. Certain bits like "Daddy, What Is Heaven Like" just freak me the hell out. But it's a totally compelling record and I agree that it works just as well as a novelty record than as an interesting bit of psych-pop.

Growing up, my parents had "God Bless ... "on LP, and I never remember hearing it, but I always remembered the cover. 2 years ago, I took it from their collection, and gradually fell in love with the record, and it's wickedly 60's production (Richard Perry, who also produced Captain Beefheart's first, and I think best, album "Safe As Milk").

His second album is also quite good, but not quite AS good. I went on a Tiny Tim spree (somewhat like a Polyphonic Spree) and picked up another album by him "Tiptoe Trough the Tulips Resurection". Really, really suffers from bad production, but some great tunes.

Also, check out Tiny Tim with Brave Combo "Girl", featuring a great cover of "Stariway to Heaven". Classic beyond classic.

Also I got a little known horror film that he was in called "Blood Harvest". Pretty bad, but he was entertaining in it.

Anyway, Tiny Tim rules.

NO DOUBT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jfj9VUdW0g&search=tiny%20tim

Most of it was produced by Richard Perry who did Ringo's best stuff and you can also hear echos of Sparks, Nilsson, and other pop eccentrics. I still have vinyl copies I bought as a child (three for a buck at Woolco's-wish I would have bought the Yoko & Apple Records obscurities they had boxes of!).

This is in my Xmas stocking this year, Santa.

1. Nico appears on Tiny's first album......... impersonating Tuesday Weld!

2. Irving Berlin's errrrrrrrr, surprising anti-war song "Stay Down Here Where You Belong" (yes, that Irving Berlin).

3. The frankly disturbing "They Always Pick On Me" from the "For All My Little Friends" album, a kind of proto-Emo wrist slasher aimed at the 4 to 7 year old market.

4. The UK-only "There'll Always Be an England" single.

5. The version of "People Are Strange" - who better to sing this song that Tiny Tim after all?

6. Tiny and Miss Vicki's duet single.

I confess I haven't yet plucked up the courage to listen to the 40 or so demos on the last CD, the first 3 of which are entitled, "Bunny Nose", "Yum Yum" and "Who Stole Baby's Bottle?", hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Tiny Tim is genius and perfect holiday music!!

Just heard "God Bless" for the first time and it was everything I was hoping it would be and more! Really lovely orchestral 60s psychedelic pop. I mean the first track is "Welcome to My Dream". Love the weird spoken-word interludes. Also there is a Christian tone running through this album but it is very subtle and not at all a turn-off. I love "Living in the Sunlight", the first time I heard it this giant smile came across my face and I couldn't stop laughing til it ended and I had to go back and play the song again. I have been looking for his other 60s albums (or even the 90s ones) but can't find them. I can't imagine they can top this tho. What a beautiful thing!

Dig this video of Tiny doing "The Other Side" for a room full of kids. That song is a definite highlight, a kind of proto-prog psychedelic rock masterpiece cautionary tale about The Great Flood and Global Warming wrapped in a wonderful, completely loony and singalong-able chorus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DEoOdcYKbc

Tiny Tim w Brave Combo is brilliant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1-j44PHL3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUD_aeVi_bY&feature=related

i like his song that was featured in spongebob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLLpuzDU-v0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08M3q7Fx_As

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP6yvrfOfLc

Who wants to listen a single Tiny Tim song for 10 hours?

Is there a biography on him?

I just made it through 2 listens, gonna stop while it's still good.

Really there needs to be a biography on this dude. I'm having no luck searching tho. Getting nothing but Charles Dickens.

there's this interview where Boyd Rice pries all sorts of reactionary craziness out of him w/o out much effort: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/non/message/5575

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aluY0eLGk8

Love this song, also love the idea of Nico being seduced by Tiny Tim.

Is there a biography on him?

http://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Tim-Harry-Stein/dp/087223455X/ref=cm_rdp_product

Tiny Tim
by Harry Stein, Tiny Tim

By Harry Stein, published in 1976 by Playboy press. Excellent 243 page book on Tiny's amazing life and career with eight pages of black & white photos.
"Tiny tells his side of the story. Because he believes it his religious obligation, he describes everything; the times as a young man he was almost committed to a mental institution; his years of struggle in gay clubs; his startling success; his sexual escapades; his highly publicized marriage to Miss Vicky; his often acrimonious relationships with an army of managers, agents and lawyers".(less)

this sounds interesting (and, well, Boyd Rice endorses it :p) but it's very rare and doesn't cover the last 20 years of his life.

Damn, used at $150 bucks!

omg @ the Do Ya Think I'm Sexy clip Eisbar posted above

he wears the same suit in his cameo in One Trick Pony

he was a true scholar of 1900-25 pop

http://www.tinytim.org/images/tiny-tim-youth.jpg

wow

just hoping we don't get James Franco biopic

More like David Krumholtz.

Meanwhile Dangerous Minds just shared this out:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/19901_510051935716462_2133463073_n.jpg

God Bless.. is nuts. in a good way. Danny Baker was saying on Twitter that Bowie's Fill Your Heart is him doing Tiny.
this is the highlight IMO. astonishingly it has 9 million views! guy was freakin popular

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c71RCAyLS1M

guy was freakin popular

Deservedly so.

Yeah, Tiny Tim and Bowie have both done versions of Fill Your Heart, but I don't think it was originally by either.

i listened to this record last weekend. one of the great lost psych classics!

In Chronicles, Dylan mentions playing a relatively steady gig with Tim at a Village dive ---Cafe Wha?, I think---and at the end of the night, shift manager Fred Neil would peel off a few bucks to augment the hat-passings, which they'd pocket with leftover fries and deathburgers, then hit the streets and/or subway (Tim to his Mom's apartment in whichever outer borough, I guess). I still want to hear Tim with the Hawks/Band (maybe Dylan too).

Come to think of it: http://theband.hiof.no/albums/boot_down_in_the_basement.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdA_ZHjLxbU