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The Goldwaters

This album is so amazingly bad, it's an automatic tacky treasure. How bad is it? The entire album contains hastily written parodies of old folk songs containing pro-Goldwater and anti-Kennedy sentiments.

Although it is supposed to be a funny album (if you were a Republican), the humor is rather lame by any political standard. It was probably put together prior to the election, but after the JFK assassination, since the only Kennedy mentioned by name is Bobby. The code words for the administration include "left-wingers" and "Harvard bunch." Clumsily inserted into traditional folk songs, you get "Hang Down Your Head, Left Wingers" to the tune of "Tom Dooley," and an amazingly awkward sounding "Get Along Home, Harvard Bunch," to the tune of "Rockingham Cindy."

As if this album weren't enough of an insult to any listener's intelligence regardless of political persuasion, there is a laugh track and an applause track on this album. The laughter explodes at all the wrong moments, which means either they didn't actually do this album live, or they did, but all the people in the audience were insane. For example, one of their biggest laughs is "Whatever happened to Soapy Williams" "Soapy Who?"

The applause track sounds like it came from a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall, which seems unlikely, since these guys probably couldn't pack the local McDonald's even if they were giving away free Happy Meals.