I just stumbled upon the
WMFU 365 days project recently and it's a goldmine of weird and wacky recordings. WMFU has converted old records (and sometimes times tapes and video) into MP3s, each day for a year in 2003 and 2007. 2007 is better mainly because they tend to post the entire album instead of a few tracks. As they say:
Some words to describe the material featured would be... Celebrity, Children, Demonstration, Indigenous, Industrial, Outsider, Song-Poem, Spoken, Ventriloquism, and on and on and on. The best thing to do is to simply listen.
Amazing artifacts here and some of my favorites so far are:
Picking Up Girls Made Easy! from 1975. From the album cover: "The pick-up system no girl can resist! This amazing new record album will soon have you picking up girls automatically!" Slightly NSFW audio in a creepy 70s kinda way. I will not be surprised if a few dwellars owned this at one time
Slightly NSFW picture (previously seen on the cellar) and definitely NSFW audio on
Sexual Pleasures, a record to accompany a late 60's "documentary". The narrator's delivery is what sells this one.
45 Detritus includes various weird stuff. Especially check out the Knack/Beatles mashup and the Finnish disco covers.
The Gaylords - Sing American Hits In Italian. From the 50s and the title says it all.
Esther Rolle - Maybe It's. TV's Florida Evans sings in 1975.
A Collection of Children's Records. This is actually the page that helped me stumble upon the project. My wife and I were trying to find a copy of her favorite childhood record,
Down By The Station, which is included here with some other records. Her favorite tracks are The Subway Train, The Happy Helicopter and Chocolate Train.
If you find any more gems, please post them here, I'm still trying to wade through all the fun...