Warner Brothers Radio Ads
(from the LP Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, Warner Brothers Records 1970)
Just a pair of neat little oddities to close out the week. When I was a little kid, I was fascinated by the inner sleeves of Warner Brothers LPs, because of the advertisements for their Loss Leaders series of promo sampler albums. I’m sure most of you have seen them: $2 for a double-LP sampler of current WB and Reprise artists, often including rare or otherwise unavailable material. Most of them came out in the first half of the ’70s, although the last one, a pretty good new wave sampler called Troublemakers, came out in 1980. I saw all of these on the inner sleeves so many times that I knew most of the album titles by heart, but I didn’t own a single one of them until the late ’90s, when I picked up a copy of The Big Ball at Bow Wow Records in Albuquerque. This 1970 set was so good — so well sequenced, with nearly a whole side of tracks from Frank Zappa’s various Bizarre/Straight releases, and featuring other gems like Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” and the Pentangle’s kickass version of “Sally Go Round the Roses” — that I went on a binge. From various used record shops and a handful of eBay purchases over the next several years, I gathered a near-complete collection of the Loss Leaders. (I lack October 10, 1969, Together, Peaches Volume 2, Cookbook, Monsters and Collectus Interruptus — not bad out of 34 releases!)
Anyway, particularly in the first year or two of the series, the folks at Warner Brothers had a certain experimental streak when it came to the Loss Leaders. 1970’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies is maybe the oddest of the lot: along with ultra-rare single sides by Harpers Bizarre and Van Dyke Parks and tunes by obscure WB short-timers like Hard Meat and Jeffrey Cain (I have no idea either), this three-disc set — the only one in the lot — also features these two strange radio spots. “It’s the Plastic” is a deadpan parody of those old Olympia beer commercials that touted the purity of the brewery’s water supply, and “Chip Dip” is a surreal takeoff on the Pepsi Challenge. Personally, I love this sort of thing: I’m always on the lookout for old radio ads and jingles, which I load into my iPod to mimic the effect of vintage AM radio.
Interesting fact: one Barret Hansen — you know him as Dr. Demento — was in charge of compiling and annotating most of the Loss Leaders. For more detail on the Loss Leaders, check out this handy site.
–Stewart Mason
CGHill said,
April 28, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
I do try to be handy. And thanks for the radio spots; I don’t actually own a copy of Merrie Melodies (I’m about 31 for 34 myself), so this was the first time I’d heard them. The MM page now links (at the radio-spots entry) back to here.
JubilationTCornpone said,
May 3, 2007 @ 10:46 am
Schlagers!!
john bourne harbour said,
August 27, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
i grew up with “the big ball”, “reprise”, “platters” and “looney tunes and merry melodies” as daily listening material– i have been able to replace a lot of the music but never was able to find “chip dip” and “it’s the plastic”– excellent!!!
Michael said,
December 29, 2009 @ 8:04 pm
Down the road in Topeka my collection still lacks these:
OCTOBER 10, 1969
ZAPPÉD
NON-DAIRY CREAMER
PEACHES
PEACHES, VOL. 2
COOK BOOK
A LA CARTE
MONSTERS
LOSS LEADERS REVISITED
Cookbook UK PRO 660 (1977)
I’ve scored a few titles such as “Some Of My Best Friends Are Warner Brothers” and “Alternatives” that aren’t strictly part of the series…yet, well, they are.
Norm Childress said,
March 19, 2010 @ 2:34 pm
My first LL was “All Singing, All Talking, All Rocking”…lol Like the other posts here, I have enjoyed the inserted extras and think they really MAKE the albums!
We have ALL the Loss Leaders and even a few duplicates, but it has taken years of hunting! I am looking for a better copy of “The Big Ball” and extras of nearly any of the others. I would like to have near-perfect jackets AND vinyl of each…
I would be happy to talk about trades or other deals to upgrade my collection. I do NOT buy anything in questionable condition, but sometimes I have found something less-than-nice that I just HAD to have, with the thought that I might find better, later…maybe we can work together?
Feel free to email me about my duplicates. I hope to post a website in the near future, but probably not until late summer.
Norm Childress said,
March 19, 2010 @ 2:36 pm
Sorry…lol Email is childressextravaganza@gmail.com…thought the poster names were linkable…oops.