This product didn’t exist, but a perceptive artist/promising marketer concocted designs for 12 different flavors and a special edition platinum box. You shouldn’t put it past the free-spending Casablanca label to have tried something like this, though. After all, they cheerfully green-lighted the unprecedented expenses for manufacturing the Kiss band members’ four simultaneous solo albums in 1978. And the tendency of both the label and the band to merchandise with no regard to age appropriateness was without parallel.

From a 1973 issue of Black Enterprise. Courtesy of Old Sneaker Posters.

Starring Charles Nelson Reilly. I was glad to incorporate this into my Banana Megamix mashup.

Was thinking about a long deceased friend of mine and one of my central memories of him: the two of us, six years old, sitting at his kitchen table and his mom serving both of us slices of bread with banana/peanut Koogle. He took a bite and pretended like his lips were stuck together. Then I took a bite and realized he might not have been pretending.

Bananas are the miracle fruit. They heal. Witness the fact that it’s impossible to find any songs about bananas that are legitimately despairing. Please enjoy my little production (28 minutes).

“The Banana Megamix” by DJ Kim

download zip file

Today after I aired my Banana Megamix on KOOP Radio a caller rang me up and told me about “The Banana Man” who used to appear regularly on Ed Sullivan (before my time). I’ve come to find out via the Banana Man tribute site that the Ed Sullivan Banana Man (the same one who once appeared on Captain Kangaroo) was a second generation version of the original. No matter – if weirdness was his goal, he was getting it done. Like Bert once told Ernie, I don’t know if I’m emotionally secure enough for this sort of entertainment.