Dennis Allen from Laugh-In is the sad sack doing this SS clip. OK, I’m sending the VW on its way now.

This isn’t one of the more memorable songs by these New Zealand weirdos, but you can’t look away. Singer Phil Judd loses his hair before the first minute’s up and the eye-rolling drummer participates only halfway.

From the VW door of clown rockers emerges Leo Sayer. Here he does his very first hit, which peaked at #2 in the UK. We know it better in the US as a #4 hit for Three Dog Night from ’74.

Decidedly more bubblegum than their rivals the Hello People, the Klowns were an experiment hatched by pop song institution Jeff Barry who, fresh off the Archies, clearly had preteens on the brain. The group featured actor Barry Bostwick (perhaps best known for his role as Brad Majors in Rocky Horror) and they hosted one of those single-installment-only TV variety shows we saw countless versions of in the ’70s (Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis, Jr. were the big ticket guests). Hear their only charting song above and imagine their painted countenances rolling by repeatedly as though you were riding a nightmare carousel.

A spooky 1968 non-album single by these clown rock pioneers. Their appearance on Teen Time (thanks to the YouTube poster) has so many curious things about it: the local-yokel teens (all African-American during the opening title sequence but all Caucasian during the actual taping); the telling facial expression on the host just before the band goes on; and the blissed out performance by the band which is already a bit disturbing even before you realize that they’re singing about Armageddon.

The old 1940s Bozo records appeared in the grand fashion of the day – two 78s and a book tucked inside what might nowadays be mistaken as an antique photo album. You could read along with the dialogue and take in the glorious full color illustrations until Bozo said it was “time to turn the page in your picture book.” When I was a kid I used to spend a lot of time at the house of a friend of mine who was the youngest of nine. His parents had started buying kids’ records in the fifties, so there was a lot of vintage stuff around. I fell deeply in love with their tattered copy of Bozo Under the Sea, which my friend actually ended up giving me. (I’ve still got it and I’m still thanking him for it after several decades.) Nowadays you can download at least four of these full albums (including Under the Sea), complete with book, at Kiddie Records Weekly. Last weekend I was going through some stuff and found a 45 version of Bozo’s Songs About Good Manners which I didn’t know I had. So here it is. Sorry ’bout those Rice Krispies in the background. I did what I could.

By the way, there’s been some controversy about Bozo’s origins. It turns out that the Bozo on Capitol Records – on these records I’m talking about – was officially the first one. Pinto Colvig, also the voice of Disney’s Goofy, did Bozo and many of the other voices on the records. The Bozo we know from The Bozo Show and elsewhere, however, developed a popular persona quite independent from the Capitol version. (Alas, another early 80’s cable flashback – remember when WGN used to show that? He’d say things like “ridicle-docle” for “ridiculous.”)

“Bozo’s Songs About Good Manners” (1954)