Review Summary: Novelty my ass.
The fact that Tiny Tim, one of the most brilliant and unique people in the '60s (a decade with many many brilliant and unique people), has been pushed and pegged as a novelty act all through his career is a complete crime. Like other “outsider” acts (The Shaggs and Shooby Taylor in particularly come to mind), Tiny Tim's oddnesses (a wobbly high voice and a ukulele) have induced either pure adoration or (sadly, regretfully, tragically) pee-pants laughter. When people put on “Living in the Sunlight, Loving in the Moonlight” for a laugh and sarcastically exclaim “thiiiis shure iz gewd music, rite guise?” I admit I very much get the urge to punch them in the face. Though obviously some people can genuinely dislike his style, I honestly believe most people who don't see merit in Tiny Tim just don't understand it - because not only is this not novelty music, it is amazingly encyclopedic, detailed music – Tiny Tim had apparently been obsessed with old Tin Pan Alley songs his whole life, and it shows because most of these tunes are really, really obscure; the average music fan has probably never heard these songs, and even if they have they sure as hell haven't heard them like this.
What Tiny Tim did, knowing fully well that an album full of silly '20s cover would get old fast (even when played charmingly on a ukelele) is arrange them to make them into his own thing, which meant teaming up with producer Richard Perry to turn a freak folk album (which itself is pretty impressive for 1968) into a kaleidoscopic high-definition widescreen gem of an LP. Brian Wilson would chew off his right ear (hurr hurr) to make an album as lushly produced as this one. Give “Tip Toe Thru' The Tulips”, Tim's biggest hit, a listen without the preconceived “novelty” ideas. The stark, initially grating ukulele eventually gives way to a tambourine and morphs into a beautiful string section, in the process becoming a perfect pop song. That is however, actually the simplest song on here! There are a lot of instruments over the course of this album – an organ, a violin, a tambourine, a harmonica, a Hawaiian pedal guitar, a xylophone, a tympani, a trumpet, a piano, a bass guitar, a cymbal, primitive synthesizers, a saxophone, a kazoo, a didgeridoo, crowd chatter, a cello, a flute, that thingy that all those carnivals use, a hi-hat, wind, an accordion, a clarinet, bongos, a viola, a vibraphone, a triangle, an airhorn, whistling, an acoustic guitar, vinyl crackle, a koto, a celeste, another violin, bird noises, a man's laughter, French horns, up-to-the minute reverb sound effects, paper, telephones, breath, automatic double tracking, and a bass saxophone. In fact most of these songs don't even feature a ukulele you fucking faggots.
If this was all they did, though, it would still just be a '20s big band revival/traditional pop/folk album, undeserving of an “outsider” label and even if the songs were all great (and they are!) that's no good. So the album throws in some extreme oddness (from the intro to Ever Since You Told Me You Loved Me: “the birds are coming the birds are coming the birds are coming the birds are coming the birds are coming THE BIRDS ARE COMING THE BIRDS ARE COMING oh those birds”, with dozens of overdubbed Tims speaking over each other) as well as polite but immersive psychedelia (Strawberry Tea's sweeping organ/violin/glockenspiel combo that would fit right at home on The Millennium's discography or something). These odd bits of cut-up effects and overdubs and spoken word give the album an experimental edge and ties it more neatly to the “outsider' genre everyone likes to stick on it. Not that these bits always work, and in fact a few of them are the things keeping the album from being completely perfect. “The Viper”, as cheesily hilarious as its punchline is and as intersting as the stereo effects are, is still 4 minutes of spoken word and feels like kind of a grating break between the songs, and it lacks replay value (c'mon, Tim, I'm trying to help you OUT of the novelty label). Also, he uses his trademark falsetto and a gratingly happy swagger during the speaking bits that precede some of the songs, and when he breaks the falsetto at some points and goes to a lower register it sounds really fucking creepy and somewhat madman-esque.
Don't let that deter you, though; this album is still brilliant and a near-classic. You're unlikely to find a more perfectly realized and immersive pop album out there. Not novelty or silly, just genius. As the opener's title (“Welcome to My Dream”) implies, this album is like entering a beautiful, cartoony and intensely surreal dream-world for 41 minutes, one that you can get lost in and never want to come out of. How depressing that some people just laugh at that.
