Although some information about the Fabulous Four Skins is sprinkled across the web, I’m pretty sure your ability to hear the album is exclusive to Swan Fungus. You can thank me at any time with a large, cumbersome trophy awarded to me for maintaining the greatest blog on the entire Internet.
The Fabulous Four Skins* (the asterisk on the black-and-white booklet insert make sure to note that the artists are, “a non-profit vocal group of the following young doctors: Larry M. Davis, M.D., Michael B. DuBois, M.D., G. William Johnson, M.D., and Larry G. Thompson, M.D”) put twenty songs to tape for an unknown record label in 1967. “Any similarity to songs living or dead is purely instrumental…Only the words have been changed to present the impudent.” Larry G. Thompson was the member of the vocal group responsible for penning the lyrics, while Wallace F. Williamson (also an M.D.) acted as musical director and Paul Bender (no M.D.) played technical director.
As for the songs, well…you can only imagine how good this album is based on song titles such as “Isn’t Oral Contraception Grand,” “Red Cells In Your Urine,” “Gono The Coccus,” “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Syphilis,” and “Her Vagina.” Then you drop the needle on side one, track one, and happily follow along with the provided lyric book.
From “Diarrhea”:
“How do you solve a case of diarrhea? / How do you stop a bowel that want to go? / I know that drugs will stamp out gonorrhea, / But none cures my trots; my colon’s in knots, I know!”
From “It Had To Be Sprue”:
“It had to be sprue; It had to be sprue– / The use of lab tools, the fat in your stools… / Gave me the clue. / Diarrhea that you had blamed on the flu… / Was quite simply due to foodstuffs that you… / Passed right on through.”
Yeah, it goes on like that. For 20 glorious tracks. Lots of homages to all things scatological, venereal diseases, human anatomy and there’s even a trippy little celebration of LSD. The good news is, Sings Songs Of Medicine And Med School is not nearly as rare as some of the other one-off records I’ve shared in the past; you can find copies on eBay from anywhere between $15 and $65 depending on condition. I don’t know how many copies of this vanity press record exist, but sure it is obscure enough that a) most people don’t care about it, and b) you still stand a chance of seeing a copy in your lifetime.
I don’t know how much more can be said about this record. It’s more like one of those you-have-to-hear-it-for-yourself oddities that will make more sense once you’ve heard it. The songs do a better job of selling themselves than I ever could, what with my inability to accurately render what’s in the grooves with my poor vocabulary…
Dig in, guys. And laugh, laugh, laugh the day away.
The Fabulous Four Skins
Sing Songs Of Medicine And Med School
(No Label, 1967)
MediaFire DL Link
01. Isn’t Oral Contraception Grand
02. Staff Man
03. On Call
04. Red Cells In Your Urine
05. Laennec’s Cirrhosis
06. Hidden Vein
07. Gono The Coccus
08. Dutiful Extern
09. Scrawny
10. Medicare
11. Blame Arteriosclerosis
12. It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Syphilis [MP3]
13. Tuber The Red Baccus
14. Suppuration
15. Diarrhea
16. Her Vagina
17. It Had To Be Sprue
18. L.S.D.
19. The Med School Song
20. The Halls Of Ivy
