Recorded live in the studio,
The Weird World of Blowfly has the ambience of an after-hours party. In the tradition of older albums by similar (though tamer) acts like Doug Clark & Hot Nuts,
The Weird World of Blowfly starts with his theme song, "Weird World," and then moves through 14 sexual and scatological parodies of popular soul and pop hits of the time, interspersed with good-humored, rambling introductions. So is it funny? Some will undoubtedly find the whole enterprise juvenile and distasteful, and frankly, a couple of the parodies are a little too obvious to be clever (surely sixth graders around the world have written songs like "Shittin' on the Dock of the Bay"), but most of the album is really very funny, for those who like this sort of thing. The 1995 reissue adds three tracks to the original LP (first released on
Clarence Reid's own Weird World label), including both sides of a celebrated mid-'70s holiday single, "Jingle Fuckin' Bells" and "Queer for the New Year," along with, oddly enough, a clean single released under
Reid's own name in 1974, "Fonky Party." ~ Stewart Mason