A museum of kitsch, Allee Willis and a confused Big R scribe.

We get a lot of press releases and, in fairness, most of them are awful. They overuse the word 'seminal' and the phrase 'life changing'. The amount of life changing seminal LPs we've received are what is known in the food industry as 'trace'.

So, we get a whole big schlub of words about Allee Willis. Genuinely hadn't heard of her, yet she was described as "a one-woman creative think tank, a pop culture powerhouse with a wildly diverse resume of genuine Warholian proportions. She's a Grammy-winning, Emmy- and Tony-nominated songwriter and recording artist, her words and music having driven the sale of over 50 million records and counting."

And she's opened the Museum of Kitsch. A further look was needed...

Okay. Here's the kicker. Of the songs she's penned, here are the ones you've most likely heard of: Earth Wind & Fire's 'Boogie Wonderland' and 'September' and The Pointer Sisters' 'Neutron Dance' (from one of the Beverley Hills Cop movies) and the theme song for "Friends".

She's also made loads of tracks for loads of famous people, but generally speaking, she covered their cruddy '80s output. She also made an entire LP for health nut and camp icon Richard Simmons.

Apparently, Allee was an Internet pioneer, developing a visual social network in 1992, addressing Congress on cyberspace, and consulting on interactive strategy for the largest media and technology companies in the world.

She's also keen on making weird tributes to 90 year old drummers hooked up to oxygen tanks.

She also got well known for her parties that she throws at her famous Art-Deco-meets-Atomic-Age 'Willis Wonderland', inviting "celebrity guests and noteworthy artists of all genres".

Growing up in Detroit and spending every Saturday of her youth in her father's junkyard, Allee was constantly surrounded by discarded kitsch... so it shouldn't be too surprising that her latest project is the Museum of Kitsch. 

In her own words: "As a kid I used to spend Saturdays climbing massive piles of sinks and toilets, newspapers and comic book and cars stacked ten high. The shapes and textures of everything, as well as imagining who owned every object fascinated me. My days in the junkyard are at the very root of my obsession with kitsch. My house is filled with it. My style of dress is informed by it. My fascination with certain types of people is defined by it."

The museum launches today with a "spectacular week of live events in Los Angeles and a progressive YouTube festival of eight original Allee-crafted "What Is Kitsch?" short films"

The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch website (click here to visit) will showcase an ever growing, mind expanding panoply of delightful and dubious items from Allee's massive private collection. You are encouraged to send in snaps of your own tat. Should you do that, you officially become a like-minded "aKitschionados".

If you click here, you can see loads of her kitsch... some of it looks great... other bits... well, you know how it goes. Anyway, my head is spinning with all this junk... feel free to make your own inroads.