[Video Link, and related Wikipedia entry.]
(via Mikael Jorgensen)

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Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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lovelystrangeness

Inbred religious fundamentalist or no, that kid can move.
DouglasArthur

I know what I’m going to be singing for the rest of the day.
Anonymous

Once you get past the inane subject matter this number rocks by the end. They may be the insane inbred Osmonds of Germany but they can get down.

Unfortunately nothing else of theirs on YouTube is remotely like this. Was hoping for something similar but not about pee. I suspect this was written by the kid doing the vocals, and was autobiographical.
JIMWICh

I regret only that it’s impossible to swap out everything on the gold records carried aboard the two Voyager spacecraft with this video alone.

Somehow it ingeniously sums up everything anyone would ever need to know about humanity. Including optimism about our potential for progress and support from a anthropomorphized deity.
- chgoliz
  
  Sad, and so fracking true.
Anonymous

You know what? I believe him.
knoxblox

This kid dances better than I do. That’s why I stopped dancing.
Anonymous

Where can I get a copy of the lyrics?
- Anonymous
  
  This comment is utter genius
RangerGordon

I thought the vocalist was a little girl because of the braid, but somebody said he/she was a boy, which makes sense considering the group’s gender-specific costumes. (That is, the children’s costumes are gender-specific; the dad’s shift/surplice/smock/muumuu/whatever is a bit more androgynous.)

Anyway, even though it’s a bizarre performance and an impossibly grotesque song, that kid is a trouper!

There can’t be very many kids that age who are un-self-conscious enough to belt a tune and do the pee-pee dance with such abandon. With the right material, he could make it to the Big Time!
aspec

:(
RufusTheGreat

That kid looks like Joey,
http://www.joeykelly.de/

he’s still going strong in Germany as a TV personality. Well, at least on the cable channels that stoop so low as to broadcast American TV sitcoms.
Anonymous

What about poo-poo the bed? Can we trust him on that one hmmm?
sourbob

I had my moments of OMGWTF with this one, too, but am startled to find that upon visiting Angelo Kelly’s site (the pee-pee kid, now a father my age)… he isn’t my cup of tea musically, but I kinda like him a little. He has decided he missed the gypsy-like musician life he grew up with before The Kelly Family hit it big. (Although they originally toured most of Europe in a houseboat and/or RV, by the end, the Kellys were so rich, they literally bought a castle.) So, in the interest of giving his kids the upbringing he cherished, he has ditched his manager and his record label and he and his family are spending a year busking across Europe in an RV.

Crapulent though his music may be (though to be fair, I didn’t bother listening to much) that is kind of awesome.
Anonymous

::insert R. Kelly joke here::
Bill

If the wiki dates are correct, ‘Mama’ Kelly was only 15 or 16 years old, while ‘Papa’ Kelly was ~32, when they started having the first of their 10 Baby Kellys…
- Major Variola (ret)
  
  Daniel Boone married a 14 year old.
  
  Any questions, pinhead?
  - Jake0748
    
    Why are you throwing out gratuitous insults, pencil-dick?
    
    Seriously, you seem to be pretty new here, and you seem to have some strong opinions. Why not come off as a little more friendly, and a little less know-it-all? Just sayin’, don’t mean to start any kind of flame-fight. :)
  - DoctressJulia
    
    What the hell does Daniel Boone have to do with anything? So, he married a child too. A ’15 year old’ WHAT, exactly? Person? Like, 150 years ago? I just… dude, WTF is your problem? …’pinhead’?
    
    You’re a total ass. It is now confirmed.
  - Bill
    
    And George Washington owned slaves… so what’s your point, needle-nose?
  - Phikus
    
    I didn’t know Bill O’Reilly commented in these pages.
    
    ___
    
    No one else noticed the “wacka-wacka” hands one of the sister singers insisted on doing at all times during this number? A lost art, perhaps.
- Methusedalot
  
  I think Papa Kelly had a first wife, who left him for some reason. If you have the time or inclination to go to Wikipedia, I think you will find that his first four children were born to a woman named Joanne, and the later six shared a mother named Barbara-Ann.
  - Bill
    
    Ah.. and so it is.
    
    Thanks for clearing that up.
kpkpkp

This is how Michael Jackson got started, I think, but he only had half the backing power.
Anonymous

this is the funniest thing i’ve ever seen in my life.
Anonymous

This is a wonderful coming of age song. The kid is obviously glad he’s not going to pee-pee his bed tonight.

Poo on you haters out there.
Jasonclock

This wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job. Not one bit.
Anonymous

21 years I have been looking for the Kelly family, you must look at them from a artist point of view, old tyme, songesters young youth strenth,, I like them and after a fire distroyed my home and I lost the kelly tape I had Iam sorry to say I forgot about this wonderful family, thank to the internet and a bit on the pee pee song on AOL this morning I found you, for those with snide remarks and nasty things to say, why waste your time!!!!! I wish Paddy was around, he was the best But the Light should not go outm hope to see more?>???????
Enormo

She has the palsy somethin’ fierce.
stitcher

I also recently wrote about another Kelly Family song, “An Angel,” that, although may not be as funny, also has lyrics that will stick in your brain for many days to come.
http://www.modernneonsound.com/2011/03/kelly-family-angel.html

There’s a great shot in the video of two girls, face full of tears, clinging to each other, overwhelmed with joy that they are in the audience of their favorite band.
Dunia si Andra

wow.. uhhhh…
Anonymous

Jesus, this was the cancer of German pop music in the early 90s. Everywhere you looked for music back then you could hear this family trying to make you bite your ears off or something.
It gave me an early idea of the musical taste of the masses: the common taste sucks.
It’s not like other nations don’t have bad music either, but only in Germany a group like this could become so famous and everywhere.
speedreeder

I remember being really high one night, and was watching TV, and a 30 minute informercial for the Kelly Family’s greatest hits came on. I thought it was terrible, weird, and creepy, but yet I watched the whole thing.
General Specific

I hate this in many ways, but I think I hate it most for having “lyrics” that are nothing more than the title repeated over and over. It’s anti-creative.
Antinous / Moderator

Look at it this way – it was either this or form the Westboro Baptist Church.
- Major Variola (ret)
  
  @mod
  
  I don’t think the Westboros can sing, whereas this
  familykult clearly can.
  
  Though their graphic design (and PR, clothing design, etc)
  skillz may lag that of Westboro.
  
  BTW I live in Socal and saw the Westboro here last year.
  At the same time, Irvine, Ca has the first
  Perpetual War memorial (updated yearly)
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_war_memorial
  
  Too bizarre for words, both.
  
  Rome didn’t fall in a day, but things happen a lot faster now.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    I don’t think the Westboros can sing, whereas this
    familykult clearly can.
    
    Did we watch the same video?
Anonymous

i hope that was the last time he had to sing that song in public. maybe i am missing the point, but disgrace just doesn’t seem to be an effective means of education to me.

.~.
Anonymous

The Troll Family
mxjohnson

Remember the video of North Korean children playing guitars? How people said it was creepy, and others said, You only think that because they’re North Korean?
Vic333

Unfortunately, the song promised more than he could deliver.
Major Variola (ret)

I need the Tom Waits version of this, pronto.
- scifijazznik
  
  Best laugh I’ve had in a week. Thank you.
  
  I can hear it so clearly in my head. It’s the only possible way to make this tune better.
Major Variola (ret)

I just showed this to my kid who, at age 11, still have
male incontinence problems. He thought it was hilarious,
though we both are wondering, WTF did we see?

Nice cult, AFAIK, as cults go. Less predatory than
catholics, less suicidal than some.

Have a great day, will ya?

And any saledroid who breaks your zone, kill him, for
the stockholders’ sake.
SeamusAndrewMurphy

It just hit me why I will never attain wealth, ever. Whenever I have a bad idea (often), I think about it and say to myself, “Damn, that’s a bad idea”, and discard it. When other people have bad ideas, they invest themselves fully in them and either fail embarrassingly, or other people buy into their horrific brainstorms and they get fabulously rich.

And the upshot is that, really, I’m the a-hole for hating bad ideas, programs, etc., and being constitutionally unable to pursue them. It seems that a lot of people are willing to support any old B.S. that comes down the pipe…with THEIR money!

How can it be that this idiotic display was deemed acceptable to be televised, nevermind that the Kelly family ended up with enough cash to buy a castle?

Maybe I’m the alien, not them. I’m so out of touch with humanity.
- Anonymous
  
  Albert Einstein said
  â€œIf at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for itâ€
  
  Of course, he was German…
Anonymous

I thought The Hobbit was not getting made?
2HourHiatus

Ain’t gonna vomit on my laptop right now.
Ain’t gonna vomit on my laptop right now.
Ain’t gonna vomit on my laptop right now…
5string

That just took me down a long, dark wikipedia journey part of me will never return from.
Anonymous

Is that a young Win Butler from Arcade Fire?
Anonymous

The von Trapp family they aint.
revjeromedunk

I remember a commercial in the ’90s and they were offering a free CD. My son ordered it and we played it a lot. It came with an information packet about the Kelly Family and about ordering their products. The single we were sent was “Fell In Love With An Alien”
- LadysmithLiz
  
  I actually will admit to having that album, too, and to still listening to it. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the music.
Bartacus

Yeek. :/
Art Carnage

You know, that “Friday” song’s not so bad after all.
AmyGee

When I first moved to Cologne 12 years ago, The Kelly Family still lived in a houseboat anchored in the Rhine Harbor just a ways down from my house. You couldn’t go past there without seeing groups of lovesick teenagers, and the very long wall lining that part of the harbor was completely covered in messages for them. They were so, so beloved here. Last year I was walking over the Domplatte on Roncalli Platz, which is always active with buskers and street artists, and a few members of the Kelly Family were singing with their guitar and a large crowd had gathered. I never understood the full story of why they were so popular, but I do think that the family’s lifestyle was/is pretty fascinating. They all don’t seem to give a flip about money, and every single one of them speaks perfect german (this impressed me, because one can *totally* get by here with english, and to learn german says something about character, imo, it’s such a beast of a language).
quesie

If only Maria VonTrapp was here to see this today! omg, thank you for this much needed laff on a highly annoying day…
niche assignment

Busy here compiling links to the early Dylan and Velvet Underground versions and to the waif uke and death-metal covers. The Bad Lip-Reader took a flyer on this, but gave up after coming up with “ain’t gonna pee-pee the bed tonight” . . . .
racerx_is_alive

These guys seem like the definition of Happy Mutants.
sorted

yeek and yuck… wrong, wrong, wrong on so many many levels…
Anonymous

I think I just pee pee’d myself laughing.
randyman

It’s hard to imagine something like this can be possible without some form of child abuse taking place over a long, long period of time. I’m not talking sexual abuse, but there’s no arguing these kids have grown up in an extremely strange psychic space.
jimh

Surely there were cordless mics in 1990?
Anonymous

Strange, bizarre, even disturbing … reminds me a bit of America’s own Shaggs … yet I have to say, that little lead singer there (girl, I think) is pretty talented. The vocal phrasing and Elvis-moves are pretty clever, not something you often see in one so young. The dancing isn’t that bad either … it’s purposely comical.

And I can’t get the &#%@!!*&# song out of my head.
IWood

Judging by the robed fellow on the right, they’re aliens.

Yep.
- civilwarnascar
  
  Aliens, you say?
  the proof is in der pudding!
  see this!
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAdeKUBZKlg
  - Anonymous
    
    That alien looks like the Chicken Lady.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ_IXZ0Bksg
Amsterdaam

I bet he did it anyway because he’s such a rock star.
Bill

This is what happens when Americans go back to Europe.
smaier69

The part that I don’t comprehend at all is the end. When the crowd applauds.

Wierd.
Stefan Jones

Dry bed, perhaps, but some of those dance moves look like the kid is dealing with a load in his pants.
IWood

Follow up: 20 million albums? Holy shit.
Anonymous

I love love LOVE it!
TokenFrenchDude

What in the name of science did I just watch ?
Bill

Uhmmm… uh… huh?
Anonymous

20 million albums…how about over 300 million albums. Check out “David’s Song,” the two minute mark is the best.
igpajo

Looks like some kind of religious cult family or something. Would love to know the context of the where and when of this “talent show”. And the why?
Oh wait…Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kelly_Family
Looks like a demented 80′s gypsy version of the Von Trapp family.
jimh

Also, I probably won’t, but I know better than to make promises like this…
Johnny Coelacanth

From the wikilink: “In the 1990s, the group enjoyed their biggest success. Their 1994 album Over the Hump sold more than 2.25 million copies in Germany alone …. In 1995 they filled the Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, nine times in a row, a feat no other musician has since accomplished.”

Fucking Germans, how do they work?
squeeziecat

why would anyone dress that way unless they were anachronistic religious fundamentalists (and therefore would shun the electricity needed to power the stage)? and how did they manage to get God to sit in on the gig?
- rebdav
  
  What percentage of fundamentalist types are not really anti-tech just ascetic or seeking an uncomplicated life.
  I thought that looked like god too :)
Mr. Winka

This made me pee pee my bed. I blame the Elvis impersonation.
Anonymous

This looks to be the Jerry Lewis is popular in France meme, only they fell in love with aliens in Germany. So totally off the radar, yet so popular…
boo

Sorry, I seem to have (fortunately) missed something.
capl

Kelly Family, Lou Bega, Der Hoff, Backstreet Boys, Take That, Tokio Hotel.. the Germans have been catapulting the wrong people into stardom for decades.
- Rukasu
  
  Let’s not forget Hitler
  - IWood
    
    You Godwined a thread about pee-pee?
- Phikus
  
  Don’t forget David Hasselhoff on that list.
  - Little John
    
    Don’t forget David Hasselhoff on that list.
    
    “Der Hoff” in Germany = David Hasselhoff
sapere_aude

I was not heretofore aware that something could be so lame and so bizarre at the same time. (And yet it is still not nearly as insipid as that “Friday” video that Cory posted about the other day.)
obeyken

Damn, I wish I saw this video last night.
amanicdroid

Nonono it’s stuck in my head.

Hope I don’t start singing this out loud at work today.
- igpajo
  
  I KNOW! I’ve been humming this fricking tune ever since I saw it last night on “Attack of the Show!” Can’t get it out of my head!
Phikus

Methinks he doth protest too much.

The Kelly Family: "Ain't Gonna Pee-Pee My Bed Tonight" (music video, ca. 1990)

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