Bob Dylan's Gatest Hits! Dept.

"There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden" but Bob's gates are fit for a king!

 

You'll know protest singer Bob Dylan for his hard-hitting social criticism - songs such as Puff The Magic Dragon, Little Boxes, and In The Year 2525 have made it to the top of the "pop charts" in spite of a message many of the "older generation" find uncomfortable!

But did you know he also welded gates? That's right! Bob stopped by th' IoF© to promote his latest passion! We chatted poolside whilst [grammar - Ed.] Kreemé [below, and eighteen my ass - Ed.] served signature eel spleen n' Reflecting Pool water smoothies!

FT3 Bob! The Bobster! Bobby-boy! Zimbo! You're looking good, my man!

BD Right now I'm lookin' at that gal's ass.

FT3 (laughs) Tells us about this unexpected career change!

BD Just got sick of the singin'. I can sing any old shit out there, make it all one same fucking note, they don't care. They should be booin' me off stage, they're cheerin', goin' crazy. Sick of it.

FT3 So why gates?

BD I've always been interested in railings, bootscrapers, grilles, gates, anything made of iron, steel, metal. Welded. Love me a welder's torch, mask, them heavy gloves. It's a manly occupation. Writin' a fuckin' song? What kind of thing is that for a grown-ass man to do?

FT3 Right. So no more records?

BD Fuck that. Fuck that with a big iron spike with a fucking rusty point on the end. It's the welder's life for me.

FT3 Let's take a break here to show th' Four Or Five Guys© some of your work ...

BD Right, here's me at work. I'm lifting my mask here so you can see who I am. Normally that's over my face, for protection from the intense light and searing heat. OHSA very strict about that. 

 BD And here's an archway what I did for some mall or something ... no! A casino!

 

BD I mean, I made more from that than I did for my last album, uh, whatever that was. Made a shitload of money out of a casino! (laughs) Not many people can say that!

FT3 Knockin' on Heaven's Door! I hav'ta say, Bob, that's better than Tempest.

BD That one's going on tour. I'm curating a truckload of gate-adjacent welding projects for Bob Dylan's Weld Tour. I stay home, weld some more stuff ... yeah!

 

 

This post funded in part by Scarcely Credible Developments And Unlikely Directions Magazine 

 

 

Boring Publishing News

Adding a cute picture will drive traffic to your blog!

 

 

You may remember [yeah, right - Ed.] I posted a new novel, Selfies, here a while back. I had a total of four (count 'em!) reactions from the Four Or Five Guys©. Two used the same phrase - "quite enjoyed it". Imagine the impact they'd have on the cover! Another "eventually" found it to be a satisfactory read, presumably after slogging through the beginning and middle parts. The fourth sent me a much appreciated and thoughtfully detailed positive reaction (thank you, Nico!). So at least four of you read it. There may be more, who didn't quite enjoy it, or enjoy it enough to get through it, and were kind enough to keep their opinions to themselves.

Over the last few months I've submitted it to thirty-nine literary agents, in the UK, the USA, and three publishers in France who accept manuscripts in English. I researched individuals who represent this genre of novel. Each submission has to conform to specific and slightly differing requirements in terms of what they want to see, and what they want to know about you. It's nothing like as simple as emailing the manuscript (you never send the whole book). Each submission is individually researched and tailored and formatted.

I contacted a total of forty-two (count 'em!) people, each of whom advertised their wants specifically enough for me to not waste their time. Let's count the replies: zero. I'm not talking about rejections. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement of receipt. Something along the lines of thank you for your submission, I'll get back to you. Or not. How long would it take to press send on a boiler-plate reply like that? But no, nothing. Zip. Nada. A deafening silence.

Either the submissions were not read at all (very likely) or speed-scanned and spiked, or read and ignored. But not one was even acknowledged. This is publishing.

I never thought it would be a publishing sensation. It's just entertaining escapist fun, with strong movie potential. A holiday read, or, if the reader is the thoughtful type, something to think about. We'll never know, will we?

No, I'm not going to "self-publish" on Amazon or anywhere else. I checked the numbers. It would be lost in the flood. Millions of books out there, for free, not getting read. This is publishing.

Perfect Tens Dept. - Jefferson And His Aeroplanes!

This is what it might have looked like if Balin's original idea was used. Pink works better, and he thought so too.

 

They don't get enough love, is what I'm saying. For why? Perhaps it was their shift into hectoring agit-prop, confused science fiction, and a string of ragged albums. And then the Starship, which has dated as well as toweling headbands and legwarmers. I reckon it was the drugs becoming more important than the tunes, but what do I know? Their first three albums remain paradigms [oh, fuck off - Ed.] of 'sixties culture, focused like a crystal lens onto the times they were made, clear and color-saturated.

Takes Off is the modern sound of folk-rock, from Marty Balin's band. What set it apart from the hootenanny hayriders was a for-the-times lyrical edginess, pencil-fucked by the prudes at RCA, some neat acid-etched guitar and Jack Casady's frankly mindblowing bass, recorded unusually close. Signe Toly Anderson and Skip Spence left before the second album, replaced by high society sex tornado Grace Slick and jazzbo sticksman Spencer Dryden. 8/10

Balin took a slight but significant step back for Surrealistic Pillow, the band creating as a whole, and the sound expanded into something immediately new - by turns battering and sharp or shimmering gentle. Slick brought two songs from the underachieving Great Society, the hit Somebody To Love and the psycho bolero White Rabbit, which sounded like nothing else more than anything else, and still does, only more so. Here's the sound of the summer of love happening, breaking through the concrete and diffusing rainbows into the air. Only Electric Music For The Mind And Body caught the mood as perfectly. 10/10

After Bathing At Baxters shows the perils of freedom, of over-indulgence. Arriving in late '67, it prefigured the end of the decade and the sun setting on the Age of Aquarius after barely nudging over the horizon. Balin was sidelined to one song and experimentation was valued for its own sake. Again, it's a perfect encapsulation of the times, but the times were already troubled, and the lack of focus, of a cohesive identity, that was to plague the band's later releases was apparent in the wider context of a counterculture uncertain how to replace mindless hedonism with something lasting. Yes, it's a nearly great album, but that nearly is crippling. In spite of some rave reviews, Baxter's fell short of its lofty aim. Grace Slick: "We figured we were going to produce the most brilliant album released in rock ... we had no idea what we were doing." I blame the drugs. 9/10

 

This post approved safe for human consumption by the FADAMDA (Food And Drugs And More Drugs Administration)

See Grace demonstrate mothering skills! 

Oh my.

Firesign Double Disc TwinPack Twofers™! Dept.

 

Available scans of this awesome cover are universally shit. I blame the internet.

 

You have nothing better to do with your ears right now than squirt new, liquid Firesign Ear Canal Cleanser™ into them! And what swifter, cleaner way of delivery than clicking the cunningly hidden StealthLink© embedded in this post!

 

Terrible, horrible cover by Phil Yamamoto and his girlfriend. It was Phil's only design commission, and I wonder why.

 

These swell dual discs, the Firesign's only original twin vinyls, offer:

🖕MicroHybrid© cleansing technology!

🖕Refreshful MintyMenthol™ aftertaste!

🖕Sparkling RIAA Redline® performance!

 

Add to the fun!

Is that even possible, you ask, your voice choking with emotion, that we could have even more Firesign fun? These two swell extry deliverables, StealthLinked© together somewhere in this paragraph (I forget, so don't ask), answer your question with a resounding YES!

De-tuned as in the crappy songs have been deleted. You won't notice.

 

Phil "Rock God" Austin's feeble, boring, and irrelevant musical interludes SAVAGELY edited out, resulting in a smooth, Liqui-Glyde™ listening experience. You should thank me. Also for the new cover, which spares us Austin's nipple.

... and here's Snorky's faahhhbulous cover for four hours of live radio (see comments):

 

Bravo, Snorkers! Graphic perfection!

Snorkers knocks it out the park and into the frying pan with his cover for "Rarities"! Link in comments.

 

You'll treasure these legacy recordings just like all the other shit you download but never get around to playing!

The Olds Are The News Dept.

 

This [above - Ed.] is the one I'll be using. Ideally, the apes would be recognisable caricatures of Mick, Keef, n' Ronaldo, but still in the Bored Ape NFT style. That whole non-fungible nonsense seems to fit somehow. And this is immediately a Stones album!

Ideas: super-celebs, NFT bored monkey, Banksy. Image search about five minutes, fooling around with filters, fonts - maybe fifteen, tops. Not over-thinking is a key Stones attribute. These wouldn't have flown as real designs, due to copyright/legal problems I'm not bothered by. The Stones have form in eye-wincing "bad taste" - Get Your Ya-Yas Out? Some Girls? Voodoo Lounge? Hackney Diamonds? Yikes and thrice yikes!

THIS JUST IN!

Famed Dutch fine artiste Koen got his crayons out, too!

And here's a design solution that riffs on the "foreign tongues" as transmissions from space, with a cute nod to "it's in the stars". Cool concept, elegant design ... but is it a Stones cover? Nope, nope, and thrice nope: 

Original "Mr. Ugly" artwork. I like it.