Perfect Tens Dept. - Strange Days

A Perfect Ten is awarded to albums with no weakness, including the cover and the title. Which disqualifies Pet Sounds! Crazy system, I know. I don't make the rules. Strange Days is note perfect, from the cover to the spindle hole.

 

THE COVER

Art directed by the great Harvey S. Williams, who was responsible for the Elektra house style, which included the use of the Rockwell font. There may have been a pun in there? The photograph, by the equally great Joel Brodsky, has some futzery happening - note building at end of alley, repetition and slicing and change of scale. What the actual? Don't think about this, because it will drive you nuts. I had to undergo weeks of counseling.

Sniffen Court, 36th St, between Lexington and Third, yesterday. No, you can't afford to live here. You can't afford to know anyone who can afford to live here. You can't even afford to look through the gates. G'wan, beat it, ya bum!

 

Jimbo didn't want his mugshot, or the band's, on the cover. Pretty extraordinary, really. If you were a sultry Dionysian sex god (that if is doing a lot of heavy lifting) you'd want your picture on the cover. Brodsky suggested Fellini-esque strangeness, and the band went for it. The Short People are twin actors, the juggler is Brodsky's assistant, the trumpet player a passing cab driver (hat - driver's own), the weightlifter a bouncer, and only the acrobats are professional performers. The hippie chick, I can reveal, is Velda Kowznofski, and her phone number is BIGELOW 472-1906.

 

DIEGETIC

You'd of thunk that would be enough to bestow significance on what is one of the greatest album covers, like, literally, ever, but there's more! It's very likely the first example of diegetic design on an album cover. And we're going to take a hinge at that word diegetic, because you don't know (or care much) about what it means. It's probably the first time it's been used in the context of rock music album cover analysis. You can look it up, practice it in front of a mirror, and casually drop it into the conversation with your lowlife pals at the dog track.

The name and photos of the band, and the title of the album, appear in posters on the walls. So - not on the cover at all! This, as well as being diegetic, is unprecedented awesomeness.

 

CHARIVARI

Your second Snob Vocab du jour! It behooves you to look the fucking word up, because if I tell you, it'll pass straight through like that Chipotle burrito you floated on a keg of Coors last nite.

Charivari, or the later US variant Shivaree, is exactly what's going on here, and it's perfect.

 

THE MUSIC

You know how highly this album is rated. You may even rate it highly yourself, although, fascinatingly, a little lower than YOUR FAVORITE HERE. It was recorded on a sumptuous 8-track console, like those in-car tape players [Eh? - Ed.], and unlike the live-in-the-studio approach of the debut, used the sophisticated production facilities available at LA's prestigious Sunset Sound to achieve a consistent, although shifting, mood of strangeness, like no other album before it. The cover and the music act in perfect symbiosisness. Symbioctivity. Whatever. Unlike The Soft Parade, the studio never gets in the way of the music. Everything is a whole, ya dig? It's like this, uh, whole thing, man. Beautiful. Oh wow.

 

 

This post funded in part by the Eschewal Of Obfuscation Society, Pork Bend, AK. My thanks to Zebedee Veeblefetzer.

 

TV's Sir David Of Attenborough Centenary! Dept.

Cover Art © IoF© Art Department Of Art® Dept. All Rights Reserved (and some of the lefts)

Lord Attenborough gets his ton! Happy Birthday!

You'll know TV's Sir Attenborough from his award-winning kids' puppet shows such as like We Fucked Up Our Beautiful Planet And All The Elephants Are Dying, but did you know he was hemp enthusiasts The Small Faces' go-to guy for recreational pharmacy? That's right, subscribers! Leave us lissen in as Sir Attenborough reveals shocking truth via Foam-O-Fone©!

The Nice, high above the fertile tundra, yestiddy

FMF Sir Attenborough! Looking cool there! Which is where?

SA Here, five thousand feet above the fertile tundra of -

FMF Right, right! So what's with this Small Faces story?

SA Ah! I am honoured to be the inspiration for their chart-topping disc, Here Comes The Nice! Back in Swingin' London, one was very much the globetrotter, bringing back treasures galore from exotic lands, steamer trunks bursting with rare herbal remedies! So of course one shared one's bounty, being a nice chap, and that was how muggins here became known as The Nice!

FMF And you have an album for us?

SA Indeed I do! It's an unissued compilation of their, shall we say, jazz cigarette tunes? Andy [Andrew Loog Oldham - Ed.] put it together before the whole thing went pear-shaped. And a very evocative Gerry Mankowitz photograph on the front. Gerry [Gered Mankovitz - Ed.] and I were oft to be seen getting off our heads at the Roundhouse [The Roundhouse - Ed.]! (laughs) He came up with the name for this long-playing LP, incidentally, during one of our famous "sessions"!

FMF Maryon Park? Any clues?

SA The lads in the group liked elliptical titles, something a little more imaginative, and this is no exception. Perhaps you might quiz th' Four Or Five Guys©? Maybe one of them might come up with an explanation!

FMF Uh ... yeah. Or likely not, probably. I doubt they read this far. Some of 'em can't even. But thanks for sharing this with us, and drop by th' Isle any time! It's a copacetic microcosm of microclimatical nanoculture!

SA (laughs) Shall I bring my - steamer trunk?

FMF (laughs) That would be swell, Sir Nice!

SA (laughs) 

FMF (laughs) 

Oright, oright, you've 'ad your fun, settle down, settle down ...

I *cough* curated this because in their appropriately short lifespan The Small Faces made music that expressed the times better than just about anybody, their super-smashing pop hits as slyly subversive as they were memorable. Steve Marriott is possibly the greatest male vocalist the UK ever produced, with a staggering emotional range, and deceptively accomplished technique grounded in his drama studies and acting experience [←original critical aperçu - Ed.]. He's always bang in the middle of the note, and he inhabits the song using phrasing and inflection in a way that seems natural and unthinking but is pure - and brilliant - technique. The Artful Dodger knew what he was doing with every note he sang. Shame he squandered his great gift in a life of squalid excess, ain't it?

So why this album again? I wanted the definitive, cohesive, pop-psych masterclass minus the overwrought stuff, omitting the knees-up sing-alongs, and without the Hammond-heavy club groovers. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake gets a lot of love, but the Stanley Unwin story-telling gets old very quickly, and side one's a little ragged. Autumn Stone is at once too much and not enough, and sounds like what it is, a bit of a barrel-scrape. So this, then. I've paced the hits so they don't dominate, and maybe they sound fresher in a new context. 

That tracklist in full:

Become Like You/Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire/Here Comes The Nice/Just Passing/Show Me The Way/I'm Only Dreaming/Green Circles/Itchycoo Park/Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass/The Universal/Call It Something Nice/The Autumn Stone

Why isn't [YOUR CHOICE HERE] included? Because reasons. Like other similarly humble exercises in improving on artists' original brilliance here on th' IoF©, this is above all a playable album with a flow to it, at listenable length, with more thought behind it than playlists or bonus tracks editions or completist archival sets. You'll dig it on account which it's swell.

This post homologated thru our sponsors: Pearl Necklaces By Dirty Sanchez™, Beverly Hills, LA.

 

This piece Certified IoF© Greatest Hit!

ZZ Top - Everything You Want PLUS! Nothing You Need Dept.

Is this you?

The CD Era was a time of wonders. I disposed of most of my disposable income buying CD duplicates of my vinyl collection, which had already disposed of most of my disposable income. Why? Because I was a damn fool, in retrospect. But I wasn't alone in being duped into stacking up the nasty, sharp-edged items of office equipment with their stupid "jewel boxes" and flimsy illegible "inserts" and functionally ugly "label designs". I think I hated the damn things from the start but went on buying them because I was earning stupid money and had a Hugo Boss suit and a company Peugeot 1.9 GTI. Make stupid money, buy stupid stuff! I never felt so alive! New albums became obligatory CD purchases as vinyl dried up. And then the music industry suckered us into buying CD duplicates of music we already had on CD. Remastered with extra tracks! Limited edition miniature card sleeves! Oboyoboyoboy! TAKE MY MONEY!! Never mind that the vast majority of the "bonus" tracks were demo, live and alternate versions that did nothing to enhance the album, I wanted them! BOX SETS!! Gimme two, so I can keep one sealed!

Airbrush, cursed forerunner of AI

Talking of box sets, what we have here is one of the worst examples of Sucker CD ever issued, a remixed set of the first six ZZ Top albums [left - Ed.]. This might - just - have been a valid exercise if the remixes hadn't replaced the original mixes, which you couldn't buy anymore. It got a righteous kicking from those sharp-eared enough to notice it deserved one. As egregious as Zappa's '84 butchery of Money/Lumpy, the remix was an attempt to sound contemporary. In that, it's entirely successful, because in '87 contemporary music sounded like shit. Inevitably, there's now a critical reassessment along the lines of "it's just different". Er ... so was Zappa's '84 Money/Lumpy twofer.

 

 

Kustom sleeve, only at IoF©!

Rhino (we're supposed to type "the good people at" in front of that, but I refuse, because I'm a rebel, me) eventually made up for it with a box of original mixes, Chrome, Smoke & BBQ in '03. The Four Or Five Guys© are encouraged to make their own minds up as to which they prefer. I'd suggest comparing the two versions of Tush initially, and if you think the Six Pack version is better, that's fine. All opinions are equally respected and welcome, and we are nothing if not a broad church. Just never, never, paddle your coracle over to th' IoF© ever, ever again.

 

 

 

Note ZZ Top fan, bottom right. When you finish eyeing her chest puppies.

 

This post scrimshawed on a narwhal's tusk by a Esquimeau as part of th' IoF©'s cultural appropriation outreach program. Write for details.

The Swellest Band In The Whole Darn World Dept.

Show me a more perfecter group shot. You can't.

Little Feat's first album was inspired by Exile On Main Street, and best listened to with that in mind. Incredible to think that it was recorded just two years before the Stones' masterpiece. It's had a frankly fahbulous dahling makeover, which you need more than groceries right now. There's a remastered version, because of course there is, but the second disc holds the juicy stuff. A steaming slewage of alternate versions and outtakes, and thank the Baby Jesus no live tracks. They constitute a genuine alternative album, in no way inferior (except in the sense of not being quite as good). And a shitload of guitar!

See? They're, like, rocking winter duds? But it's summer in LA! HAW! Joke's on them, right?

 

It's been a real pleasure revisiting this album - it tends to be less played than their other Lowell era records, and it shouldn't be. File under: much better than I remembered it. Included in today's Deliverable O' Excellence™ at no extra cost is the band's previous incarnation as The Factory, their unreleased album Demonstration Not For Sale on Uni with the original cover. Everything @ a sparkling 193mHz for total audio satisfaction! What a time to be alive!

This post hewn from the living rock with a fork.

Great British Tenor Players, Nope, You Read That Right Dept. Part Deux

Well, great in this case is a little bit of a stretch. Let's settle for pretty damn good. Johnny Almond was no Tubby Hayes, but he was no slouch, either. Plus, he could play a bunch of other stuff, keys, flute, vibes, whatever. The first JAMM album, Patent Pending, was bought by many hippies in '69 tempted by jazz but knowing fuck all about it. Like me. It's a brilliantly entertaining album, too pop to be jazz, too jazz to be pop. There's some sweet psych touches, a little Mexican samba, a bit of free jazz (for which the listener pays, like always), some groovy funk, and a lot of it sounds like the soundtrack to a Swingin' London movie, which is no bad thing. Think black turtlenecks, dolly birds in miniskirts ... 

The followup in the following year was recorded in the US and A with an entirely different lineup, including Joe Pass. All the pop influences and experimentation are gone, but it's a fine straight jazz album, although does anybody need to hear (or play) Perdido again? I seem to remember Ralph Gleason writing some snootily patronising sleeve notes along the lines of "can't cut it with the big boys, maybe next time", but as he could only play a Remington portable he can shut his yap, right? Again, a nice illustration on the cover, very Pop Art. You'll dig it.

Almond moved on to John Mayall for The Turning Point album, and thence [grammar - Ed.] to Mark-Almond. Interesting guy, shame there aren't more like him.