Don't Close The Blinds! - The Susanna Hoffs Interview

There's a school of thought that maintains The Bangles were the last great true pop group. If we leave aside the "girl group" thing, Bananarama don't count. They had less credibility, and much less talent, than The Archies, never mind The Bangles. But The Bangles were not only real musicians in a real band - they had huge, world-wide pop hits. And the greatest hit of them all - the swoonsome Eternal Flame - was written by them. Well, one of them. The one everyone fancies like hell. Not that the others aren't fanciable. Or talented or whatever. It's just that, well, Ms. Hoffs ... uhhh ... be right back.

Where were we? Oh - Susanna Hoffs. Oh, Susanna! Did ever anyone, ever, in the history of anything, wear a Rickenbacker as well as she did? Mmm. Sorry - getting distracted here. Be right back.

O-kayyyy! She also had and still has a thriving, though not quite Eternal Flame-rekindling, solo career. And she recorded a solo album that never got released,

Who's driving the car?

which isn't exactly hard to find in the seething souk of illicit contraband that is the internet, but here it is for those that missed it. I've also added the Live At The Ritz boot from '84, which shows what a deliriously exciting band they were live. Kick arse, in fact!

During the giddy hey-day of Eternal Flame, when I was coincidentally renting a dumpster apartment across the street from Ms. Hoffs' LA home, I was lucky enough to secure a personal interview with her by telephone, a transcription of which follows:

SH: Who is this?
FMF: [breathing]
SH: Hello?
FMF: [breathing heavily]
SH: Is this the creep that stole my laundry?
FMF: [breathing faster]
SH: I'm calling the cops on you, you freak! [slams phone down]
FMF: [into dead line] DON'T CLOSE THE BLINDS!
[siren in distance]

"The sparkle of your china, the shine of your Japan"

On April 6, 1988, Larry Carlton was shot point-blank in the neck by some punk at the door of his Hollywood Hills home. He thought he was going to die, but survived through crippling nerve damage to resume his guitar-playing career. So there you go. Tell me about your bad knee.

An Allmusic second-stringer, lacking the critical smarts of the great Stephen Thomas Erlewine, describes Carlton's second solo offering from 1973 as "disappointing" and his singing as "toneless". Our critic, thumping his desk with his tiny fist, demanded and expected more fretwork and a different voice, yes he did. Well, boo fucking hoo.

That voice first. Toneless? The album is either called Playing/Singing or Singing/Playing, depending on which side of the sleeve you look at. The Playing side has him looking happy, the Singing less so. He needn't have worried. In the same year, Michael Franks released his first solo album [to be featured on FMF©, -Ed.] and Carlton's voice fits perfectly into the same category. Neither aims for a sweaty vibrato or rock n' roll raunch. They can both hit the note, they just don't care to hold onto it until it dies of old age. Laid back Left Coast stylings owing more to Astrud Gilberto than Janis Joplin, which is fine by me.


Not enough guitar? Are you nuts? But this is a songs album first and foremost, so the guitar takes its place, and here's the surprise that lifts this album into the must-haves. The quality of the material. There are no covers of pop hits du jour [French for soup - Ed.] here, unlike his first album. The songs are all-new and all-fantastic, from Allen Toussaint-inflected funk to unexpected tugs at the heart-strings. The kind of songs that are old friends the first time you hear them. And in the too-short running time (remember too-short albums? What happened to them?) he delivers a couple of how-the-freaking-fuck-did-that-happen?!? instrumentals, kicking in the stomp boxes to remind you that at his best, he was the best. And Larry Carlton was always at his best. That's why Steely Dan picked him up and dusted him off and gave him a studio tan for the next few years.

Anyway, to be fair to our Allmusic hack, nobody else quite got a grip on what Carlton was doing with this album either, until the Japanese caught on to it a few zeitgeist-shifts later. It's pop music. You know - the greatest and finest artform ever created.

And the punk with the gun? Who knows? And I think that's the point.

Down At The Tiki Hut

Before Harpers got Bizarre, there were The Tikis. They cut enough tracks for an album, just barely, but made a pact with Satan and shape-shifted into a Finnish despair metal band instead. Satan, unhappy with their sunny harmonies and cheerful studio banter, released them from their contract and they enjoyed international fame as the 59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy - Ed.] hitmakers. Ted Templeman went on to produce a whole bunch of fine albums (look him up on Wiki - what am I, your typist?) and the world is a better place for having him in it. But let's raise a glass of fern-bedecked neon-sour-colored Kahaluu cocktail to this, my tribute to a Forgotten Band. Pay Attention To ... The Tikis!

Hallmark Psychedelia

It's maybe fair to label these guys Hallmark Psychedelia. On the first ten tracks of this probably-complete-works collection their barbershop roots show all too clearly, veering a little too far into the comfort zone for comfort. But something happened between recording that first album [Sing Valley Of The Dolls - Ed.] and their second [Featuring ... - Ed.], which rounds out this sumptuous pop-psych package. That something was either dropping acid (unlikely, given the Mormon Tabernacle insurance salesman look) or a contact high from the pizza guy. They don't jettison the gorgeous harmonies or the lush production or the cover-version æsthetic (hey! Slate readers! æsthetic!), but the adaptations are startling and wholly successful. The detailed production, haunting and very slightly weird vibe (man) make the album something of an underrated classic psych-pop iconic classic album album. And a sugar rush that'll get you hooked like a fish.

Hi! I'm Cody!

It tanked, of course, although their stunning chamber-pop version of The Letter was a minor stateside hit. They all went into advertising and made several shitloads of easy money singing soap-powder jingles. I hope they micro-managed their self-loathing, anyway.

I snagged the songs from the fabulous Pop On The Run blog (to whom, my undying thanks for turning me on to this and other treasures), where they were presented separately, half in an irritating file format, and with their original and wretched sleeves. Date Records obviously left their sleeve design to Some Guy Or His Brother down at the print shop. It is my fervent desire that I will one day travel back in time and submit this new artwork to the label. In the mean time, it's included absolutely free in this small package of value. Because, as The Arbors aver, Love Is A Groovy Game.

Immerse Yerself

Hi! I'm Cody!

The revised/expanded Obscured By Clouds post [Burning Bridges - Ed.] is enjoying a tsunami of interest amongst the FMF© diaspora! I see from my stats feedback that well over three people have "visited" the "page"! Doubles all round!

Hoping to milk this heartening surge in enthusiasm, I'm now offering my Private Reserve Immersion Edition® of Echoes (see the Roger Waters interview below for the full story and the edited-for-radio 50 minute version). It benefits from an extra six lush minutes of Actual Floyd Soundscape material - recorded contemporaneously - to enhance the listening experience to almost unbearable levels of cosmic ecstasy. But you will need an hour to yourself and some headphones that don't make your ears sweat, requirements that will put this experience beyond the reach of the working stiff who falls exhausted into his mean cot after the night shift at the abattoir. Luckily we care naught for him.

If you missed it before, get this instead. If you grabbed it already, trash it and get this. And please remove your shoes before entering the blog next time. 

EDIT: I see one of my interns has added a selfie of herself to this piece in the hope of attracting a greater readership. I apologise. Once I've found out how to remove it I most certainly will.

Texan Tumbleweed

Can't have too much Nesmith, right? Well, this is the collection that says, yes, you can. This is everything I could find that's not on an album, but I'm sure there are a few more songs out there that slipped the net. A chakra-numbing sixty-five tracks that not even the most swivel-eyed Nesfan will find time to sit through. Four hours, if you think you're hard enough. But that's not the point. You can dip in and out as you like, assemble coherent playlists, or just feel good about having it without ever getting around to playing it. It's a ragbag collection of frayed threads from the intellectual of the group, from his earliest home demos and singles through to the New Age Synth Years, including Elephant Parts, alternate mixes, live tracks (except the Roundhouse Concert, available separately) and a few songs that were released as expanded edition bonus tracks after I collected them. Some of it is revelatory - Curson Terrace, an early single, shows the unlikely influence of Bo Diddley mentioned in his autobiography. If you like Nesmith, there's not a track you won't enjoy, but snack, don't binge!

Little Boots (part 1)

There's a whole slew of Little Feat bootlegs sizzling quietly on my digital griddle and I'll be slopping them onto the tin plate of the internet every so often. Never the most industrious of bands, they were content to play the same setlist at nearly every gig, with minor exceptions. This is because writing and learning new songs is hard work, and they had twenty million better things to do with their time, like fulfilling their drugs n' sex quota and then sleeping it off in the shade. The Feat and The Dan are like a couple of brothers. Steely Dan went to college and got a law degree and a Beamer. Little Feat goofed off and worked in the auto shop when they needed money for dope. Steely Dan floated silver bowls of coke in the infinity pool overlooking the bay. Little Feat filled the project GTO with bong smoke. I miss them both like air. They stretched the sixties into the seventies and shared their too much fun* with the rest of us, out here on the fractal fringe of the fun zone.

This is (I think) from '74, the Santa Monica Civic. Odd songs of note: Eldorado Slim and Chevy '39. Quality is perfectly listenable - I don't keep shitty audience recordings - and I like to think Lowell would have got a chuckle out of my nuanced cover art. I got nuance out the ass.

*Millennials! Ask a grown-up what fun was!

None Moura Ana!

Apart from most of it being sung in Spanish [Portugese - Ed.], this album has a lot going for it. Tunes a-plenty, smoky vocals, and crisp, quietly virtuoso instrumentation. Ana Moura is (it says here) the world's most famous fadista, so if you're interested in getting to know her you could do worse than to start with this gorgeous piece of work from 2012.

Not understanding the lyrics shouldn't be an impediment - most songs don't have lyrics worth writing down anyway, and Moura gets across the meaning of the songs in her understated, passionate, and intimate delivery. There's a pretty intense version of Joni Mitchell's A Case Of You, and the whole thing makes a refreshing change from all that Finnish Gore Metal you've been listening to.

Free Wi-Fi Now Available!

Ever mindful of the technological expectations of today's internet enthusiast, False Memory Foam© is proud to announce a blogging first - the introduction of an exclusive free Wi-Fi service for its readers!

Simply "log on" with the "device" of your choice and start "surfing the internet"!

This is the first of a program of features and amenities we're rolling out to make the False Memory Foam© experience meaningful and relevant to you, our valued customer!

The Best Album He Never Made - Now Available Again For The First Time!

In 1968, Michael Nesmith went to Nashville and recorded an album's worth of songs, mostly his own, with Nashville's own "Wrecking Crew", the studio musicians who constituted Area Code 615. There were no better musicians on the planet. John Sebastian wrote Nashville Cats about them. And Nesmith was an accomplished songwriter with a  bunch of tunes that deserved the best. The resulting solo album, spectacularly lovely as it was, never materialised. Because Music Business. Some of the songs drifted onto Monkees albums, others waited decades before Rhino anthologised them. Nesmith has denied (in his splendid autobiography) ever thinking he was inventing, or even playing, country rock. "I was playing country music," he says. But here, on several cuts, his pop smarts show through just as strongly as his country roots. Nesmith sings bang in the middle of the note, in the tensile tone so many Texans have, like stretched barbed wire, and the band plays with that country-sprung back-porch beat that never gets old.

So here it is, hi-fi enthusiasts! The best album he never made. That's okay. Don't thank me or nuthin'. I'm having more fun than you are.

Ritz Cracker

It was the the song titles on that first Church album that got my synapses popping like bubblewrap; Unguarded Moment, Bel-Air, Is This Where You Live, Memories In Future Tense ... I just knew it had to be good. And there was a long track! All proper rock albums have a long track. The music didn't disappoint - a rush of guitars, Kilbey's off-kilter croon, and tunes that got stuck in and wouldn't let go. Real choruses. Real guitar breaks. Real poetry that really meant something, even if you weren't really sure what. Back then, when musicianship of this calibre seemed to be beyond anyone under thirty, this was manna from heaven. In the following decades, I've bought everything the band's done. I'm a fan. I'm aware that those first few albums (up to but strangely not including Starfish) are the most special for me, and still the most-played, but the band have never stopped making music worth my hard-earned dollar.

Live In New York was recorded at the start of their breakthrough tour of the US [United States - Ed.] at the Old Ritz, and it's the live album they should have released. As old a fanboi as I am, I have to admit that most Church bootlegs I've heard are, er, unworthy of them. Never had the good luck to see them live, but those who have attest to the power and excitement they generate, so it's unfortunate that this recording never got an official release, because it's wildly, insanely great. Recording quality is very, very good, setlist impeccable, and the band whips up a fucking storm. Plus I done a cover redolent of the period.

I asked Steve if I could post it here, and he said, "Post it by all means mate." So here it is, in all its bohemian finery, nearly two blazing hours of The Church in New York, finishing with a melt-down sixteen minute You Took you'll need therapy to recover from.

None More Bing

Possibly the first LP [long-playing record - Ed.] I ever heard. From '58, it represents everything good from an era about to be ended by rock n' roll. Two great voices blending like peanut butter and jelly into a sequence of songs too modest to call itself a concept - a voyage around the world in song!

Let's take a voyage around that cover first. A commercial art masterpiece from when the big record companies employed talented in-house art departments, everything fits harmoniously, the layout, the typography, the colors. They built a set for Bing and Rosie to pose in. The wardrobe department kitted them out in some swell threads, and the make-up artist even faked "panda eyes" from an imaginary ski-slope. These days [an old person grumbles - Ed.] an instagram snapshot is enough; a few bare trees or some miserable girl hiding her face in her hair. Or a fucking badly-drawn owl. Or a grim bloke with a beard standing up to his waist in water. Any old shit goes. Anything to avoid looking professional. But look at this, to cheer yourself up. It's a shame you can't turn it over, because there's a swell map [lo-fi indie band - Ed.] with their route marked, and some snappy liner [sleeve - Ed.] notes.

Then there's the music. Billy May arranged it and his band played it, and that guarantees it swings like a donkey's nuts. The songs are chosen for geographical appropriateness, and the lyrics are frequently, and delightfully, adapted to the personalities and the times. Bing sings "when Elvis bows, I just nod", and Dino's pizzas get a product placement, as does Bob Hope's nose. It's all unforced, unironic, guileless, but very smart, fun.

And remember that Bing was a legendary mellow toker, and sucking on a hemp straw between songs. Remember too that he invented the close-up microphone technique, and nobody who knew him or worked with him had an unkind word to say about him (that vicious slur about him scuppering his brother's career is just that). And remember Rosie, in addition to being a swell gal and a swooningly accomplished chantoozie, was George Clooney's aunt.

So, probably the first album I ever heard, and I've been listening to it with undiminished pleasure for six decades or so. You should be so lucky.

EDIT: Lookee here! You can pretend you flipped over the cover while you're digging the tunes! Note how album is TRUE STEREO. In '58!!

RSD Special!!

It's that time of year again, when Millennials with more money than sense - that is to say, all of them - camp overnight outside indie record stores to grab that limited edition RSD collectable investment! Fevered hipsters will be hungry to snap up this 10-inch from Gap Year Records. It's on 845gsm brown vinyl sourced from shade-grown sustainable polymers, and the sleeve is printed on recycled homeless dwellings, with inks made from vegetarian body waste. That alone is enough to ensure its investment value, even at 2,995 bucks a pop!

The music is something special, too! The Miserable Bastard Brits Play Non-Stop Party Hits! is a compilation curated by Paul Morley [who? - Ed.] featuring exclusive covers by Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, Polly Jean Harvey, Jim Kerr, Roger Waters, Richard Thompson, Morrissey, Shawn Ryder, John Lydon, and Amy Winehouse. From Paul Morley[who? - Ed.]'s sleeve notes:

"Back in the Golden Age Of Pop (around November 3rd, 1983), involuntary celibacy, medication, and tinnitus were the sex, drugs and rock n' roll of an entire generation of "a certain kind of creep" (as Elvis Costello famously described his fans). The posters on their bedroom walls - they still lived at home, so Sellotape was banned! - featured the musicians on this record. Musicians who caught the zeitgeist of the UK in all its rain-soaked glory, and who now re-imagine the pop hits of the day. Only a Jim Kerr could see the inherent existential despair of Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs, or a Morrissey capture the Proustian melancholy of Agadoo-Doo-Doo (push pineapple, shake the tree). Polly Harvey's re-imagining of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep is at once a meditation on loss and the politics of the liberated vagina. The discovery of an early demo tape by Nick Drake - an anguished cover of Ken Dodd's hit "Happiness" - is the icing on the cake."

None More Hot

Frank's timeless masterpiece was, of course, recorded pre-CD [compact disc - Ed.], and had to restrict its length to album sides. There was more material recorded during the Hot Rats sessions, but not enough to fill a double disc, so Frank [Zappa - Ed.] made the necessary editorial decisions and left some fine, fine music wriggling like baby snakes on the cutting-room floor.

What we have here, dear friends, is an assemblage of the available music from those sessions, artfully programmed to deliver the quality experience today's hi-fi enthusiasts demand. One hour and change crammed with the modern jazz-rock stylings for which Mr Zappa [Frank - Ed.] became the audio entertainer of choice for the smarter consumer.  Be it patio barbeque, poolside brunch, cocktails when unexpected guests drop by, or simply getting blown by a toothless crack-whore in the back of the family Camry, you'll find Hotter Rats the ideal musical accompaniment!

Supplied at no extra cost is a lysergically over-heated cover [shown left - Ed.], ideal for framing or cat litter. This, dear friends, is the kind of content you have come to expect from False Memory Foam©, the blog at the fractal fringe of the fun zone! Remember to tell all your friend about this swell blog! Hoo boy!

None More Sixties

Sitarswami. His name is uttered in hushed, awed tones wherever the Now Generation gets it together. You'll hear it whispered at an Amsterdam coffee house. Intoned in the back room of the City Lights bookshop. Called across the rustling depths of an Afghanistan hemp field. Accidentally amplified during a Grateful Dead soundcheck. Chanted at a Rishikesh ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas. Sitarswami! A mantra for seekers after truth, for the Love Children and freethinkers who are welcoming the dawning of the Age of Aquarius! Yet few have seen his face. His internet presence is no more than a fleeting shadow. He remains a myth, a mystery.

False Memory Foam© eventually tracked him down at an undisclosed location on the outskirts of Steubenville [Ohio - Ed.]. On the intersection of Meat Street and Eleanor Roosevelt Ave. Above Manny's Thirty Day Dry Cleaners. At the back. It was here, in his fun-fur conversation pit, bathed in the shifting glow of a lava-lamp, that Sitarswami gave his first ever interview.

S: Dude! Get outta here! Split, man! I don't do interviews. I'm not doing this one.
FMF: Tell us about your None More Sixties comp.
S: If you make up stuff I never said, like this what I'm not saying now, and put it on an internet, that will be your bad karma, man. You will die.
FMF: I did a cover for it, just like it's a real album!
S: You ripped off somebody's artwork and added some cheesy typography.
FMF: Yeah. Make it sound easy. [grabbing hit from bong] Your face is, like, blue, man! Green!
S: Hihihihihihihih!
FMF: [snork] What makes your compilation so far freaking out? Which it is.
S: By now, seemingly every 45rpm released between 1965-1969 has been compiled/re-issued legally or illegally and it's harder than ever to find something new to share. Hopefully this comp includes a few songs you haven't heard before (or too often) but I've tried to provide a bit more context by presenting four songs by an artist rather than one song by somebody and then one from someone else onto the next and the next until you lose track of who's who. All of these songs were issued as singles while only two of the groups represented managed to release a full album at the time, and only three or four others have been retrospectively comped. The other dozen artists released only a few singles. The one cheat I allowed myself was including all five of the Joyride songs (while cutting the barely listenable fourth Charlotte Russe track). For all Doors fans: make sure you catch the sunshine-pop cover of The Crystal Ship by the aforementioned, beyond fantastic, The Joyride! 
FMF: Wupes. I screwed that up, then. When I beat the tracks down to an ozone-friendly bitrate, I had to retag them all and they arranged themselves in alphabetical order. 
S: [sobs] Oh, man! All my work! A lifetime!
FMF: But hey! If anyone downloads it from here, which isn't likely, because he's probably out. At the library or something. He can always re-order them in iTunes or whatever. Do your own thing!
[Sitarswami hurls bong at FMF's head]

Breda Reactor

Well, shit. Look at this cover what I did. Go on, look at it. Look at these guys. It's a style graveyard. No wonder the only groupie they could pull between them was elderly Frau Mittengrouperschnellgeschaft [at left - Ed.]. Jazzrock was never the genre for attracting the nubile, pouting lovelies in fuck-me shoes so highly prized by the rock, pop n' roll industry. So here the Softies are in Bremen or somewhere [Breda - Ed.], performing material from their party-pooping albums Third, Fourth, and Fifth. A neat trick, because Fifth wasn't even out yet. I used to turn up at parties with Third. It was all I usually left with, too. I couldn't understand why I wasn't pulling hot chicks with my challengingly speccy musical tastes. Then I learned to pretend to like Motown and got lucky. Unlike the Soft Machine, who never as far as I know played any Jimmy Ruffin hits, and had to suffer the consequences. Still and all, this is a fine set. Just don't play it at parties and you'll be fine.

Liquid Sunshine Donovan - The Interview

It's well known that Donovan invented folk music, punk, jazz, and psychedelia. He was perhaps the major influence on Bob Dylan ("I owe it all to Donnie") and without him, music as we know it would simply never have happened. What is less well-known is that he invented the seed-drill, bendy straws, fat-free yoghurt, those little plastic tripods they stick in delivery pizzas, the genome string, Poughkeepsie, moveable type, and Tuesday. Modestly, the Don [Donovan - Ed.] shrugged it all off when I quizzed him about his achievements in an exclusive poolside interview for False Memory Foam© yesterday.

D: Inspiration is a gift from the gods. I never claim credit for it, just humble gratitude for being chosen as a divine vessel. And others too numerous to mention. Such as the addition symbol, the little cross used in mathematics. That's mine. Do I ever get credit for that?
FMF: Could we talk about the Liquid Sunshine Donovan album?
D: [laughs] That was quite the scandal at the time! We dosed the butterfly on the cover with a microdot of LSD. I invented LSD, you know.
FMF: Is that what led to the album being withdrawn?
D: That and the title, apparently. Epic didn't like it. Don't know why.
FMF: Liquid Sunshine Donovan ... L,S,D?
D: [thinks] Hmm. Nope. Not getting it.
FMF: Anyway, John Peel wrote the sleeve notes, didn't he?
D: Dear old Peelie! He doesn't come by my yurt much any more.
FMF: What was going to be on the album?
D: It was the most groundbreaking thing I ever did. It was so far beyond what mere humans call music it transcended time and space. Unfortunately it was also beyond the limited consciousness of anybody who heard it. It was recorded during intensive all-night sessions with the Stromberg Twins, channeled directly from the spirit world via my astral connections with the Old Gods of Mu and Atlantis, the Celtic archetypes manifested in this earthly realm. Om shanti the noo, och aye.
FMF: No songs as such, then?
D: Just the pure tantric spiral of the groove, traveling ever inward to the ineffable center of the cosmic void. Are you going to finish those fries?
FMF: Help yourself.
D: [belches] I invented French fr- [tape ends]

Give The Drummer Some (More)

Anyone in possession of a master's degree in Applied Psychedelic Research will be familiar with the two albums by HP Lovecraft. The first [HP Lovecraft - Ed.] is a superb example of folk-rock pushing the envelope into psychedelia. The second [HP Lovecraft II - Ed.] was apparently - obviously, really - recorded while the band was tripped out of its collective skull. From the day-glo disrupted mosaic of the cover through to the powerful contact high contained in that innocent-looking groove, it's the album I will play for the Martians, when they land and want to learn all they can about psychedelia while their flying saucer refuels for the long trip back to the Red Planet. There is simply none more. After that, it's difficult to see where they could have gone. The band broke up, partially got back together, then Michael Tegza, after a stint with the unfairly ignored Bangor Flying Circus, formed a band called Lovecraft with him as the sole surviving member of the original line-up plus musicians from the faaaahbulous Aorta and Marty Grebb from The Buckinghams (yay!). If you were anything like me you probably curled your lip at it in the racks and moved on past its throat-slashingly dull cover, tut-tutting at such a cheap and blatant cash-in. And you'd have been wrong. So very wrong.

It's a great album. In fact, if you didn't know its story, it seems exactly like the third album they never made. Even with only the drummer remaining. The glory days of psychedelia were pretty much over by 1970 (some would argue three years earlier), and this album is as representative of its time as the previous two had been. So what you get is a bunch of great songs, sung and played by a bunch of great musicians. In a shit cover. The harmonies, the guitars, the drums ... everything is a joy. Although it's sadly true to say that we will not hear its like again (what with music being made by algorithms running the Instagram likes of an entire generation of phone-stroking fools) we didn't hear it at the time either, or most of us didn't. It's not too late, though. You can grab it here and pretend to your friends that you always dug it, man. Like I do!

EDIT: The FMF postbag has been bulging with requests for Tegza's previous album. "You better of post that Banger Flying circus ablum" writes a Mr Schneider from Los Angeles, "I know where you live. Shame if something happen to them dogs a your's." It's a pleasure to oblige, sir!

Double Entendre

As ever, the French have a word for it. Or in this case, two. The phrase means "to listen in Dolby", or something. Who cares? It's just a way to avoid typing the Great Artist's name. There's an abandoned mill outside Ballygawkeycolleen where hundreds of sunlight-deprived orphans hunt down every internet reference to their Employer, and a team of rottweiler lawyers unleashed on the evil-doers. They're not going to find this. Oh no.

Anyway, to the discs at hand. It's not exactly a biblical revelation that Mr Ivan intended Difficult Proboscis The Freeway to be a double album, and recorded all the tracks only to have Warner Brothers [Curly, Moe and Larry Warner - Ed.]  insist it be hacked back to a single. Nor is it particularly difficult to gather the tracks together from various sources, and there have been attempts at assembling the original album made available on this very same internet. But this is the best one, and I'll tell you why.

The album as issued [HNTH - Ed.] was never quite the artistic success it should and could have been. It's inconsistent, perhaps over-rich, and the more you think about it the more it seems like it was edited down from a double album. Which it was. Or, if you are poetically-minded, you might liken it to a fruitcake with too many cherries and not enough cake. Okay, you come up with a better simile, you're so smart. Restoring the tracks that were cut from the double allows the HNTH songs to breathe. Gives them a bit of context. But you can't just shovel them all in at the end as "bonus" tracks, you have to sequence them over the four imaginary album sides so the thing works as it should. Which is, if you can summon up the energy to click the link in the comments, what you'll find here. It flows nicely from beginning to end, with a possible single kicking off each side.

Add a contemporary and fashionably brown cover shot featuring a nice pullover, and you finish up with an album which - if you have as much taste yourself - you will agree is better in every sense than the compromised original. Cheaper, too. Free, in fact.