I Think, Therefore I Ambient

Here's a swell record you don't see so much of no more. It's sometimes described as being ahead of its time, but I don't recall any cries of "Hey! Steve! We ain't ready for this! Come back when it's your turn!" Nope, like everything else, it was precisely of its time, conditioned by the same ineluctable concatenation of circumstances that ensure you don't get off at Poughkeepsie when you get on the Gowanus bus.

Hillage made this lovely thing in '79, when ambience was already an established thing in music as well as restaurants and comfort stations, with his main squeeze Miquette Giraudy, a French dame from France, and one tomate chaude. Each side lasts a soothing twenty minutes or so, and is the ideal accompaniment to dawn meditation sessions on the deck, or getting blown by someone you only know from the top of their head. I'm not here to judge.

From Trogg To Prog - The Bobby Fripp Interview

The last post in our record-breakingly popular PEW Week is an exclusive interview with Robert Fripp. I interviewed Bobby (as he's known to his closest friends) in his converted vicarage at Piddlehinton, deep in the Dorset hills.

FMF©: Can we start with your experience with The Troggs? I don't think most of our readers will be aware of the connection.
RF: My! You have done your research, haven't you? Well, Reginald [Presley - Ed.] and I were at Yeovil Technical College together. Not really together as such, I tended to distance myself from that crowd, but when Reginald said he was forming a beat group I generously offered my services as guitarist - not because I could play, but because I owned one. A Burns three pick-up. Bright red. I remember it had an impressive array of tone switches which made very little difference to the sound. One was labeled dog bark! Reginald's cronies were what I used to call oiks - still do, actually - real country bumpkins with straw in their hair. As a slight and bookish youth, my downy cheek easily brought to a blush, I was an outsider from the beginning. But I quickly mastered the two chords they used for every song and did the dance steps with them round those ghastly Working Mens' Clubs [shudders]. There was quite the celebration when Reginald signed the recording contract, but when it was time to get in the van for the trip to London, friend Reginald said, not you, specs, and pushed me back over my guitar case. The group drove off laughing and pointing.
FMF©: Must have been traumatic.

RF: Oh, one soldiers on, doesn't one. I'd decided the music business was not for me, and soon found employ as a living garden gnome, hiring myself out to garden parties and fêtes and the like. I'd crouch by ponds dangling my little rod and wink at the girls. It was at one such event that I was spotted by Mickey and Pete Giles. They needed a novelty keyboard player for their musical comedy act, which was a kind of whimsical Footlights thing. So of course one leapt at the opportunity!
FMF©: It's hard to equate this background with the very serious, complex prog-rock world of King Crimson. 
RF: It is? Never thought about it.

Our interview was brought to a natural close by the arrival of his lovely wife, La Toya Wilcox, wheeling in a tea urn.

Toast And Marmalade For Tea

It's impossible to take any band calling themselves Tin Tin seriously. Yet Can can - losing the repetition and changing the container was all it required. Those canny Krauts! Tin Tin was formed in the UK by an Australian duo calling themselves Steve And Stevie, which was, I suppose, an improvement on Steve Steve.

Yeesh - get off your ass and read the Wiki page. I should waste the twilight years of my life re-typing rock, pop n' roll history for you? That's some nerve you have! Why, for two cents I'd ... I'd ...

Anyway, here, as part of PEW week, are their fine fine albums, including Steve And Stevie's winsome debut. Melodic chops abound - Steve Kipner went on to produce and write for Major Stars. Astral Taxi has rare boners tracks, and the presence of Toast And Marmalade For Tea should make this an impulse purchase for freeloading bums everywhere.

The Two Nicks

The Two Jakes is a great movie. It got a critical thumping on release, and has forever suffered from being compared unfavorably to Chinatown, to which it is a sequel of sorts, made sixteen years later. The cinéastes among us will also know about its troubled production, and use that as further evidence of its unworthiness.

As to that Chinatown connection - any movie can be compared to any other and dismissed (or praised) accordingly. The trick is to view a work of art not in a comparative context but for its own merits. We don't grade (say) Picasso's work according to an Amazonian five-star system. We don't say that Mozart's Clarinet Concerto K622 is better than his Horn Concerto K447. But in popular culture we have this weird compulsion to rate artistic works on a scale of comparative worth. If you give Astral Weeks five stars, how many do you give A Period Of Transition? It's a futile exercise, and leads to reducing art to a scorecard.

The second impediment to appreciating The Two Jakes is knowledge of its production difficulties. As if great movies are the result of smooth production and easy teamwork. These difficulties are not apparent on-screen (as they are not apparent in the grooves of Born To Run). What you get on-screen is a great movie. Great story, great performances, great script, great cinematography, unforgettable scenes, and Jack Nicholson at the top of his game.

What? Two what? Nicks? Oh. I'm sorry. Carried away there. Today's offering is part of PEW (Psychedelic English Whimsy) Week here at th' House O'Foam©. The Great Indoors is drop-dead gorgeous. Psychotropia - ooh - shall we give it four stars against Haeffner's five?

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness

Nobody could hate the Blossom Toes first album, We Are Ever So Clean. It would be like clubbing a baby seal. Yet the band did. With the passing of the Summer of Love (and no album was a better soundtrack for grooving down Carnaby Street), the group torched their paisley shirts and strove for rock band credibility with the presciently-titled If Only For A Moment. Not even a sitar cameo from our pal Shawn Phillips could lift this from the tar pit.

What fans they had weren't too impressed by their new direction - all growly vocals and Jazz Odyssey-like live jams - and the band fell apart briefly before appropriately renaming themselves BB Blunder, and cutting their dullest album, and candidate for dullest album ever made, Workers' Playtime. The cover showed them satirically attired as working class blokes down the boozer with arch-snob Julie Driscoll slumming it as a barmaid. What larks! And they had the gall, the cheek, the brazen effrontery to pose with that sublime first album stuffed into a trash bag. Fuck them, frankly. They should have changed their name one album earlier.

Included in today's Blossie Bonanza are the extra tracks versions of the first two albums, a very enjoyable rarities collection, What On Earth, which catches them making the painful transition into Grown-up Rock, and a needlessly expanded Workers' Playtime.

That second album has its fans, and its moments (SWIDT?), but the first blooms forever in our hearts. Giorgio Gomelsky - we thank you!

National Museum Of Psychedelia Opened By Alois, Hereditary Prince Of Liechtenstein

Hi! I'm Al!

Vaduz, the bustling, vibrant capital of Liechtenstein boasts many tourist attractions; the Felt And Related Roofing Materials Amusement Park, the annual Parade Of Accountancy And Tax Law, and the picturesque Old Town itself, a hipster paradise of "indie" banking establishments and funky ATM street culture. To this formidable list can now be added The National Museum Of Psychedelia. Conveniently located between the imposing Bank der Nazikriegsverbrecher AG and the Department Of Public Hygiene, the Museum was formally opened yesterday by Alois, Hereditary Prince Of Liechtenstein in a psychotropic haze of hallucinogens.

Alois, naked except for wild day-glo body paint and love beads, spoke briefly to a small contingent of puzzled but respectful local businessmen and dignitaries assembled for the inauguration, before being escorted into the Royal Limousine.

Hi! I'm Cody!

"WOW!! I'm, like ... hihihihihhihihi ... oh, man, this is so heavy ... you're so beautiful! [sings] EV'RYBODY'S BEAUTIFUL IN THEIR OWN WAY-AYY, LIKE THE SUMMER ... something ... wow ... look at my hands, man ... the lines ... stretching out into, into the cosmos ..."

I was quick enough to liberate a few of the exhibits before the display was taped off by crime-scene police, and share two of them with you today. Don't thank me - thank Alois "Call me Al!", Liechtenstein's Hippie Hereditary Prince!

Something For Sunday

I'm guessing Mel Tormé doesn't feature as strongly as Sinatra in your collection, if at all. I'm also guessing that it's because he has that Vegas thing going for him without being part of the Rat Pack - he's suave - or should that be suavé - and smooth, but perhaps a little too smooth? He lacks the sharp neurotic edge of Sinatra, the loucheness of Dino, yet he could sing better than either of them.

It's A Blue World is an impeccable collection of ballads, mostly arranged by Marty Paich. If you're expecting barstool confessionals, or staring at the cracks in the ceiling through the smoke of your last Lucky, you'll be disappointed. "It's A Blue World" is one of the songs, not the conceptual theme of the album, and that classy cover is misleading. It's suited to late night listening, but not the wee small hours, not that last lonely walk along the beach.

I'm ambivalent about this, as I am about Ella Fitzgerald. Like Ella, he sings almost supernaturally well, with perfect diction, perfect phrasing, and perfect pitch. And yet. Maybe it's that faultlessness that's at fault.

You might think that today's second Sunday Something© has little in common with It's A Blue World, and you'd be wrong. Damned Damned Damned has nothing in common with it at all. But you may need waking up after Mel, and this raucous, joyous, hilarious thrash sounds as good on Sunday as any other day. You can understand why an entire generation got fired up by this, but it beat them to the punch. The first Damned album said everything punk had to say - said it first, and said it better. Neat, neat, neat.

Get The Funk Out Of Your Face Once And For All With This Revolutionary Audio Solution

It's Saturday! The weekend is here and it's time to shake out the bugs from that mullet and get on down with your bad self! Why not invite your deadbeat pals over for a Patio Party? Like they have something better to do, yeah right. No yard, yet? Why not create your own indoor patio with Walmart© Peel n' Stick© vinyl floor tiles? Add some flowers from the local cemetery, and the illusion is complete! And why not greet your guests rocking a fun Bar-B-Q apron?

All you need now is a colorful Tupperware© bowl full of prison-grade blow cut with veterinary anæsthetic, a couple of crack whores still throwing up from the container ship, and ... music, maestro, please!

Nothing gets the party swingin' like some Old School funk. Here at Th' House

Peel-n'-Stick©, yesterday

O'Foam©, we get in the partay mood with Catalyst. Them and a fistful of poppers. What's that you say? You never heard of 'em? Well, poppers are ... what? Oh. Catalyst were Old School before there was even kindergarten. Imagine the fun you'll have poking your so-called friends in their hollow chests and sneering "you tellin' me you never heard of Catalyst? You fuckin' kiddin' me? Heyyyy! C'mon! I'm just bustin' ya balls, man! Relax! Haw haw haw! Wotta sap!"

Humorous apron, yesterday

The Complete Recordings, originally issued as two sets of CDs, collects their first four albums together in a fabulous feast o' funk. These were Miles [Davis - Ed.] and Herbie [Hancock - Ed.] level musicians stretching out over beats funkier than a fun-fur rug. If you dig the Headhunters, you'll flip for these guys. They make The Crusaders sound like, well, The Crusaders. Only a couple of tracks play down to the audience, so your jazzbo cred will be as high as those crack whores passed out on the Peel-n'-Stick©.

EDIT: On re-listening to this, I find it laughably inappropriate for the kind of soirée envisaged above. I apologize if you have already gone to all the trouble and expense of installing an indoor patio.

Frank Gets Primordial On Our Asses

This hot, hot biscuit snuck out in a limited vinyl-only limited edition as a limited Record Store Day limited exclusive.

It's Uncle Frank's original orchestral mix, what got nixed by the label, all twenty-three furshlugginer minutes of it. Gee, is it ever swell! Buying a copy - if you could find one for sale - would set you back the equivalent of 2.5 Greenlands. Why not get it for nothing from th' House O'Foam©, where Old Is The New New?

Oops!

I think I forgot to include the cover of Carly Simon's Playing Possum in the Sunday Somethin' post below. My bad! Here it is - better late than never!

EDIT: Here's the inner sleeve, too, just to be sure

EDIT: Here's the back cover, too, just to be even more ... sure. Can't be too sure. Are you guys seeing this?

EDIT: Oh, Carly! This could of been I, Farquhar! Unlike this hapless geek, I'm still here for you, honey! I keep a special room for you. Pictures of you all over the walls! Why, it's like a secret shrine to our love!

Little Boots Part V

Not so much a bootleg this time around - it's a swell unofficial compilation of Feat songs covered by Various Artists (you have all their albums). The range is surprising - Nicolette Larson, uh-huh, but Van Halen?? Forty-one tracks of Feat Fun, with song duplicates at a minimum. I think I found this on Cousin Willard's old site - don't look for it - so all credit and thanks due to the original compiler.

Here - have a cover, so you have something to carry it home in.

TL-DR Dept. "No-one else is in his tree" - Shawn Phillips

The title of Shawn Phillips '64 debut album I'm A Loner is both a cliché typical of those Guthrie-inspired guitar-slinger times, and a larger truth about the man. He's still out there, over a half-century later, and he's still doing the thing we can only describe as his own - because there's nobody else doing it.

The debut and the following year's Shawn were recorded (possibly during the same sessions) in London by Denis Preston, the UK's first independent record producer. Both albums featured show tunes, Leadbelly material and a tentative handful of his own compositions among the more generic trad. arrs. And he was already an unusually accomplished guitarist, with a unique twelve-string style.

I'm A Loner's bonus tracks here (and only here) include a '64 promo. Extras on Shawn include Summer Came, whose fuller pop production seems to place it during '66, and the remarkable sitar-soaked Stargazer and Woman Mind, which encapsulate 1967 as well as anything. He studied sitar under Ravi Shankar, and, until I hear different, was the first musician to use the instrument in a pop context, appearing on and co-writing many early Donovan recordings. The Celtic Bard, with the big-hearted generosity for which the Scots are adored world-wide, gave him minimal to no credit. "I would play guitar, and he would make up words ... who would you say wrote the music? His name is Leitch. You can figure the rest out as to who got the money" [Phillips interviewed by Scott Itter].

Phillips gave George Harrison sitar lessons before his Fabness nabbed Shankar himself, and sang backing vox on Lovely Rita. During this period he also studied yoga with the same intensity he'd given the sitar, and his breath control gave him a startling range and control outside the range of any other pop singer. He's featured briefly in the Woodstock movie, looking every inch the hippie mystic, demonstrating yoga. He was also making contacts everywhere he went, with the result that he was able to call on Traffic and Eric Clapton for his first real solo album, the amazing Contribution from 1970. And for me, as for many of his fans, this is where my Shawn story begins.

Peanuts Molloy, in a comment, says "what you like most, what you don’t like so much, it can all be down to time and place" and my time for this was Personal Best in lysergic intake. Take a look at the sleeve, then compare and contrast with the covers above. This is what LSD does. Yikes! There are over fifty photographs of him on the sleeve and the lyric insert, I know because I counted them, because that's the kind of thing you did back then, with no internet. That and/or take drugs. Which Shawn had certainly been doing, with the fervor he brought to the sitar and yoga.

The album doesn't use psychedelic motifs or decoration - this was 1970. The freakiest the production gets is a wash of phasing and a touch of sitar. But it resonated with my psychedelic experience through its lyrical imagery, mood, and his incredible soaring vocals. "In this house of visions, on top of the hill, the glass has turned to rust ... light will splinter through open clouds, and you'll look straight in a face like the sun" - 'L' Ballade. Now that is breathtaking taken straight, but under the right conditions, it blows your head off. I'm still looking for mine.

Recorded at Trident, it marked the beginning not only of his Imperial Period at A&M, but also a long relationship with the brilliant Paul Buckmaster. And we just have time to squeeze another Scot into the story. Listen to Phillips' extraordinary phased 12-string rhythm solo in the sublime Withered Roses. Now listen to Al Stewart's extraordinary phased 12-string rhythm solo in Nostradamus, recorded three years later. Al and Don: say thanks, Shawn. No, wait - I'll say it for you: thanks, Shawn.


I've taken the liberty of resequencing the tracks. I never liked the way Not Quite Nonsense broke the high created by L Ballade, which itself appeared too soon. You can always listen to the original.

Country Rock Cause Of Sink Holes, Enquiry Reveals

Couple of prime corn-fed discs for the cowboy in you. They are both sheerly excellent, packed full of song-writing goodness and seasoned with the finest playin' and singin'. So fine, in fact, I can't imagine you not already having them. But if either one is new to you, scarf it up, because this music lasts a lifetime. The quality of timelessness is frequently found in this genre - something, perhaps, that comes with being part of a long tradition of musicality.

The credits on Wayne Berry's '74 solo album are jaw-dropping. I'm too bone idle to type out lists here, so check discogs. What's special about this album is that they all give their matchless best to songs worthy of their talents. Produced by the great Norbert Putnam. Almost unbelievably, this gorgeous piece of work sold shit.

Country Funk's album is a little different. Musicianship is homespun, songs not up to Berry's standards, but it stretches the genre envelope nicely, in the same way as the first Morning album [already featured at th' Foam - Ed.]. A strong indebtedness to CSNY/Byrds is evident, and there's some mighty tasty guitar workouts, too.

Pcinemadelic - It's Swingin', Dad!

We jet to 'sixties Britain for today's double feature, and again, the soundtracks are more worthy of your time than the movies.

Main feature is Up The Junction, a socially-conscious kitchen-sink drama. Those IMDB keywords again prove invaluable: abortion, bare-chested male, class differences. It's a good movie if any of those issues punch your ticket, or if you feel like harshing your mellow just for kicks, but psychonauts seeking the cheap lava-lamp thrills so treasured here at Th' House o' Foam© are going to be grievous disappoint.

The soundtrack is a surprise - Manfred Mann take a step outside their format and turn in a thing of beauty. I don't like to copy-paste text here, but the Allmusic review gets it absolutely right for once: "One of the great soundtracks of the 1960s ... Manfred Mann shed their pop skin and evolve into a fucking awesome jazz outfit ... title song, a flipped-out alternative to Good Vibrations, is one of their finest pieces ever, and fuck you, FalseMemoryFoam@, editing this quote ..."

The version presented here has swell bonus tracks to take you even further Up The Junction! Hoo boy!

Supporting our main feature is the lower-budget, much more interesting The Touchables, which spookily shares a plot with 3 In The Attic, lensed the same year [already featured in Pcinemadelic - Ed.]. Co-written by acid-head David Cammell, who also scripted Performance and The Man Who Fell To Earth. IMDB keywords: sexploitation, gangster, erotic, bare-chested male bondage. Again with the bare chest already! Strange that groovy dolly-birds doesn't make the list. The soundtrack features the dreamy title theme by Nirvana familiar from their All Of Us album, and big input from Ken Thorne. Who he? Very interesting guy. Composed incidental music for The Monkees' Head, Donovan's Brother Sun, Sister Moon [both buried deep here in th' Foam - Ed.] and uncredited, the Fabnesses Help! What a relentlessly tedious movie that was.

The Touchables is worse in every way than Up The Junction, and all the better for it, featuring BDSM-lite scenes in a groovy transparent dome built for the movie. Don't look for it - it's not there any more.

Phillibuster

The Firesign Theatre is known as a comedy act. Who made comedy albums. For me, the laffs are the least of what they did, coming few and far between. I love that run of early albums, up to Bozos, listened to them countless times over the years. They're immersive, incredibly detailed, multi-layered, with a dream-logic all their own. But funny? I've always found them more scary than funny, a little like the Alice books in that respect. Live performance (the clips are out there) lost what these guys were best at - throwing you in at the deep end and leaving you to work out what the hell was going on - and reduced them to third-rate burlesque shtick.

Their satiric targets were frequently obscure and obsolete, and unfamiliarity with the source material (who listened to 'forties radio shows in the 'sixties?) boosted the weirdness factor. Later attempts to politicize their humor, to make it contemporary and relevant, tended to fall flat. They were falling apart about the time the internet was coming together. But that early run of albums remains a remarkable achievement, redefining what was possible with audio environment and narrative, and it should include the album credited to Phil Austin, Roller Maidens From Outer Space. 

It's actually a full-tilt Firesign Theatre album - the gang's all here - but there's

Hi! I'm Phil!

dishy Phil on the cover as barechested glam rock diva. Barf. And - excuse me? - why? Maybe he tried the "I'm being ironic, man!" line - I'd have been unconvinced. He wanted to be a rock star comedian, but the addition of his dreary, unfunny, and unnecessary songs meant I never gave the album the attention it deserved. The cover, the songs, and the solo credit disguise a first-rate Firesign album.

So here it is. New cover, song-free content. And don't worry if you're not yokking it up all the way through. Listen for the devil breathing ...

The Lost Decade - Found At Last!

The unproductive decade separating 82's Angel Heart and 93's Suspending Disbelief has long been attributed to what are euphemistically referred to as "personal issues". In this exclusive FalseMemoryFoam© interview, Mr Webb [Jimmy - recording artist - Ed.] reveals for the first time exactly what happened during those missing years.

The interview took place at fashionable hipster haunt The Kosher Koffee Kompany in picturesque Lyons Falls, NY.

JW: What you having?
FMF©: What's that?
JW: Bagel Bean Frappuccino.
FMF©: Oh, waitress? I'll get one of those? Hey - Jimmy - you see the sign for this place? 
JW: [laughs] Only in Lyons Falls!
FMF©: So. What happened?
JW: Well, it's a long story ...
FMF©: Can we get the short version? It's a blog on the internet, not a WAPO op-ed. We're losing readers by the keystroke here.
JW: Look. Farquhar. You have to understand his is not easy for me, speaking openly and for the first time about the extraordinary, borderline unbelievable events that profoundly impacted my life during the course of a decade! I can't just-
FMF©: [cuts in] The Monticello bus leaves in thirty. Can we wrap this up? Soundbite that tells the story?
JW: Have you heard my music? Does it sound like the Ramones to you? I put a lot of thought and-
FMF©: FOR GOD'S SAKE!
JW: [covers face with hands] I was abducted by an alien spa-
FMF©: Sorry! Gotta blow! Have my Bagel ... thing. Good talkin' to ya!

Today's Cavalcade O' Melody© offers two swell records that sound like they could have been recorded a year apart, not ten! It's a shame we shall never know the reason for those mysterious missing months. And like all Jimmy Webb albums, they leave me wondering why the poor guy gets a critical kicking for his vocals. "Great songwriter, poor performer". What horseshit. He has a great voice, and these beautiful, heartfelt albums show him at the top of his game, which, at his altitude, is solitaire.

A Sunday Somethin'

I'm not James Taylor's biggest fan. He always seemed like a girls' act to me - at least all the frails of my acquaintance were smitten by his sweet baby looks, th' cheap heel, th' nogood bum. But his first, eponymous, as rock critics like to say, album gets overlooked, and it's - perhaps predictably - my favorite. Criticized not least by himself for being "over produced" (by ginger adult baby Peter Asher), it's a swell pop album with some of his best tunes. I'll take Carolina In My Mind over Sweet Baby James, thank you.

Which brings us to the showbiz tragedy of Carly Simon. Why tragedy? Because she could of had me, th' dumb broad. Instead of that soybean whiner James Taylor. I was there for her. Waiting. Sensitive to her needs. Fantasizing wildly, in preparation for when she came to her senses and into my arms. But no. Well, her cross to bear, right? But Carly - if you're reading this - perhaps sprawled erotically in a windowseat, a glass of chilled Chardonnay in your delicate fingers and an expression of regret coloring your lovely pan - I'm still here for ya, baby. Come to poppa. Anyway, this is my bestest Carly album, and not just for that mind-tattoo cover. Be right back. Okay! Playing Possum is summer in the Hamptons, and we're poolside with Carly as the sun dips into the ocean, like a maraschino cherry in a Manhattan. Parr-tay!

Buyer's Remorse Dept.

Howdy! Uncle Ignatz here, depping for FT3 on this fine, fine Sat'dy morning! Th' swamp's steaming and Cousin Willard's out clubbing catfish fer breakfast! Clubs the critters twice, once for each head! Heh heh! Set awhile! Now what we have to talk about today is those albums you buy when there's nothing else in the crates but Firefall and The Babys, and you don't want to go home empty-handed. Happens to us all, son! Got us a couple of swell examples here.

Openers by The Hot Soup. Prime period piece from '69, on the prestigious Rama Rama label. Boy howdy! Now I never heard of this puppy a'fore I pulled it from the pile down at the General Store Head Shop here in downtown Okefenokee, and if I never hear it again it'll be too soon. G'wan! Take it! You know you want it! Next up is ... wait a second ... my eyes ain't what they were, and these psychedelic spectacles don't help much, that's for sure ...

The Sundae Times. Now this one is of some interest. Us Coloured Kids. On the British Joy label, again from '69. Joy was like the British equivalent of Rama Rama, I'm guessing. It's got Eddy Grant on it. But it's also got Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels and Conrad Isidore, who were good enough to get their next gig with Stephen Stills. Fuzzy went on to record with CSNY. How bad can this album be? I don't think Stills ever heard it. G'wan - take it and beat it! Here's Cousin Willard with the breakfast!

Country Rock More Harmful Than Heroin - Study Shows

Ace country fiddle player Byron Berline has had a varied career. His first public appearance was as "Bouncin' Byron, Teen Cannonball" in the popular Saturday morning kids' TV show Hiram Haystack's Hootenanny [Wikipedia is your friend - Ed.]. His parents soon tired of driving frantically around the TV studios with a net stretched across the bed of their pick-up. "We'd miss him, or he'd overshoot, more often than not," chuckles father Keats, "and crash hats were a mite expensive." Retiring from TV before concussion retired him from everything, Byron hoped to capitalize on his TV celebrity with a traveling trampoline show, but failed to draw an audience. On the suggestion of his mother, Byron added fiddle playing to the act, and he soon attracted an enthusiastic public. It was at the Crawfish County Fair that country music legend Bill Monroe spotted the talented teen rising momentarily above the heads of the crowd whilst playing Orange Blossom Special. The rest is history, and history, as PT Barnum said, is bunk.

Today's Catering Pack O' Country Rock© serves up a sizzling selection of Bouncin' Byron's best! The Sundance album is a little-known beauty from '76, just gorgeous, but sales were disappointing. "I should have hung on to that trampoline!" jokes Berline today. "Not in a literal sense - I don't see how that would work - but it might have made folks take notice."

Also included is the swell Warped Records compilation of twenty-seven - count 'em - pre-Sundance Country Gazette tracks, apparently recorded between albums, which you need like air.

That's Jaaazz!

More smooth listening for that intimate soirée, when you get that broad over from the double-wide, what with her "husband" still stamping license plates for the government. A six pack of Coors, a bucket of slaw, and this. What could possibly go wrong? You dog you! Down boy!

Bags & Trane is a swell pairing - "Trane" (as we hep jazzbos call him) is cooled off a little by the sweat-free Milt Jackson on vibes, and "Milty" (as absolutely no-one calls him) is fired up a little by him. And hey - isn't that Connie Kay on traps? Wasn't he on Astral Weeks?

Charlie Byrd is better-known for bossa, but this smoky late-nite session is perfect consolation after that broad tips the slaw over your head and stalks back to her double-wide. Dames, huh? Time to break out that emergency bottle of Seagram's 7!

Thanks to Peanuts Molloy for the Charlie Byrd - did you get that sack of soup greens I sent you?

In Search Of Clarence's Magic Garden

You'd think everywhere was somewhere on the internet, wouldn't you? An article, a photograph, a reference, a reminiscence ... something. Yet the only mention of Clarence's Magic Garden I can find is ... right here.
Clarence was an old man back in the 'sixties, a primitive/naive (horrible terms) artist I've likened to Moondog. Not a musician, a sculptor. He created a world of his own in New York State, I think up near Woodstock, a garden of strange houses and weird forms, wrapped in tinfoil and studded with found objects, dolls, glittery trash. You can see a glimpse of it on the cover of the Jake And The Family Jewels album, and it gets a credit in the liner notes. I also remember it being featured in an art book I owned. But according to the internet, it never happened. Just bubbles of false memory foam.

I contacted an old friend of mine (hi, Joel!) who lives up in the backwoods close

Joel's dove - sign o' the times

to the Catskills and the site of the festival, and asked him if he knew anything about it. He's busy right now painting psychedelic signs for the 50th anniversary, but nope, he can't recall anything about Clarence's Magic Garden.

A magical little corner of the world, lost in time and place. A secret from the internet. Maybe that's a good thing.

EDIT: Note exactly a secret! A helpful comment from the most hardworking presence on the internet - Mr Anonymous - clears up the mystery.

"I'm The Dummy"

Gee, this sure was a surprise! From the tarpits of the mid-'nineties, when nobody did nuthin', comes this, on the tiny Beachwood label. It's a surprise because it's so damn nice. Tork never had the greatest set of pipes, but there's nothing to make us wince here, apart from the cover. A bunch of good originals, any of which would have been at home on the fine Monkees swansong Good Times, cameos from Mike n' Micky, and some sweet guitar in a clear pop-centric production. Dig.

ALLERGY ADVISORY: Some cheesy synth presets may be present - if in doubt consult your physician.

Teen Idol Trips Out

Rick Nelson, as previously noted here, was one cool cat, a child radio and TV star who became a teen pop and movie idol before developing a career as a country rock musician of impeccable taste. In the twilight days of his heartthrob years, with Dylan and the Beatles ushering in a new era, he realised he had to change to survive. As so many did, he experimented with a soft psychedelia. But at the same time he made a couple of full-tilt Bakersfield country music albums [hunt for them here - Ed.]. This was a subtle and super-smart move, and I can't offhand think of another artist who tried two radically different styles virtually simultaneously.

Being the thorough professional that he was, he didn't just sprinkle some instant sitar powder over a rock n' roll track and snap on a headband for a photoshoot, he made two albums in the strange and contradictory mode of psych-pop, at once experimental and formulaic. Go on over to AllMusic to read the standard critical response to these albums - a smug smirk of contempt. That's just wrong - critics can be so pleased with their own opinions that they prefer listening to their own keystrokes than the music.

On both these albums, Nelson showed his class covering songs by Hoagy Carmichael, John Sebastian, Tim Hardin, Harry Nilsson, Richie Havens, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman. In '67/'68, this showed a real hip awareness of what was happening around him. He also - as was required - tried his hand at his own material, although he knew his limitations at that time and kept it to a minimum. Jimmy Haskell, Jack Nitzsche and Bruce Botnick were part of the team, as were James Burton and John Boylan, whose Appletree Theatre album (made with his brother Terry) remains a beautiful classic of the genre.

Ultimately, country won over Crayola psych, and his career, although never reaching the heights of his teen idol years, continued steadily and respectably. If these albums can be seen as failures, they're very honorable ones, created without the slightest taint of cynicism. The genre was never built to last, and Rick gave it his best shot, from the heart - he was always incapable of giving less.