These dreary days, the more basic the production, the better. Because - more real, right? More authentic. More artistic, more true to the artist's intentions. Yes, more cheap, too. More easy. More quick. Not that the woke lo-fi æsthetic (oh, jeez, it physically hurts to type that out) is influenced by those baser issues, of course. Nor that the resources behind the pop albums of the sixties, the session players, the experienced producers and engineers, the dedicated studios and big-label budgets simply aren't there any more. No. Rigorous artistic integrity can only be exercised from a bedroom or a back porch, and this is a morally superior context than corporate professionalism.
Today's bulk delivery is an overdose of pop overproduction from four (count 'em!) solo artists determined to grab every musician and production tweak available to them while they had the opportunity.
Fratboy favorite Gary Lewis (And The Playboys) hit '67 running with Listen, recorded while he was on leave from active service in Vietnam (no bone spurs for Gary). Hard to fault on any level, it features a knowingly hip selection of songwriters; Bonner & Gordon, the Boylan Brothers, John Sebastian, and Tim Hardin. And yes, that's the kitchen sink you hear in the surround-sound arrangements by Jack Nitzsche.
From the same miraculous year, teenybopper heartthrob Tommy Roe out-dizzied himself with Phantasy, an all-time ABC whimsydelia classic. Paisley Dreams and Mystic Magic in a Plastic World. This is the mono vinyl, yet, like you should care.
Mickey Newbury looks ill at ease in the only store-bought hippie shirt in Nashville, as well he might, but turns in an extraordinary first album, at once representative of the prevailing trends and kicking against them, like the cover. From '68.
A year later, 98.6 hitmaker Keith is probably wearing the same shirt in New York, but on him it looks good. The Adventures Of Keith is a concept album, the concept being let's make a concept album.
I'll be taking a break from my punishing House O'Foam© schedule over the next three weeks or so. If the warden lets me, I'll drop by to weed out the spam (and see if any of the four or five guys are still around). So don't forget to scarf everything up during my absinthe, because re-ups are a pain in th' ass! Be seeing you ...
Jack Daugherty tried to sue A&M for downplaying his production contributions to the early Carpenters albums, and lost. But whatever he didn't contribute to those sessions, he made up for on this, his solo outing from '71. Solo is something of a misnomer - the musician credits, stretched end to end, would run from Anaheim, through Azusa, all the way to Cucamonga. It qualifies as jazz, but shares that hip Don Sebesky/Dave Grusin Malibu soundtrack vibe.
Squeeze into those Angel'sFlight©
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| Can I come too? |
slacks, dangle that medallion in your chest hair, put the top down on the GTO, and head out to the beach.
What's this? It's only an album cover you won't find anywhere else on the internet, is what this is. Think about that for a second or two. Enough. Now read the next sentence awready. You may find a link to the photographer's site (the great Barry Feinstein - he took the cover shot for that Byrds album down below), but that shows the original shot only, and in black and white. This is the full artworked-up and printed cover for Joe Cocker's second, eponymous [oh well done! - Ed.] album. Which they didn't use, replacing it with the ho-hum monochrome image you're familiar with.
Why? Why was this fantastic cover shelved and replaced with an inferior, cheap-looking design? We shall never know. But this is the iconic [bravo! - Ed.] image of Joe. The heavy tweed suit (for a day at the seaside), the collarless shirt with studs and armbands. The dog on a rope. This is Joe bringing British working class style to Santa Monica, and he's pissed that someone out of shot has called his pedigree mutt a mongrel. Was this the original album title? Looks like it, doesn't it?
Questions - questions! My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of cascading alternatives. Perhaps you, too, dear reader, have questions. Questions about life. Love. The Universe, and our place within it. Do us a big favor and keep them to yourself, ya dope.
The immortal Wonga Philip Harris, bandleader, voice of Baloo and all-round great guy, wrote the hit That's What I Like About The South, but baked ribs and candied yams, sugar-cured hams and a basement full of berry jams is not what this post is about. It's about Southern Rock in its finest form; twin lead guitars, harmony singing and a country-sprung beat that borders on boogie.
Chain Lightning do it better than most. You have to be, uh, ready to rawk to appreciate this, and at our age maybe that's asking too much. But if you're up for some arthritic air guitar when nobody's looking, or something to make the dash rattle on the Toyota Xanax, then Ain't Just Whistlin' Dixie will make you a very happy man. There's plenty of that duelling geetar, a couple of fist-pumping ballads you can fall off the porch to, some sweet steel guitar, and the songs are just swell. Fans of th' Allmans - and who isn't? - will be well pleased with this unfeasibly accomplished and little-known album. Even if the south ain't really gonna rise again. Or ever did, much.
(In the mean time, if any of youse guys gots Phil Harris, especially his phenomenal big band, I does wants!)
If you haven't already, check out Sitarswami's epic pop-psych compilation posted antecedently [None More Sixties, April - Ed.]. Since then, he hasn't rested on his laurels - secluded in his private lamasery high in fabled Shangri-La, the internet mystic has labored on the astral plane to create what might be his finest achievement in this earthly form. As usual, he paid little or no attention to the mundane aspects of his task, like tagging the tracks so the the whole thing hung together, or creating cover art, leaving the dirty work to the poor slobs at Th' House O' Foam©.
I interviewed him via Madame Velma at her Temple Of Spiritualness And Garment Repair (Ask About IRS Charity Deductions), here in bosky downtown Las Vegas, NV.
FMF©: Can you hear me, o mystic sage which you are in, like, Tibet or something?
MV: Of course he can hear you. We got 4G here. Whoops.
S: I send you vibrations across the vastness of the cosmos, little grasshopper.
FMF©: Little grasshopper? You talkin' to me?
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| Sitarswami, yesterday |
S: To experience the now, to attain the sublime, this is the goal of the seeker after truth.
FMF©: Whatevs. Kudos on another swell collection, dude, but why don't you tag your fucking tracks like you got a brain in your head?
S: The seeker must clear his mind until it is a mirror for the light of illumination.
FMF©: Listen - have you any idea the amount of work that made for my staff? Eighty-four fucking songs?
S: Find refuge in your heart's eye and-
FMF©: [cutting in] And you still ain't paid me for the last cover what I done.
[line goes dead]
MV: The Mahagururama has ascended to a higher plane. That'll be fifty bucks. No cards no checks.
[FX: cash register]
An eon ago in internet terms, maybe even years, some diligent fan and archivist labored to assemble the ultimate Byrds project - a complete set of Byrds albums, each with all the available relevant associated material added. All official recordings, no dodgy boots, the whole deal. It was an incredible undertaking, and may be the last woid on Da Boids.
Here's the first album in the series, thirty-six (count 'em) tracks of Mr. Tambourine Man material, each song tagged with provenance. It's one of those music blog clichés (sorry - tropes - almost had my Rock Writer card revoked) to "thank the original uploader", but here we need to. Outstanding work, sir!
A note about the cover - a beautiful example of Corporate Art Department expertise from '65, the genesis of the cultural decade of the sixties, which lasted until '75. It's so obviously not like anything that came before - it's not a jazz album, not a rock n' roll album. Everything about it is just perfect. And that lens distortion was something new - six whole months before the Beetles caught up with Rubber Soul.
Fresh out of law college, Cashman, Pistilli & West hung up their shingle on New York's bustling Bleecker Street. Gazing out at the parade of hippies in the sunshine, they cried as one, "Fuck this shit! It's only gonna be 1967 once!"
Tearing their diplomas into confetti, they led a procession of flower children to Central Park, and as they danced barefoot this album sprang fully-formed from their lips. It's so saturated with sunshine you get a tan from just listening to it. Spanky & Our Gang heard it, and had a hit with Sunday Will Never Be The Same, included on their first album.
Later, the clouds rolled over, but you can roll 'em back right now with these swell none-more-sixty-seven slices of sunshine-pop salami.
Run barefoot in your head, while you still can. Be as young as you want.
Recorded in '57, between the sublime High Society soundtrack and Fancy Meeting You Here (both previously Foamfeatured), Bing With A Beat is another prime Bingleburger, and hold the cheese. Bing wasn't averse to cheese in his albums, unfortunately, and you have to dig hard in his prodigious output to find one free of cod-Irish sentimentality, hula hokeyness and other sadly dated sappiness. To his eternal credit, he never took himself seriously as an artist, but the downside of that is he invested as much artistic intent into an album as he did a round of golf, and albums that qualify as works of art do so by accident.
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| Hi guys! |
Bing With A Beat does. There's a consistency of quality and artistic coherence (no filler, no stylistic distractions) that results from a focused studio session with a sympathetic band playing the perfect song program. Bob Scobey's band swings like a donkey's nuts (or occasionally a hammock) and Bing is clearly having a blast. You can bet he knew all the musicians by name, and he's listening to every one of them. Everyone involved with this session left the studio with a smile on his face - look at that cover! - and it's one we can share.
(Postscript - another album from the same period, Bing Sings Whilst Bregman Swings, misses the swing - and the Bing - by a mile, almost driving him from the studio with its carnival float horns and a showboating Buddy Bregman.)
Howard Roberts was a highly successful jazz guitarist. Bandleader, sessions, part of the Wrecking Crew, high-profile TV and movie soundtrack work; he's probably on more than a few albums you own. But like many sessioners at the top of their game, he grew itchy with the elevator music his label expected of him. I think pharmaceutical research may have impacted his creativity.
Antelope Freeway ('71) is like no other guitar album I've ever heard, except maybe his next one. It's like he's remembering The Firesign Theatre's How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, without trying to interpret it. There's spoken word and sound effect interludes, and the whole thing is seamlessly edited together as a suite. It's off-beat, left-field, funny and funky, and stoned as a heretic in old Jerusalem. That's him sitting on the edge of the earthquake-destroyed titular freeway on the cover, and the music is like a fault-line running through contemporary L.A. A freaking, freaked-out masterpiece.
Equinox Express Elevator ('72) is more of the same, yet different. At some point, out of nowhere, he shreds. It's startling. Like Freeway, there are echoes of Zappa's studio techniques, and the titles of the pieces are hilarious - how could you not want to hear Real Freak Of Nature Historical Monument?
This is the kind of unclassifiable stuff that crimps the sphincters of record labels, and after getting it out of his system he returned to standards and sessions, much to the relief of everyone who benefited from his royalty checks.
This week's Country Rock Cornucopia© presents a couple of hi-fiber biscuits that'll go down a treat while your old lady's fixing the tailgate on the truck. Get her to fetch you a brewskie first, though. Watching a dame chip rust can work up a thirst.
Milkwood's How's The Weather from '72 is a swell collection of CSNY-flavored tunes, distinguished by the presence of future Cars members Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr. Yep! The My Best Friend's Girl hitmakers started their careers as back-porch harmonizers, a-pickin' and a-singin' their easy way through something of a genre classic.
Timbercreek's Hellbound Highway ('75) is a double rarity. Not only was it a severely limited private press, it is also damn good, unlike many "lost classics" pressed up by local hopefuls. If you like Workingman's Dead, you'll flip for this. If you don't like Workingman's, please collect your shoes at the door on your way out. This isn't the Dead, of course, but they're a surprisingly skilled band, with an especially strong rhythm section (the bass playing is a stone delight) and better-than-average songwriting chops. They even get the home-made cover right, too. Keeper!
EDIT: Don't miss Bob's links in the comments for the boners tracks version of the album, and a beautiful, groovy, trucking live album!
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| Ed, yesterday |
Our FalseMemoryFoam© editor-in-chief Ed hosts today's Buyer's Remorse feature. Ed graduated summa cum laude in Phys. Ed. from Bryn Mawr in 1965, much to the surprise of the faculty. "We had no idea he was there," says then Principal Hildegaard Öberstrangle.
Today, our under-the-counterculture icon resides in a dumpster duplex in the FMF© lot here in bosky downtown Las Vegas, NV. We free him from his parenthetical manacles to talk about a couple of albums that caused him sickness of heart.
"I was working at a Goodwill store, and I'd liberate all the righteous-looking albums before they went on sale. The Fifth Avenue Band was one of those alarm klaxon finds. 1969, Spoonful connections, Greenwich Village ... this has to be great, right? Wrong. It doesn't stink. It's not even bad enough for me to donate back. It's okay. But, you know, it was free, so no complaints from me, and you neither, thank you.
Today's other Disc O' Disappoint© is the third Ultimate Spinach album. I'd admired the first two for their brazen, artless approach to psychedelia, but this one? Skunk Baxter's on board. Maybe for the view. Groovy cover. I want to have it, but I don't need to hear it. Same as you."
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| Th' Goopster, yesterday |
Lovely Gwyneth Paltrow [left - Ed.] is justly celebrated for her work with Dream Catcher technology and sustainable kelp face-packs, but few know of her love for late-sixties psychedelic music! A long-time lurker at Th' House O' Foam©, she agreed to be interviewed at her Holistic Healthfulness Yurt on the outskirts of picturesque Bakersfield, CA., overlooking the disused tuna cannery.
FMF©: Swell yurt you got here!
GP: It was ethically created by my Estonian orphans from shade-grown polymers.
FMF©: Excellent. I know you have an album you want to share, but I'd like to hear about your time with The Police.
GP: It was all a misunderstanding. She told me she was-
FMF©: You had that big hit, uh, Roseanne? (sings in high-pitched voice) You don't have to switch on the red light!
GP: (laughs) Oh that! A long time ago. I've moved on since ...
FMF©: And you had quite the solo career! That Concert For World Hunger singing with the dugongs off Fernando Po. Air-lifting your albums to those jungle dudes in Brazil, with your CDs in their lips. Your brave advocacy of tantric sex education for schoolgirls. Is there anything else you feel a burning desire to address?
GP: Yes. Fans - especially women of a certain age - old - of Engelbert Humperdinck. They are a form of eugenic pollution that should be erased from the world.
FMF©: Can we talk about the album?
GP: It's a wellness tool at my Psychedelic Pspa.
FMF©: Don't stand so, don't stand so, close to me!
GP: It's by Hendrickson Road House, and-
FMF©: Massage in a bottle! Hahahahaha!
GP: Okay. I'm requesting closure on this interview. (calls out) SECURITY!
In a recent summit meeting of finer minds in the comments section, I loftily dismissed late Spirit albums as generic hard rock, and not worth the time. It's a standard Rock Snob reflex. Strictly speaking - and who wants sloppy speaking? - we're really talking about two albums here, Rapture In The Chambers and Tent Of Miracles, both from the ass end of the eighties. In the spirit (swidt?) of critical objectivity, I decided to re-audition these albums in th' Conversation Pit O' Sound©, to see if the wiser perspective of maturity like what I got (out th' ass) would shine a different, softer light on the music.
Rapture gets a kicking for its "over-produced sound" and synthesizers, and being from the eighties. Well, yep, all that, but ... it sounds great. It does. If we have to have eighties music, and I suppose we do, it should sound like this finely detailed Randy California production. The man knew his way around a studio. That period drum sound, usually so flatly metronomic and irritating, becomes a tribal heartbeat in Cass's capable hands. John Locke's synth isn't overplayed, and remain untouched most of the time. A few of the songs do qualify as generic hard rock, but there's some first-tier Randy California material here, thoughtful, imaginative, and atmospheric. Plus also too: great title, great cover. Their last major label release, as it didn't impress floppy-haired synth-pop fans, and such Spirit fans as were left had mostly wandered away into th' fog after the half-assed nothing-burger of The Thirteenth Dream. If you were one of them, as I was, then please do give it a spin on th' Victrola. It's a swell Spirit album, and deserves its place in the canon.
The following year's Tent Of Miracles limped out on a non-label with a toxic cover [at right - Ed.] that actively terminated any remaining chances of sales.
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| Unsee! |
I mean - what the actual fuck? Couldn't they have found someone, anyone, who knew what a Spirit album should look like? This would shame a bootleg. Plus point - it cost them nothing. Minus point - it cost them everything. The stupid fucks. Because lurking in this shitty package is another great album. With another great title. And now, thanks to th' graphic genius available on tap at th' House O' Foam©, it's got a cover that doesn't make you blow chunks. I posted it at the top to lure in thumbnail clickers.
The sound is stripped-down after Rapture, as is the line-up. Mike Nile's playing, singing and writing is an asset, and the whole deal slips down a treat. As much as I like their last album California Blues (which is to say, not a whole bunch) it doesn't have the cohesiveness or *gulp* artistic integrity - blues covers? - of these two. I was wrong about them, and it's a great pleasure to catch up.
Yeppers! It's my birthday! To mark this auspicious occasion, th' House O' Foam© offers a couple of swell recordings you'll be proud to display in den or lobby!
We have to thank Fourth Or Fifth Guy Scott1669 for the heads-up to the Smithsonian Legacy Recording At The Waleback by Robbie "The Werewolf" Robison. Who he? Hoo hah? He was married to Barbara/Sandy/Sandi Robison [see Roses Gone - Ed.], and after honing his showbiz chops as the US's premier (and possibly only) beatnik monster comedy folksinger he joined the innerezdingk band The Brain Train, which morphed into the awesome Clear Light. But after he left. Hmm.
Completing today's exquisitely tasteful boners bouquet of song is Patrick Sky's immortal classic Songs That Made America Famous, and you really should audition this one alone, too. Which won't be a problem if you're in solitary, of course. I'm a-skeered to even type out some of the song titles from this biscuit, but if you want something to sweep away those Millennial Blues, this will work against the woke.
Happy Birthday to me!
Ignoring their mothers' advice, The Tokens ate a bunch of blotter after their It's A Happening World album (already FoamFeatured©) made them the psychedelic darlings of absolutely nobody, and delivered the riskily-titled Intercourse to their label, confident it would carry them to the top of the charts on a wave of lysergic bliss. They should have listened to their mothers. And their management. And their label, who, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, ushered them gently out into the street and changed the locks.
The album runs through seventeen song fragments in twenty-seven minutes, averaging 1.6 minutes per fragment. Sporadically issued and re-issued since, it's inevitably been hailed as a lost psychedelic classic. It ain't that. It's a pleasant curio you'll play a few times, enjoying the Smiley Smile vibe. Good enough.
Meanwhile, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart saw The Monkees on their Head trip and decided to do their own, releasing It's All Happening On The Inside (man) to mild indifference from both their teenybopper fanbase (well-served by two superb previous albums) and the hippies. The same pleasing-no-one career move as The Monkees, and The Tokens. And The Happenings. And just about any other pop group struggling into a kaftan before it got out of style. As you'd expect from these guys, you get professional audio entertainment. Good enough, and sometimes good enough is just swell.
It is with a heavy heart that I announce the departure of Cody from th' House O' Foam©. Again. Her feckless and lackadaisical attitude to work, and her callous indifference to the needs of you, th' Four Or Five Guys©, resulted in an entire album being wrongly uploaded [Peggy Lipton - Ed.] causing Monahoohah much inconvenience, wasted time, and personal embarrassment down at Manny's Tire & Lube.
I generously gave Cody time to clear her desk (Happy Meal toys, mostly) and had security escort her off the premises.
Thank you for your understanding.
Thelonious Monk is frequently the rock fan's third gateway drug into jazz, after Miles and Coltrane (as noted before here, never refer to Miles as Davis, nor Coltrane as John, if you want your jazz cred to remain intact). By far the most interesting and sympathetic of the three in terms of attitude, technique and personality, his music has something maybe unique among his bop peers - a sense of humor. Not laugh-out-loud comedy - Monk (never Thelonious) never plays it for laughs, but wit is there in his idiosyncratic composition and playing. In spite of its "difficult" reputation, his music is fun, more likely to bring an attractively wry smile to your lips than a furrow to your brow.
Here's his earliest recording sessions from 1947, as "curated" [compiled - Ed.] for the 2001 Rudy Van Gelder reissue, and as a bonus, something I thought I was going to loathe but love to bits - last year's "re-imagining" [interpretation - Ed.] of his music by "Mast" [Tim Conley - Ed.], using contemporary recording techniques, beats, and feats. It's as fantastic as that exquisite cover art would lead you to hope, and shows, seventy-two freakin' years on, that Monk's music is truly timeless.
Swell jazztertainment for Sunday!
Boduf Songs (me neither) have a new album out! Oboy! It's called Abyss Versions, and here's some highlights culled from its accompanying text! Just in case you're wondering, this is not a parody.
... songs are stripped bare and
trembling ... whispery nakedness.
Existential angst binds the album together ... begins in a vortex and
ends in a void ... not just thematically but with a palpable shiver ... alienated, evocative, full of murmured violence ... a scream that is sighed ... disquieting ... extremes of horror, despair and dystopia ... one isolated lonely voice,
musing on how “fingers break, flowers fall.” Let the chill run down
your spine, let the melancholy linger, Abyss Versions speaks to your quietest, deepest doubts.
Some fun, huh? I wonder what they'll pull for the single? Call me old-fashioned, but I preferred it when album sleeves detailed what the group liked in the way of girls and food. Not for the first time, I have to ask myself what is wrong with these people? They seem to have entirely lost the idea of music as entertainment, and entertainment as a business like any other - best left to professionals.
Normal service resumed later in the day.
Sandy Robison sang with FMF© faves The Peanut Butter Conspiracy. This collection of recordings featuring the PBC was released with the world's worst cover a few years back. I can't even bring myself to post it, it's so damn ugly. So I done did a new one, and changed the title an' everything. You'll groove to its sunshine pop vibe.
Peggy Lipton starred in TV's hip The Mod Squad, and made a bunch of swell recordings, too. Much later, she made a surprise appearance in Twin Peaks. The roses were gone for her as a child, but remember her this way, as a blurred Kodachrome summer.
Peggy and Sandy, th' House O' Foam© thanks you. Drop by any time.
Lewis Taylor is a genuine oddity. A massively talented musician, vocalist and arranger, his composing skills fell just slightly short of getting the hits he deserved. He started his musical career touring with a late-model Edgar Broughton Band. Why? We shall never know. Debuting his recording career as the whimsydelic© Sheriff Jack, he recorded two albums and a couple of mini-albums in '86/'87, of which I have only Let's Be Nonchalant (the internet knows Sheriff Jack Shit about this stuff).
Then he swerved inexplicably into blue-eyed soul, releasing his first album under his own name (oops, sorry, eponymous - nearly had my Rock Music Writer card taken away from me there), but even universally enthusiastic critics couldn't make it fly from the racks. There's a swell review here https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/w428/ In the likely event of your not having the energy to click and read - who has the time? - it calls it the "album that everybody talked about but few bought ... a slow-burning secret."
He followed it with more of the similar, in a confusing discography of international variations, none of which brought him the fame you - and he - might have thought due. Lesser talents (the tune-dodging clothes-horse Lenny Kravitz, for example) had greater success.
Then something dark happened in the life of Lewis Taylor, and he "retired from the music business." The Lost Album, a gorgeous homage [Fr. cheese - Ed.] to Surf's Up-era Beach Boys, was assembled for a belated release to gasps of wonder from those who loved his work and indifference from everybody else.
As a postscript, he left possibly the most baffling and left-field project in the history of recorded music - a cover version of Trout Mask Replica. A startling piece of work, neither slavishly accurate nor lazily loose, it remains unfinished, and doesn't appear on any discography I can find.
Here's what I have - not a complete œuvre [Fr. egg - Ed.], but all of it worth a listen. The Lost Album gets regular spins in the FMF© Conversation Pit O' Sound©, and makes Cody go all dreamy. Play it next time you pitch woo at your main squeeze.
Electronic music! It's so futuristic! The thing with this stuff, if it can be said to be a thing, is that it's impossible to tell if it's "good" or not, even in relation to other music of the genre. It qualifies as sound over noise because it has been created and organized through an artistic process, but is it music? This kind of argument seemed to matter a few years back. Now, nobody gives a fuck. Futuristic music is a thing of the past, as retro as ray guns and personal autogyros.
Nic/Nik Raicevik/Pascal somehow finagled himself a major-label (Buddah qualifies) release for his first album, but credited it to Head, clearing up any ambiguity by titling its three lengthy tracks Cannabis Sativa, Methedrine, and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Happy times! It also came with a coloring book, a nice touch as many of its listeners were only allowed crayons.
Claims for him being some kind of sonic pioneer don't stand up to scrutiny, though. Head was released in 1970, three years after the Monkees premiered the Moog in a pop context and two after their Head project. Yes, the Monkees did everything first and best! [See Tear The Top Right Off Your Million Dollar Head, March - Ed.]
When the suits at Buddah realised that avant-garde hard drug advocacy wasn't the hoped-for cash cow after their bubblegum music bubble burst, they kicked his sorry ass to the curb, and over the next five years he released a string of albums on his own Narco label (see a pattern yet?), all of them featuring his gorgeously lurid pulp S.F. paintings.
And here they are. "Do not listen to this music if you are stoned", as he cheekily warns on the sticker, the scamp.
L'Affaire Louis Trio and Les Innocents were France's answer to Britpop, which wasn't a question. France never had a strong pop group tradition, favoring solo artists, and neither group came from Paris, so their success came as a welcome surprise, seemingly out of nowhere - at least to Parisians, who tend not to look beyond the périphérique, the grim ring road that acts as a wall to keep out the rest of France, and the world. From the eighties into the nineties L'ALT and Les Inno sent hits up the charts, lighting up the radio with infectious tunes and making it seem like l'âge d'or [Fr. big door - Ed.] of pop group pop. Unfortunately, they didn't start a tradition, and French pop, with some exceptions, refocused on solo artists.
L'ALT started out making jumpy disco and dancehall pop, but quickly matured into a band capable of delivering one of the finest concept albums ever made anywhere, Mobilis In Mobile, which means, before Ed. sticks his nose in, free in a free world. Sorta. It's the Latin motto adopted by Jules Verne's Captain Nemo. Older readers may remember when Nemo wasn't a fish. As you might expect, L'ALT are a bunch of boulevard intellectuals, and this album is fathoms deeper than Yellow Submarine (thank God). But what hits you is the giddy melodic joy, the thrilling production, the sheer boggling quality of the thing, from the beautifully constructed cover to the last submarine bell. How can a single album contain so many great hooks, song after song? It is fucking brilliant.
Les Innocents were a dryer bunch, with a yearning quality to much of their work, and not as adroit with a melody, but there's a lovely element of classic pop jangle, Gallicized with a little squeezebox and tasteful strings. Fous à Lier is maybe their best album, with their best song, L'Autre Finistère, which packs a universally understandable emotional punch.
These albums are as good as pop group pop gets, which is to say, as good as music gets. Vive le pop!
