Jessica Fletcher's Psych-Pop Psaturday!*

"This is simply unacceptable!"

Most of you will know Jessica Fletcher from her long-running documentary TV show exposing the seething corpse-strewn underbelly of Cabot Cove, Maine. But few know of her passion for late sixties' psychedelia. She contacted FMF© for an interview, which I was pleased to give, asking only that she brung with her an album from her extensive collection.

The interview took place at Mom n' Pop's Mom n' Pop Store For Pops n' Moms, at Smut St. and Fluffer Ave. here in fragrant downtown Las Vegas (Th' House O'Foam© is currently taped off as a crime scene).

FMF©: Jessica, I'm a longtime fan of the TV show, and I'm not even gay or menopausal. The resemblance between you and Dame Angie is uncanny! Were you happy with her portrayal of you?
JF: [shakes head] Wayyy too much eyelid-fluttering to get what she wanted from men.
FMF©: Oh. Tell us about your early career as a novelist, before you became an investigative journalist.
JF: Well. I wrote a bunch of stuff. There was Lesbian Lynch Mob ... Coprophiliac Cakewalk ... Senior Sleepover ... Hunchback Handjob ...
FMF©: Ri-ight. So you-
JF: Rest-Room Romance ... Diaper Dykes ... Necrophiliacs In Negligées ...
FMF©: Okay! So what made you-
JF: Homosexual Hayride ... Pansy Pillowbiters ... Truckdriver Transvestite ... wow! So many! They're collectors' items now. I saw Fisty The Farmhand on ebay for, like, three bucks? Barnyard Backdoor Buddies, that was an-
FMF©: [cutting in] What drew you to quaintly picturesque Cabot Cove with its unsettling echoes of Stepford Wives and the Prisoner's village ?
JF: The shellfish. And the lively queer BDSM community.
FMF©: [coughs] You've brung an album?
JF: Yup. The Critters.
FMF©: Tell us about it.

JF: This New Jersey quintet's second album, Touch N' Go With The Critters, was the group's first outing for arranger/conductor Enoch Light's Project 3 label, which was devoted to using cutting-edge enhanced stereo technology, the best available. By now, only the group's de facto leader, guitarist Jim Ryan and bassist Kenneth Gorka remained in the lineup from the band's earlier Kapp period. Nevertheless, the performances as evidenced here are still first-rate, and the amazing stereo production and songwriting are among the best of the group's ca-
FMF©: Wait a goddam minute! You're reading this off your phone! The italics are a dead giveaway. This is the Allmusic review!
JF: So sue me, noodle-dick. You going to give me Cody's number or what?
FMF©: If you promise to solve The Mystery Of The Mrs. Myra Nussbaum Murder.
JF: Let's do this, people!

* I know it's Friday, okay? I needed the alliteration more than the accuracy.

Play Some New!

A great man - I think it was Freddie And The Dreamers - once wrote that "the quality of old music is not strained but droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven". The quality of new music, however, is strained like a hernia. I spin maybe a couple or three "new" (i.e. made by Millennials, who incidentally gave us the Corona Virus) albums a week in the vain hope that something will pin my hairy old ears back and reflex up some arthritic air guitar.

The Cave Flowers album has crept up on me like a hash cake high. It's Country Rock, see. Not Country, not Rock, but that elusive and heady mix frequently featured at Th' House O'Foam©, the genuine thing. These guys will spin your spurs off (not at all a given with new music). The drummer is a delight, and clearly enjoys his work. Most of these songs are mid-tempo, but he approaches each one with a subtly different feel, adding groovy little fills or crash cymbal, working his way round the kit. There's a keyboard player who is way better than he wants you to know, and a bass player who keeps to the shadows but you'd miss him if he was gone. And then there's the lead vox, nicely road-weary, and guitars that make you ache for more. If the album has a failing it's in leaving you wanting more. More steel guitar. More wah-wah guitar. I really, really need to hear their nine-minute wigout, ending in a piercing hail of feedback. And while you're at it, guys, a guest fiddle spot and some harmony backing vox maybe?

The songs are short, and have plain melodies and predictable chords, but if they didn't they'd be jazz. There's a few unexpected steps and stops to keep things interesting, and a couple of plays in they fit like those old jeans your wife wants to throw out.

There's very little about the band on the internet. They're from LA, and you can buy the album for seven lousy bucks at Bandcamp. Big, big fan of their work. Nice cover art, too, which matters.

Da Boids Is Da Woid Part Th' One Before Th' One Antecedent

As a sharp-eyed (well, awake) one of th' Four Or Five Guys© noted, Sweetheart jumped a place, ousting The Notorious Byrd Brothers from its scheduled place in this, the most popular of Foam Features. My blogger stats-bot tells me that Da Boids regularly attract page hits in the near double figures, so some a youse guys mus' be readin' dem twice!

Here it is, the Greatest Record Ever Made (along, it must be said, with several others, including YOUR FAVORITE HERE) with the usual sumptuous slew of xtry trx that have made False Memory Foam@ a household name for Billy and Trixie Household of Spokane, WA.

Note original cover, with "stereo" logo above roofline. You don't care.

Great Classics Of Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Little Annie Fanny

Moby Dick. Don Quixote. Oliver Twist. These are the great names of literature that echo down through the ages. Yet nobody actually reads that shit unless they have to. Little Annie Fanny, now ...

Although this epochal work - by the inspired partnership of Harvey Kurtzman and Will "Chicken Fat" Elder - is yet to sit on the same shelf as Tolstoy, Henry James, Dan Brown, Jessica Fletcher, or any other of them guys, its time has come at th' House O' Foam© Library Of Books, where it is enshrined as part of our Great Classics Of Literature Out Th' Ass® heritage collection, which is like the Smithsonian, only fun.

The Complete Annie Fanny is a swell Yuletide package of sumptuousness, even when it's not Christmas, like today. So what? Treat yerself, ya poor slob! You'll think all your birthdays have come at once as you peruse its lavishly limned pages, each as artistic as the finest French painting in a museum. You'll laugh at her indomitable spirit! Cry at the hardships she endures! Gasp at her narrow escapes! Leer unpleasantly at her wardrobe malfunctions! And very probably sob your old heart out at the fact that Millennials would like to make things like this - and you too, grandpa - illegal.

I'll leave the factual stuff (actually pretty educational) to the comments.

Film Frenzy!

Today's offering presents two approaches to Youth Movie soundtrack albums. Goodbye Columbus was a mainstream movie from '69 featuring edgy counterculture activists Richard Benjamin (of whom it can fairly be asked whatever happened to) and Ali MacGraw. The soundtrack featured mainstream act The Association phoning in four tracks (actually three), and mainstream composer Charles Fox padding everything out with instrymentals of the type you'd expect to hear. There's some sound collage stuff to add a street-level political dimension, pretty themes, and a few FX. In short, a mainstream album. Product. It's swell!

WTF were you thinking, Neil?

Our other offering, however, is Art. "A Film By Neil Young", yet. I haven't seen it, and I'm guessing a few of th' Four Or Five Guys© haven't either. In fact, I'll 'fess up, I haven't even heard the soundtrack. All I know is, it's a direct transfer of the movie audio to vinyl. Like watching the movie while blind. You could say this was a revolutionary approach to the form, an artistic statement in itself. Or you could say it's just Neil being his lazy-assed self. You listen, and tell me if its reputation is warranted. I'm prepared to adopt any opinion that's persuasively expressed.

The titanic struggle between Art and Commerce! Which wins? You decide!

(thanks to jcc for the Neil!)

Staff News

Shantoozie Deluxe

Dorothy Dandridge was possibly the least-suited name for a shantoozie ever, conjuring up an Amish schoolmarm. Primarily a fine actress, with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame and an Oscar nom for Carmen Jones, Dandridge was also a smoky-voiced supperclub star, a real smooth operator. Her life was a struggle against racism, libel, financial fraud, and personal tragedy, ended by a sad death at 42. She accomplished much, against the odds. A swell dame.

This disc presents all of her 1958 album, unreleased at the time, and some worthwhile extras.

Rip Taylor's Buyers' Remorse

Rip lived a couple blocks from Th' House O' Foam© here in bosky downtown Vegas, and would often drop by with some vinyl he'd scored at the Nellis Blvd. Goodwill store, where the proprietor put albums aside for him.

Rip was famous for his outrageously camp stage act, but his secret passion for vintage psych albums was as serious as it was comprehensive - his vinyl collection occupied an entire room, leaving barely enough space for a high-end valve-driven hi-fi set-up.

Last time he visited he brung a couple of albums hot from Nellis Blvd., and we relaxed in Th' Conversation Pit' O' Sound® for the audition.

Rip: Color me trepidatious, Farq. I don't know what we got here. You know how I am with N.Y. bands ... [makes face]
FMF©: Yeah. Can't play, won't play. Hackamore Brick. I think I heard of 'em. I think.
Rip: Right. Typical Big Apple cover. Couldn't be anywhere else, could it? Fire escape was the only outdoors they had. Poor bastards. Kama Sutra - what can possibly go wrong?
[several minutes later]
FMF©: Sounds a little ... thin? Like a demo. Or The Fifth Avenue Band.
Rip: Guy can't sing, can he? And that scratchy strummed electric guitar. Annoying.
FMF©: Let's hear what else.

Rip: Took a flyer on this. Head West, with Bob Welch.
FMF©: The Bob Welch? Bonkers Bob?
[several minutes later]
FMF©: How much you pay for these, Rip?
Rip: Buck thirty-eight.
FMF©: Each?
Rip: Both.
FMF©: Sounds about right.
Rip: And some confetti.

Transcendental Rn'B

Mac Gayden wrote Everlasting Love, which is a strange song. It kicks off normally enough, with a verse leading into the chorus, but then there's a short bridge or middle eight or whatever, and the chorus gets sung again, and the verse effectively disappears, sketched in as backing vox to a relatively long instrumental fade. One verse, couple of choruses, and a big thumping hit down four decades.

Gayden is a curious Nashville cat, his music a mix of Rn'B, country, and hippie mysticism. The suite-like feel of his extended songs owes something, perhaps, to prog. He blamed country music for forcing black musicians off the streets of Nashville, "which used to be an Rn'B river town", a point of view you don't see expressed too often.

That's him playing slide on JJ Cale's Crazy Mama, and the list of sessions he didn't play on is probably shorter than the one of those he did, often using his unique wah-slide technique.

The shortness of the shrift he gets on Allmusic reflects the fact that his participation in Area Code 615 and Barefoot Jerry is better known than his solo output, which is blister-packed for your convenience here.

The recent-ish Nirvana Blues is something of a disappointment, lacking the experimental freedom that lifted those first three albums into the extraordinary.

Mrs. Myra Nussbaum's Poolside Pick!

In a bold new initiative that proudly meets Millennial requirements for both diversity and body-positivism, Cody's grandma takes over bikini duties for the first - and maybe the last - Poolside Pick feature!

"I'm the world's biggest Engelbert fan!" Myra gushed yesterday. "I've thrown more damp granny-pants at that man than any other gal!" When I pointed out that most of them had been thrown during a home invasion at Mr. Humperdinck's private Beverly Hills residence, an act for which she had been put under a restraining order at the Downey Courthouse, she laughed it off as "girlish hijinks". As jinks go, I consider those pretty low.

Myra's preferred poolside listening this - and every - week is Engelbert's

Warmest Christmas Wishes album. "Engelbert knows what my warmest Christmas wish is," Myra winked. "I wanna be the fairy stuck on the top of his tree! His big old gnarly tree!"

Politely evading her request to "c'mon oil yer granny up, big boy!" I made an excuse and left her twerking enthusiastically to Mr. Humperdinck's disco version of Little Drummer Boy.

Friday's Something For Sunday

A super-swell collection of rare EP sides [approved jazz term - Ed.] from Der Bingle which stands up better than most of his albums. Bear in mind he was higher than a cat's back when he got behind the mic, and his relaxed approach to choice of material as well as the act of singing makes sense. He didn't care much what he sang - everything was copacetic - and he certainly wasn't going to pop a neck vein getting it across. Yup - that avuncular pipe was packed with Bing's Special Mix, a blend of fine Virginia tobacco and primo Tijuana hemp.

This ain't the cover that comes with the rekkid (the usual mosaic of tiny sleeves that answers for collections of this type) but a swell piece of art painted for a Stetson ad what I found in an old copy of Spicy Amputee Romance. It's better than the Mona Lisa in every conceivable way. Note enigmatic smile. Note how eyes follow you around room - hallmark of any great painting.

The artist didn't just paint guys in hats. He painted dudes in cheaters thinking for themselves. Slayton Underhill (for it is he) - FalseMemoryFoam© salutes you.

Anyway - back to Bing. Hoo boy! The treehouse gang will go ape when you spin these twenty-six Foam-Filled tracks of slacks-n'-loafers wax at your next club meet!

Da Boids Is Da Woid - Part Th' Whatever

The lineup of The Byrds changed more frequently than socks and traffic lights. Gram Parsons came in (on a salary) after Notorious, based on his jazz-lite keyboard stylings which Jim-Roger McGuinn thought he could use for his double album telling the story of American music. No, really.

Parsons cleverly (and mercifully) finessed Jim-Roger into making a full-tilt country album instead, and loftily suggested the band's name be changed to Gram Parsons And The Byrds, which didn't sit too well with Jim-Roger. Concerned that he wasn't getting the attention and credit he felt owed him, Jim-Roger pushed Parsons out onto the street, throwing his Nudie duds after him.

The history of The Byrds is one of planet-sized egos orbiting briefly before colliding, but those titanic battles of bruised self-esteem and diva petulance created some of the greatest albums ever made, as here. Jim-Roger decided the next record would feature himself up-front and center on every track, with no competition to dim his spotlight. It would under-perform every previous album by quite a margin.

Forty-three tracks in this swell "complete" version, for which thanks are due to the anonymous soul whose labor of love this is. The Incredible String Band [I think you mean International Submarine Band? - Ed.] tracks he added are over on their own album, featured antecedently. If you have anything you think should be added, please do so.

Steely Danish ...

Who? And why?

... was the answer to the best crossword clue I ever forgot*. It's also the brilliant name of a Steely Dan tribute band. Which brings us to today's Dancentric download of three albums influenced by Little Feat's smarter brother. The Feat was the stoner working at the auto shop, firing up a bong in the back of a project Camaro. The Dan was the law school grad floating a bowl of medical-grade cocaine in a Los Feliz infinity pool.

Although many bands wanted to be Little Feat, the Dan were never very influential, mainly because their chords and rhythms were so fucking ridiculous they could only be played by LA tube-bred session musicians who had never seen daylight. But they inspired some fair attempts, more Danish than Dan, among whom China Crisis were the least sparkling.

Far Cry enlisted Donald Fagen for backup vox on their lone '80 album, and numbers like Eldorado Escape owe an obvious Dan-debt. You'll want to travel back in time and shoot the drummer in the back of the head, but apart from that this slips down like a margarita.

Marc Jordan released a tribute album to the Mounties, as all Canuck musicians are bound to by law. But that's not why we're here today. His solo output includes this pleasingly slick dip into the Danesque, which shows how it should be done. You could, if you were a cruel person heedless of others' opinions, say it veers a little too closely into yacht rock for your comfort. But nobody cares what you think.

I'm surprised that there haven't been more jazz band covers albums, given the Dan's propensity for jazzular chordage. Maybe there have, and I haven't heard of them. Maybe you have. This is the only one I know, and it's swell. Everything You Did by The Mark Masters Ensemble (me neither) swings like your nuts in loose boxers.

*A little googling tells me it's from the LA Times (where else): Pastry with a metallic taste?

"We got literature out th' ass ..."

The title of this piece is, as far as I remember, a Morgan Freeman quote from The Shawshank Redemption, as a trusty working in the library. It resonated with me, and has stayed with me through the decades.

Literature out th' ass. A perfect title for a bold new FMF© initiative! We at Th' House O' Foam© have always seen literary outreach as part of our mission - part of th' Foam DNA, if you will. From time to time we'll be releasing sumptuous limited editions of Th' Great Classics Of Literature Out Th' Ass. Heritage volumes you'll be proud to display in your own library of books!

To start the program rolling, we present the entire run of Harvey Kurtzman's EC Mad comic, in vibrant and lifelike color! Conveniently comb-bound in handy .pdf format, you'll be able to read them on any household device, from Etch-A-Sketch to digital clock radio! Yes, dear friends, this is truly an heirloom collection that will show your friends and neighbors you really do got literature out th' ass!

Country Rock/Corona Virus Link "Medical Certainty" - Doctor

Today we grub about in the gnarly roots of the genre, getting calluses from dropping this good homegrown vinyl onto th' old hickory spindle. Notable absentees Hearts & Flowers and The Dillards will get their own posts later.

The International Submarine Band was formed by Gram Parsons at Harvard. Gram had a trust fund and knew all about dustbowl hardship from a photograph he'd seen of poor people.  Safe At Home is from '68, when the idea of a return to country roots embodied in the title and cover art was still pretty new. Bonus cuts!

The Blue Velvet Band features pre-Blues Project/Seatrain Richard Greene and Andy Kulberg, featured antecedently at Th' Home of Foam©. Sweet Moments With appeared in '69, same year as Da Boids' Sweetheart. Sweet!

Longbranch/Pennywhistle was Glenn Frey and John David Souther, who went on to form an obscure country-rock combo called "The Eagles" (me neither). To look at the cover of their eponymous album from '70 you'd think they were rolling in trust funds, but these guys grew up in Detroit garage bands, ducking bottles of piss thrown by drunks. So cappuccinos and candlelight came naturally to them.

Nashville West often get ignored, mainly because not many people have heard of them - especially people writing authoritative histories of country rock on the internet. Informally taped in '67, these recordings finally got issued in '76. Familiar names include Clarence Clemons [I think you mean Clarence White - Ed.] and Gene Parsons from later Boids incarnations, and Gib Guilbeau, who played with the Burritos (among others). It's seminal, dude!

So - there you have it - a swell quartet of one-off albums ideal for when unexpected guests drop by. Especially if they don't dig country rock. Fuck 'em - maybe they'll phone ahead next time.

Meet Myra Nussbaum!

Staff News! In my absence, Cody basically quit. Her two-word resignation letter lipsticked onto my Elvis mirror was a model of clarity. But there's no cloud without its silver lining, and Myra Nussbaum (Cody's grandmother) volunteered to take up her duties "until a suitable replacement is found you should live so long."

I'm sure the Four Or Five Guys© will make Mrs Nussbaum feel at home in Th' House O' Foam©, where her techspertise ("they have the internet on computers yet!") will make a her a valuable asset!

Take It Slow

The sampler Fill Your Head With Rocks [are you sure? - Ed.] was my first introduction to Tom Rush. His version of Driving Wheel seemed to hold more power than was possible in a vinyl groove - a cavernous sound his voice inhabited like a Shakespearean king in a high castle. For some old engine that lost its driving wheel, the song had an inexorable momentum that swept me down the track (and I never came back). If you're not familiar with Rush, I suggest you cue up his self-titled - wupes - eponymous - album first [at left - Ed.]. His version of Jackson Browne's Colors Of The Sun is as heartfelt and sheerly beautiful as singing gets and will blow you right away.

Maybe its because he interpreted other songwriters that he's not considered to be a first-tier artist. That's a mistake. Elvis, Sinatra ... and when he does write, he writes superbly well. No Regrets is a staple, and on its own worth more than many singer-songwriters' entire output.

I'm on a Tom Rush kick at the moment. Can't get enough, but I'm a long way from knowing his extensive discography, dating back to the birth of coffee-house folk in the early 'sixties.

Incredibly, the guy's still out there, as beautiful as ever and making great records at seventy-seven - Voices is his first consisting entirely of self-penned songs.

Major talent, major dude.

You give us hope, Tom.

Wilf Brimley's Crawlspace Collectibles Part The One

Wilf Brimley, altered states enthusiast

It's been a while since we visited Uncle Wilford, but when he sent his Cousin Willard over with a message clenched in his toothless gums we knew something was up at the Psychedelic Pshack®.

Here's that message in full:

Howdy, Farqington! Long time no see! Thought you might be interested in a stash of Mainstream albums - know you're a fan - found in the crawlspace. Sent Willard down there to hunt up back issues of Spicy Amputee Romance - for a friend - and he came up with a box of vinyl valuables that made me salivate like a hound on a 'coon hunt! Had to wring out the old 'tache! I'm sure they'll find a home at th' House O' Foam©. My regards to Cody! Yrs. W. Brimley Esq.

Although far from complete, Wilford's stash is pretty wantable, and it's in two parts, five albums per. That's the kind of bighearted largesse you just don't get at any other music blog. Also, Kelly assures me she's reasonably certain none of the downloads carry Corona virus, at least at a hazardous level. Why risk dying in agony from cynical music bloggers who seek to profit from global catastrophe?