NEW! Play "Who's In My Box?" With Random Internet Horizon Tilt Babe!

You'll know her from your web search history, but did you know Random Internet Horizon Tilt Babe is into obscure rock albums, too? As well as distracting hard-working photographers from their time-honored craft?

Today's Random Babe, LaTischia DuVet-Tögrating [19 my ass - Ed.] has a passion for vocals of the female persuasion. "They just turn me on!" she breathed during her surfside photo-shoot yesterday, reading from a script prepared by a random skeevy internet fantasist. "Do you want to see who's in my box?"

In the unlikely event th' Four Or Five Guys© are interested in this-type situation, a discreet link, guaranteeing satisfaction, is provided in the comments.

EDIT: The super-swell album R.I.H.T.B. had in her box is linked in the comments, and so, now, are the first two albums by this verrrrrry inneresting band, featuring the swell vox of Candy Givens, who died (it says here) while drunk in a hot tub. Now I don't know the context for this, but on the face of it I can think of worse ways to go. I like these albums way more than I expected.

Collect the set! Except there's a super-rare fourth I can't find.

It's Wednesday, It's Djangocious!

Two hurdles to overcome for anyone interested in Django Reinhardt. They're high, but not insurmountable. First, that pumping, four-square rhythm, it's either there or it's not, and it's there most of the time. You have to background it. Second, the overwhelming amount of recordings he made. There are remastered box sets all over the internet - where to start? It's not like the guy cut his equivalent of Dark Side Of The Moon or Kind Of Blue. There's no obvious gateway drug.

Django has been FoamFeatured© antecedently, but here's his "Greatest Hits". Both these albums have been the go-to place for my shot of Hot for decades. If you dig these, then dig further, and take a long-handle shovel. If the Hot Club leaves you tepid, then move right along, and no harm done. Worth noting that these sides were recorded already well into his career.

Included as a FoamBonus©, at no extra cost to you, Mr. Impulse Purchaser, is the best biography available. It's a mobi file [above left - Ed.]. His story is almost unbelievable, from his Romany childhood through a Paris that's now entered myth, and it's beautifully told. So if you can read, and know what to do with a mobi file, this is a treat.

A Brief History Of Th' Four Or Five Guys©

A swell dame, yesterday

"Build it and they will come," as a very wise man - I think it was the Isley Brothers - once said. I looked at the visitor counter at the long-running blogs and felt stupid adding one at Th' House O'Foam© (as it was then, pre-pandemic escape), so I found a picture of a counter stalled between four and five [sidebar at right- Ed.] and blamed the low page views on a faulty doo-dad.

As the visitor count shot encouragingly into double figures, I left it up, and Th' Four Or Five Guys© was copyrighted as a name for all the guys (there were a couple of dames at one point) who turn up here, commenters or not. There are a few more than four or five, and the name does not limit membership, nor exclude me, I like to think.

I've ticked the any random slob can comment box on the blogger control panel, so if you've been the shy, bookish-type random slob, get your toes in the surf and the sand in your shorts. Importantly, check back to see what's happened so far, and if you'd like me to re-up anything, leave a comment to that piece. Rare and unheard treasure is a finite resource, and there's a lot of it buried here for you to dig up. Like, digsville!

And - we're still looking for guys what like to write. Be a come-with Four Or Five Guy© and send a message in a bottle by adding it to the comments of this here piece. Previously featured features by th' 4/5 have garnered their authors international kudos and more sexual activity than is good for them. Pmac was awarded the prestigious Golden Seaswallow Of Knökke for his contributions, and Jack Kerouac's Cat got his own scrapbooking show on cable down there in Pork Bend, Ill.

Signed, Your Pal, Farquhar Throckmorton III.

Movies For The Ears Dept.

The Rolling Stones' movie Charlie Is My Darling, documenting their riotous Irish tour in '65, wasn't released until 2012, with editing and addition. The soundtrack plays like a radio show, with live recording interrupted by snippets of conversation, studio tracks and Andrew Loog Oldham showing off with the orchestrals. An amost unbelievable glimpse into/reminder of a wild, wild time in pop. "The screaming was a bit much."

Director Peter Whitehead also directed Swingin' London doc Tonite Let's All Make Love In London a couple of years later. This is the extended soundtrack with the commentary, not the original vinyl [at left - Ed.], famous for including early Pink Floyd unavailable elsewhere. Caveat: the tracks aren't tagged, only numbered. I just ain't got th' energy, pals. It plays swell as it is.

Pink Floyd's Live At Pompeii from '72 is better known, benefiting from a contemporary release which filled cinemas with the heady perfume of Afghan Black the length and breadth of the U.K. This Director's Cut, like the above, contains all the chat from the movie, and you'll hear both bands talking about the British breakfast/cup of tea obsession.

Veronica Lake's "This Just In" Dept.

"Hi! Moviedom's sultry siren Veronica Lake here with all the latest news from th' Fabulous Isle O'Foam©! Beep-beep-bip-beep this just in - anonymous comments are turned back on! In this stunning development, all you John Does out there without a Goggle account can now join in the fun! If you make one, feel free to use a nick-name in the comment, make it personal! I like that! Uh - in other news - there isn't any! Be seeing you, sailor!"

It's Still A Beautiful Day

When I want to sail away yet remain where I am, I often ask Kreemé to pass me the eponymous It's A Beautiful Day album. She's not allowed to take it from its sleeve because, well - what is it about girls and inner sleeves? They either ignore them completely or turn them so the album falls out. And their sticky fingerprints? Don't get me started. So, using an arcane levitation spell I learned on retreat in the snowy fastnesses of Tibet, I mystically hover the album over to th' Victrola and lower it gently onto the turntable. I have no idea why this technique isn't widely embraced by the hi-fi community.

My copy also has their pre-album Love For You as the opening track, which yours doesn't, and sounds absolutely right at home. Give it a listen this way even if you already gots the album (the other song sometimes touted as early I.A.B.D., Aquarian Dream, is by Indian Pudding & Pipe, and nuts to Matthew Katz, still alive and making a damn nuisance of himself).

Beyond Dreams is a late [2003 - Ed.] copyright-protection release, with interesting versions of the old songs. Here it's properly credited to the band and has the cover it couldn't have but wanted, by Maxfield Parrish.

Orkustra is pre-I.A.B.D. The history of these guys is complex and repays research, David LaFlamme emerging as one of the Great And Good.

TL-DR Dept. - The Mighty Baby Who Never Grew Up

Older readers may remember Marsha Hunt guesting in our Who's In My Box? spot a couple of days ago. Turns out it was the ver-ry interesting U.K. band The Action, who regressed wombwards into Mighty Baby, and if you are American (and the FoamComputer suggests you may well be) you should know about this band.

The Action were basically a 'sixties singles band who evolved from mod/freakbeat without leaving an album behind them, which is okay, as there's been a few since. Rolled Gold is the demo of the album they nearly got around to finishing, but it's swell anyway.

 

Mighty Baby were an albums band, working the college circuit and playing festivals (inc. the first Glastonbury). A genuine proto-jam band, as the other recordings here show. The eponymous [rock crit vocab alert - Ed.] first album doesn't even hint at this. Instead, they deliver a great set of tunes with a uniquely psych vibe - hard-edged but swimmy. There's not a weak aspect to the album, including the retina-busting cover by Foam Hero Martin Sharp, and it's just about the closest the U.K. got to producing a West Coast album.

The follow-up, Jug Of Love, was a misstep, and instead of capitalising on the success of the first threw it all away with a set of pleasant enough Sufi- and American Beauty-inspired acoustic numbers. Trouble is, pleasant enough wasn't enough, and whereas antecedently Martin Stone's guitar was a rush, here it just noodles about all over a bunch of unmemorable songs and doesn't know when to shut up.

Today's overburdening download includes Action Packed, the best Action comp available, Rolled Gold, Mighty Baby's deux albums (replete with extry trx), and a slew of whatever was left in the tape box (Live In The Attic, Tasting The Life, and India). Getting album sleeve images to appear in the right place is such a headache with the new improved Blogger interface (adding captions screws everything up) I'm giving up, and showing three of the seven.

Mighty Baby coulda/shoulda been as big as Traffic, who did the smart thing by working in the U.S.A., but their first album is a stone cold classic. Martin Stone, incidentally, became a book-dealer, a mythic figure in the seedy world of second-hand bookshops in the U.K. and Paris.

 

Play "Who's In My Box?" With Marsha Hunt!

You'll know Marsha Hunt from her groundbreaking display of southern hemisphere cleavage [below - Ed.]. But the star of the hit family values musical Hair is also a keen collector of psychedelic albums! Marsha was kind enough to speak to us from 1969, courtesy our L.T.D. [Linear Time Denial - Ed.] app. available at th' FoamStore™!

FT3: Hey, Marsh! Looking good!
MH: Likewise I'm sure, Farq.
FT3: You have something for th' Four Or Five Guys©?
MH: The skeevy seniors?
FT3: Hey! Some of us are in our 'fifties! That's, like, teenage!
MH: In your dreams, Gramps. But yeah, I got a fine, fine album in my secret box, take a peek in there, see if you smart as you think you are.
FT3: Gee, that's swell, Marsh! Rots of ruck with the 'seventies!

Take a peek in the comments, and see if you know - who's in Marsha's Box! (HARMONICA THEME, APPLAUSE)

After this, breasts were never quite the same.

 

Fragrant Blooms From The Garden Of Poesie Dept.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti - two names that shouldn't be in the same room, leave alone on the same luggage tag. Turn down the lights. Set fire to a French cigarette. Wait - do that first. Light the cigarette. Turn down the lights. You'll burn the rug, else. Place this album on th' Victrola. Wait - put the lights on first, or you'll scratch the sucker up on the spindle. Cigarette, album, lights down. Okay, relax. You're hep.

Let your mind be carried back to a time when people did stuff like this, and it mattered. Sure, they did it to get laid - that's what poetry has always been about, getting laid - but it's a path little trodden these days. And that's a damn shame, Hortense.

This post made possible through th' auspices of th' Lupine Assassin Foundation & Glee Club.

Smewthé!

Creed Taylor gets a lot of bitter snark from jazzbos. Poor guy! He likes smewthe jazz. Not for him the brow-furrowing beardy stuff, the sweaty sheets of sound, the harrowing atonality. All the guy wanted to do was kick back poolside, a bikini babe bringing him a Daiquiri while he digs the sounds of the best musicians in the world laying down some cool licks and silky beats. Right? Sorta. This was the guy who founded Impulse Records, signing Coltrane. But mostly his tastes didn't coincide with anyone's except the record-buying public.

His ear was matched only by his eye - Impulse and C.T.I. covers were groundbreakingly classy and memorable. Shame the C.T.I. Fuse One albums have shit covers, then (Ice came out on G.N.P./Electric Bird).

Fuse One were a shifting mix of, yes, the world's greatest musicians, recording three albums of enjoyable, polished, subtly brilliant jazz-funk-lite of the type which gets jazzbos sneering elevator music, and sellout. I can't be assed to copy the long list of Fuse One alumni. Stanley Clarke, John McLaughlin, George Benson, Stanley Turrentine and an elevator-load of others sold their souls for money, and will go to hell for their betrayal of Jazz Principles laid down by college-educated white guys with hi-fi systems.

It's an elevator I'm happy to ride. Kreemé! More Daiquiris over here!

Fugging With You Dept.

Isle O'Foam© House Band The Fugs hit the big time with these albums. After guesting on The Andy Williams Show (and typically refusing a regular spot) they played a record-breaking four month residency at Las Vegas playground of the stars, The Sands. They backed Billy Graham on his nation-wide tent crusade and played at the White House wedding of Lyndon Johnson's daughter, Thelma-Louise.

On Tenderness Junction, they pay tribute to C&W legend Jim Reeves (premiering the album at The Grand Ol' Opry to a rapturous reception), and their version of Christmas Country Carol stayed at the top of the Billboard pop and country charts well into February.

It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest saw them performing at Carnegie Hall with the Jewish National Symphony Orchestra helmed by Leonard Bernstein, who went on to compose his Mass In Fug Minor in their honor.

Sadly, their retirement from show business and well-publicized retreat to the Fug Yurt high in the Nepal foothills to re-align their chakras lost their momentum and the fickle public's interest. They are currently house band at the Tiki Hut here on th' Isle O'Foam©.

Soft White Underbelly Of Love Dept.

For youse bums what don't dig th' Blue Öyster Cult, this may be your gateway drug. Forget - if you knew - that the Stalk-Forrest Group evolved from The Soft White Underbelly and into BÖC. Forget everything, in fact - it'll help. That's why we're here, on Fabulous False Memory Foam© Island - remember?

For fans of 'sixties psychedelic rock, which is you, this album presses all the right buttons. Hoo boy! For starters, ixnay on growly hard rock covalsay. Don't be scared! These vox is super-swell! For seconds, songs, out th' ass. More hooks than a butcher's truck. For thirds, weirdness: FX, batshit-crazy lyrics. Acid Garcia guitar. And - no, really - country rock.

Only two things working against this album, to whit - non-release at the time. What th' creeping fuck were Elektra doing? And later, on belated release, being dismissed as nascent BÖC lite. On th' Isle O' Foam, this was released at the tail end of the 'sixties and clasped to the Love Generation's skinny bosom like th' Eye Of Agamotto. Like, digsville.

Not The Pretty One Dept.

Shaved Fish, anyone?

John Lennon's solo work sounds better over the years. Not his angsty Yoko material, the primal scream I want my Mommy tantrums and political fist-fucking and greaser rock n' roll stuff. That sounds the same as it ever did - not so great, you ask me. The commercial albums.

When the guy reined himself in (and fought off the New York scag monkeys, gutter drunks and crack whores he was so comfortable with) he was capable of fine craft. Paul McCartney's solo work sounds like stylistic affectation in comparison, glib and coy. It all came too easy for Macca, but Lennon worked at it, worked it out, and crucially - had something to say. Macca's message? Ever? Beats me.

If Lennon's foot was often in his mouth, his heart was on his sleeve and his finger on his aberrant pulse. Unlike the Pretty One, he wasn't getting up on his hind legs to be liked. Here's a re-imagined Shaved Fish (going out of his way to hurt sales with title and cover), Walls & Bridges (featuring his side twist May Pang, Bizarro Yoko), Mind Games and Single Fantasy, my Yoko-Free assemblage. Yes, I know I should respect Yoko as artiste and pioneering activist and strong role model, and I should feel guilty about thinking she's a fucking nuisance.

Incidentally, when I showed Kwai Chang the Mind Games cover, he immediately spotted the (unconscious, unintentional) placing of O.D. centered on his eyes.

Weird Giant Statue Found On Isle O'Foam© Dept. - Evidence Of Alien Visitors?

During a team-building mission with Kreemé recently, we stumbled on this weird giant statue, half buried in the sand! Evidence of alien visitation? Or incredible monument to a lost civilization with unimaginable skills?

Back in our Laboratory Of Science©, samples from the statue revealed that the colossus - perhaps a primitive god? - is constructed entirely of chicken fat.

Everything You Know Is Wrong.

From Good Times To Hard Times To The Worst Times Of All - The Craig Smith Story

You need wiki for this. Really. It's a heartbreaking story and I would bust into sobs if I recounted it in detail here. Mike Stax (Ugly Things supremo) had his part to play - wotta guy - and wrote a book about it. Broad strokes, then - take a deep breath; Craig was a bright and likeable kid groomed for stardom. That's him in the Good Time Singers - I'm guessing front n' center on the cover. They win a regular spot on The Andy Williams Show, cut an album, and break up when they're not invited back for the new season. Uh oh.

Craig starts his own band The Penny Arkade, writes some pop hits (the Monkees' Salesman is his), and gets an album produced by Nesmith which gets shelved. Uh oh. And then things start to go badly wrong. He gets involved with the Manson Family, goes on an L.S.D. diet to lose weight, friends, and his mind, makes the trip to the Mystic East, gets beat up/raped in Kandahar, thrown into an Afghan insane asylum ... oh jeez.

Back in the U.S.A., he's damaged goods. He cuts a couple of wigged-out solo albums as Maitreya Kali, attacks his Mom, gets institutionalized, and dies homeless and broke and insane. His family don't collect his ashes. Mike Stax does. The Penny Arkade album (eventually rescued by Sundazed with their usual respect and attention to detail) is psych-pop just short of greatness, even if it's obvious that Nesmith had yet to learn his way around the studio. These guys deserved better luck - but not even a lottery win could have saved Craig Smith from his life, and his lonely, fucked-up death.

Note: the album sleeves aren't shown in chronological order because new blogger layout interface.

It's 1970! Just Time To Record That One-Off Album Before Everybody Forgets What The Sixties Were For!

Wild Butter were straight outta Akron, OH. One of these guys went on to play with post-whatever artrockers Tin Huey, the others warped to a parallel dimension and set up a vinyl upholstery repair franchise. Their album is Prime Foam, being swell and unknown.

The Wizards From Kansas were from Kansas!  They were called Pig Newton before the record company made them change their name. The album - swell - sounds like it was recorded in San Francisco because it was. Not untypically, by the time the album came out the band weren't around anymore, and neither were the 'sixties.

Robert Stack's Paisley Underground Playroom© Dept.

You'll know Bob Stack from his tough-guy title role as NBC Radio's Tardigrade - T.V. Detective! But did you know he owns and runs the Paisley Underground Playroom™,  the notorious Spokane [WA - Ed.] niterie? Here's Bob, speaking to us yesterday via our Atomic Science Satellite:

"Sure, Farq! The Paisley Underground - half myth, half reality, half marketing - produced a small but exquisite body of work (and I'm not just talking about Susanna Hoffs here heh heh) which still sounds as good as its 'sixties inspiration. But True West never quite capitalized on their first ep, Hollywood Holiday, here extended to epic mini-album proportions. Noisy, banging, melodic. Gets regular spins at th' Playroom!"

"And hey - The Eyes Of Mind also debuted with a mini-album, Tales Of The Turquoise Umbrella, presented here in the rarely-seen extended album version, with a generous eleven tracks of whimsydelia that make Michael Quercio sound like Lemmy Out Of Motorhead!"

Thanks, Bob!

 

Play Some New Dept. - Garcia Peoples - Updated With Video!!!!

I'm late to these guys. They started doing what they do six years back. Over the last few days I've immersed myself in their albums, making up for lost time. Loth tho' I be to deprivate a living band from scraping moolah, the usual overload download is absent from this piece, just a sample, and I do encourage you to buy if you like and gots cabbage; or do what I did if you don't.

 

They're the first new band for a long while to have made the crucial synaptic connection. I wish this was, say, '74, and they'd just picked up a Warner Bros contract and were going into the studio with Ted Templeman. Casting that aside, what do they gots that we need? Guitars, mainly, and none of that strummed placeholder indie band approach. These peoples can play. Songs. Nothing immediately pop hit material, but real songs, sung well enough, with lyrics that don't strike me as dumb after a few hearings.

Television, the band, have been evoked as an influence, and the Dead, and you get sporadic references to both in the dual guitar arrangements and stop-start structure and dynamic build. No trace of the Undies malign influence, praise be. But what marks them out and rewards the listener is their ability to think as well as play - to listen to each other, to shift gear at the exact moment it's needed. And to draw you in with them. This stuff involves.

So yeah, Garcia Peoples get that rarest of accolades - the Isle O'Foam© Hygenic Home Listening Award™. They're at bandcamp, and the usual places. Like, digsville!

Great Classics Of Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Gandalf's Garden

Four Or Five Guy© Geriatrix did the world a favor when he posted the obscure U.K. underground hippie 'zine Gandalf's Garden. But it may have passed you by, because the link was buried in the comments (even I can't find it now).

It was the anti-Oz. Peaceful vibes, and the beautiful art of John Hurford (an Aubrey Beardsley for the 'sixties). Articles on meditation, organic food, Mu, all the stuff that got ironed out and sanded down into New Age consumerism. Don't confuse it with that - Muz Murray had a clear head and a vision: change the world from your back yard. It's never too late to start.

You can dismiss this, and the spirit that inspired it, as faintly risible hippie bullshit, or you can, if you're lucky, recognise the timelessness of the message. Having said that, remain wary of guys who get themselves gussied up as gurus.

Download contains the six magazines, the entire run. Om shanti, youse bums.

Danny Boy

Danny O'Keefe got a little publicity recently when music critics clawed over each other to point out the similarity between his Good Time Charlie Got The Blues and Springsteen's Hello Sunshine. Point is, none of these critics even heard of O'Keefe before one of their dads pointed it out to them, and now they've forgotten all about him. He's way more than just the inspiration for one of the Boss's tunes, and if you're unfamiliar with his œuvre [Fr. egg - Ed.] here's your opportunity to catch up and pretend you know all about him, just like the twenty-something internet scribes whose opinions are so vital to our wellbeing.

Of course, as a Four Or Five Guy© you probably do know how good the guy is, but maybe there's something in this package you ain't haz. It takes his discography right up to the end of the 'sixties - 1975 - and I'm unfamiliar with his career after this point, productive though it still be. Furthur Lissenin' always encouraged in the comments.

Although it includes his short-lived '68 foray into psychedelia as part of Calliope, there's a missing - danged if I can find his elusive first solo album from '66 - Introducing. Win A Nite Of Tropical Romance with Kreemé for frisbeeing it onto th' Isle O' Foam©!

Archangel Void Dept. - Paralyze Your Mind This Weekend

Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void was performed live at the Rhinecliff Hotel by Harmony Rockets - AKA Mercury Rev. It was recorded on a hand-held Arrivox-Tandberg 183 analog cassette recorder [you copied this from discogs - Ed.] (STFU - FT3). If you find the time - and let's not kid ourselves, it's easy to lose these days - you may well experience an out-of-body experience when the music finally lifts off toward the end of the forty minutes. You won't actually need an exotic pharmaceutical cocktail to get there - this is genuine trance music.

It gets an extraordinary four-and-a-half stars on the normally nose-picky Allmusic, where our pan-fried reviewer describes it as brain-searing and a shape-shifting aural world almost alien in its dementia.

It's all improvised, mostly instrumental. If you like free jazz, atonal sheets of sound, you may not like this. This is smarter than free jazz. It doesn't beat you up. It's focused with a laser-like intensity. It sounds like Gas Music From Jupiter. It would have made the perfect soundtrack for the third-act trip sequence of 2001 A Space Odyssey. I can think of no higher praise.

Because we go the extra mile here for you, Mr. Sketchy Random Internet Grifter, we include at no extra cost their later exercise in stretched-out improv, Inner Autumn Outer Space, at no extra cost. This is very different - chill-out music with some piano stylings. Pleasant, but it doesn't twist your brain into a Neon Sour Möbius strip like Paralyzed Mind.