Happy Christmas! To usher in Yule - why wait? - we're putting on our snowshoes and trekking north of the border to Canadia, where Christmas is celebrated year-round! Canadia is like this one continent what sits on top of the U.S.A. It's famous for husky lumberjacks sharing rough-hewn log cabins, and "Mounties" (smiling policemen on horseback in boyscout hats and gay pants), and Cheddar cheese, and framed pictures of Queen Hortense II Of Britain, and Perry Como, patron saint of seasonal knitwear.
But did you know Canadia also produced some swell country rock? Oh, okay, maybe you did. But there will be some stuff here even you ain't heard, smart boy.
The common thread running through this snowy tapestry of rock is a pair of guys what eschewed the traditions of lumbersexuality and Mountiehood to follow the (country) rocky path to riches and fame.
Say howdy! to Brian Edwards and Rayburn Blake, and their swell band Mashmakhan, what cut these here albums in (Ed look up dates please) [blow it out yer ass, Farq - Ed.] (Fine - you just kissed your Christmas bonus goodye) [1970 and '71 - Ed.].
Then they moved on to Riverson and helped out Cliff Edwards on his hemmorhagingly rare Transition [both '73- Ed.] for which we are beholden to Tremolo, curator of the Tremolo Lost Arkives Of Rock™, which is where the Smithsonian goes for its vinyl. Thanks, Trem, and happy Yule from th' Four Or Five Guys©!Brian Edwards joined the R.C.M.P. in '79, the year Ray Blake started Logs-R-Us©, a boutique lumber company in Quebec.
What would you like for Christmas? (The more trivial the better - an end to the pandemic and Trump in jail are already on our letter to Santa).
ReplyDeleteHey, Farquhar Throckmorton III, I would like to iterate your requests above, but what I really want to know is this- what exactly is false memory foam? Is it my addled 70 year- old memory that gets all of my childhood memories wrong or conflates them or exaggerates them? And am I the only one who doesn't know what it means?
ReplyDeleteOkay, you ask a serious question, so you'll get a serious answer. It's a kind of paradox. Memory Foam retains its shape, so False Memory Foam does not, it changes. Memory changes. We rely on it to shape our world and our place in it, but memory is subjective by nature, and in a state of flux. "The self is in a fever, forever changing, like a dream". The self - who we are, our identity - is comprised largely of memory, but this is not to be mistaken for the truth. "As stars, a flame, a mirage, as mist or a bubble, as a lightning flash, so we should see our world."
DeleteThe idea of a refuge, where this "falseness" is self-evident, no big deal, created from communal memory (Alfred E. Neuman and Groucho Marx as archetypes) in play rather than seriousness. Let's kick up the bubbles, watch the foam glitter and burst, and not get too hung up on trying to hold it in our hand.
(There's more of this sort of thing if you care for it in the sidebar - click "Elson" under the Swell Guys heading).
And this:the original House O' Foam© (as it was back then) was set in Las Vegas, an entirely imaginary place frothed up from the desert by gangsters. It's architectural false memory - the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, Venice ... anywhere you like and no place at all. Then the pandemic hit (eerily prefigured by some noir alternative nightmare headers I briefly put up, which scared the shit out of me) and a sunny island paradise emerged from the transparent waters of the Pacific, retaining its Vegas signage as a beacon.
Delete"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives". What do I want for XMas? It's a little late to be asking me that in mid-November a week after the holiday but you may have already seen that I commented earlier today on tomorrow's post, or will soon see after reading this comment on the preceding day's post, that I didn't get the Boy Howdy merch on my wish-list this Xmas last year nor on my birthday which coincidentally is yesterday relative to this post which I will likely be commenting on later today but which you are likely to have already seen before reading this comment. I envy you (potentially) already knowing what insightful and thought-provoking comments I may soon be making on yesterday's post that I haven't even read yet today. Boy, I bet it was a doozy!!
Deletethe breadth of your vision never cease to amaze me...either that or you are just deeply, deeply batshit crazy, a high compliment.
ReplyDeleteFor Diwali we got one of the clothesline poles outta the ground; if Christmas brought the other, that'd be peachy. Hanukkah I'm holding out for a Cuba libre
The best experiences I've had are gifts, but they came wrapped in the worst. Throw the wrapping away.
Delete(Santa is a lurker here at th' Io'F©, and he's got your note).
Is it the breadth of Farq's vision, or the depth of his madness? Great question! As the young folks say these days, "It can be two things." Some of history's visionaries were regarded as madmen, and plenty of crazy folks are blessed or cursed by visions.
DeleteBillyMac asked another great question. You aren't the only one who wondered. I had assumed that FMF was a portmanteau of memory foam and false memory syndrome.
Happy Xmas, war is almost over in these Untied States (the country that warms itself under Canadia's hat). Thank you Prof. Throckmorton for all your generous gifts throughout the year, but especially today's pearl of wisdom. I will try to remember that the worst things may just be paper and ribbons, with a gift hidden inside.
PS - Just ordered a Tim Earnshaw novel as a gift from me to me.
Deletedepth, breadth, and passing brilla--a triple threat.
DeleteI took a big chance and ordered one of his novels today, too. (The man will be able to retire.)
DeleteIf it's any consolation, I get zip from book sales. The money I did make - a considerable grubstake that basically allowed me to quit work (and be poor) for the rest of my life, came from a Warner's movie deal for Helium, which they optioned three times before producer David Hayman dropped it when he picked up the rights to the Harry Potter books.
DeleteSorry to hear that book sales don't pay the bills. I thought maybe Gollancz treated its authors better than that. We should offer you consolation, instead of the other way round.
DeleteAt least you got your grub steak. I hear they're full of protein, but kinda mealy if they're undercooked.
Well, the crazy machine that is Hollywood. Some screenwriters have a fifteen year-"career" in which two of their scripts get made and yet they get by on options and prep work.
DeleteThat should be soul-grinding, Farq, so I can see why you got out. But what made you go to South East Asia.
PS. So I finally googled you. Interesting picture your editor used, makes you look like a "don't fuck with me"-badass. You probably mellowed out those last twenty years or so...
OBG, my favorite H'wood experience quote: after completely changing the story of Helium to the producer's requests, through three drafts of the script, he finally said "you've done everything we asked, but it's not what we want" and they gave the screenwriting job to somebody else before dropping the project.
DeleteI've lived a bunch of places (pool guy in the South of France for a couple of years) so the Road To Siam wasn't a straight one.
Huh? You were a pool boy in France AFTER you quit working for "Hollywood"? Wouldn't that make you a little old to be a pool, ahem, "boy".
Delete"Please get me a towel."
"Ah. Ooof. You know, the old arthritis. Mind if I lay down for a bit before I get you that towel?"
Pool guy, not boy, you rascal! Happened about the same time. I was a buff, lean, forty-something. It was there I met my second wife. I should have drowned myself instead.
DeleteHave yourself a very merry Christmastide with this seasonal snowflake Stealth Link!
ReplyDelete**********
**********
**********
**********
I wants a pony..........
ReplyDeleteActually, a Gretsch resonator guitar would be nice.
Dude, no shit. That's be v cool.
DeleteI gots a resonator, a Tanglewood. Needs a polish.
Deletesox
ReplyDelete(typo)
Deletewho has time for ''cks''?
Deletewow was just listening to the first lp and a song on there ''as years go by'' man I been looking for what that song was for forty years! recorded it off the radio in the mid 70's and never could find out who it was by
ReplyDeleteMade the top 40 in the Billboard charts, and definitely forgotten soon after. Glad you found it! So nice to find a long lost tune.
DeleteCheers guv!
ReplyDeleteGorblimey!
DeleteWho knew.
ReplyDeleteBob Ross: The Early Years aka Liberal applicator of Sunscreen by day, lil rascal by night...
Ho ho oh no...
Thanks, Farq. Great answer. Did you write David Lynch's Twin Peaks -The Return?
ReplyDeleteNope. I wrote some swell novels you might enjoy, if you're the sensitive, bookish type, and a couple or theree go-nowhere movie scripts, and a stack of unpublished novels, and some angry emails to my fucking bank, but not that.
DeleteYo Farq, if you're running out of stuff to post, why not throw one of your unpublished novels to the four or five guys, published like in the olden days, chapter by chapter.
DeleteSerial. Killer.
DeleteIt's a thought. I'll up "Baddha" for youse bums, which got stiffed by its publisher. You'll like this. It's got Durty Bits, and it's *ulp* autobiographical.
DeleteOh Canoodia. I almost fergot to answer. How about...
ReplyDeleteAn end to disease, pestilence, hunger... Imagine...
Wait. Too John O'Lennony...?
Uh-huh, I'm afraid we're all going to have to beat up on you for being a wuss. Plus also, you ignored the rule - keep it trivial.
DeleteOkay....................
DeleteMashmakhan was in the rawk flick "Festival Express" doin at least one song...
"As Years Go By" by Mashmakhan is the intro set piece... I think... Gotta break out the DVD...
Volume 1 of the stellar CD series "Rock Artifacts" has The Hit in superb Stereo.
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Rock-Artifacts-Volume-1/release/5094729
How was that, Mr. Trebek?
I know Canada is technically a "country" but I personally wouldn't put this in the "country-rock" category. Which is fine, of course. I think there's more steel guitar on Tales From Topographic Oceans than here. (Not that Steve Howe learned to play the thing before inflicting it on his bandmates and the suffering consumer.) Anyhoo, thanks again, I'm digging this stuff. It was many years ago that I recognized that there was a lot more enjoyment to be found in third string minor league obscure releases from "back in the day" than could be found in contemporary radio. I'm frankly a little surprised that well still hasn't gone dry.
ReplyDeleteCanada? Is that in Canadia? As to not being country rock, the astute reader will notice a twin-flume of factoid slurry in this piece with nary a glint of accuracy to be discerned in the belching fountain of misinformation.
DeleteYeah, fake news I say. Oh sorry, I didn't do that right. Let me try again: FAKE NEWS! SO SAD!
DeleteMashmakhan be gone from my hard disk. From the three songs of Riverson I heard that's more my gig, haven't gotten around to Cliff Edwards yet.