Crumbstock - Three Discs Of Pies, Laffs N' Music!

Number Two was the first I bought. I literally couldn't leave it in the rack with a cover like that. And whaddya know, the tunes within were swell also! Crumb is known as a collector of early 78s, and he frequently limned hisself as a slobbering nerd obsessing over a new purchase. His Cheap Suit Serenaders renditions are amateurism pushed to the giddy brink of genius thru sheer wilful enthusiasm, and as far as I need get into the genre.

Today's loaddown (vols one thru three) is a grand way to flip the bird to the Old and the New Year simultaneantly! Number Two still seems choice to me, but you can shuffle, rinse and repeat. Get in a quart of Thunderbird™, fold up that Z-Bed©, roll back the rug and partay like it's 1926! Gee! Is it ever swell!

Lingerie Model Reads From Teleprompter Dept. - Where Santana Went Wrong

Lingerie courtesy Aubade©

We axed exotic lingerie model and Insta Influencer Rholonne Deodorante [19 my ass - Ed.] to generate page hits for a subject which nobody - least of all she - gives much of a shit about. Take it away, Rholonne!

RD: Uh - I start? Okay. This is kinda hard to see? Okay - Carlos Santana gets sneered at for betraying the artistic principles of Caravanserai, Welcome, and Borboletta, but he purs- pursed? Oh! Pursued. Like follow, right? That - (yawns)  - uh - Farq?

FT3: Yes, Rholonne?

RD: I'm like, boring? Boomer shit.

FT3: Take five, sweetpants! I got this! Catch you in the jacuzzi! Uh - keep that stuff on, okay? (snaps finger pistol)

(RD blows kiss, giggles)

FT3: (chuckles indulgently) Okay! Where were we ... pursued that direction on his solo albums, which were solo in name only, featuring current Santana Band members in different combinations. In a totally batshit marketing initiative - where was the focus group when he needed it? - he styled himself Devadip, which is like Retail Sales Associate to the District Sales Manager of John McLaughlin's lofty Mahavishnu.

Running a solo career concurrently with leading a band is always problematic. Another great guitar-playing bandleader Frank Zappa got over it - eventually - by crediting everything he did to his name, merging solo and band productions in a coherent, consumer-friendly package. Santana's output, in comparison, is a mess. And it's the messiest of the solo albums we're here to talk about today.

The poisonously-titled Oneness: Silver Dreams - Golden Reality [kill me now - Ed.] does everything possible to dissuade the slob in the record store from popping his chain wallet. Incredibly, "Santana" doesn't appear on the cover (although some markets clumsily rectified this with some Letraset), which is mystical puke porn kitsch like those albums bean-brained nuisances tried to press on you in the street. Like Illuminations, in fact. As if this wasn't enough - and it was already too much - the album has a confidence-sapping fifteen tracks, most with thrift-store mystic titles, some only a few seconds long.

Fuck dis, said the record-buying public, anteing up for Highway To Hell instead. The faithful who sucked it up anyway struggled with its scrappiness and its sappiness. One song, Silver Dreams Golden Smiles, brought the unwelcome taste of sick into the mouth. And Mrs. Santana intoning mystic verse ... *shudder*.

Which is a shame, a damn shame. Because hidden in the grooves, behind that awful cover, is probably his best solo album, right up there with the "serious music" albums, and containing some his most visceral, incendiary, electrifying [etc. - Ed.] playing. You can trust me because I am never wrong.

You don't care, but here's what I done:

ITEM! The six (count 'em) tracks which play as a ten-minute instrumental suite have been ironed together into one. I've snipped out distracting and confusing bursts of applause, some musical detritus, and called it Transformation, a word lifted from one of the original titles.

ITEM! The mystic warbling of Silver Dreams Golden Smiles and Mrs. Santana's *cough* hauntingly evocative poesie have been savagely kicked to the curb, as a service to the listener. Boo fucking hoo. It was a long album anyways - too long by exactly this much.

ITEM! The track order has been reshuffled for better dynamics, and proper vinyl side lengths. A few small but exquisitely nuanced edits here and there.

ITEM! A drop-dead gorgeous new cover what I labored over for at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Santana brand front n' center, title reduced to its essence. Voilà. Frankly, I think it's wasted on youse bums, because it's a swell album, and you're like meh with Santana. Cordially, it's your loss, and I could care less, ya bum!

Encouraged by the imaginary rapture greeting my artistic triumph, I done did new covers for the first two Devadips, also. Note series coherence, "house" style, class out th' ass.

Pop Pre-Pop Dept. - Eric Coates

Was there ever a more English name than Eric Coates? Well yes there was, smart-arse. His full name is more English yet: Eric Francis Harrison Coates. Put that in yer pipe an' smoke it!

He was making pop records in the early 'twenties. Nineteen twenties. A hundred freaking years ago, when everything was made of bricks, or wood, by blerks in big aprons and a fag behind their ear (oh, stop). The most popular colour for maps of the world was pink; Coates made pop music for the Empire, through two World Wars, to lift the spirit of the Man In The Street, The Man On The Clapham Omnibus, and the Housewife listening to the Home Service on the wireless.

What makes him pop? He never wanted to compose serious, classical-type music. He liked to cheer people up with a touch of yer light orchestrals. Look at the happy family on the cover of this album what I faked up. That's how English people look when they're happy. They're having their equivalent of a rave party, and jolly good fun it is too.

This music is heartbreaking. All that optimism and good feeling, whistling while you work. A spring in your step, a brighter tomorrow. As much love as I hold for dear old Blighty - which isn't much - the country is fucked. Nothing to do with class or colour, everything to do with culture. Eric Coates is pre-irony, the cultural virus that infected the nation long before John Chinaman invented the covids. The simplicity of heart expressed in this music is as foreign - as lost - to your contemporary Brit as Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Oh well (parts one and two) - Happy New Year!

(Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.)

The Quality Of Yulishness Is Not Strained Dept.

Foam-O-Graph© - "Yule Love It!™"

Every day is Festivus on Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©!

Yes, subscribers, there's Gifts and Good Cheer for one and all, especially Four Or Five©! So have a swell Santa's Birthday, and don't forget to open Santa's Surprise Sac [typo, we're hoping- Ed.] in the comments! And for the calendar cultists out there - see youse bums in the New Year! Or before, if we gots seasonal ennui out th' ass! Everybody now - chinkun ben, chinkun ben, chinkun or deway!

Sayyy, fellows! Why not use above pristine field of pure untrodden snow to limn festive scene? Use Sharpie, ballpoint, indelible marker, oil paints, auto spray, create heritage artwork for IoF© Art Gallery O' Paintings™! Hint - practice on somebody else's computer first!

Type Of A Camel! Oh The Cow! Dept.

Putain de merde! Notre artiste a fait une grosse erreur ! Peux-tu le voir, cher lecteur?

Ze Freinch! Zey are so 'ow you say - Freinch! And it's a quality we admire on th' IoF©, having antecedently FoamFeatured™ much of the cheese-loving surrender monkeys' musique [Fr. music - Ed.] It has a certain, shall we say, sacré bleu? A certain femme fatale, if you will, that sets it apart from music of less philosophically-inclined, more dumbass nations, such as like yours, ya dumbass.

On today's menu du jour of the day is Vianney, whose swell long-playing L.P. discs [Fr. discs - Ed.] should be in collection of any guy what wants inside pants of dame swayed by sensitivity, romance! Pretend to translate lyrics as you lead dizzy broad ineluctably to heady rapture of nuptial couch! She won't know no different. Bonjour very much!

Holiday Music Dept.

This is the swellest instant compendium of Billie Holiday, the sixteen-track compilation of Stay With Me and Lady Sings The Blues from '95. The real treat is the fifteen minute bonus - a rehearsal of God Bless The Child, complete with kids playing in the street, telephones, drinks ordered, traffic, chat ("tell that son of a bitch to forget it"), laughs, and furniture creaks. Priceless.

Holiday Reading Dept. - The Hard Machine

Unused gatefold for triple disc retrospective

It’s generally accepted that the Softies lost the plot when they fired (his word) Robert Wyatt from his own band. They certainly lost a lot of good will from the fans who’d stayed with them through the pricklier parts of Fourth, in spite of no vocals from the man in the hand-made yellow suit. Interest perked up again when Alan Holdsworth joined for their eighth (and first non-numerically named) Bundles album, when they seemed, if not the Soft Machine we knew and loved, at least to have found a new focus and a new approachability. But the three in the middle, Fifth, Six, and Seven, remain an acquired taste, and require an ability and willingness to forget what a group called “Soft Machine” should sound like. 

For 1972’s Fifth, Phil Howard spun his sticks for three entire tracks before his busy style gave Mike Ratledge the vapors and he was invited to get his coat from the hook on the door. Nucleus drummer John Marshall slid onto the drum stool while it was still warm. Speccy and bewhiskered Hugh Hopper was playing his bass lines inside out, and Elton Dean (from whom Reg nicked his name) had been blowing out his sax with them since sixth-form common room favorite Third. If you count heads, the group is now a quartet. There’s a kind of laboratory feel to the music. Rocking out, let alone getting the funk out of their faces, is not on their agenda. It’s almost chamber jazz, but with an edge of quiet experimentation. Mike Ratledge’s signature keyboard tone, like an anteater clearing his nose of carpet fiber, is all over the place. There’s subtly atmospheric pieces and politely raucous pieces, and it’s clear that Marshall wants the job - and that’s hard to understand, given the affection for Wyatt. He’s not going to please the old fans, nor make any new, but he doesn’t seem to care. This is not jazz-rock, it’s not fusion, it’s contemporary jazz, of Weather Report standard, even Davis [Miles - Ed.] standard. No, really.

For the following years’ Six, Elt was replaced by another particle physicist, fulsomely-'tached Karl (“I’m Welsh, me”) Jenkins, also ex-Nucleus, a multi-instrumentalist whose compositional skills would change the music. They were now, officially, the least sexy band on the planet, and celebrated by commissioning a piece of cover artwork (mutant cyborg cow's udder?) that was even harder to look at than they were [swell IoF© alternative, left - Ed.]. The album, though, was a sparkling and energetic double, half studio, half live. As they were effectively recording albums live in the studio anyway, there’s little difference apart from some hushed golf applause. Some of it is reassuringly bonkers, and there’s an overall feeling of being up for it, in direct contrast to the brow-furrowingly introspective Fifth. Jenkins’ compositions tend to have an almost pop edge to them, being tightly disciplined and riff-based, but this is still very much a big fat jazz album. For every million jazzbos into Davis [Miles - Ed.], there’s maybe a hundred who know how good this music is. Rubbery bass from Hopper, aardvark wheezing from Ratledge, wiry reeds from Jenkins, and (solo apart), perfectly acceptable trap-smacking from Marshall. Also, some great Terry Riley-inspired loops. That cover can’t have helped anything, though. Even a photo of the band would have been be- But no. Perhaps not.

Seven appeared the same year. Hopper’s hopped it, alas, but Roy Babbington (ex-Nucleus - are we seeing a pattern here?) is a livelier player better suited to their newly propulsive sound. The band were on a special roll of their own. Jenkins’ riff-centric compositions act as bouncy springboards for mainly keyboard improvisation, but the themes are never forgotten for too long, and the music is muscular, concise and driven, where it’s not being delicately melodic. Ratledge reins in his squalling to good effect. There’s a feeling of the Canterbury sound to this album - it’s fun, catchy, and sometimes beautiful. More concise than Six, it’s probably the most approachable album ever to have “Soft Machine” on the label, and for me, one of their very best.

It wasn’t to last, of course. Maddened by power, the Bolshevik Jenkins took over, guitarists started plugging in and turning up to eleven and Ratledge wandered off into the mist, working in advertising, doing odd jobs, a couple of go-nowhere side projects (including, it says here, research for a British TV series on the history of facial hair), and generally leaving everyone with the feeling that he made a wrong turn somewhere. A truly original and innovative player and composer, his long absence from the music scene is one of the great headscratchers of our time.

Elderly Lesbians Name Albums O' Th' Year! Dept.

Gertrude (left) and Irma (right) announce Best Album award, yesterday.

At the end of every year here on th' IoF©, we ax the Elderly Lesbians to choose their favorite album releases! It's been a swell year for music, so they'll have a bunch to talk about! Gertrude [left - Ed.] and Irma [right - Ed.] spoke yesterday from the Sisters Of Discipline Home For Sapphic Seniors ("Putting the sex into sexagenarian!™").

Gertrude (reading with difficulty from card before dropping it): Well, Irm, what a ... a great ... ear? Year. For music it's - oh heavens.

Irma: Year? What year?

Gertrude: This year, I guess. Last year.

Irma: I like that one girl. You know - her. Fat. One name.

Gertrude: Madonna?

Irma: Yeah. No. The other one.

Gertrude: Did Madonna make an album this year?

Irma: (fanning away fart) Who knows? What's her name now.

Gertrude: I would've given Madonna one. I would. Up the ass.

Irma: Begins with an L. No ... an A.

Gertrude: Enya?

Irma: Body-surf that bitch.

(long silence)

Gertrude: Did we get lunch yet?

Irma: Wanna eat out? (both collapse into incontinent giggles)

If youse bums can remember any of this years' albums you deem merit-worthy,  list in comment!

Teri Garr's Tapestry O' Tuneage™ Dept. - Mrs. Nussbaum's Reveal

You'll know T.V.'s Teri from her role as Samantha in long-running "Science Fiction" show Bewitched [needs research? - Ed.] but did you know she's also a respected tapestry embroiderer and collector of mid-sixties "pop" music records? What are the chances of that? [rhetorical question. Stupid also - Ed.]

That's right, subscribers! Toothsome Teri loves nothing better whilst *cough* "voyaging where no man has gone before" than working up a much-loved album sleeve into a stylishly contemporary wall hanging! Today's Foam-O-Graph© shows Ms. Garr wrinkling witchy nose at lovely interstellar cabin companion Wanda Whiplash in front of latest needlework masterpiece!

But can you identify inspiration, readers? Well-known long-playing "L.P." cover artfully transformed into heritage decor accent, which with its bold colors and striking composition lends space-age look to oh-so-feminine living quarters!

If you can, leave clew, hint, suggestive allusion to demonstrate familiarity with topic! Don't name act, album directly! There's a swell Grand Prize for the winner! Beam me up, Scotty!

Wool Hat

Here's a swell comp put together by our pal Scotch. Nice way to remember a guy we're never really in danger of forgetting. 

Comp: Scotch. Cover/title FT3.

Answers To Questions No-one Was Asking Dept. - Edit

Many seniors while away their declining years with jigsaws or puzzle books. Some stumble around the garden with secateurs, or take up scrapbooking. Still others dismember their victims in the basement, or expose themselves at kindergartens. It takes all types. Me, I like to cosplay a hotshot Art Director, working on dream accounts without any interference from clients, who are fucking nuisances.

Back in the day, I worked on the My Little Pony™ account, among other Big Brand Bullshittery. I sucked it up. The pay was good, but not enough to quell a wave of self-loathing. I assumed - mistakenly, as it turned out - that Brand Managers, in their black, shrivelled hearts, shared my cynical belief that the best that could be said of our efforts was that it would all be soon forgotten, and did little actual harm. And the pay was shamefully copious, for the amount of "work" we actually did in the studio, funding Hugo Boss suits and a Peugeot GTI 1.9. But I made nothing I was proud of, nothing I'd ever want to put in a frame.

Which is why I like to make pretend album covers. I miss the studio humor (I remember all of that, including the My Little Pony™ Glue Factory presentation), and I miss having somebody else do the actual work, but no Brand Manger is a blessed relief. And no client meetings. No 1.9 frothing over in traffic on the way to client meetings. No pay, either. But it's worth it.

Here's some Covers What Never Was what I done for SLN's superb Beach Boys' Albums What Never Was. You want the albums, head over there and wrestle with his weapons-grade download protocols - you'll never be irritated by a Stealth Link© again!

Sleeve Notes
Add Some Music uses a b&w outtake from the Sunflower shoot, laboriously hand-tinted with a vintage feel. We have to wait until the horse turns around to get Mike Love in the picture (LOL). SLN's meisterwerk Hubba Hubba uses a great image I used already for my Grammy award-winning Dennis comp, so I found this alternative. In my own fevered mind, this is how I should look. SLN loathes Adult Child. Harsh. My Land Locked uses the same basic layout of the "original" cover slick, coupled brilliantly with an image echoing the lyric insert of Surf's Up. See what I did there? Reverberation puts a twist into a familiar shot. No Photoshop involved anywhere.

EDIT: I'm going to add further Beach Boys Recovery projects to this piece, rather than give them another post and waste shrinking internet real estate. So if you're interested, check back from time to time. Here's today's project, Today! (LOL). The album was recorded early '65, when Pop and Op Art was bursting retinas everywhere but Capitol's Art Department, apparently. This design, using (treated) authentic '65 fabric design and authentic fab font, might have presented them as really contemporary, as the Rubber Soul cover did for The Beetles. Note vibrant colors. Note mugshot symmetry - Al, Carl, lean in. Bri, Mike tilt out. Dennis front n' center. Note subliminal hint of psychedelics, dynamic yet balanced proportions inspired by Golden Mean. Note song titles relegated to back cover.

Bambi Is A Man Man Fan, Man! Dept.

A recent Grateful Dead feature story, got me thinking [muses bambi - Ed.] about the wonderful Welsh band Man. Man began in 1968 and are still going now. They were formed from members of The Bystanders a successful singles band of the 60’s, however Man were much more psychedelic, their first album is mainly short songs but later albums had longer jam numbers, and their concerts would regularly feature a couple of 20 minute plus tracks. They were particularly popular in Germany, but rarely kept the same line-up for each album or tour. By the end of 1976 they broke up.

I’m too young and good looking [sic - Ed.] to have seen the band at their peak 1971-1976, however at the end of the 70’s you could pick up their wonderful albums cheaply in the secondhand shops, and every one I bought was ‘a cracker’. They were notable for releasing many live albums, and this is why I think of them and The Dead. Also the attached link has wonderful Rick Griffin cover art, based on the Slow Motion album art, you’ll know Rick Griffin for work he did for Quicksilver Messengers, Big Brother and The Grateful Dead. [Farq recreates original art, pre-restraining order from Mad Magazine, above - Ed.]

In 1983 Man reformed, and I was lucky enough to see them at my first ever festival, The 1983 Reading Festival. The line-up was wonderful, including Thin Lizzy, Ten Years After, Little Steven, Black Sabbath (with Ian Gillan on vocals), The Enid and Man. Also on the bill was a special guest from the USA, who none of my friends had heard of, his name Stevie Ray Vaughan. Fortunately I was able to persuade a few of my friends to leave the pub (The Moderation), and we witnessed his first gig in the UK, and it was magnificent.

Man played mid Friday afternoon, and we all enjoyed their energetic set. Over the years I’ve seen Man on may occasions, and amassed most of their great albums.One of their most famous live albums from 1975 is called Maximum Darkness and features John Cipollina, but some of Cipollina’s erratic playing was erased on one track and replaced by a Mickie Jones solo.

However from the same year, the attached linkage is a great (but not complete) live set from Berkeley in 1975 plus a few other live tracks I tagged on. This is, I think one of their best concerts, both sonically pro recording and also great performance, and the other tracks make for a great Man sampler - John Cipollina is not on this recording. Superb quality, even if you’re a fan of the band you may not have these tracks, Berkeley 1976 was officially released but that was a different line-up, and I don’t think that’s as good as this, mwynhau.

Readers will know Bambi better as porn star Studly Von Stagge in straight-to-video hits such as Air Hostess Hostel, Air Hostess Hospital,  Air Hostess Hospice, Erotic Amputees, and the popular Soup Kitchen franchise. He is currently "between projects".

Foam-O-Drome© Dept. - Revolution

Today Malone, yesterday.

Revolution is one of the disappointingly few hippie movies made during the late 'sixties. It's also a, uh, documentary, something I didn't appreciate when I first picked up the soundtrack album in pre-internet ignorance. I thought it was another groovy 'sploitation movie I'd never get to see, along with Psych-Out, Riot On Sunset Strip, and Herbie Goes Bananas. It's no disappointment, but it's not exactly the coverage the subject needed. It (sorta) tells the story of nubile hippie chick Today Malone, who changed her name "illegally" - maybe her real name was Today O'Herlihy? Basically it's footage from footwork around Haight Ashbury, with some amusing acid trip scenes thrown in for free.

The old-guy-at-the-print-shop poster [left - Ed.] urges us to GASP, SHOCK, and LAUGH at the "weird rites of the hippies" although the screengrabs seem to show wholesome summer camp activities. The movie is lensed in hauntingly lifelike COLOR by DeLUXE® (the only color endorsed by th' IoF©) which is a welcome surprise.

Director Jack O'Connell also helmed Greenwich Village Story ('63) which looks like Foam-O-Drome© celluloid (see comments).

The soundtrack - you probably have it - is super-swell, even if it doesn't include the CJ & His Fish songs performed in the movie. Early Steve Miller Band, non-album cuts from Quicksilver, and Mother Earth make for a surprisingly classy package, with sleeve notes from Paul Krassner for street credibility. "The message of the liberating subculture," he intones, "is simply that the postponement of joy is a perversion of nature," a line whose get-your-panties-off-baby subtext must have worked well for him with young hippie chicks. Chicks like Today Malone.

It's easy to smirk at this for camp amusement, but fuck that. Young people waving their freak flag, and having the time of their lives, and making some fantastic music, in the belief that the future could and would be better. It was hopefully naive, and hopelessly wrong, but so what? Who gets it right?

Click to read

Who's In Jizzle's Prison Purse? Dept.

You'll know Jizzleyne Maxwell from her role as giddy socialite in love with husky backwoods financier (Jeff Epstein) in popliar Hallmark movie Christmas Is For Children, but did you know glamorous heiress is authority on 'nineties "indie rock"?

"I hide albums in my prison purse," she smirked suggestively in an exclusive interview from the Slut Slammer. "So occasionally a guard will find one up there during a routine body cavity search. Lucky me!"

In above Foam-O-Graph© [above - Ed.], diligent guard Beatrice "Brucie" Beaverballs extracts contraband "indie rock" CD from G-Max's fragrant prison purse, yesterday! Identify act/album to win this week's Grand Prize! Do not name directly! Hint! Allude! Reference obliquely!

Whaddya mean ya "don't know"?! How many "indie rock" bands put out an album in th' early nineties? How hard can this be? Quit yer whinin' and take a wild guess!

Clew 1: Eponymous

Clew Deux: Beware of red herrings

Clew C: Herring is a good catch

Clew 4: Education

Steve Shark Dept. - A Right Fandango!

A friend of mine (Steve Shark brags) recently had his driving licence confiscated after a mix up over a medical examination. He got it back eventually but it was, to quote him, "a right fandango".

We've probably all heard the word "fandango" before - if only in Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" - but what is a "fandango"? Well, it's often used to describe a chaotic or complicated situation or process, but it was originally a dance from Spain and Portugal. This set me off on a trawl through my music collection to find any fandangos I had and I came up with quite a few...

These aren't necessarily true fandangos, in fact most certainly aren't, but I came up with quite a quirky collection which I'm going to share. The tracks are meant to also serve as jumping off points to places you might not have visited yet.

1. Renaud Garcia-Fons - Ultimo Fandango
Garcia-Fons is a French jazz double bassist with very obvious folk and world influences. This is probably the only real fandango here. It could almost belong on Chick Corea's "This Spanish Heart" album (check that mother out!) and shows off his virtuosity in an interesting acoustic setting with accordion, guitar, and violin.

2. The Shadows - Fandango
The Shadows are the UK's best known guitar instrumental band who influenced many a budding guitarist - myself included. This is almost a real fandango and features harmony guitars - probably Hank Marvin double tracked. Nowadays, I gather Hank's into Gypsy Swing, and he's a far better player than the Shadows' recordings suggest.

3. Doobie Brothers - Neal's Fandango
This is definitely not a fandango. It's a rather fine piece of country rock from "Stampede", my favourite Doobies album. There's a nice pedal steel solo from ex-Dan Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, after a very Allmans sounding harmony guitar passage. There are further multitracked guitar solos which go a bit psychedelic, just to leven the rather Eagles vibe.

4. Bob Wills - Spanish Fandango
I'm a huge Western Swing fan and it's Bob Wills I always keep coming back to - especially the Tiffany Transcriptions. Cut for radio broadcast, they catch Wills and his band at their most relaxed. Here's another not-fandango with some great ensemble playing - electric guitar, electric mandolin and steel playing horn lines. Tiny Moore unleashes an electric mandolin solo which just swings and sings.

5. Cindy Cashdollar - Spanish Fandango
Not the same tune as above. Instead, an instrumental featuring Cindy and Steve James on reso guitars. There's some lovely interplay between the two with beautiful harminics. Cindy was in Asleep at the Wheel - well worth checking out in their own right. Still not a fandango!

6. Martha Velez - Very Good Fandango
Included for curiosity value only. It features Ms Velez warbling rather badly and mars what is quite an interesting blues amd soul album called "Fiends and Angels", featuring unknowns like Eric Clapton, Paul Kossof, Jack Bruce and a couple of blokes from some band called Traffic. Definitely not a fandango of any known type!

7 Pip Pyle's  Equipe Out - Foetal Fandango
The late Pip Pyle is one of my favourite drummers. He was in Chicken Shack, Delivery, Hatfield and the North, National Health, Khan and Gong and was also a very good composer, as shown here. The time signature is very odd and I've tried to work it out but failed - perhaps someone here could oblige, please? This has two members of of Soft Machine included, with a great sax solo from Elton Dean. Very quirky, but then listen to what Pip did next...

8 Pip Pyle - Foetal Fanfare Fandango
...yes, the same tune, but slower, so that it almost sounds like something you might hear at a rather avant-garde New Orleans funeral parade. I don't know why he decided to cut the tune again, but I'm glad he did. Mutant Dixieland jazz! The album features many Canterbury Scene musicians and manages to avoid any of the jazz rock cliches which often plague such line ups.

9 Racing Cars - Moonshine Fandango
One hit wonders who charted with "They Shoot Horses Don't They?". This is a pleasant enough but rather generic rocker with just a hint of Little Feat and almost Man like vocals...both bands are Welsh. Vocalist Morty went on to sing backing vox for the Beach Boys, Tina Turner and Bryan Adamas, so he did OK for himelf. So, a happy ending but no way is this a fandango.

10 Sid Griffin - Front Porch Fandango
A short but sweet banjo and mandolin instrumental from the lead singer and Rick 12 slinger of the excellent Long Ryders - a Paisley Underground band who actually made it in the UK. The Ryders managed to combine country, Byrds style folk rock and punk into a high octane mixture, best appreciated on their "State of Our Union" album, which I wholeheartedly recommend. Any band which would cover "Billy Jean", "Dirty Old Town" and "Anarchy in the UK" in the same live set deserves your attention.

11 Steve Miller Band - Fandango
My wife's favourite singer and also a favourite of mine. His first few albums merged blues and psychedelia in a unique way as this track shows. Of course, "Fly Like an Eagle" introduced him to a wider audience, but the music just seemed to get "bigger" without actually having more impact. "Journey From Eden" on the same album as this track, is a song of true beauty and still has pertinence today.

Listen to the blackbird sadly sing
For you, for me
Look at all the pointless suffering
Humanity

12 Todd Rundgren and Sparks - Your Fandango
This is an odd one - with Todd and the Mael Bros, what do you expect? A bit of a reunion as Todd once produced Sparks. Lots of interesting sounds and textures - synth sequences, power chord guitar riffing, harpsichords, LOTS of castanets and great vocals from Todd, Russ and Ron. The whole thing is a bit mantra-ish with cod Mexican ay-yi-yi's creeping in from time to time. It's as strange as it sounds, but very listenable.

So, there you have it - twelve fandangos for your delectation.

Will you do the fandango?

Get Off My Lawn! Dept. - Th' Eagles

Cheer the fuck up for fuck's sake, you miserable fucking sons of bitches.

Country Rock, I'm sure we all agree, represents perhaps the highest evolutionary point of Western Culture. The genre enables the basic qualities of popular tunesmithery more completely than any other. Melody is here, and harmony in abundance. Technical virtuosity - unequalled by the finest classical string quartets - is harnessed to the needs of the song, and never featured merely to satisfy the ego of the musician. And all is built on a propulsive but never dominating rhythmic foundation. It is, in a word, swell.

Th' IoF© has featured many proponents of the genre - the Buffalo Springsteens, Micky Nesmith, and countless others, to a reception of ragged cheers and hats thrown into the air. Yet the elephant in the room is a bird - that noblest of winged creatures, the Eagle.

Why does this band - shining exemplar of all the heretofore mentioned qualities - merit such opprobrium? Such contumely? I posit [do you mean PostIt© - showing results for PostIt© - Ed.] that any reason for disliking their music is based on non-musical - and therefore irrelevant - reasons. Basically, I'm saying if you don't dig Eagles albums, you're full of shit. No, no, hear me out. Hear me out, I say!

The if-you-will rockumentary History Of The Eagles was far from a whitewash, showing the band to be the insufferable nuisances we've always thought they were - quite as horrible as The Byrds. So, and indeed, what? They're unlikely to swing by my house with their whining demands, shabby table manners, and appalling sartorial gaffes, so what care I? Art, not the artist, has ever been the tenet of th' IoF©, and nowhere is it more applicable than here.

Is it because they were so commercially successful? And therefore, by the law of averages, liked by millions of embarrassing dumbasses in trailer couture? But is not the Palace of Success - when built upon the Twin Pillars of Talent and Hard Work - a temple to girt with garlands of flowers rather than hurl handfuls of your own excrement? At? Which to?

If you're willing and able to shed these two spurious prejudices, you are free to judge the music on its own merits. If you like Poco, the Byrds, Crazy Horse - any of the hundreds of acts working in the same genre - it's hard to put a case for the Eagles to be in any way inferior. But go ahead. Knock yourself out. Or ... Get Off My Lawn!

This is the first in a new series of timely and provocative Get Off My Lawn features. Next up - Santana. Oboyoboyoboy!

Dude! This Shit Gets You High! Dept. - Pythagoron™

From the sleeve notes:

"PYTHAGORON™ is not just music-but sound controlled with electronic precision to alter your awareness, to get you high. Developed through years of research into the resonant interaction of sound and brainwave patterns, PYTHAGORON™ sound is unique in concept and production."

From Keith Fullerton Whitman's notes on YewChewb:

The A-side starts out with a surge of White Noise, then suddenly out of nowhere an out of time Echoplexed Drum-Machine thump begins pulsing - at first the echoes are out of time but slowly it coalesces into a near-Heartbeat rhythm. A fixed flat-fifth realized with an octave-shifting Organ / Synth tone fades in, starts flickering via a series of oscillating square-wave VCLFOs, and the piece starts to gain momentum. This continues for some time before something of a Bass-line kicks in - more of a Triangle-wave root-note pattern - incredibly heavy and super-deep, constantly ebbing and flowing - around which the “Organ” tone shifts in tonality incredibly slowly - a new chord every 5 minutes or so. This continues for almost the entirety of the first side; shimmering overtone-laced chordal drones that, when they do finally resolve, almost immediately begin their ascent towards another tonal trajectory. The side ends after the root-fifth chord that the Bass-line has been suggesting all along finally wins out, and the piece slowly fades to silence.

On the flip, the same drone / thump-set fades in slowly and a new set of chord-patterns are suggested, only this time the side ends with a rather beautiful related-but-unresolved tone-cluster in a different key - while I'm sure there’s some seriously deep Psycho-Acoustic effects & “Music-of-the-Spheres” -lineage mathematical frequency-relations being worked out all over this gem - for about an hour after listening to this, twice, at full volume, everything I heard sounded just that much crisper and I somehow became more aware of the upper harmonics being produced by every single electric / electronic device within earshot; wouldn’t say I was “Stoned” exactly, but definitely ... “Beautiful" - it works just as well as an über-mysterious, almost Krautrock-ian Machine-Music study; timbre-wise, “Cluster II” or any number of later Moe / Roe solo jams are great reference points. Stylistically, I hear strong echoes of the sort of music that was being released on the Japanese Vanity label at around the same time but, alas, any / all connections are purely speculation given the lack of detailed notes / personnel involved. Any fan of zonked near-cultish Exotica, “Minimal Electronics”, Synth Drones, etc. will do their bodies / minds / spirits well to subjugate their inner will(s) via this one.

From Farq:

Gee whiz.

Ooh La La! Dept. - Le London All Star

British Percussion was released only in France ('65) and Italy ('66). Featuring - it says here - Jimmy Page [18 my ass - Ed.], who "wrote" three of the tracks - you know how Jimmy "writes" - and again, it says here - John McLaughlin and/or Big Jim Sullivan - it's a swingin' Carnaby St.-style thump n' fuzz n' Tijuana trumpet fest. Probably produced by Glyn Johns, this is freaktastic stuff, and as rare as underarm deodorant for snakes.

You lust after this shamefully, you dog, and you might find blessed relief in the comments, where you can rub shoulders with like-minded furtive individuals with tastes for the outré - ooh la la!

This post made possible by le Lupine Assassin Suppositoire d'Obscurité - thanks, L.A.!

Pope Blesses Jock Ewing's "Miracle" Jockstrap Dept.

Sanctified Foam-O-Graph© on loan from Vatican Gift Shop

You'll know grizzled, crusty patriarch Jock Ewing for hosting annual <wtf>Owl Barns Bowl</wtf> at prestigious Dallas Four Seasons Landscaping car park - but did you know he also curates IoF©'s own Turin Shroud?

Hauntingly lifelike 3D image of REDACTED transubstantiated mystically into humble athletic support, drawing thousands to IoF©'s luxurious Pilgrim Motel N' Massage Resort™. " REDACTED will lead us true faithful Keepers Of The Holy Jockstrap to GODWORLD®!" averred Enis Thousands (61) yesterday. "In a limo!" added wife LaBrea (14), "wit' like, cup holders an' shit."

In rare visit to our shores, His Popeness Frankie Goestohollywood I blesses Holy Relic, held aloft by grizzled, crusty Jock Ewing, during awe-inspiring surfside ceremony. That benediction in full:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing ballbag. Aenean commodo lingula eget smegmatis. Anus massa. Cum sociis fuckity-fuckface penetratibus et magnis dis prurientis mingeamus, nascetur ridiculus shitpost. Donec quam felis, ultricies asswipæ, pellentesque eu, pretium masturbatius, sementia. Nulla consequat pudendamis squirtus magnificat. Trailerparcet jailbaitius justo, frottageus transporto publicus, goatse nec, voluputate tumescentia, bueno. In nomine padre, Alfredus E. Neumanet, complaintus venerealis, rimjob ad astra. L.O.L."

Recognise popular recording star manifesting liturgically on Jock's grizzled, crusty strap, leave clew, allusion or hint as to identity in comment, win seat in limo to GODWORLD®! Name artiste directly, go straight to hell, rag-head!

(Garner xtry FoamPoint™ for mansplaining "Owl Barns Bowl"!)

Spirit Of Sunday Dept.

Son Of Spirit is in some sense a little album - modest, unpretentious, and short. Thirty-three minutes at a formulaic ten tracks, and not a second wasted. It's also overlooked. Spirit Of '76 seems to be the favorite of the Cass n' Cali years, followed by the left-field Future Games. On paper, it don't look so hot. Some leftovers from '76, and some pimped-up Randy demos.But gee, is it ever swell! If you're unfamiliar with its gentle charm and melodic grace, gather it to your meager bosom now. Pop heaven, and a lighter, more positive tone sets it apart from '76.

There are those - wretched bluenoses - who opine loftily that the Cass n' Cali duo had no right to the name Spirit, and that their albums are inferior to that imperial 'sixties run through to Sardonicus. Fie! I say, and a pox on them. This incarnation of the spirit is different; one doesn't cancel out the other. Over the decades I've enjoyed the duo/trio recordings as much as the classiconic full band albums.

Son Of Spirit is one of those albums saturated with personal associations for me, all of them good. My first wife and I (when we wus fab) in a Welsh cottage, wood fire burning in the grate, and the cream-and-red Dansette playing the first IABD album, the first ISB album, and this - a great little album, and perfect for a sunny Sunday, which I hope yours is.

Marina Restaurant Menu O' Randomness Dept.

 

Sayyy - ain't that pitcher vaguely familiar? Well spotted, subscribers! It's the iconic cover to The Lead Zeppelin's hit platter Presents! But did you know the original photo was snapped at th' IoF©'s famous Marina Restaurant, where menu choices are made for you by Al Gorithm, the Maître De Randomness? Of course you didn't, because I'm literally making this shit up as I go along! Haw!

But hey! It's the weekend, and what better thing do you have to do than to list the first five random choices made by your device of choice? I got nuthin', so I'll be getting this whole ball of wax rolling in the comments!

When They Go Lowell, We Get High Dept.

In swell cross-blog hysteresis. Jonder teams with PJ [albumsiwishexisted - Ed.] to bring us an expanded set of Lowell's session work. Only the cover [above - Ed.] is mine, Frankensteined from various sources, mainly a Robert Williams painting.

Farq (Jonder screeds) has described the days when music obsessives communicated through classified ads, fan clubs and snail mail to assemble versions of the Beach Boys' unreleased opus, Smile.  The tools of tape traders and fanzine publishers (xerox, x-acto, letraset, liquid paper, and rubber cement) have been replaced by sophisticated software.  Almost anything you'd possibly want to read, hear or watch is now immediately available in digital form; and if you don't like the way it looks or sounds, you can edit it to suit yourself.

A number of music blogs feature "albums what oughta exist," and Smile is one of their specialties.  PJ at albumsiwishexisted2.blogspot.com recently created a trilogy of albums to chronicle the adventures of Lowell George as a musician, songwriter, and producer when he was off the clock with Little Feat.  These albums are shared here with PJ's permission.  His blog includes a series called "...and on guitar" which spotlights those moonlighters who have fingered fretboards and lavished licks upon recordings that don't always bear their name.  PJ has featured some great players, and one reader suggested Lowell George.

Lowell was (among other things) a studio rat who lent his talents as a musician, songwriter, and producer to many other artists.  Sometimes one or more members of Little Feat accompanied Lowell on these sessions. Farq has shared Kathy Dalton's 1973 album Amazing (which featured the entire sextet), and Chico Hamilton's 1973 album The Master (with 5/6 of the Feat: Richie Hayward sat out).

PJ's collection is chronological, beginning with a song from 1969's Permanent Damage by The GTOs.  I added a dozen tracks, and the trilogy now ends with the title track from Long Time Gone, a 1980 album by John Starling (from The Seldom Scene). There's rock, funk, jazz, blues, bluegrass, folk, and country; much of it laced with the sweet sting of Lowell's slide guitar.

Thanks to PJ for his collaboration!

My Nite Of Taboo Lust With Carly Simon Dept.

 

(Author just out of shot)

Showbiz lenser Norman Seeff was one of my "groupies" (as I affectionately called them!) back in the 'seventies. He invited me to shoots because he valued my advice - although I never got my hands dirty handling a camera (I'm not a mechanic), my genius with composition and lighting gave his work its signature look. That blurred, slightly out-of-focus thing? Nose oil on the lens. Had to be my nose oil - a particularly refined and unctuously pure nectar I bottled for him. So he was particularly keen for me to attend Carly Simon's shoot for her upcoming Playing Possum album. "Privately, Farq," he whispered over a bowl of borscht at Tinseltown's famed Brown Derby Five Star Restaurant, "she has a girl boner for you I could hang a swing from." I chuckled, waving back at Jack Nicholson. "She'll have to take a ticket, Normie. Right now I'm squiring toothsome Debbie Harry, which she is taking my advice to form a New Wave band." But the Seeffster was insistent, saying my presence at the shoot would "make things happen". I relented, because his need was transparent, and touching. I had the gift - or skill - to put his subjects at ease, distracting them from the little man fussing with the camera.

But the effect I had on Carly was nothing short of explosive. She rushed across the studio, arms outstretched to embrace me. "Farq! Oh, Farq!" she moaned, pressing her lithe, taut body to mine. I felt her nipple harden through my shirt pocket protector. "I've waited all my life for this moment!" I firmly reminded her we were professionals, snapping my fingers at Normie, fumbling a cassette into his Instamatic, and it was only my direct order that prevented her from stripping naked, so lost was she in my pheromonal tsunami. "I'll keep my boots on," she pouted. "Later, baby," I growled.

Modesty requires me to draw a discreet veil over what occurred later in her private suite at H'wood's exclusive The Chateau Marmont Five Star Hotel & Restaurant. But I can tell you that Carly opened Love's Secret Portals (3) for the proud entrance of my throbbing manhood! That she surged on wave upon wave of ecstasy all through that long, hot night, our juices mixing in a divine Cocktail of Love! And when at last she passed out (again) as dawn broke, I quietly wiped my dick on the drapes and tiptoed away. And I can tell you that "Jimmy" Taylor phoned me later that week - ever the gentleman! - to thank me for fulfilling his wife's womanly potential. "She's taught me some of your moves, Farq, and you know? When she cries out your name, my friend, I'm flattered." It's a story that does us all credit, I think, and perhaps sharing it here will add to your listening pleasure of this swell album, a personal favorite!

And remember, pals - when you're looking at the cover photograph you are literally looking at Carly through my Nose Nectar. Fun fact!

Dune It Again Dept.

Sunday's Lynch reference came about on account which I recently re-watched his largely dismissed (especially by him) version of Herbert Frank's epic Dune. I'd been among the first to fling fæces at it on release. But there's much to admire and enjoy, and in some ways it's superior to Villeneuve's style sheet. Mood, for one. There's a real feeling of poisoned dread, of intergalactic heaviosity, that leaks direct from Lynch's brain-stem. No amount of C.G.I. can improve on the old school art direction, set and costume design that give the movie its monumental nightmarish feel. F'rinstance - in the first  scene, the entrance of the Guild Navigator (whatevs) in a kind of mobile nuclear bunker/iron lung thing is authentically scary. Compare and contrast with Villeneuve's treatment of <wtf>the same</wtf> a totally unrelated scene, which plays like a debutante's ball, with about as much threat as a dropped handkerchief.

There's a lot to regret, too. The primitive computer effects are sometimes jarring. Kyle MacLachlan's snow-plow jaw is no match for Timothée Chalamet's storm-tossed coiffure. The story ... well, the original book had trouble with that too.

There'll be an opportunity to re-see in the comments, at a pretty decent quality. Also Toto's (TOTO!?) Original Soundtrack album [left - Ed.], with theme input from Brian Eno.

A note about the various versions: avoid the so-called extended cut, so loathed by Lynch that it's credited to Alan Smithee ("A Alan Smithee Film"), and features the worst first ten minutes of any movie ever - terrible, really terrible, illustrations with an expositionary voice-over. There are fan edits out there, of course, but none is the movie we want this to be. Lynch gets closest.

David Lynch's Toilet O'Tunes Dept.

Foam-O-Graph© on a roll!

Dishy David Lynch is of course celebrated for his family values comedies for Disney, such as Eraserhead and the long-running sitcom Twin Peaks, but did you know he listens to music solely in his toilet? He's had the bowl connected to a record player in the next room, and spends hours in there, often receiving guests while they audition his latest album purchases!

FT3 Whence came this idea, Dave?

DL [laughs] It was during a visit to Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©, Farq, as well you know!

FT3 [laughs]

DL You were so gracious as to shew me Sir Kubrick's Tub O' Tunes -

FT3 Do you mean https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/04/stanley-kubricks-indie-rock-bathroom.html?

DL [laughs] So naturally, as a major motion picture helmer myself, I had to add my own Lynchian twist to the proceedings! [makes fart noise]

FT3 [laughs]

Can you identify the music emanating from the Lynchian Loo, subscribers? There's a Grand Prize of some wonderful car seat covers for the lucky winner! Clew in the comments!

(Feel free to use the above space to add your own toilet door graffiti!)