Great Klassix O' Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Wensdy Krumbtacular!

Hoo boy! Will your skeevy so-called pals at th' pool room ever flip when you turn up with today's Compendium o' Culture! It's all three (count 'em!) issues of that esteemed organ of intellectual analysis Snatch, what troubled genius R. Krumb limned wit' a bunch o' like-minded confreres back in '69, when guys could still do this shit without gettin' pussy-whipped by a bunch of dames! Them wus th' days huh, pals! Why - we wus ridin' the Tunaville Trolley to Beaver Street, foist class!

Relive the Sexual Revolution in the privacy of your own underwear with this strictly Adults Only heritage collection!

The Sly n' Robbie Story Dept. - Part XVI

Older readers will remember how we left the dubwise duo in part XV, desperately bailing their coracle as Hurricane Hortense whirled across Puget Sound at the turn of the century. Would their frail barque survive?

Weakened by days with only blisters and toenails for sustenance, their oilskins in tatters, their eyes blinded by spume whipping from the towering waves, things looked bleak for the storm-tossed twosome. "Caulk the mainbrace!" cried Robbie, his voice a hoarse croak in the thunderous roar. "Scupper the harpoon!" screamed Sly.

Luckily they made it to Kingston, Jamaica and Electric Lady in New York in time to cut this satisfyingly obscure dub platter in '84. Luther "Luxury Vehicle" Vandross and sultry siren Brenda White [left - Ed.] add backing vox. Only released in the Netherlands, which is like Holland, for what they call the Dutch market, where the hemp-loving herring enthusiasts were so confused by the deal they forgot to put the artist's name on the album sleeve. It sank without trace, only to wash up on the shores of Fabulous False Memory Foam Island© many years later. 

Pimp My Classic Iconic Album Cover Dept.

Joni Mitchell's Blue sleeve worked fine on the original vinyl release (getting the inks right wasn't as easy as you might think), but as a postage-stamp size image on your hand-held device it loses impact and definition. Thus this. Gawd, I love this woman and her butterfly jazz genius.

The cover to Pet Sounds is legendarily awful. If you like it, it's because of familiarity and good associations. I say the hell with it, and let's give Brian his due. The European Intellectual look suits him, don'cha think?

Country Joe And His Fishes lost the visual plot with their third album Together, one of the worst-ever covers for a major-ish group. Here's something that reflects the gestalt (baby) with zest, gumption, moxie, and not a little pizzazz. Plus, teaches the Beach Boys a thing or two about using goats.

Captain Beefheart was no dreamy teen idol, but he could look pretty damn mythic, and it's a shame his pan wasn't featured on the later albums. This Bat Chain Puller cover uses some of his painterly explorations, color-intensified.

Click for embiggerment. Printed out and laminated, they make swell drinks coasters for when unexpected guests drop by!

Sinatra On Sunday

If you have "woke" concerns about Sinatra - if you find any aspect of his personality or act, uh, problematic, I cordially urge you to go fuck yourself. And after you've done that - or even whilst - watch the Netflix bio-doc All Or Nothing At All. Amazingly, against all the odds, it tells the balanced truth about the man and the kind of life that is no longer possible to lead. Larger than life, wilder and deeper and richer than the shadow-world entertainment we accept today, with its neutered mediocrity, its hypocrisy masked as appropriateness, its crushing banality delivering at best a degraded echo of its source.

Popular culture - and Sinatra built the stage for Elvis to step onto - created the greatest art of the twentieth century. Art that spoke directly to people who gave a shit about "art" but knew when their hearts and feet and minds were moved. America in the twentieth century, for all its faults (spoiler - this is earth, not heaven) produced the greatest art the world had seen, articulated by the huddled masses for their own pleasure. But the millennial clock ticked over, and that time in the sun is gone. There is no new Sinatra. There isn't even a new Robert Goulet.

Live In Seattle '57 is a rarity (for which we can thank my friend Scotch) originally a bootleg and eventually released in 1999. Nelson Riddle swings the baton for nineteen of the greatest songs ever written, a live recording that many Sinatra fans rate as his finest. Play a little loud. Get a little drunk.

Secrets Of Th' Isle O' Foam© Dept. - Th' Swell-O-Meter®

Professor U.U. Gefiltefish yesterday. Swell-O-Meter®: model's own

Y'know, subscribers, one of the most axed questions here on Fabulous False Memory Foam Island© is, how the Dickens do we know if an album is swell enough to be FoamFeatured™? Glad you axed, youngster! The answer is at once simple yet fraught with a fractal complexity that threatens the very foundations of Rational Thought. Our back-room boffin, Professor U.U. Gefiltefish [see Foam-O-Graph™ above - Ed.] took time out from combing Kreemé's Kirlian Aura to answer:

 "In layman's terms, the swellness of an album is measured with with my patented Swell-O-Meter®, a portable device which evolved from the Neil Young Shit-Not-Shit-O-Meter® [FoamFeatured™ antecedently - Ed.]. Again in terms adapted to the meanest intelligence, the Swell-O-Meter® is connected by co-axial cable to the gramophone playing the album under consideration, and a reading registers on the dial you see on the face of the device. Obviously, this simple operation belies the advanced scientific theory and empirical application that went into the creation and development of the apparatus. Also there is some risk of low-grade plutonium leakage involved in the process, so the operator is required to wear specially-designed protective gear."
 

Thanks, Professor! Let's try the sucker out on this here album by Suntreader! Sayy ... we're getting, what, a six, six point five? That counts as swell, by George!

Who's In Loni's Lunchbox? Dept.

Loni's guest Randy Randomguy admires her wipe-kleen surfaces (image©Foam-O-Graph Inc.)

T.V.'s popular Loni Anderson plays hostess in what promises to be a fun-type FoamFeaturette™! Note kitchen melding traditional-style elegance with futuristic accents! Note album emerging tantalisingly from Lidsville™ lunchbox! Can you recognise it, subscribers? Leave a smart clue-type comment in the comments! Don't name album/artist! A clue! To help the nogood bums what ain't gots college smarts like youse!

The Delta Delicatessen Dept.

Delta Del, "England’s only imaginary comedy-psychedelic free blues guitarist", took time out from liftin' barges n' totin' bales to dictate this swell piece to his intern, LaJuicette Boncaresse [19 my ass - Ed.] - take it to the bridge, Del! 

Our esteemed host Farquhar Throckmorton III once told me “I wish I could share your love for the blues, but I'm with Navin Johnson. Aren't they kind of - depressing?"  Well, I’m with Navin too, but only on his theory of spectacle nose-brakes.

Blues was always about more than broken hearts and hard times.  Blues can be jumping with energy, designed for celebration, loaded with passion and humour, laced with psychedelics, spaced right out.  Freed from Navinite misconception, blues reveals itself as the true Mothership, and those who raise their eyes and minds beyond the slow blues moan will surely witness the full splendour of its coming.  Amen!

There’s a stack of premium grade regular blues out there.  And there’s a pile of low grade stuff too.  I recommend using a filter on the low grade …  Does the blues you are listening to last for more than three minutes?  If guitar solos are present, do they last for more than 45 seconds?  Is the singer a White European using an American or African-American accent to sing a slow blues about a failed relationship?   “Yes” is the wrong answer to these questions.  Filter your listening choices through them and a world of jumpin good regular blues will emerge.  

 

Del's own swell blues CD [right - Ed.]

These time limits don’t apply when it comes to free blues.  And what exactly the heck is free blues anyway?  As England’s only imaginary comedy-psychedelic free blues guitarist, I often ask myself that question.  And it’s complicated.  Sometimes free blues can be regular blues.  Othertimes free blues can appear to be blues free.  Free blues is both a description and a demand.  Free blues may be free from the classic 3-chord 12bar blues structures, but free blues can exist within these structures too.  Free blues is blues that’s free from limits on what blues can and cannot be.  

Further guidance is available from your neighbourhood Free Blues Advocate-Practitioner.  A qualified Advocate-Practitioner can prescribe a course of listening guaranteed to permanently dispel misconceptions and expand blues horizons within 14 days or your money back.  See comments for details.  Becoming an Advocate-Practitioner requires several years of field work (fortunately not involving cotton), and a demanding final exam which includes essay questions such as  “Coltrane’s Live at the Village Vanguard is a free blues album. Discuss” or the perennial favourite “Have you ever been to Electric Ladyland?  Prove it in a minimum of 1000 words.”  There may also be quiz-style posers such as “How did camels and the sun guide a one-time blues band to freedom?”  

Free blues!  Free your mind and your blues will follow.  Your misconceptions are a prison, but many escape routes are available once the inner mind-wall has been breached.  Realising belatedly that I was not born a poor Black child, this English blues guitarist found a way to blues freedom via the birth of an alter-ego. Me and alter-boy now live happily together in London in the late 1960’s, where the Bonzos are barking and Jimi is blowing minds and blowing the bloody doors off the blues.  

And now I think I hear the 10.54 to Basingstoke a-comin’.  If you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way.

Enter Sting's Vagina Of Vinyl! Dept. - Bonaroo

Sting poses inside a giant lady-garden made of, like, a vagillion flowers (©Foam-O-Graph)

In what promises to be a popular FoamFeaturette©, fragrant punk rock icon Sting [above - Ed.] talks about the Dark Ages of popular music! Take it away, Sting!

"It seems hard to believe, but people actually made records before my punk band Sting And His Policemen revolutionised human consciousness! Farq has given me this album which like nobody has heard, right? Who'd need to? 1978 was Ground Zero for pop music, and this was like, 1974???!!! I'm, like, W.T.F.???!!! Lol! Anyway, I'm too busy having tantric sex with my upmarket life-partner and marketing my new Gloop© organic cologne This Smells Like My Nutsack™ to waste time on music these days. Sting has moved on, and so should the world."

Sting will be unaware that guitarist Bobby Winkelman was antecedently in Frumious Bandersnatch [see last piece - Ed.]. Bonaroo suffered from being packaged with the Warner Bros. roadshow - they were never going to be as hip as Little Feat or balls-out rocking like the Doobie Brothers, but their lone album stands up well today as exemplifying all the professional qualities that punk posers found so abhorrent (and difficult). Stereo Review sez: "Bonaroo's sound is straight-ahead Top-Forty pop with no pretensions but with a good deal of craft to it." Dame Christgau and Allmusic, like New Age punk icon Sting, ain't heard of it. 

Winkelman cut a Bonaroo II album some time later which frankly ain't up to snuff, but this you should have, on account it's swell.

This post made possible thru the digital forensics of Altoid - kudos!

The Mome Raths Outgrabe Dept.

Frumious Bandersnatch were one of the great left coast acid guitar/harmony bands to be exhumed during the First Era Of Psychedelic Rediscovery - that post-Nuggets, pre-internet period when you'd discover albums through dealers' lists, collectors' stores and record fairs. Very occasionally the heavens would open, sending a ray of light into the skunky back room of some thrift store, and you'd fall upon an album you just knew was the real thing. Not Frumious Bandersnatch, though - their only contemporary release was an e.p. on the Muggles Gramophone Works micro-label in '68 which attained mythic status. Official release of any kind would have to wait until '96, when Big Beat served up a slew of great tracks, but not the e.p., in a generic cover that screamed archival release and a title (A Young Man's Song) more suited to a Rod McKuen album. I pimped it up as Black Box with a band shot that tells us everything we need to know (basically, that these guys would eat blotter from a police desk).

Golden Sons Of Libra, another collection of previously unknown material, again without the e.p., turned up in 2003. I've added the e.p. tracks as a politeness to the consumer, but left the cover (the original Muggles Gramophone masterpiece) alone.

Band members went on to fame and success with Steve Miller, Journey, Faun, or avoided both in the unjustly obscure and soon-to-be-FoamFeatured™ Bonaroo.

What was far out is far out. What was Furthur is Furthur.

 

Paradise Crossed & Rossed

 

England, 1972. In the rain. Keith Cross and Peter Ross wanted out. "A new start, somewhere in the sun." Somewhere turned out to be Nassau, in the Bahamas. "Chris Blackwell was thinking of setting up a studio there, so he flew us all out to test the vibe." At Compass Point, the gray U.K. seemed a world away, and the sessions effortlessly produced a blissful, one-of-a-kind album.

Maybe predictably, the summery, airy feel didn't connect with rain-soaked Brits,  and Blackwell was forced to offload the project to Decca, who repackaged and retitled the album in a hope to catch the wave of prog gloom. "We went from Hawaiian shirts to greatcoats, for nothing. The press department concocted this story about us falling out, because Brits love that, but we could do nothing about the music, which nobody understood. Still don't."

So here it is, as it should have been, direct from the shores of Th' Isle O' Foam© to you, wherever you are. Surf's up.

Phyllis Diller's Step-In Bath Of Psychedelia™ Dept.

Hauntingly lifelike Foam-O-Graph™renders reality obsolete

 

You'll know wacky, sassy gagstress Phyllis Diller from her hilarious appearances on long-running Conelrad show It's Diller Time! - but did you know she's a passionate collector of obscure-type rock vinyl? That's right, subscribers! And she brung a couple favorite elpees to share with th' Four Or Five Guys©!

FT3 Heyyy Phyllis! Look at you looking great!

PD Suck my dick!

FT3 Ha ha! What obscure albums have you brung across the vast blue Pacific in your Step-In Bath of Psychedelia™? 

PD Fuck off! 

FT3 Ha ha! Well - no, really - let's do this again some time! Promise me!

PD Shit through your dick-ho- [tape ends abruptly - Ed.] 

Luckily, I was able to wrest the albums from her claw-like grip before a rip tide carried her away. They're by Syrinx, who are like out of Canadia ("The Mexico Of The North") and there is more than somewhat of experimental-type electronics involved, only being Canucks it's all tastefully done, nothing to give you acid reflux.

Such was the success of the first album they opened for trumpet-botherer Davis on his Bitches Brew tour, only he was too busy slapping people around in the dressing room to hear them. Syrinx's lone single Puck's Away! was theme to Canadian National Radio's weekly ice hockey round-up, charted briefly in greater Toronto area.

Cover of second album [left - Ed.] shows exact moment Summer of Love reached Canadia, winter of '71.

 

Foam-O-Drome© Presents Dept. - 100 Greatest Top Ten Movies You Must See Before You Die Ever

 

Le Trou [Fr. The Hole - Ed.] is sometimes referred to as noir, because it's black and white, and about a bunch of crooks, although jailbreak movie is perhaps a more accurate genre niche. There's a gritty, documentary, real-time intensity to it, but the quality that raises it from any genre categorisation into greatness is its humanity. It's a message movie, but not spoon-fed by a focus group checking off diversity issues. And when you get the message, quietly delivered in the very last seconds, you never forget it. 

Dig.

Let Your Woman Flow To Her Own Natural Rhythm Dept. - Chi Coltrane

This here uber-rare album has been kindly donated by Four Or Five Guy© Nathan Nothin' ("I dig chix!"), and is presented @320, for all you bat-eared wine-sippers out there who use words like soundstage without cringing. Not only does the recording feature frequencies outside the range of human hearing - the kind you like - there are also hi-res scans of the album sleeve and inner bag and other good shit you'll need an electron microscope to appreciate! Hoo boy! But what of the music? As always, we cluster at the feet of The Amish Schoolma'am Of Rock Critics for his wise summation:

"A remarkable percentage of female singer-songwriters resemble movie stars, at least on their album jackets, which makes me wonder whether companies sign them because they sing and write. There's a hit single to go with the flowing blonde hair here. It's a humdrum r&b rip-off that's about as catchy as the Buffy Sainte-Marie imitation, which makes it better than the rest. C-" 

Well, Bob has a problem with good-looking, rich people who make records - especially if they're women. I wonder why that is? Resentment, you say? You're not suggesting that he's denying his inner woman with movie star looks and flowing blonde hair who makes records? Hmm. You'll make your own mind up about the album, but I'll just say it's swell, like all the music you find on th' IoF©, and if you have any other records by Chi, frisbee 'em over!

 

Secrets Of Th' Isle O' Foam© Dept. - Randy Randomguy's Lair Of Love™!

Just past the Mini-Golf of Mindfulness©, hidden behind the Karmic Kar Wash®, lurks Randy Randomguy's secret Lair of Love™! Let Randy tell us about it in his own words!

"Fkuug aslaa lfcy kf oao ri. Jlae xdi -"

Wo-ah there, Randy! Maybe not your own words! Let's try English!

"Ha ha, Farq! Okay! I was saying that I am legendary among the ladies for my love-making prowess. I have elevated the animal act of reproduction beyond the carnal, above even the mystic realm of Tantric sex, to an experience which delivers an orgasmic stream of ecstasy too intense for the frail feminine psyche to survive!"

Wait a minute, there, Randy! Are you telling us that ... what are you telling us?

"My boudoir [above - Ed.] is scientifically designed to overcome woman's natural resistance, and then to amplify her response to my manly urging to unimaginable levels of sexual pleasure, which will totally overwhelm her physical being! She will become a distilled essence of ecstasy, which I will bring to market guided by the wise counsel of famed Madison Ave. ad agency Furshlugginer, Potrzebie & Kvetch."

Ri-ight! So exactly how many women have, uh, you know ...

"Well, Farq, let's just say the Lair Of Love™ is open for business! I'm asking all the eager beavers out there to take a ticket and wait in the yard!"

Okay - so, basically, the seal on that box of Trojans© remains unpopped?

"Early days, Farq! Would you mind moving along, fella? Expecting a carload of cuties any minute now ... don't want to embarrass you! Nothing personal!" 

Before I tactfully withdrew, Randy was kind enough to give me a copy of his Soundtrack to Seduction, which you'll find in the comments!

Enter Th' Kabbalistical World Of Tony Kosinec! Dept.

You'll know Tony Kosinec from his forthright espousal of ancient mystic art Th' Kabbalah, but did you know he cut some swell albums back in the day? What's that you say? Well, the same to you, fella!

Traditional practitioners believe Th' Kabbalah's earliest origins pre-date world religions, forming primordial blueprint for creation's philosophies, religions, sciences, arts, political systems an' suchlike - and you have the gall [unmitigated - gall is always unmitigated - Ed.] to tell I, Farquhar Throckmorton III, to blow it out my ass?

This is the last time I try to educate youse bums in th' Hidden Arts. Here's his first couple albums - gee - are they ever swell!

Secrets Of Th' Isle O' Foam© Dept. - Bitrate Conversion Facility

The IoF© mail room is oft-times flooded with damn fool requests from th' Four Or Five Guys© (no, Kreemé will not oil up for your "camera club"), but occasionally we get technical enquiries we're only too pleased to answer! Sparky Pencilhouse Jr., out of Greasefield, MI [below - Ed.] wants to know more about our world famous Bitrate Conversion Facility™ [above - Ed.]. Glad to help, Sparky!  This state of the art facility is where bloated, unsustainable audio files are lovingly honed down to a slender, willowy @192 and given a coat of marine varnish before being featured in a feature. Why @192? Glad you asked, youngster! Mainly because @128 looks cheap. But also because major religious leaders throughout the ages have espoused this zesty and resilient bitrate, and if @192 was good enough for Christ Jesus, it's good enough for us, by crikey!

In rare hand-tinted daguerreotype reproduced above [above - Ed.], lab technician Professor U. U. Gefiltefish autoclaves priceless original mint vinyl copy of Kind Of Blue (mastered by Bernie Grundman) during conversion to precious digital data! The ever-inquisitive Sparky asks, "Is it necessary to destroy original in order to provide quality listening experience for bunch of kvetching yahoos, Professor?"

"Heck no," Gefiltefish chuckles, "but it sure is fun! Whoops! There she goes!"

Looking for a rare or collectable collectible, or perhaps that Hall n' Oates album some lap dancer boosted from your trailer home kegger? Make a request in the comments and we'll get back to you!

 

 

 

Ladies And Gentlemen Dept.

This is pretty much what it says on the tin - Fully Finished Studio Outtakes. Fifty of the buggers. I say pretty much because you'll hear some obvious demo/studio jamming material here, but mostly they're finished (or nearly so) songs. JCC, who found them in a shoebox under a motel bed in Kankerville, DE, has this to say: 

"From what’s being termed as a ‘Japanese Fan Club release’, a new 3 CD set is being touted. Judging by the track list, a few have already have been released, there are many that haven’t and are making their premier. Scanning the tracklist below, this set could be as thrilling as ‘Foxes In The Boxes’ or ‘Static In The Attic’ for new and polished great sounding Stones outtakes. Enjoy @320"

So our thanks to JCC, and all the copyright-dodging ganefs before him who made this possible.

Lee Sklar's Beardful O' Bass Dept.

Lee Sklar played on every rock album ever made. This is a fact (do your own research). Sometimes he was invited. Sometimes he just showed up and plugged in. The time he disrupted The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper sessions is legendary. "They shit themselves, th' wusses!" laughs Lee today from secret hideout the Sklar Dome® high above L.A. [see charmingly inept photomontage, left - Ed.]

In what promises to be a promising feature featured here at famed False Memory Foam Island©, every week Sklar will be teasing us with a glimpse of an album he's hiding in his beard!

"My beard is super-sized on account which I keep library copies of everything I ever played on in there. Which is like, everything." Can you identify this week's record, fight fans?

Foam-O-Drome© Presents Dept. - Don Siegel's "The Lineup"

By 1958, the public, and the moviemakers, had pretty much done with noir as a genre. But Don Siegel hadn't. He and screenwriter Sterling Silliphant just got in under the line with this relatively little-known masterpiece. What's it got that's fantastic? Truly psychotic bad guys in hats. Placeholder detectives in overcoats. Cars with fins. Insanely great S.F. location shooting. Violence that hurts. And a smart, but not pleased with itself, script.

The climax, through the iconic Sutro's [above - Ed.], then in its last days as an ice rink, and onto the twisted perspectives of an unfinished highway, has all the cramped urgency of dream - there is no way out.

Some internet voices describe The Lineup as "little" for some reason - "a great little movie" - but there's nothing little about it. Siegel wrapped up the genre and set the scene for the wave of tough cop action movies to follow. Bullitt wouldn't have been the same without it.

Great Classics O' Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - George Herriman

 

A god among men, back when bein' a newspaper man was everything you wanted it to be. Lookit this swell rotogravure of George, pretendin' to be dozin' at his desk! Haw! The scamp! Note hat, weskit. Guys dressed swell in them days, not like bums like today. Note litter, piles of paper all over. No antiseptic paperless offices back then. It was all paper - blooming like flowers on the newsstands today, swept away like dead leaves tomorrow. George turned up, sat down, inked a strip, went for lunch. No boss lookin' over his shoulder. Tell me that's not the best job in the whole damn world!

Krazy Kat was his most famous creation, and at its glorious full-color height attained Art, as pop culture can, Art with an unashamed capital A, to amaze and raise the spirits, little stained-glass windows filtering the light of god.