Kreemé Clickbaits Dept. - Sideshow

©Foam-O-Graph - note superstructure balancing compression and tension

 

Kreemé [19 my ass - Ed.] has been busy these last few months designing a complex series of suspension bridges linking the Faroe Islands. "There's like a bunch of these islands, out in the ocean someplace, and I kinda saw them as like beads on a necklace? With the bridges as the string? That was my concept which with my engineering skills I was able to envisage."

The resourceful marine biologist and Senior Cultural Outreach Officer here on th' IoF© is currently crowdfunding the project, with nearly three hundred dollars already donated by a bunch of skeevy seniors international investment financiers. "It's mainly for the sheeps," she said yesterday. "They'll be able to, like, commute to other islands, which is sustainable."

So - what, you ax, has all this to do with today's unjustly obscure music recording? You gots us there, smart guy! Sideshow have been FoamFeatured™ antecedently, but as a sidebar to a piece on Paul Giovanni, so youse bums may have missed it, what with your ADD issues. Anyway, Joe came up on shuffle yestiddy and I ejaculated gee whiz! this is one swell album which th' Four Or Five Guys© will be proud to spin for their confreres at Jizzy's Tickle Klub, by George!

 

 

 

Mystery Guest Dept. - Popskidoo!

Note Robin Williams, John Phillip Law, Groucho Marx. Note hippie decor. Enough noting, awready.

 

The estate of our Mystery Guest has bloodhounds snuffling all over the internet for copyright infringement. Willard (of Wormhole memory, although I dug him more back in the old Never Get Out Of The Boat days) ran a swell website (For The Love Of Harry) entirely devoted to him; a labor of love, offering lo-def mp3 and a ton of rare stuff, articles, clips, photos ... everything the fan could want. It was a model of how the music business should be exploiting the internet - beautiful to look at, fun to read, and a potentially dynamite sales portal. But no. The lawyers tunneled down his throat with wirecutters. So he just shut the store and the subject was verboten (in his own words - "I'm not a people person").

All of which is a preamble to this here FoamFeature© on one of the most talented and frustrating pop artists ever to tremble his tonsils at a microphone. A couple of his more obscure waxings - the soundtracks shewn (unsearchably) hereunder - and maybe some more cryptically enveloped in the comments.

From smart pop to crooning, he delighted and delivered, never falling into pastiche [type of beer nut - Ed.]. But he was happy to fall into Lennon's poisoned chalice, a bottomless well of damage. Drunks can't think straight, leave alone walk, and Harry staggered on until 1993, when his beat-up heart finally gave up the fight.

Features extry disc of demos!

Features nightmare Carol Channing track!

 

 

 

This post made possible in part thru th' ægis of Sitarswami. Jaigurudev, hombre!

Old Indie Burial Ground Dept. - Nothing Painted Blue

Graveside refreshment awaits respect-paying FT3 [left - Ed.]! ©Foam-O-Graph Corp.

Answering the needs of Young People Today® and keeping up with their latest musical "fads" has always been high on th' IoF© agenda! So hold on to your seats, teens n' tweens! We're on a giddy goatcart ride to th' Old Indie Burial Ground with today's crest-o'-th'-zeitgeist post featuring the Nothing Painted Blues!

Listen! Their music says - Stand aside, Woody Woodmansey's U-Boat! Back off, Beck, Bogert & Appice! We're the Now Wave of Pop and we've got something to say!

The Nothings, as their adoring fans affectionately call them, still get together when their busy schedules as corporate lawyers allow. 

They're a bunch of wise-acres, basically, you can tell from the lyrics. Joey Burns - out of Canadia - went on to form Calexico, after failing his Bar Exam.

What sets these dudes apart from regliar indie landfill bands is weapons-grade intelligence and a sense of humor drier than a camel's nutsack. And they occasionally hit on a swell tune, too. So leave us pay our respects at th' Old Indie Burial Ground for The Nothings!

This post proudly sponsored by Buckeye Bongs©, the bong you think of when you see a dwarf and a goat.

 

 

 

 

TL-DR Dept. - Glittering Nights Down Southend High Street

Sir Bendigo Wonglepong pops his IoF© cherry with this, the longest message in a bottle ever to wash up at Foam Bay. I ain't read it, on account which I'm too busy descaling my bellybutton, but dollars to donuts it's swell!

If you were a kid in the 1960s [writes Sir Bendigo - Ed.] and lived in the provinces, package tours were the only way you would get to see famous pop stars. Sure, you could see people in pubs and clubs who were slightly famous or going to be famous one day (or not). I saw the Animals and the Downliners Sect at the Night Scene club in Westcliff-on-Sea. Every Saturday night you could see local heroes the Whirlwinds and the Monotones at the Elms in Leigh, and as long as you stayed out of the way of the Canvey Island teds who flocked there from their bleak island you were fine. (The Whirlwinds mutated into Force Five and finally, in a last desperate grab for psych greatness, Crocheted Doughnut Ring.) But if you wanted to see the sort of people even your mum had heard of, you had to head to the Odeon. At the time no big American stars could play the UK unless a British artiste of similar standing went over to the States in exchange – a rule imposed, I presume, by the Musicians’ Union. Since such UK artistes were thin on the ground, you rarely got to see an American until the British Invasion made a nonsense of the rule. It was pretty much all Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith and so on.

So, package tours. (Nothing to do with the Chippendales.) Promoters like Larry Parnes and Tito Burns would bundle their often-teenage boys and girls into a bus and send them off round the country to play the cinema network for weeks on end. Depending on the size of the bill the acts would get anything up to 20 minutes twice a night to do their stuff, and then it would be on to the next town. The punishing schedule would doubtless be made up for by lots of larking about.

The curious thing about these tours was that for every big name you actually wanted to see you had to suffer three or four small or no-names you’d never heard of or had no interest in. What follows then is a list of acts I’ve seen play live at the Southend Odeon that you’ve either never heard of or forgotten about. I’m indebted for the gruesome details I had forgotten to the extraordinary Bradford Timeline site (bradfordtimeline.co.uk/music.htm), a huge list of package tours between 1955 and 1967, complete with dates, venues and bills plus loads of scanned programmes, put together so we didn’t have to by someone with too much time on his hands.

Rock ‘n’ Trad Spectacular: The New Noise of 1960 (October 12, 1960)

This was the Larry Parnes crowd. The main attractions were Billy Fury and Joe Brown, but you also got Johnny Goode (‘Great new singing discovery’), Johnny Gentle (‘Philips young singer-composer’), Peter Wynne (‘The Golden voice of the 1960s’) – and none other than the 17-year-old Georgie Fame (‘Singing pianist sensation’). They were all backed by Jimmie Nicol and the 15 New Orleans Rockers with Red Price – the same Jimmy Nicol who was to be a temporary Beatle a few years later. I don’t suppose any of the Rockers had been any closer to New Orleans than the corner of Archer Street, but no matter, it was all loud and live and the 13-year-old me loved it.  My main memory is of Billy Fury singing Wondrous Place in front of the curtain with a fag on and wearing a Burberry mac.  Very moody, very never alone with a Strand.

https://youtu.be/Q-sOU89nVBc

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157629228736933/with/6840532273/

The Shadows (December 16, 1960)

Having just learned to pick out Apache on my cheesecutter Lucky 7, this would have been a big deal. They would have played Man of Mystery as well. No gorgeous Fiesta Red Strats to be seen in the programme, strangely. Less of a big deal were Freight Train hitmakers Chas McDevitt and Shirley Douglas, the not-yet-famous Frank Ifield, Dave Sampson and the Hunters and the Landis Brothers, an act so obscure they aren’t even on Discogs. Google thinks you mean The Blues Brothers.

https://youtu.be/e4BJif5Q7Tc

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157627608064008/

Cliff Richard & the Shadows (February 17, 1961)

Cliiiiff!! And more Shads, as practically nobody called them except Brian Matthew. I remember hearing screaming – presumably for the first time – and nothing else. Also, more Chas ‘n’ Shirley, more Dave Sampson, England’s Everly Brothers the Brook Brothers, and mildly groovy Hammond organiste Cherry Wainer (she played the organ in Lord Rockingham’s Eleven on Oh Boy!). The whole lot was compered by Norman ‘Swinging!' Vaughan.

https://youtu.be/rnyhfqaqm2I

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157626215216410/

The Allisons, Ronnie Carroll (April 9, 1961)

Very odd one, this. The Allisons were briefly famous for coming second in the Eurovision Song Contest with Are You Sure? But 1962 it was all over – turns out they weren’t even brothers. Kuh. Can’t imagine wanting to see them, or Ronnie ‘Ring-a-Ding Girl’ Carroll either. Mike Preston went to Australia and turned up in Mad Max 18 years later. As far as the internet is concerned Michael Hill, with what the programme insists is his ‘new sound’, never existed, although for some reason I have a dim memory of a harpsichord.

Perhaps it was twangy guitars I was after. The Hunters, Rhet Stoller and the Strangers and the Krew Kats were all trailing in the wake of the Shadows. The Krew Kats’ lead guitarist was none other than the legendary Big Jim Sullivan, while bass and drums, both called Brian, later made it into the actual Shadows.

https://youtu.be/hDohphdDsG4

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157626097133157/

Johnny Burnette, Gary US Bonds, Gene McDaniels, Walthamstow Granada, May 13, 1962)

Some rare Americans, and a rare bus trip out of town. If we’re honest, both Burnette and Bonds were on the way down (though Bonds was rediscovered by the Boss in the 80s), and McDaniels had never had a hit in Britain – both his US hits were blown out of the water by Frankie Vaughan, of all people. Still, they were American, and had made some great records, and were famous – unlike Danny Rivers, Roly Daniels and the Four Kestrels. But: turns out that the Kestrels contained Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, later to foist You’ve Got Your Troubles, I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman, Melting Pot and I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing on a grateful nation. 

https://youtu.be/LgWHDH0Ypps

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157632107170208/with/8220162575/

Joe Brown, Eden Kane, The Tornadoes (February 15, 1963)

Bit puzzled by this one, too – another Larry Parnes extravaganza. Feels like I’d already moved on from this mob, though I always liked Joe Brown – still do. Was it the appeal of Shane Fenton & the Fentones, or the Sun Arise hitmaker Rolf Harris, or bubbly songstress Susan Maughan, who as the only woman on the bill probably spent a lot of time keeping out of Rolf’s way? Or the quartet of new Larry Parnes finds: Daryl Quist, Peter Lodge, Mike and Tony Nevitt and the Diggeroos, of all of whom it has been said, Who? Who knows?

https://youtu.be/9IDz_swnUIA

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157626161261375/

The Beatles, Roy Orbison, Gerry & the Pacemakers (May 31, 1963)

Now we’re talking!  The Fabs sang Some Other Guy, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Love Me Do, From Me to You, Please Please Me, I Saw Her Standing There and Twist and Shout. The Big O was supposed to be top of the bill, on after the Beatles, but that turned out to be impossible, such was the hysteria. Tonight’s also-rans were David Macbeth, skankin’ Erkey Grant and the Earwigs, Ian Crawford and the I’m Just a Baby hitmaker Louise Cordet, who is the Duke of Edinburgh’s goddaughter, fact fans. 

https://youtu.be/AvSb03jU6-Y

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157626160966281/

The Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley, the Rolling Stones (October 3, 1963)

Package tour heaven. The Everly Brothers (backed by the Crickets, no less), Bo Diddley (plus the Duchess and Jerome) and the Rolling Stones, still in their leather waistcoats with only Come On to their name. Two days later, on October 5, the tour was joined by Little Richard, dammit! Mickie Most did his best, poor lamb, but he couldn’t hack it in this company. Unaccountably I remember him lying on his back waving his legs in the air singing Sea Cruise. 

https://youtu.be/mf2hZIH_cPQ

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157631420595794/with/7936989944/

The Beatles, December 9, 1963

A bunch of us queued in shifts for this from Friday after school until Sunday morning, when the box office opened. Our reward was front-row seats, which wasn’t a comfortable place to be as it turned out – the moment they came on the stage the girls rushed the stage en masse, down the aisles and clambering over the seats too. Fortunately, the management had thought of this and hired the Southend Judo Club to lower them into the orchestra pit, where what seemed like half the audience sat the performance out looking up Beatle noses. Still couldn’t actually hear the Fabs for the noise. There were stories about rows of seats being ruined by hysterical girls letting go.

The irrelevances that had to be sat through were the Brook Brothers (again), the Kestrels (again), the Rhythm and Blues Quartet and your compere Frank Berry (‘Canada’s “Mad Man of Magic”’).  There were always comperes, and they were always a pain in the arse because they persisted in trying to entertain us, the poor deluded fools.

https://youtu.be/UAH1z9ebn6A

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157631776244742/with/8090515237/

Roy Orbison, Brian Poole & the Tremolos (May 1, 1964)

This was down to my new girlfriend, who was a raving fan of Roy Orbison, so much so that we had to loiter outside the stage door for ages so she could get his autograph. So that was all right – Only the Lonely, Running Scared, Blue Bayou, In Dreams – which hadn’t yet acquired the sinister implications David Lynch conferred on it.  I had no time for Chris Sandford and the Coronets, Tony Sheridan with the Bobby Patrick Big Six (though there was the German Beatle connection, so that was something), the Federals, the Three Quarters – and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, eek! Or indeed Brian Poole & the Tremeloes.

https://youtu.be/hakF-hUT7PU

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/albums/72157666184781161/with/25395014233/

Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, The Animals (May 29, 1964)

I got Carl Perkins’s autograph on my programme – had it for years until I sold it on eBay. I really wanted Chuck Berry’s too, but he was nowhere to be seen after the show. Pretty good night out though, not that I remember anything of course. But Animals, Nashville Teens…The Swinging Blue Jeans were supposed to be on the bill, but they were booted off halfway through the tour ‘due to adverse audience reaction’ it says here – to be replaced by Bern Elliott and the Fenmen. The shame! Talking of shame, a mere three years later I was in a band that played a summer ball at Hertford College in Oxford. The SBJ were also on the bill – they were paid £40; we were paid £60 (a mate of mine was the Ents Sec.). Also on the bill back in ’64 were The Other Two, two fierce-looking women who were ‘discovered while singing over the washing up by Charles Blackwell’, according to the programme. A likely story. One of them, Jemima Smith, was later married to Duane Eddy according to a bloke on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/OQHCW2drLxs

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157626098023455/with/5509466212/

Among the acts I didn’t see during these years were Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent (who seemed to have been on at the Odeon every other week), Duane Eddy, Inez and Charlie Foxx, Little Richard, The Shirelles, The Ronettes, Robert Horton (‘star of TV’s Wagon Train’) …one glorious night in 1962 I missed Nina & Fredrick, Malcolm Mitchell & His Trio, Daisy May & Saveen, The Harmonichords (who became The Bachelors), Joe Church and The Two Tones. Hey ho!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157626302930513/with/5588842169/

 

Sir Bendigo [Real Name Reviewer] is currently The United Kingdom Of England's Cultural Attaché to Fernando Po. A keen frotteur, his Bovine Husbandry In The Low Countries 1830-1837 (7 vols.) remains the standard textbook on the subject.

 

 

We're The Young Generation, And We've Got Something To Say Dept.

Micky Dolenz's new album Dolenz Sings Nesmith is wayyy better than anyone had the right to expect. Everything about it is just ... perfect. You should add to cart immediately, because it's the type of thing you like, with the quality you demand.

Let's start with the song choice - just jaw-droppingly informed, hip, and made me raise a thin fist accompanied by a wheezy right-on croak. I couldn't have come up with a better program, and neither could you. Wupes, I just ... goddam adult diapers ... brb.

Then there's the man's singing. Dolenz had one of the great pop voices, and it's still there. Is it auto-tuned? Does anybody give a tiny-violin bew-hew any more? Do we kick away an old man's stick as he crosses the road, on account which he's cheating? All I hear is a swell set of pipes for a man any age, leave alone a septua- a septagen - a guy in his seventies.

The real surprise is the production. We have the great voice and the great songs as a given. Think Pisces Aquarius, not Headquarters. It's that good. It sparkles and shines. Detailed, deep, old-school organic, and every song is treated on its merits - no cookie-cutter used here. Christian Nesmith - we salute you, dude.

The root of all this is creativity (and love, leave us not forget). The arrangements are frequently surprising. Re-imagined is the term The Young People use, and for once it's the right one. Dolenz croons, rocks out, has himself a fine old time. Is this the best version of Different Drum I ever heard? It's as good as the original, but startlingly different. Is Circle Sky higher than the original? Yes, it is, a blissful psychedelic haze.

I'd sooner measure the times by the good times than the bad. Coming soon after Nesmith's sublime Lost RCA Recordings, Micky Dolenz is making it a great year.

Doug Henning's Mystic Horns Of Transubstantiation Dept.

©Foam-O-Graph Corp. All rights reserved. Lefts are pretty outgoing, though.

 

Doug hasn't guested on th' IoF© for a while now, on account which he's been prepping swell new prestidigitization! Th' Four Or Five Guys© have long been aware of certain arcane symbols - fetishes, if you will - recurring in visual iconography [Jesus Freaking Christ get on with it - Ed.] of Foam Island™ - symbols holding deep and powerful significance for adepts and initiates!

Premiering spectacular new spectacle here for you, famed T.V. trickster mystically transmutes FoamFetishes® as they migrate etherically from one Horn Of Transubstantiation to the other! And, as exclusive IoF© exclusive, he's thrown FoamFriendly™ album into mix!

Spot album and claim ONE MILLION DOLLARS* tax free! Hoo boy!

*Offer void where prohibited by local law. This post made possible through the ægis of Amalgamated & Consolidated Corp., Hartford, CT. "Bringing excellence to amalgamation and consolidation!™"

Some Steely Dan Content Advisory Dept.

Wilbur and Irving Boylan are largely forgotten today, but their pioneering use of the patented "Boylan Burner"© heat gun quietly revolutionised vinyl upholstery repair in the early 'forties. Terry and John Boylan have no connection with Wil and Irv, but achieved fame and fortune in the pop music industry under the intriguing soubriquet The Appletree Theatre, which had as little to do with one as the other. Those expecting an intriguing amalgam of horticultural and thespian activity from Playback will feel a crushing sense of betrayal.

Where this gets interesting - and it has to, at some point - is that Hall O' Foamer© Rick Nelson recorded some of the Playback songs the previous year  [1967 - Ed.] on his super-swell Another Side Of Rick album [Foamfeatured© antecedently - use the search field, ya lazy bum - Ed.].

Playback had an acknowledged influence on The Firesign Theatre, and may safely be enjoyed in tandem with Howard Robert's Antelope Freeway [also Foamfeatured© antecedently - Ed.] It's a beautiful piece of work, funny, trippy, and unique, and part of its quality is down to first-call sessioners like Larry Coryell, Eric Gale and Chuck Rainey.

"So where do Don n' Walt come in?" I hear you ask in that pinched, nasal tone you have. Well, they're all over Terry Boylan's first solo album, Alias Boona, from '69, which is here, too.

Associative Memory Dept. - Just The Right Sound

Generally, I search thru th' crawlspace, candle in what's left of my teeth, for something that maybe one of th' Four Or Five Guys© ain't heard, or at least for a while. From the backroads by the rivers of my memory, ever gentle on my mind. Generally. Right now, I feel like typing about The Six Or Seven Guys©, because every time they come up on shuffle something catches in this old man's heart - *snurfle*! - and I stop what I'm doing (risky while driving), and ... listen.

The Association escaped hip credibility entirely, which took some effort on their part, because they graduated summa cum laude from Rock Music U., majoring in Bitter End folk, chart-topping pop, psychedelia and country rock. Their imperial years ended with the elegiac swansong of Waterbeds In Trinidad [FoamFeatured© antecedently here - Ed.], leaving not a careless album or worthless song behind them. It had to be their rejection of the Fillmore route for the primetime TV, the Vegas glitter, the poisonous taint of show business. It did them no harm commercially, and behind the scenes they threw themselves into the rock n' roll lifestyle as enthusiastically, as stupidly, as anyone. But nobody who'd actually left home bought an Association album.

The albums, and the singles, have lasted better than many contemporary recordings by more authentic acts. Their associative talents and honed professionalism produced music built to last. And if they couldn't jam to save their lives, they could at least sing a lyric worthy of Robert Hunter:

An old day is coming once again
Young woman leaves the beast
Of never ending sadness
The day grows sleepy and it's
Night

He the barefoot boy
In the earth-green waving fields
Leaves for the city, the stars
Awake and come to the crowd for
The Night

And the orange open glow
And sunset of goodbye is singing
Through woman there's a home
In the heart of man right now
Barefoot gentleman there's a
Woman's hand under the moon
'Neath the moon an ever new light

He the barefoot boy
In the black blindfold of death
Led by a woman within his heart
Finds the city of dark's
Promised land

Barefoot Gentleman, from the sublime Birthday, '68.

Just The Right Sound is the perfect compilation, a map of Main Street and the backroads that you can wander through, preferably barefoot. May that saturated 'sixties sunshine light the hollows of your old heart. It's not over.

Dr. D Investigates Dept. - The Case Of The Purloined Songbook

Four Or Five Guy© Dr. D dropped this into the comments section hoping it wouldn't be pulled. How wrong he was.

Part I: Nottingham

The Maze in Nottingham was the small back room of The Forest Tavern on Mansfield Road. The sort of place which is invariably described as ‘intimate’ and ‘authentic.’ Capacity was a little over a hundred, a third of whom could sit. The rest of us just lined the walls and massed in front of the bar, hoping that no tall bugger was going to block the view of the band on the small riser not 15 feet away. Through the rear door was a small courtyard, toilets off to one side and, opposite, another door with steep stairs behind leading up to a tiny space that performed the function of a dressing room.

Beyond the courtyard, through large double doors you were back out into the cold Nottingham night air and on Peel Street, where the women who work late would look at you quizzically before their attention was drawn to a slow-moving car, window down and the shadowy figure within.

The Forest, and with it The Maze, has, seemingly like much of the inner city, since fallen prey to the endlessly rapacious appetite for student accommodation. But prior to its repurposing it was by far the city venue that I would most often frequent to see live music.

And the reason for that was simple – my friend Jim would indulge his love of what’s variously called Americana, Alt. Country, No Depression, Roots-Rock or whatever nebulous term doing the rounds this week is, and book visiting American bands. With only a hundred or so tickets available margins were, to put it mildly, tight. Most times Jim would end up subsidising the show but every so often he’d sell enough to make up those outlays and more. And I like to think I helped to minimise Jim’s subs. But the truth is I was treated to many more memorable shows than not – Chuck Prophet would have been one of Jim’s decent pay-dates; the place was rammed, heaving and the condensation ran down the walls. Sally Timms, Kelly Hogan and The Waco Bros put on what seemed more of a revue than a gig. It didn’t seem to want to stop. Jim used to save money by putting up the acts at his home when he could but that night, due to the numbers, The Waco Bros slept on my floor. They seemed so intimidating on stage, so charming eating breakfast off their knees in my living room the next morning. Chris Mills in front of 20, Curtis Eller with even fewer, Peter Bruntnell with a very young James Walbourne in the band, Bap Kennedy, Chip Taylor with Carrie Rodriguez, Bob Cheevers, The Guthries, Andrew Bird, Hawksley Workman, Gene Parsons, Dan Bern, The Coal Porters… 

But I’m going to tell you about Ryan Adams.

Back, way back before he was persona non-grata, back even before he was famous – at least over here. Back to November 2000, a year after Whiskeytown had folded and his first solo album, Heartbreaker, had been released just a couple of months earlier. He’d come to Europe to promote the album and his first stop was Nottingham [not a big college town - Ed.]. The Maze was pretty much full, and expectations were high amongst a crowd who held Stranger’s Almanac and Heartbreaker in high regard. Listening back to the tape now it’s clear though that Adams was a bit nervous, he didn’t really settle into the set but gave a professional, if somewhat hesitant, performance. In my view, always the professional; Ryan Adams’ shambolic personae is more a tribute to his hero Keith Richards than it is an accurate reflection of his personality. Ryan Adams has always hungered after fame and was adept at manipulating his image and charisma and dangerous charm to this end. Welded to his undoubted talent he didn’t really have to go looking for fame, it came searching for him. And so it was on this November evening back in 2000, despite this strange uncertainty and diffidence he won over the room filled with people willing him to succeed and to be there at the beginning of something.

And at some point in the evening, in the sweet, sweaty fug of cigarette smoke and spirits, of beery breath and craning necks, someone stepped out into the courtyard, slipped up those steep stairs [see first para for set-up - Ed.] and stole Ryan Adams’ song book.  

Part II: Leicester

So there are lots of pubs like The Forest Taven, lots of back rooms like The Maze, up and down the UK, which provide a decent circuit for these exotic tourers. Nottingham, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds… but the next night, Ryan Adams’ second solo gig outside of The States, was going to be in Leicester. It’s only 20 miles away and I could get Jim to get me a ticket seeing as though he knew the promoter down there.

Leicester, like a great many provincial cities in the UK has been gifted by the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe and the City Planning Dept. with a nightmarish one-way system of ring roads and dual carriageways, flyovers and underpasses none of which are adequately signed. Consequently, I arrived at The Musician just as Adams was walking out on to the stage.

And he was pissed off.

He opens the show with Dear Thief, a song he wrote that day (not just before the show as he claimed but earlier that afternoon at Jim’s house) about the theft of his Songbook. His abilities as a songwriter are obvious, and perhaps surprisingly the lyric suggests a degree of self-awareness that seems to have deserted him over the subsequent years.

But whether this act of catharsis energised him or if was the day spent relaxing with Jim’s wife and young daughter – listen to his intro to My Winding Wheel (5 years later Beth was a bridesmaid at my wedding) – or whether it was not travelling or perhaps he was simply more up for it on this particular night, but gone is the nervousness and uncertainty of Nottingham. This night he really connects and gives an outstanding performance of much of the Heartbreaker album, but also newer songs not yet then recorded and even stretches back to his Whiskeytown material.

He finished the show with a second and markedly more polished outing of Dear Thief. As far as I’m aware the song was played one more time in Sheffield the following evening and that was it. Never heard again. I suppose if you’re a prolific a songwriter as Adams is there are a great many songs that get taken up, tried out only to be cast by the wayside.

The two shows are both presented here for you – they are to my knowledge unavailable anywhere on the internet other than the first performance of Dear Thief which was posted to YouTube a decade ago by someone. These are taken from the soundboard and other than some minor snipping here and there to excise mumbled and muffled comments, longueurs and tuning they are unexpurgated.

Finally, I can confirm Adams did get his Songbook back. Jim had a fair idea who took it, and the individual didn’t need much persuading to return it. It’s true that some people are so desperate to be there at the start of something big that they’ll do something quite out of character to somehow be a part of it themselves.

And no, if you’re wondering, it wasn’t me.

Dr. D is the pseudonym of a veteran character actor seen in UK TV shows Jerry's Shed, The Pringle Years, and Ooh Missus! (with Thora Hird), before moving to Hollywood for cult movies Rogue Pastor II, Siamese Twincest, and Electronic Jet Robot Patrol (with David Hasselhoff).

"With The Albums, Enough Already!" The John Zorn Story

Edgy, tune-dodging John Zorn has a place in the Guinness Book Of Records for releasing the most albums in a year - four hundred and twenty-three in 1988 [are you sure this is right? - Ed.]. Makes Ryan Adams and latter-day Van Morrison look like pikers, and the Grateful Dead's archival program seem undernourished. I guess if you don't have to fill the albums with whistleable melodies, danceable rhythms and rhyming lyrics ...

So if you're unfamiliar with the man's œuvre [Fr. Egg - Ed.], where do you start? And who gives a flying one? Easier to shrug and walk away. It's not like there's nothing else to listen to - you're only up to Disc Two in that 81-disc King Crimson The Complete Soundchecks '69-'72 box set.

But then you'd miss this swell album. You should leave it at this, though. No point wading into the bottomless tar pit of his discography hoping for more of the same - this is as good as he gets. Featuring Albert Collins, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Big John Patton, and Robert Quine, it's at once avant-garde (I suppose) and entertaining. Even collegiate wankers The Kronos Quartet and Bill Frisell (hurrah! now the party can start!) don't stink things up too much.

Learn this handy screed for when your confreres mention Zorn like you never heard of the guy:

"Zorn? Seriously? Don't you sense a creative bankruptcy, a sterility of form, in his endless semiotics? Oh, I play Spillane from time to time because it amuses me. As to the rest..." [blow cheeks out, small shake of the head].

That should shut the fuckers up.

Push-Button Radio And Cut-Up Culture In The City Of The Angels

William Burroughs knew what was happening before it happened. He sensed the fragmentation, the fissures spreading from some cultural San Andreas Fault, and he did his best to express it with the tools he had - typewriter and scissors.

Teenagers hearing God in rock n' roll didn't wait for salvation, they punched the car radio buttons, cutting up the narrative - we want the world and we want it now. TV remote controls enabled the visual equivalent, an optic restlessness mirrored in avant-garde film editing. It all coincided with the fractured vision of LSD. The confluence, the crucible, the fractal fringe of the fun zone®, was LA pop culture, an alchemical fusion of art and commerce not seen before or since. Maybe the people would be the times.

Three albums reflected and created the times better than most; Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys' Smile, and Zappa's Lumpy Gravy. Recorded simultaneously, each exploiting studio techniques to break the flow, to shuffle and reshuffle the familiar into the unexpected, the bizarre, and the beautiful. And the funny. That's something often forgotten. Jokes are the first to the wall in the kultural putsch - you can see it happening now - woke is no joke. Smile is not a frown. Song Cycle's best gag is that it contains no songs at all. Lumpy Gravy is both a broken mirror reflecting LA, and an extended pants-down snork at its pretensions.

It's also worth noting that none of these albums was inspired by, or referred to, or needed, the "British Invasion," and that the catastrophically over-regarded Beatles were already several steps behind the West Coast. Pepper, played after these, sounds like what it is, a Hallmark greeting card from a week in Hashbury. A little patchouli scenting the toytown vaudeville, but essentially business as usual. These three revolutionary albums blew the business model apart, a new American Gothic, a stained glass window constantly shattering into multi-colored shards.

Song Cycle was originally to be called Looney Tunes, a title that refects its cartoonish playfulness, and I've given it a cover which combines LA's high society with its low humor. Stereo and the RSD mono edition (thanks to Kwai Chang) included.

Smile is the astonishing recreation from the albumsthatneverwere blog, with a slight tweak. This is the stereo version (he has the mono also) but with a complete stereo Heroes & Villains. Sonic replaced the first third with a mono splice because he preferred the vocals - a puzzling mis-step in what is otherwise as perfect a version of this gorgeous work of art as we're likely to hear.

Lumpy Gravy is represented by the 2012 remaster and the Primordial edition. Hotcha!

If I ever have to jettison albums from my hot air balloon to get over the snowy peaks to Shangri-La, these will be the last to go. I may throw myself out with them - I can think of worse ways to go. With a smile on my face!

Bitter Harvest Dept.

Soon after Harvest Records gained momentum in the UK, parent company EMI decided to launch the Prog Rock Masterpiece series in Germany, intended to broaden the appeal of classical music. Wagner's Ring Of The Nibelung was reduced to a double album of highlights and renamed Ringlord to exploit the Tolkien connection. The Wagner estate sued before it left the pressing plant. A few copies escaped destruction, but the series was canceled. Misconceived and misleading, it remains an approachable gateway to Wagner's exhausting opus, and the rarest Harvest release, escaping the attentions of rock collectors.

Mr. T's Yurt O'Yoks© Dept. - Th' Goons

©Foam-O-Graph "It's Like A Monocle For Your Third Eye!™"

 

In what promises to be regliar-type feature featured in IoF© Features Dept. T.V.'s Mr. T from popular cable show Mr. T Pities You! chooses swell comedy-type album from his Yurt O'Yoks™!

For series premiere, Mr. T offers legacy recordings by U.K. Of England radio rascals The Goons! Tell us about it, Mr. T!

"It is well-known that The Goons kept the flag of the English Empire waving through two World Wars before me and the Rat Patrol liberated the world from the evil menace of, uh, whatever we was fighting against! Imagine them poor Limeys - I pity them! - huddled around a bowl of gas ointment in their underground bus shelters and keeping their spirits up by listening to The Goons on th' crystal set! Yes, the wacky, way-out humor of John, Paul, George and Ringo Goon certainly kept that plucky little country going until Uncle Sam and Mr. T arrived, locked n' loaded with gum n' democracy!"

Today's loaddown is twenty shows, presented in original black-and-white radio aspect, playable on any Bakelite™ steam wireless!

Kreemé Presents Diversity Initiative Dept. - Live Gigs What You Can Actually, Like, Remember?

©Foam-O-Graph "For all your Foam-O-Graph Needs!™"

 

One of th' Four Or Five Guys© had a swell notion for a feature to follow the Your Top Two Albums Of All Time feature or whatever it was. That feature garnered over three million page views and just under four thousand comments! These figures are necessarily vague because I made 'em up, but at the very least they serve as an indicator of your enthusiasm.

This year, Kreemé is hosting the Live Gigs What You Can Actually, Like, Remember? feature as part of our groundbreaking Celebrating Diversity initiative here on Fabulous False Memory Foam© Island. Let's listen to her arousingly breathy voice as she explains the rules, adapted to even the meanest intelligence. Which is yours, ya doofus.

"Hey guys! Wassup! Okay, we got a question for you what is like, totally fun! We want to hear about music gigs you went to and can remember? This doesn't mean gigs you think you were at but can't remember for horse puckey, or gigs you've been told you were at, or gigs you like to pretend you went to. Farq saw the Beetles live, and Hendrix [see left - Ed.], but what he can remember about them is like, nothing. He just drools and moves his head from side to side. We want to hear about gigs - swell or stinkers! - what you can still remember clearly. Maybe because you got pulled on stage (or backstage!) Whatevs! We here at th' IoF© value your opinion, and your engagement is important to us!"

As an inducement to join in the fun - as if it were needed! - the Four Or Five Guy© getting the biggest show of hands from the panel of Random Diversity Babes [pictured above - Ed.] will win a Luxury Champagne Hamper Of Some Food!

Oboy! Crack yer knucks and leap into the comments!

Play Some New Dept. - Jupiter Affect

The Jupiter Effect was a 1974 bestseller predicting colossal earthshaking disasters that never transpired; a neat trick, because nobody could ask for their money back either way. Jupiter Affect (in planetary synchrony with another post-Paisley Underground band Viva Saturn) [FoamFeatured® antecedently - Ed.] was a rock group fronted by Michael Quercio, whose strange toybox genius inspired The Three O'Clock, and to a lesser degree, Permanent Green Light, a band that fell a little short of its perfect name.

Apparently a Kick Arse™ live act, they made three records in five years, with Quercio later fronting a reformed O'Clocks to little effect. For those disappointed by Vermillion, the Three's last album, Jupiter Affect's music is a more logical evolution of the sound, although many fans didn't see it that way, disliking the harder edge.

I was a late convert, believing that the Paisley Underground bands had enjoyed their (brilliant) day in the sun. But these two albums and debut e.p. are swell, the strengths clarifying after repeat plays, and deserve better than being considered also-rans. Quercio's voice is a taste acquired by too few, and its setting here in honed psychedelic pop-rock is weirdly affective.

This post made possible by Henry's Bendy Wendy House™ of Knuckleface, MN.

Dancing With Jazz Hands Dept. - You’ve Been Granted An Audience With Betty Carter!

Jack Kerouac's Cat with another helping of Jazz Munchies!

OK Kiddos, here it is, one of the greatest jazz recordings most people have never heard. Many only know Betty Carter from her pleasant duet with Ray Charles, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (a song that gets dragged out by clueless radio programmers every winter) but is atypical of her art. 

Betty loved the improvisational nature of bebop and the vocal stylings of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, and combined them into a unique style of her own.

Early in her career she performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Lionel Hampton. Lionel fired her seven times in two and a half years, claiming he just couldn’t dig vocal improvisation, but in truth she was stealing the show. It should be pointed out this band also included Charles Mingus and Wes Montgomery!
Miles Davis introduced her to Ray Charles.

 
In the mid 1960s, influenced by John Coltrane, she was exploiting extremes of range and flexibility of time. After twenty frustrating years as a professional jazz singer, Betty Carter took the difficult and risky step of starting her own label in 1969, Bet-Car Records, which proved serendipitous for her. Once she was in charge of her own recording, she entered the most productive and successful phase of her career.

Taking cues from Miles Davis and Art Blakey, she loved to use young artists, and encouraged both artistic and career development to the likes of John Hicks, Curtis Lundy, Mulgrew Miller, Cyrus Chestnut, Dave Holland, Kenny Washington and Benny Green to name a few.

The National Endowment for the Arts named her a Jazz Master in 1992, and in 1997 she was awarded a National Medal of Arts by Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky lobbied for Shirley Horn, but Betty won out. Purportedly, Hillary consoled a defeated Monica, “Close but no cigar, dear.” [Oy vey! - Ed.]

The Audience with Betty Carter was recorded on December 6–8, 1979, at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. In 2012, it was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. The songs are divided between her original compositions like “Sounds (Movin’ On),” her 25-minute tour de force of improvisation and scat singing, and an eclectic mix of standards such as “The Trolley Song” and “My Favorite Things”; and more obscure gems such as Charles Henderson and Rudy Vallee’s “Deep Night.” The almost magical rapport Betty had with her musicians got her recognised as a superlative musician during a lean era for jazz singers. Like, digsville!


Piano -John Hicks

Bass - Curtis Lundy

Drums - Kenny Washington on drums (full disclosure: Kenny is a close friend, and Godfather to my daughter)

More Of The Same, But Different Dept. - Th' Dead

Whut we gots here is a swell unofficial repackaging of all the bonus tracks from The Golden Road and Beyond Description box sets, compiled into studio & live sets. The way it should have been done. Bonus tracks are, of course, a marketing scam to get us to repurchase what we already have - like remastering - and I can't think of a Dead album qualitatively improved by them. Or any album, actually - they mostly foul up the original. Pet Sounds with Trombone Dixie tagged on at the end? Fuck off!

Remember that monster container ship that blocked the Suez canal a while back? This is what it was carrying. Two shitloads of quality merchandise. Even the covers [shewn at left - Ed.] are swell, unlike the drooling Crayola rehab art on Dave's Picks.

These guys were just so damn good!

This post made possible thru a grant from the Lupine Assassin Bunny Wabbit Refuge & Lucky Charm Warehouse.

Buyer's Remorse Dept. - Rn'B Sax Players Blow Chunks

Well, that's more than a little unfair. These albums are okay, but like the recently FoamFeatured™ Jim Horn solo albums, they're a tad disappointing. Great Rn'B horn players have great tone, and the bare minimum chops - any more would be clutter. You step up to feature your post-bop chops on an Rn'B gig, you're going to be picking your horn and your hat out of the gutter in the rain.

Clarence Clemons recorded some of the great rock sax solos, after they were hummed to him by Springsteen first. He's not a nimble melodicist, but has tone out th' ass. Peacemaker was a career swerve for him, an atypically meditative set with sparse accompaniment, kinda jazzbient. Not Rn'B in any sense, but barely jazz, either. Full marks for trying to break into the wellness market.

Junior Walker's signature wail sounds like nothing else, and you get some of it (just slightly too much) on Moody Junior, another stylistic break from Rn'B signaled by the "jazz session" styling of the cover (just lacking the Jazz Hat). What you don't get is the technique Mr. Walker needs to break free of technique. Jim Horn, Junior Walker, Clarence Clemons, they all made fantastic contributions to music, perfect for the context they worked in, but they tend to flounder a little outside their comfort zone.

You're going to tell me I'm wrong. I hope.

Castro Parchesi's T.V. Treasure Trail! Dept. - Comrade Detective

Castro Parchesi, star of aisle-end dump-bin fixture The Tire Fire Five, pops his IoF© cherry with swell review of forgotten T.V. series what you can now pretend you always dug. In joining th' Four Or Five Guys©, Parchesi fulfils childhood dream of working for nothing.

Romania, 1983. The Cold War is raging, and Comrade Detective is the country’s top TV show, a gritty crime serial about communist cops who are in over their heads. When loose cannon Anghel sees his sidekick murdered by a psycho in a Ronald Reagan mask, the police captain assigns him a new partner: Iosif Baciu, a by-the-book rural beat officer, and former professional wrestler. Together, they unpick a conspiracy involving assassins, illegally imported Monopoly boards, Western porn, and a trail of dirt that leads right to the US ambassador.

 

Except Comrade Detective was filmed in 2017, a genre experiment bankrolled by Channing Tatum. Conceived as the imagined Soviet response to gung-ho ‘80s movies like Cobra, Comrade Detective sees collectivism, and not the individual, triumph at every turn. This is thanks to the labour-sharing heroics of cops Anghel and Baciu: a pair of brown-jacketed bad-asses who specialise in sliding over Trabant bonnets, explosions, and glugging vodka for breakfast.

 

Anghel is the textbook flawed cop: quick with his fists, permanently unshaven, possibly crazy. He chastises his partner for being a “goat fucker”, and smears cocaine into the faces of dealers who dare sling it on the workers’ streets. 

 

It’s his job to squint his way through the perfunctory plot, which is a grab-bag of buddy cop clichés, and therefore fantastic. On the hunt of the capitalist killer who took out his partner, Anghel not only has to work with his stiff replacement, but also has to link further killings to the dastardly Jordache Jeans corporation (surely the strangest example of product placement ever). They’re flooding the streets with designer denim, determined to bring down communism through use of corrupt ambassadors and religious extremists, i.e. Christians. 

 See left? This actually happened.

 

In a flip on Rocky IV, where the communist menace was imagined as a chiselled, monosyllabic killing machine, the capitalist bad guys of Comrade Detective are obese fast food addicts in golfing slacks. One dream sequence shows Detective Bachu’s childhood trip to New York, where the streets swarm with prostitutes and bankrupt entrepreneurs. Crack-heads try to rob you of your shoes, while bums sing of how they’re infected with HIV. 

 

Comrade Detective keeps you hooked as much with its serial killer story as it does with jokes about indoctrination. Background detectives binge on borscht, not pizza, and an attempt to evade false imprisonment sees Anghel and Baciu disguise themselves as cowboys. “Considering this is how the men of your country dress,” growls Anghel to a US embassy worker, “I’m surprised you have any population growth," while his partner’s milk-maid wife marvels at Bucharest, “The most modern city in the world with its gas stoves and electricity.” 

 

“I heard about this American,” whispers one character in flashback. “He builds skyscrapers in New York City. And he puts his name in gold letters on every building! Imagine that.”

 

“Sounds like an asshole,” replies his roommate. “It takes many men to erect a building. Not just one.”

 

[Castro Parchesi is a freelance Caged Animal Masturbator retained by top zoos and endangered beast collectors worldwide. His autobiography "Castro Keeps 'Em Coming!" has been sent to many famous agents - Ed.]

Great Classics Of Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Comix Named After Great Lakes

We all remember those fabulous Great Lakes magazines of the 'sixties, and the legendary misunderstanding that led to Erie being re-launched as a horror comic. "The artist who did the original cover mock-up [shewn at left - Ed.] totally screwed up," laughs publisher James Warren today from his double-wide on the outskirts of garden resort Nipigon Township. "But everybody loved it, so we added an E to the title and totally changed editorial direction!"

The rest is history.  Now, th' IoF© Library Of Books™ offers the Four Or Five Guys© a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own this swell compendium of the first five issues of the spine-chilling 'zine! Imagine loved ones clustered at your feet as you share much-loved tales of creeping loathsome horror! Imagine confreres' respect as you show off legacy volume in display case or wall safe! Hoo boy! That's some imagination you got, fella!

Mrs. Myra Nussbaum Clickbaits Feature Featuring Guitarists Named After Elevators Dept.

©Foam-O-Graph Corp. (Helen Keller, Founder)

 

Shuggie Otis was born into the wealthy Chicago Otises. His great-great-grandfather Hiram Q. Otis famously invented the elevator by up-ending a streetcar. Several horses died before Hiram incorporated the new electric motor into his design. "Unfortunately," Shuggie laughs today, "there were no multi-story buildings back then, so Hiram had this steel tower in the yard, car going up and down. Folks paid five cents for a ride to the top. He fleeced 'em another nickel to go down!"

It was only with the invention of the skyscraper in the eighteen-eighties that the real money began flowing in. "Folks got tired of walking up and down forty floors pretty damn quick, and anything above second story stayed empty." Soon the Otis Elevator was the most popular public transportation system in the U.S., and the rank of Elevator Pilot First Class (trained by the U.S. Air Force!) was the proud ambition of many a college boy.

But Shuggie, a child of his times, rebelled against his cosseted Ivy League/trust fund background. Turning his back on wealth and privilege, he built a one room country shack a thousand miles from nowhere, and learned to play the blues.

The rest is history, and history, as P.T. Barnum said, is bunk.

(Can't be assed to loadup a bunch of album covers - check comments - FT3)