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!