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| Foam-O-Graph© - The Bastard Child Of Reality And Imagination! |
T.V.'s Sid Slaw [above - Ed.] shot to fame as Fred MacMurray's stunt double for three seasons of N.B.C.'s The Nunkie Bupkiss Show ("I can't remember how many times I tripped over L'il Binkie's wagon!" he laughs today). Now happily retired ("the calls stopped coming - I don't know why" he ruminated yesterday), he divides his time between freebasing with ladyboys and advising major stars of rock, pop, n' roll on where they went wrong.
When diminutive, wily tunesmith Paul Simon dropped by th' Isle O' Foam© recently, Sid was on hand to help! They chatted relaxedly in th' Conversation Pit O' Sound®, whilst Kreemé [19 my ass - Ed.] served Gum n' Olive Flapjacks with Peach Gravy.
SS Hey! Paulie! My man!
PS (silence)
SS So we're here, or rather you are, to learn what you should of done with Bridge On The Waters! Which, believe me, could of been big! A big, big hit album! Just needed a few tweaks, the expert touch of somebody who knew what he was fucking doing - no offence! - and that album could of put you right up there with The Buckinghams!
PS (silence)
SS Okay! Well, I got this checklist - here's your copy, to keep! Let's take it from the top: Frontloading the single? Right at the top of the album? Were you out of your tiny fucking mind? Rhetorical question. Lemme explain, Paulie. Albums is all about pacing. Dynamics. Or - fucking a broad. You don't want to come all over her soon as you drop your shorts, right? Not a good look. You probably know this, right? Ha ha! Trust me, the title song? Bridge On The Waters? This is the great spurting climax of the album! The money shot! After that, you pull out, relax. Smoke a cigarette. Snap off your socks, take a dump, your work is done. So it goes at the end, dumbass. The last track. Everything else is build. Foreplay! You getting this? Going too fast?
PS (silence)
SS Okayy, moving on, your programming is fucked. It's a fucking disgrace. What you do? Throw dice? I've rebuilt the entire album, ground up. But your other big boo-boo, a real humdinger, was putting that Everly Brothers thing in there? What the actual? And live? Was there no-one who had the balls to say, hey, excu-use me, Mr. Simon, but this sounds like shit? Because it totally does. I cut it right out, not too easy because the clapping bleeds all over. No, don't thank me. And I slipped in Feuilles-O, which you say is a demo but it clearly fucking ain't. It's a complete. although minimalist, production, and it should of been on the album. So what we're gonna do is, cue up my version - I think you'll want to get the sleeve reprinted, Simon & Slaw & Garfunkel, and - hey? Where'd he go? Paulie?
Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled water are magnificent works of pop art. None better, few equals. I know the accepted critical stance is to prefer Bookends (same as you'd prefer Revolver over Pepper, if you cared - makes you look discerning), but really there's nothing to choose. I suppose you could strip out the old people taking from Bookends, but it's part of the fabric. Bye Bye Love never sounded right. Sid's version wins.
ReplyDeleteI do suggest you DL this sucker, because a playlist will have applause stubs. This is actually at a swell-sounding 320 (I think), the best-sounding version I could find. All versions that I've heard are a little sibilant, so you may want to roll off the treble.
You wants? Simply join in today's Mass Debate, which is about yer pets. Dogs? Cats? Crabs? What you got, and what are their names. Fess up.
Dachshund named Jack. (Rescue dog but not the first dachshund.)
DeleteGinger tom cat named Django (found on the street as a kitten last year.)
DeleteBlack Lab and Doberman mix named Max
Black cat - Mad Maxi Martin Mandingo Mohammed Ali....nick is Circe
DeleteMy honky Tonkinese snowshoe...(look them up, newer breed) is Ki'ichi-san
I won't get into the two dozen emus, dozen miniature cattle and 8 probably 9 as I write, non-stop f cking alpacas who all have names as well.
Non-Stop Fucking Alpacas (NSFA) is my next band name.
DeleteOr maybe Medeski Martin Mohammed & Wood.
LOL...........put me on the pest list!
Deletemmmph.
ReplyDeleteYou sound like my second wife.
DeleteHera is a 10 year old Golden Retreiver/Border Collie rescue dog and most definitely the favorite of my children (Don't tell the other two less furry ones)
ReplyDeleteMia is a border collie/lab mix...she doesn't care for Arlo Guthrie. Iggy is the cat from hell
ReplyDeleteCurious creatures, cats.
DeleteMany decades ago, a cat chose our house as its own, and wouldn't be dissuaded. We became its slave. Opening doors and windows at the prescribed time, serving the correct brand of food, supplying a comfy chair by the fire. His name was Henry. He died in his sleep at an unknown but advanced age. As much as I loved the old cuss, that's it for me with cats.
DeleteAt one time I had a business partner whose pet theory was that cats are a deviant line within mammalian evolution, having descended more directly from snakes. Asked for evidence he'd simply say, "Look in those slit-pupiled eyes, really look, and you'll know." I think there may be something to it. As Babs notes, they're curious creatures, never actually tamed, charming at times, and demanding almost always.
DeleteI currently serve on the staff for two cats that were foisted on us by our daughter when she buggered off to Java 14 years ago. Both adopted strays, we don't really know their age but are keenly aware of all their wants, whims, and idiosyncrasies. Zahira AKA Miss Pretty has wicked-fast claws for any attendant who fails to guess her grooming preferences. Oliver is a big white tom who hoovers any stray bits of food and loves licking Miss Pretty. But as predictably as showers on midsummer Mexico City afternoons, the love fest quickly devolves into hissing and snarling. Farq, there's always pain when these creatures fade away or worse, but to never share your pad with a non-humanoid and risk the love that nearly always arises, seems a shame.
When I was a kid, my mother wouldn't let me have any pets except a fucking budgerigar, so ever since I've made up for lost time. Highest dog count in our house - six.
DeleteWe also had a damned cat who adapted us -- abandoned in the attached barn of our 1836 farm house in Hadley, MA. Her name was Rupert but we always thought of her as a male dog who chose moles & birds over bones for playing with. Our landlords were evil and known to have drowned cats and Rupert died at a fairly young age after finding antifreeze in the barn that we don't believe was there before. Here's to all our furry friends that have left this mortal coil!
DeleteWe've had a few market dogs, 200 baht each, look after them until they get dead of something (lot to get dead of out here). Currently three; Di-Di, little white house dog, tasks me and my wife morning and evening (we get the bulk of the day off), Cookie, big golden-colored guy, here as a puppy when we built the house, and Nina, floaty-haired lady and Bark Alarm in he small hours. Those two sleep outside.
ReplyDeleteI thought you Siam dwellers ate the poor buggers.
DeleteMy brother-in-law - one of many - lives on a farm out in the boonies (Thailand is 99.999 per boonies), had a dog that barked all night, ate it. My wife can remember when the Lao market (this side of the river) sold dogmeat. But it's not the thing any more. Cani-sseurs of the delicacy should go to China, where their restraint in not eating their own babies is testament to their advanced civilisation.
DeleteTwo cats (Eva and Ivy), and a black Pomeranian pup named Toki.
ReplyDeleteHey -- someone told me it's all happening at the zoo!
I dig the Simon & Garfunkels. I do. Bookends and Bridge are sublime. Fallen from grace these days, of course. Too white and male, perhaps, too collegiate, too melodic, too skilled. And Roy Halee's sound is an architectural marvel in times when The Young People prefer rough log cabins. Because realer.
DeleteYou're a connysewer of album art, Farq: what's with the washed out and grainy cover photo on Bridge that cuts off Art's face? It looks even worse when you compare it to the classy Avedon B&W portrait on Bookends.
DeletePrior to Bridge, album photographers found ways to minimize the difference in height between Artie and Paul (Sounds Of Silence makes clever use of perspective), but the front and back cover pics on Bridge seem to exaggerate it.
I love the cover. The summer of love is long over, and they're on the city street in a hazy shade of winter. Muted palette, sophisticated typography. The visual pun of Simon's hair as Garfunkel's droopy Russian mustache is easily unseen, and there's honesty in showing their respective heights. The photographers are unknown to me, and according to discogs never did anything else, which is curious.
DeleteDid a little digging. The photographers mostly worked on film sets, so they weren't known for album covers. The photo was shot during the filming of "Simon And Garfunkel: Songs For America", a made for TV doc directed by Charles Grodin.
DeleteS&G aren't on a city street: they're walking through a passenger tunnel under LAX. A mosaic by Charles Kratka is on the wall next to them.
Peter Powell and Abbot Mills often worked on film sets together, including on this film: https://drewassociates.com/films/the-sun-ship-game/
Peter Powell's filmography:
https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba043f5cb
I got the info about the location from this list:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Dryden/album-cover-photo-ops/
An article about the murals at LAX:
http://martinostimemachine.blogspot.com/2020/05/charles-kratkas-mosaic-tiles-at-lax.html
Armed with your information, I feel essentially more knowledgable and as a result more interesting as a person. Thank you.
DeleteHaving shared this information, I feel paradoxically both lighter (a responsibility has been discharged) and heavier: because for me, the mustache cannot be unseen. I cannot bridge those troubled waters. I wander restless on the distant shore of disbelief, and I fear that I will never lay me down.
DeleteI offer you this bottle of Moss Beard™ IPA, enriched with kelp extract and shade-grown dingleberries, brewed in the world's tiniest microbrewery by sturdy gnomes, that you may be comforted therewith.
DeleteThank you for the microscopic microbrew. My dingleberries are all a-tingle. I like your "new" cover of BOTW, which swaps the back photo for the front, thereby solving my mustache problem.
DeleteYour cover for Bookends was a poster included with the LP (using another Avedon photo, I believe). Small Paul towers smugly over the bridge, but is still eclipsed by Artie! I'm not prejudiced, BUT (the universal preface for racist or otherwise prejudicial statements) -- I don't want no short people 'round here. j/k
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIn case anybody wonders, I'm 5'10" and magnificently mustachioed. I like IPA's, long walks on the beach, and tall people.
DeleteMe and the 4 or 5 guys were wondering when you'd kick down the yotrak salakchai bootleg cassettes you have on the back porch overhanging the khlong. http://monrakplengthai.blogspot.com/2021/10/yotrak-salakchai-ao-nae.html
ReplyDeleteWhat a great blog! Thank you!
DeleteOkay. Since you reminded me. I assume this is from Thailand on account of the title (and I may have Googled it up once). Accidentally heard it on the radio one day. I usually steer clear of "World Music" show, but this, which turned out to be a 13+ minute electric guitar (I assume) solo, with some kind of non-western percussion is pretty damn good. Way more interesting than "Tell The Truth Jam", for example. Hypnotic, yet energizing.
DeleteKuhn Narin - Lam Phu Thai
https://workupload.com/file/7ZvL449AdbX
I've heard a lot of this live in the streets. There's a hand-pushed metal cart-thing stacked with amps, a guitar player (traditional Thai or, less frequently, Western style), bass, and a percussion ensemble up front. They all play with a completely disinterested attitude, maybe concentrating, because there's always a form there, with shifts and stops I can't anticipate. Sometimes the guitarist has considerable chops, but no guitarist in Siam plays his ego. It all serves the event (whatever that is).
DeleteI'll never forget hearing Gamelan disco at the Porn Ping Palace in Chiang Mai. What an experience! I couldn't sleep...it was too close to my hotel. LOL.
DeleteI asked my wife why music in Siam has to be so loud. She said, "if not loud, not interesting."
DeleteAnd interesting goes up to 11!
DeleteNo pets, now...but back in the Fab Mab days I had crawfish: Broderick and Joan.
ReplyDeleteSOL! (*smirked out loud*)
DeleteLong live Ness Aquino!!! And those spaghetti dinners he fed us musos on! And the On Broadway. I saw Specimen there when they started their Bat Cave shows upstairs.
DeleteCool
I think you two (draftervoi and FGW) know how jealous I am that you attended shows at SF's legendary Mabuhay Gardens, home of Ness Aquino and Dirk Dirksen.
Delete(Life Of Brian Michael Palin voice): "Bwing me Bwodewick!"
DeleteThe aquarium is down to one fish, I think. We have a black lab/poodle mix with an expensive drug habit, but having a veterinarian in the family helps with the cost.
ReplyDeleteI can't disagree with Sid's excising of the Tom & Jerry tune from the LP; I could even go farther, having no real use for "Cecilia". Not that I'm opposed to bouncy hit singles in general, but that's not really why I reach for S&G. There's another song or two with brass overdubs I could do without, but Roy Halee knew what he was doing, I guess.
As for recon-figuring the track order that's fine, but just imagine how much MORE distorted the climax of "BOTW" would have been way down there next to the spindle instead of leading off the album. That technical limitation, having been neatly sidestepped by late 20th century engineering innovations, lettuce give this a listen...
ReplyDeleteGood point well made. And one that vinyl fetishists - the audio equivalent of horse paste advocacy - choose to ignore.
DeleteI'm going to upload this with a subtly rescheduled Bookends, because it occurred to me that the album has two versions of the title song which perversely do NOT bookend the album. Also going to look at how the voices of old people can be less intrusively included. Not that any of youse bums give any kind of shit. You're, like, meh.
My first pet dog - Maltese, I named him Poco.
ReplyDelete(before Buffalo Springfield era)
I prefer Bookends over BOTW.
Yebbut ... but ...
DeleteI prefer the Dino, Desi & Billy version of Homeward Bound.
DeleteThat's because you're a rebel, FiveGuns.
DeleteDon't all rush at once.
ReplyDeleteThanks Farq!
DeleteIf you're a fan of Art Garfunkel and Jimmy Webb, you should give this a listen.
https://workupload.com/file/PhQrshSmzXy
Watermark sure is swell - thank 'ee. Jimmy Webb Foamfeatured® antecedently (hint: SEARCH TERM - JIMMY WEBB).
DeleteHi Farq/everyone, there was a new documentary on S&G shown on the bbc in the UK yesterday. I guess if you use a VPN you may be able to access it. Called The Harmony Game, See below, or may be on Youtube:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0010kjw/simon-garfunkel-the-harmony-game
Thank 'ee! Vigorous torrent flowing out of the Pirate Bay!
DeleteI watched The Harmony Game doc last night, very interesting about the making of BOTW, and the controversy about their TV special.
DeleteI'd love to hear the revamped "Bookends." Pets: cats Boris & Natasha.
ReplyDeleteA pleasure, Kid A! Bonus bumper SnG pack - throw away what you don't want:
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/mV3nPunzkeE