Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Andinhereagain

Back, way back, when smoking was good for your throat and rotary telephones with real bells allowed people to talk to each other at great distances, I ran this piece, which I think was seen by two people. If one of them was you, I apologise. But I'm listening to it as we speak, and consarn it, it deserves the wider exposure that Four Or Five Guys© can give. Sohereitisagain. You'll dig it.

Love's Out Here doesn't get played much. The most obvious reason for that is the toxic drum solo, ten minutes of ballsaching tedium that perhaps not even another drummer could sit through. But there are plenty of other perfectly valid reasons to pass the album by. A metric shitload of filler, for one. A dreary remake of Signed DC that nobody was asking for. A running order that seemed to have been arrived at by chickens on cocaine. A general feeling of sloppiness, not knowing when to stop, coupled with a strangely under-finished production. The list goes on. I absolutely blame the drugs.

I've struggled with this damn album for years, and I finally arrived at something worthy of Arthur Lee. I had to be brutal. The sprawling double album [doubles are frequently said to "sprawl", something a single album apparently finds difficult - Ed.] is reduced to a single, with a "soft" side and a "hard" side (starting with Stand Out).

The first step was easy. Cut the drum solo. Yay! Then I kicked the filler to the curb. You won't notice it's gone, and I'm not going to list it. Then I cut the sub-par songs, the ones that are kinda, hmm, okay, I guess. They went. Then it got a little difficult. Reshuffling the remains didn't work. Some songs outstayed their welcome, or were too short. The freakout guitar freakout freakout - which as these things go is first-rate - was in the wrong place. I dissected everything at granular level in Audacity, and edited it and sequenced it, after long trial and error, into the sumptuous musical thrill-ride I offer to you here.

What I can't do is give the whole thing the production it needs, the full Record Plant make-over that would have transformed it into the hit album - no, really - that it shoulda coulda. Although it lacks the highs of Four Sail, overall it's a stronger album. If you think that's an unrealistic claim, give it a listen. It's like hearing it for the first time.

29 comments:

  1. I just watched Oliver Stone's new JFK movie, and thought it was too damn short. Apparently there's a four-hour director's cut waiting for the demand. I'm demanding. The last half (where Sutherland takes over the narration) gets a little bogged down in the political motivations for Kennedy's removal.

    Stone's previous JFK movie (I think we can all remember where we were when that came out) was criticised for featuring Garrison too strongly (and essentially taking his version as gospel), but Stone needed a male lead to bring the story together and give it narrative structure, and Garrison was the right choice. Anyway, it's a feature film, and Through The Looking Glass is very much a documentary.

    So let's talk JFK, in all his aspects.

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    1. I shook his hand a couple of days earlier. He came through Warner Robbins AFB in Ga. They let us out of school....so as to make a crowd. We also had to shake Goldwater's hand too. I was in 2nd grade. A week of news footage and a funeral. People crying everywhere. There's a 3-hour movie on Bitchute Everything From JFK to 9/11 Is A Rich Man's Trick. Most people I know make the Mossad for 9'/11 as do I. They're part of the Kennedy hit. Facebook group Lee Harvey Oswald Was Innocent is pretty cool There is also a photo going around showing Oswald with a group of people in the vestibule at the Book Depository building with the prez limo passing right in front of him. Tranny J. Edgar we know was in on it too. It was a coup and the same c ck suckers are still in there now. Thanks for the Love, bro.

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    2. Not yet but it'll be on Archive.org before you know it. The new Dune movie is there. I loved the first JFK flick, as hard as it is to say that. I can't wait to see the new one. I agree completely with your assessment of the first one. It's a big deal for me every November, this whole thing. And, yes, I'm demanding the director's cut too. I saw the TZ version of this Love album too but it's on Kraken which I can't download anything off of, save for my first 10 gigs of highspeed once a month. What you did with this is absolutely stellar I must say so thanks again for the LOVE, bro. LOL.

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    3. Oliver says in this interview that the mainstream press haven't mentioned it....except for snot rag Rolling Stone attacked it. Remember they also lied about a hospital couldn't treat gunshot wounds because of Ivermectin overdoses which was totally debunked. RS sucks shit through a cocktail straw. Here's a great interview with Oliver about the new movie. https://youtu.be/HeEwARv4jL4

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    4. One of the 4/5g© who rarely comments here has met Stone and talked with him, but he (th' 4/5g©) is something of a shy young wallflower not given to running his typing fingers. Hi Ian!

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  2. i was a senior in high school and he was killed on my way to modern history class. the teacher was a young white activist who had a donation box for SNCC right on the window sill. girls filed by sobbing and in the hall i heard a sick joke about the assassination that i can't remember... i think my head was empty and i just listened and looked around.

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  3. I was at a "jumble sale" (yard sale) in a church hall, and someone came in with the news that he'd been shot and the place went dumbstruck, and everyone filed out and went home.

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  4. He had the right dynamic for the new frontier.

    I was sixteen-years-old, and in high school on Friday, 11/22/1963. I watched the Today show on TV before going to school that morning, so I was aware that the President was visiting Texas. At about 2:00 Eastern Time, another student arrived late at my Algebra II class and said that he had heard on the radio in his print shop class that President Kennedy had been shot. Within a few minutes, the school administration started playing the radio news bulletins through the PA system. When I first heard the news, it did not occur to me that the President might die. About 30 minutes or so later, the radio announced that Kennedy was dead. Classes continued, but no one did anything but listen to the radio. Many students were crying. All these years later, I remember everything about that day.

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    1. I can't wait 'til I finally make up my mind to learn design and study overseas.

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  5. I don't actually remember anything about the day JFK was assassinated. However, I have a strange memory of the day his brother died, which freaked me out and still does.
    I was in London that day - June 6th 1968 - on my way to visit the secretary of the Cream Fan Club in Bayswater. En route I psssed a news stand with a poster saying "Kennedy shot" or something similar.
    That was one of the biggest WTF moments of my life as I tried to process that what happened 5 years ago was happening all over again.
    Still disturbs me when I think about it.

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  6. I've already got this. I must have been one of the two guys. Whatever happened to Baby Lemonade? Saw them backing Mr Lee at Aylesbury UK many years ago. Patti (other half) reckons it was the best gig she ever saw. So there!

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    1. I am moved, Ger. To think that out there, in the vastness of the universe (or maybe Surbiton? I'm guessing) there's a Rock n' Roll Pilgrim clutching to his meager bosom the fruits of my psychedelic labors, perhaps using it as a breviary in these troubled times in which we're living in.

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  7. I see that Twilightzone! has the full album up today. Is this a rivalry that we should know about?

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    1. Wow. This is weird, man. It makes me think, like, there's this one big cosmic plan, or, timetable? Like one cosmic bus timetable, and we're - dig this - all on the same bus? And, like, Ryp and me somehow got the same seat? Oh wow, man! This freakin' blows my mind!

      Either that or he's copyin' me, th' bum.

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    2. "We're being watched". Thorin said that!

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    1. Uh-huh ... and there are two types of people in the world, those that think it matters who killed him, and those who are meh. Those who are meh far outweigh those who still seek a definitive answer. Me, I am forced to agree with your conclusion, but am still curious as to exactly how he died (why seems pretty clear), and happy there are many people out there still pulling at the threads in the frayed tapestry of the Official Version, which is pretty damn threadbare, because we should never believe the Official Version (latest edition - The Mueller Report, damn his button-down shirt).

      Actually, there are two types of people in the world; those that can extrapolate from available data.

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    2. Of note, there was a vigil in Dallas by some Q-Anon splinter group that was informed by JFK, Senior (he's still alive...) that JFK, Jr. was going to appear? Manifest? Return from the dead? and "reinstate" Donald Trump as president. I'm no constitutional scholar, but that sounds slightly "off" to me.

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    3. Yes, the dear, sweet things have got it into their heads that JFK Jr. is going to return from the afterlife to lead their righteous crusade. I'm a reasonable man, and I say we should give him the right to choose, when he does reincarnate himself.

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    4. Yeah, well, what if John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower shows up and wants to choose someone else? Who died and made JFK, Jr. pontiff of presidential reinstatements?

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  9. Before I forget, here's the Love album. Gee, is it ever th' ginchiest!

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  10. Heard about the assassination at university. Went home to watch TV coverage.
    That afternoon my soon-to-be wife was scheduled for her driver's licence road test ... and I suspect that the boggling JFK news helped her pass.

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  11. I was on my tod brewing up (instant) coffee in the kitchen annexe of the school boarding house when the head - who lived in a flat inn the same huge-ish building came in and told me. I couldn't find a response, just gaped. I guess he just wanted someone to tell, and he knew I was some kind of political wonk, but he did hate me with a vengeance. Yes, I've made it all about me, sorry.

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    1. All about you, Dave? No more than all about me. The JFK kill is all about each one of us, in way like no other public event. It touched (devastated, even) individuals around the world. Anyone who heard the news at the time is part of the story.

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  12. The Caesar's might have called it faba oppidum sonus.

    Veni, vidi, vici





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    1. Hahalol! Brilliant wordplay, Babs! Perhaps you might like to explain the joke for them slobs out there which ain't gots our edumacation?

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  13. Ehhhh....where is the link to "In here" ? I am intrigued from the pivot from Arthur Lee to JFK. Is this the CIA ?

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    1. Look for the above comment of mine that reads: "Before I forget, here's the Love album. Gee, is it ever th' ginchiest!" - the link is cunningly hidden in that comment!

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