Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Steve Shark's Shelf Portraits In Rock

Kreemé [18 my ass - Ed.] curates th' IoF© Library O' Books™ yestiddy

I've usually found [expostulates Steve Shark - Ed.] books about rock music rather disappointing. Far too often they're just hack job crap with recycled material and interviews, although there are some notable exceptions. Johnny Rogan's tomes on the Byrds and Sid Smith's equally mammoth volume about King Crimson, for example, are excellent.

Quite often, it's autobiographies which offer a bit more originality and individuality, as it's the subjects themselves who are speaking. Of course, there's always the possibility that some of the past experiences of the author may be exaggerated, biased and/or wrongly remembered, but that's probably true of many autobiographies. Then there's sometimes the small print on the title page: "MY ROCK & ROLL LIFE ON SEX AND DRUGS BY METALBOY McPHALLUS with A.Ghostwriter". However, that's not always a bad thing, as I hope you'll discover below.

So, here's three autobiographies for your asses - with woids - and some of them woids is long. However, there is an album to accompany each book and a pitcher to colour in - wax crayons not included. Whaddya think this is? Frickin' Pizza Hut??? Pineapple on a pizza??? Are you fuckin' insane??? [I for one enjoy pineapple on pizza. Its tart stringency adds a delicious counterpoint to the alkaline top-notes of the cheese. Tomato is a fruit, and nobody gets all anti-vax about that - Ed.]

Johnny Marr - Set the Boy Free
As much about ex-Smith Marr as a guitarist as his broader musical career, this is a long (almost 500 pages) and dense book. However, it's written in a relaxed and easy manner, even when dealing with serious subjects. He doesn't seem to hold any particular grudge against Morrisey and acknowledges the unique and fertile professional relationship they once had. It's one of the few books of this genre that gets to grips with what having a creative urge is really like, as Marr moves from one new venture to another. Throughout he comes across as a very grounded guy, which was probably his salvation during his descent into the R'n'R rabbit warren.

Steve Jones - Lonely Boy
I really wasn't expecting to like this, as it's ghostwritten. However, Jones is dyslexic and the general tone of the writing seems to mirror what I've seen of him in various videos and interviews. I'm inclined to think that ghostwriter Ben Thompson did a good job in this case. Sexually abused by his stepfather at a young age, and a right nasty little bastard when he was young, the book sees him rise above all that - including a disastrous heroin habit. He's emerged to become what seems a nice guy - a proper geezer - whose personal mantra is to always try and do the right thing. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the book and how uplifted I felt by how positive Jones sounds today. It's also very, very funny in places.

Ian Hunter - Diary of a Rock 'N' Roll Star
Not strictly speaking an autobiography, this chronicles Hunter's 1972 US tour with Mott the Hoople. Nothing of much import happens, as the band travels from one gig to another. It's Hunter's self-deprecating descriptions of worrying about weight gain...disputes over lighting with a band on the same bill...haggling with a motel manager over getting his wife into his room to save money which are the strengths of this book. Sure, such things are pedestrian, but Hunter's charm and determination when dealing with them really shine through. Possibly my favourite book about rock music.

As for the music...there's Johnny Marr's latest album, Steve Jones' first release under his own name, and Ian Hunter (with the late, great Mick Ronson) with a live double.

To get the link for this cornucopia of words and music, just answer this simple but very broad question - what's your favourite book about music?

[Let's do this, people! - Ed.]

Veldene VaVoom Invents The Shuffle, October 14, 1962.

Legacy screengrab by Foam-O-Fone© - all rights reserved, and a few of the lefts.

It's all too easy, in this digital age in which we're living in, to take for granted high-technology advances like the shuffle play on our audio device of choice - but do we ever stop to think how it came to be, and what genius had the inspiration for such a labor-saving device? [Nope - Ed.] 

Shuffle has become the dominant cultural form of our ADD epoch. Music streaming services, where what passes for personal taste is analysed, defined and predicted by an algorithm, are how The Young People Of Today® are spoon-fed music product while they text and meme other pod-people sitting in the same room. Little do they know they're being data-raped© by a concept invented back in 1962, way before any device was capable of incorporating it. Say hello to our Back Room Boffin and unsung heroine of the Audio Age, Veldene VaVoom [18 my ass - Ed.]! I talked to Ms. VaVoom via Foam-O-Fone™ yestiddy.

Dames n' rekkids! Like gum n' nuts!

FMF© Heyy! Veldene baby! Looking lu-uush!

VVV Likewise, I'm sure. Is that a toupe?

FMF© (laughs) Ha ha! Tell us about the birth of shuffle play, why don'cha!

VVV I was one stewed tomato! Chuggin' Johnnie Walker, dreamin' of being fucked in th' ass by Bobby Vinton. Anyway, all my rekkids was on th' carpet, an' I said, Veldene honey, you are too shitfaced to read th' labels, just pick 'em at random an' see if you remember th' fuck they are.

FMF© And invented shuffle play right there!

VVV (giggles) Ye-ah! A regliar Alfred Einstein!

FMF© Did you recognise the tunes?

VVV Who knows? I guess I must of passed out. When I came to, I was being fu-

[Connection lost - Ed.]

Sayy, fellows! Why not pay tribute to Veldene by setting your device of choice to shuffle and listing the first five plays in a comment? Oboy! Some fun, huh, guys? "Let's do this, people!"

The Strange Voyage Of Steven Soles

What for is a Monkees album doing here, and why? Well, truth-seeker, it contains a couple songs co-scribed by Steven Soles (Acapulco Sun and All Alone In The Dark), that's what for and why. You'll know Mr. Soles from his appearances with Bob Dylan, T-Bone Burnett, and the mighty awesome Alpha Band [antecedently FoamFeatured® - Ed.], but you probably weren't aware of this. That's okay - we're here to learn. Shown here in its original, unused sleeve, for swellness.

But we're already ahead of ourselves - skip back with me down the petal-strewn path of memory to Beantown, late 'sixties, where a bunch of hippies form a band called Bear, because the Bosstown Sound is a far-out happening thing! Artie Traum - who was never a hippie - Skip Boone and Darius Davenport (both with the mighty awesome Autosalvage), Eric Kaz (who went on to everything with even a whiff of country rock), and Steve Soles, a'writin' and a-singin'. Something of a FMF© supergroup, wouldn't you say? WAKE UP THERE! And it was produced by Hall O' Foamer™ John Boylan, for added swellness!

Now leave us rush forward past the Monkees album (which I like, so shaddup awready) to 1973, and Jamaica, where Soles records an album as Tidbits (uh ...) with three lazy-ass bums who never did anything else, and a Jamaican backing band including Winston Wright, who did shitloads, but not here. You'd of thunk there'd be a reggae sunsplash vibe, but no, maybe '73 was too early, and we're left wondering why they went to Jamaica to record a bunch of soft rock ditties. And another album with greetings in the title.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Fagen It - Doin' Th' Don

Donnie Darko travels back in time to glimpse the future as a memory

Donald Fagen's first solo album The Nightfly is one of my favourite albums [enthuses Steve Shark - Ed.] and there's not a duff track on it.

It's always interesting to hear cover versions of songs you know and love, but I've tried to go one better and compile an alternative Nightfly album. There are covers of every track and in the order they appear on the original album, although the title track proved to be problematic.

The Four Freshmen - I.G.Y.
Their trademark high harmonies - much admired by a young Brian Wilson - are mainly on show in the chorus, but they really are very sweet indeed when they happen. The naff handclaps are very 1980s but the swooping brass arrangement makes up for them. Trombone madness! They also covered Maxine on the same album.

M Sasaji & L.A. Allstars - Green Flower Street
Sasaji San's band really is all star and includes guitarist Dean Parks, who played on five Steely Dan albums. This is a pretty straightforward arrangement with a slightly heavier groove than the original. Some very interesting brass harmonies are going on behind the vocals. The same band has also done a cover of Babylon Sisters which is rather splendid.  

The Nylons - Ruby Baby
A cover of a cover - originally released by the Drifters in 1956. This version is by a Canadian acapella group and features some great harmony singing, sometimes mimicking a brass section. The pedestrian backing rather spoils it, however, and perhaps they should have just used finger snaps - and the Four Freshmen's annoying claps. Then again, if I was their record producer, I wouldn't be stuck here on Th' Isle O'Foam© pool house writing about them...

Chuck Loeb - Maxine
A slow and smokey version from the late Loeb. The minimalist arrangement really brings out the beautiful melody lying at the root (see what I did there?) of the harmonies of the original. Beautiful bass from John Patitucci, who really makes this track for me. Dave Weckl's work on drums isn't too shabby, either.

RandyPOP - New Frontier
This is a strange arrangement indeed. Every so often you get a WTF! moment as lines and notes you were following suddenly get transposed. The discordancy this sometimes causes is rather unsettling, although not necessarily unpleasant. Randy's daughter is on vocals and she's OK, although her voice seems rather week at times. Randy played on several Dan tracks so I guess he's earned some right to experiment with the formula. Good guitar solo from Adam Rogers, who would have been a great fit for Steely Dan when they reformed back in 1993.

The Donald Fagen Band - The Nightfly
Could I find a good cover of this? Could I bollocks! The only half decent version I could turn up had autotune on the vocals, which ruined it. What I chose in the end was Fagen covering himself with his own band, during a break from the Dan in 2006. Lovely coda in this with cyclic keyboard lines and a sax playing over them.

Joe Roccisano Orchestra - The Goodbye Look
More salsa than the bossa nova feel of the original. Timbale frenzy! The arrangement is a little florid at times, but Fagen wrote the sleevenotes for the album this is from and approved of it. Roccisano was involved writing horn charts for a Woody Herman album that had some Dan covers, and has worked with Fagen since. A lot of Fagen/Dan tunes adapt very well to big band arrangements and there are some great covers if you go hunting on YouTube.
 
Mel Torme - Walk Between Raindrops
It was a tough choice between this and Mel's cover of the previous song. His voice and Paich's arrangement combine in a swing version with a lovely walking bass that holds the rhythm section together. Mel was always cool, somehow, even when the material wasn't. Here, it's definitely cool material. That last note shows exactly why he was nicknamed The Velvet Fog.

Of course, this compilation doesn't trump the original album. However, what I hope it shows is the strength of Fagen's compositional skills and also how much these were influenced by pre-bebop jazz. Nowhere else does Fagen show his love and respect for Ellington quite so clearly.  

Steve Shark is the editor of Figurine It Out - The Quarterly Newsletter For Hummel Collectors. His favorite color is lovat, and he hopes one day to inflate a bicycle tire with the power of thought.

Voodoo Soup At Jimi's Last Supper

Moebius masterpiece

Having kept a relatively low profile - willingly or not - since Midnight Lightning, Alan Douglas [below - Ed.] stirred things up again with his interpretation of Hendrix’s missing fourth studio album. Hendrix was considering First Rays Of The New Rising Sun as a title, and while this is a little unwieldy, it still seems preferable to the mildly puzzling Voodoo Soup. But there’s an unappreciated humility in the choice of title - right up-front, Douglas is saying, “this isn’t First Rays - that’s something only Hendrix knew about.” Under any name, the album’s still a monster, and by far the most successful of all the post-mortem attempts to give the First Rays material a coherent sound and flow.

Douglas tells me: “I decided to use Voodoo Soup to make peace, bring everybody together, make everybody happy. I called Eddie Kramer, I called Mitch Mitchell, bring them in, and let’s all produce this thing of Jimi’s together. Because from my point of view this feels like the last one, I’d completed most of what I set out to do. Eddie Kramer came to see me, I said, you choose your songs, I’ll choose mine, the ones we agree on, those are what we’ll do. The lists were pretty close ...”

Douglas dries at this point. “I can’t get into too much detail, because it’s going to sound nasty, but I called my engineer to ready the tapes we agreed on, and Eddie Kramer went over to listen to them. My engineer called me next day, told me Kramer had turned up with his friend, John McDermott, and they didn’t want to listen to the tapes I told him to play for them, and what’s going on? So I called Mr. Kramer, and he said, no, no, that’s not true, I’m going back tonight, it’ll be okay. But the same thing happened again, they didn’t listen to what was on our list, they had some agenda of their own, and Kramer went back to New York. So I wrote him a letter, politely telling him I didn’t think we’d be able to work together, thank you for coming, etcetera, and he wrote me back - and if I’d kept this letter I’d have saved myself a lot of problems - asking to come back to the gig. Now, McDermott - I know this guy. he used to be a collector in Boston, I used to give him stuff - he wrote his book, Setting The Record Straight, without talking to me, without asking me anything. I mean, why not? I was there, I was part of it, and I could have given him a lot of first-hand information. But he didn’t call me. So I can see a lot of mistakes, a lot of hearsay in that book.”

It’s all a long time ago now, and Douglas’s frustration is dulled by acceptance that the record, far from being straight, is warped, and that’s the album people like to listen to.

“So anyway, Mitch Mitchell and I were good friends, we’d been hanging out together three, four nights a week when Jimi was alive, so I call him up, tell him I’m trying to get the whole family together again, and he comes over from Amsterdam or wherever it was he was living. And we’re in the studio, I put Stepping Stone up on the machine, with Buddy Miles’s drum track, the one Jimi stripped in but still wasn’t happy with. I said, the drums are all set up in the next room, you ready to do this? And he said ... No. I don’t think I can.”

At that time, Mitchell had a well-known drink problem that clearly distresses Douglas to talk about (he refers to it as a "health issue"), but it's central to understanding why Mitchell didn’t participate in the new mixes. For far too long Douglas has been lambasted for keeping Mitchell away from the project, when the reverse is the truth. I'm going against Douglas's wishes here by being specific about the health issue, but it's out here on the internet already - Mitchell's alcoholism isn't exactly a family secret. What is a secret is Douglas's inclusive approach and his discretion.

We know that Hendrix wasn’t happy with either of the drum tracks for Stepping Stone. We know now that Douglas brought Mitchell in to play new parts on the album, but Mitch didn’t feel he was up to it. And we should know that Bruce Gary is a fine drummer. This is the definitive version of Stepping Stone, and the screeches of outrage from the Hendrix obsessives (who can’t stand that Gary played with The Knack, for some reason) are beginning to sound very thin indeed. Gary co-produced the album with Douglas, and was there when Mitchell ducked out, and he nails it in one take. And gets a shitload of abuse for it. That’s fans for you - the same people who side with the talentless grifters posturing as "The Hendrix Estate". There's a lot of magic in that word estate - it gives an entirely unwarranted impression of wise and benign stewardship. Fans love estates.

The New Rising Sun makes for a hypnotic instrumental overture, and the feeling is immediate, and thrilling. Hendrix plays drums - with a simple touch that neither Mitchell or Miles had - and gets that epic outer-space under-water guitar feel with Uni-Vibe/Leslie effects. Total Hendrix, tripped-out and blissful, and this version is unavailable elsewhere. It shimmers and blurs into Belly-Button Window Again, Douglas pulls off an audacious programming stunt by cross-fading the cosmically out there opener into the most intimately in here song Hendrix ever recorded. The genesis of the new rising sun leads to a very human, and uncertain, birth. This is a small touch of genius, and to follow it up with the punch of Stepping Stone shows Hendrix couldn’t have a better hand on the controls. Already, we know this is an album, not a bunch of tapes thrown into a hat.

It doesn't even try to be complete catalog of tracks from the era, so there are inevitable omissions - fuel for the "I know better" fans - but the programming is an object lesson in pacing and dynamics. There’s not a weak moment in the entire album, and, thanks to the Mark Linett mix and Joe Gastwirt mastering, the songs sound brand new (no tapes were used as they came out of the box). Nothing drags, and the album ends as strongly as it started. A whole new Hendrix album. The real deal.

In spite of the predictable panic incontinence from the obsessives (who believed they’d been denied the “real album”), Voodoo Soup was a commercial and critical success. The sheer quality of the album was undeniable. Charles Shaar Murray wrote that it “more than earns its place in the pantheon of great Hendrix albums” and that it “brought the Hendrix studio quartet -finally!- to a satisfactory conclusion.”

If this album, exactly as is, had been released during Hendrix’s short lifetime, criticism would be unthinkable, and it would be loved and praised as the culmination of his studio output, entirely the equal of the first three. All subsequent attempts to produce a Hendrix album are dull, curiously lifeless things in comparison, and sometimes, unforgivably, boring to sit through. And although the emphasis in this piece may appear to be on Douglas, it’s not him we’re listening to. Voodoo Soup is one hundred per cent concentrated James Marshall Hendrix; funky, alive, thrilling, and as beautiful as the new rising sun. And, as far as I know, out of print since its 1995 release.

Sleeve notes: The superb French artist Moebius did better studies of Hendrix than this - such as the one at the head of this piece. The narrow crop is unsatisfactory (the image is a detail of an already-used gatefold cover) and it's hard to imagine anyone but a Frenchman finding the image of Hendrix eating soup of interest. A missed opportunity.

With thanks and a tip of th' hipster beret to Alan Douglas. Major, major dude.

Philamore North And South

 

The lone album by Philamore Lincoln (1970) is a lost treasure. No, really. He wrote the songs (Temma Harbour was a breezy hit for Mary Hopkin), Jimmy Page played guitar, it was engineered by Glyn and Andy Johns, and given a beautiful psych-pop-rock production by one James Wilder, who apparently never produced anything else, adding to the mystery.

Lincoln (real name Robert Cromwell Anson, AKA Julian Covey) left the music business in the early seventies, leaving us this. A win-win situation.

The loaddown replaces a totally inappropriate Graham Bond filler instrumental with a rare single. Thirty blissful minutes for that sunny afternoon in the park, while we still have thirty minutes.

Cover notes: Designed by heavyweight John Kosh, the evocative photograph is by Sanders Nicholson, who also shot the cover for Shawn Phillips' sublime Second Contribution - interestingly, another image that doesn't reveal the artist's face. Hard to find a scan that does it justice of the internet - most reduce the figure to solid black. Chris Dreja shot the back cover portrait [left - Ed.], showing the Carnaby Street dandy. Me, I'd have buttoned my shirt. For shame.

Gil The Great

If you're as dumb as what I am, you might of thunk Gil Evans rose from a comfortable upper-middle class background, where his mother held musical salons for a sophisticated circle of friends, under whose patronage the young Gil flourished at Juilliard, soon commissioned by major jazz orchestras to write arrangements. That is, if you thought about Gil at all. His wiki page tells a different story, and rather than copy-paste chunks of it I suggest those of youse lazy-ass bums what share my lamentable ignorance click over here for a humbling story of how talent and skill and hard work and dedication brought success. Don't start me on insta-influencers or whatever the fuck those people are.

His Plays The Music Of Jimi Hendrix ['74, left - Ed.] is well enough known, but a later album, Parabola ['79, above - Ed.] which is a Slight Return Of Plays The Music Of Jimi Hendrix remains undeservedly obscure even here on the internet, generally escaping attention and reviews. The sprawling double [all double albums sprawl, by recording industry law - Ed.] features explorations of Up From The Skies and an epic Stone Free. A shit cover - a goddamn disgrace - couldn't have helped (so I done a new one [above - Ed.]), nor that it was issued on an obscure Italian label.

If you're a fan of late 'seventies Davis [Miles - Ed.] and who isn't - apart from those withered souls who *cough* "don't like jazz" - you'll dig these sides.

Like, solid, Jackson!

Under The Counter Culture Dept.

No internet, no phones, just life being lived.

Compared to the US [avers Steve Shark - Ed.], the UK counterculture that straddled the late 1960s and early 1970s was a relatively low key affair, and musical acts with a "message" weren't really all that common.

However, there certainly was a British underground scene, replete with drugs, a radical press and various forms of freaking out. Publications like OZ, the International Times (IT) and Frendz promoted a freer society which drugs and music tried to encourage - not that it really amounted to very much in the end. The writing was (literally) on the wall as far back as Paris in 1968 - there would be no Establishment approval for any form of alternative society.

The musical scene back then was quite incestuous and three of the four albums presented here for your perusal are linked by musicians they had in common.

The Deviants - Ptooff! - 1967
Fronted by the late Mick Farren, the Deviants were one of the first counterculture bands, but certainly not the best! Mick was a far, far better writer than he was a singer and the album is a total mess. There are lengthy freakouts and a couple of what might be termed "songs", which are disappointing, to say the least. They were trying to be the MC5, but sounded more like the MCC. The drummer was Russell Hunter, of whom more later.

Hawkwind - Hawkwind - 1970
Produced by the Pretty Things' lead guitarist, Dick Taylor, Hawkwind's debut has stood up to the test of time rather better than "Ptooff!", although the reverb-heavy "let's go ape shit" numbers are a little difficult to listen to today. There are some worthy attempts to add texture in places with some acoustic guitar and there are some obvious nods to what was coming out of the US a couple of years previously. Not a bad album, but they went on to make better ones.

Pink Fairies - Never Neverland - 1971
Now this is more like it! Russell Hunter - remember him? - reappears on drums, along with ex-Pretty Things drummer Twink. Album opener "Do It" is the stand out track here. Beginning with an acoustic guitar piece, it then gets heavy with Paul Rudolph's guitar driving it along. Rudolph eventually got to play with Hawkwind and Mick Farren - I told you it was an incestuous scene! It's a fine album, although the Fairies couldn't resist an overlong wig-out on "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout".

Edgar Broughton Band - Keep Them Freaks a Rollin' (1969) - released 2004.
Edgar couldn't decide whether he was Captain Beefheart, Howlin' Wolf or a Fug, but his band was certainly a festival favourite. "Out Demons Out" was their best known song and I can still remember seeing them perform it several times and chanting along whilst extremely stoned. Recorded live at Abbey Road studios, but not released until 35 years later, this is far more representative of the band than their studio albums. Again, some numbers go on too long and too aimlessly, but that was just the way things were back then.

Through the next several decades, musical alliances were formed out of the same pool of musicians. So, for example, Twink went on to play with some of Hawkwind in Pinkwind, and then Mick Farren. Apart from the Deviants, the other three bands above are still extant and they continue to record. The Pink Fairies, in particular, are well worth further investigation.

If I'd also chosen an album with singer/guitarist the late Larry Wallis (Deviants, Farren, Fairies, Martin Stone, Blodwyn Pig, Motorhead, UFO, Dr Feelgood, Wreckless Eric), I'd probably still be making musical connections long after this reached Farq!

Incidentally, for those people wishing to read the groovy publications of that time, or maybe catch up on news they were too stoned to understand, there are online achives of a couple I mentioned above.

Here's the International Times:,,
https://www.internationaltimes.it/archive/

...and here's OZ:
https://archivesonline.uow.edu.au/nodes/view/3495/

...so that's how you roll a 5 leaf joint?

Did Stephen King Plagiarise This Novel?

It was recently brought to my attention that a movie based on Stephen King's 2018 novel (more a novella) Elevation is in pre-production. 

And what a fantastic story it is!

– Our Hero starts to inexplicably lose weight, not body mass. He enjoys an exhilarating period of physical elation and increased performance.

– As the condition worsens, he gets worried, and enlists the help of close friends, and a trusted professional from outside the scientific/medical domain. There is no explanation for his condition.

– He becomes steadily lighter to the point he has to be kept down in a wheelchair.

– At the end, he makes a decision to let go, and sails off into the sky, leaving his girlfriend on the ground.

Phew! That Stephen King, eh? What a wonderful, original writer he is! Where on earth does he get his ideas from?

I'm not suggesting for a moment he gets them from my 1997 novel (more a novella) Helium, in which:

– Our Hero starts to inexplicably lose weight, not body mass. He enjoys an exhilarating period of physical elation and increased performance.

– As the condition worsens, he gets worried, and enlists the help of close friends, and a trusted professional from outside the scientific/medical domain. There is no explanation for his condition.

– He becomes steadily lighter to the point he has to be kept down in a wheelchair.

– At the end, he makes a decision to let go, and sails off into the sky, leaving his girlfriend on the ground.

Well, okay. Ideas/concepts aren’t copyrightable. They’re just floating around out there and can land in anyone’s head, even Stephen King's. The floaty man thing has been done before. But not like this. The narrative correspondences between the two books seem beyond the scope of coincidence. There are confirmatory details, too, like "his" chapter title The Incredible Lightness Of Being, and my The Incredibleness Of Being Light. And his symbolic image of a firework disappearing into the sky, and mine of a helium balloon disappearing into the sky - right there on the cover.

Let's imagine my book being published after Mr. King's. Would he have dismissed it as coincidence, or instructed his lawyers to sue the fuck out of me?

Stephen King is a global corporation, not “a writer”, and retains lawyers with experience of being sued for plagiarism (King has form). It’s unlikely that they would leave open legal grounds for any accusation I might feel like making. It’s also absurd that I could lawyer up against a global corporation. I have no money, no support, no publishing network, nothing. I have tried to contact him, his agent, the movie production company, my publisher, and his publisher.

If you have any suggestions (that I haven't already tried), or can offer help in getting exposure - maybe through social media (which I don't do), staging a candlelight vigil on Mr. King's front lawn, or taking out a full-page ad in The New York Review - I'll be really grateful. But do not accuse him of anything - ask the question.

I for one would like to know the answer.

Electroterica Dept. -Thoroughly Modern Mellé

Pushing your buttons, yesterday

Standing [screeds Sitarswami - Ed.] waist deep in my Blue Note obsession, I browsed idly through the “Just In” used bin at Swingville Records. Keeping a sharp eye out for my prey I flipped disconsolately through the Sauter-Finnegans, Chuck Mangiones and Ahmad Jamals. Shaking my head at finding yet another Don Sebesky box [tsk - Ed.], I sensed the approach of the store’s resident guru and salesclerk. By way of greeting, he slipped a worn cassette tape into my hand. “You’ll like this,” he whispered knowingly, “it’s Gil Mellé.” Later, listening with ears wide open, little did I realize the cool jazz captured on tape was an early manifestation of the man behind two long-treasured teenage memories. Sounds I’d first heard on television fifteen years before and only once or twice since. At that point, I had no idea they were all connected. All I knew was my future happiness depended on owning that record.

Gil Mellé, a self-described jazz chemist, whose primitive/modern writing and arranging sounded, as one critic noted, like Birth of the Cool played backwards. Mellé (pronounced mell-AY) [like Kreemé - Ed.] was born in, or near, New York City on new year’s eve 1931. Abandoned as a two-year-old and raised by a family friend, Gil showed youthful promise as a painter winning several national competitions for preteens. In school he picked up the saxophone switching from alto to tenor to baritone. By age sixteen, he was playing in Greenwich Village jazz clubs, and at nineteen signed with Blue Note records becoming their first white artist. A classmate (and soon-to-be manager) arranged for Gil to record his first date on March 2, 1952. The studio was run by a 27-year-old optometrist moonlighting as an engineer and was built in his parents’ living room. Mellé often retold the story about speaking to Blue Note founder Alfred Lion about the session. Gil had been impressed by a new recording process called magnetic tape. Alfred, with his thick German accent, reportedly asked "Vas ist tape?" After hearing the tape Lion decided to hire the engineer, one Rudy Van Gelder, and another important piece of the Blue Note sound snapped into place.

Not only did Gil record one 12-inch and four 10-inch albums for Blue Note, but he also designed several of the label’s 10” record jackets – two of his own titles as well as those by Kenny Dorham, Wynton Kelly, Clifford Brown, and a few others. In 1956, Mellé left for Prestige records. He recorded three albums and designed covers for Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and famously, one for Thelonious Monk [left - Ed.]. Concurrent with his jazz career, Mellé’s paintings and sculptures were displayed in New York galleries. Unlike most of his contemporaries who led sessions for Blue Note and Prestige, Gil never appeared as a sideman on other artists’ dates.

Gil’s interest in electronic music began in 1959. He dropped off the NY jazz scene and resurfaced in Los Angeles. He now played soprano sax fitted with a gadget of his own design, the Transistorized Oscillator/Modulator/Envelope [left - Ed.]. The resulting album, Tome IV (on Verve), is acknowledged as one of the earliest electronic jazz records. The impetus for Gil’s westward migration was to write for film & television. For Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, he composed the first synthesizer-based television theme, followed by the first all-electronic movie soundtrack, The Andromeda Strain. Mellé continued to focus on film & television scoring over 125 shows. The list includes several episodes of Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Organization, and The Sentinel. He released just two more albums, Waterbirds (1970, on Nocturne, a tiny west coast label which also issued Arthur Lee Harper’s Love is the Revolution) and 1988’s Mindscape (Blue Note).

Today’s menu features a three-course special:

Gil’s 1956 Blue Note 12-inch, Patterns in Jazz, is one of my two favorites on the label (the other being John Patton’s That Certain Feeling) and was the cassette I acquired earlier. It’s an unusual quintet comprised of baritone sax, trombone, bass, drums, and the guitar of Joe Cinderella. Cinderella also figures prominently on Mellé’s Prestige releases. Throughout the 1950’s, excepting the 3/2/52 session, Gil preferred to use guitar in place of piano. In fact, Tal Farlow’s first recordings were accompanying Mellé. Leading into the album proper are selected cuts from Gil’s 10-inch sessions. Duke Ellington was an early inspiration and several of Mellé’s Blue Note and Prestige tunes are reminiscent of Duke and 1950’s Chicago-era Sun Ra, another artist indebted to Ellington at the time.

For 1971’s “The Andromeda Strain,” [right - Ed. Just kidding! Left, really] director Robert Wise -- who knew the importance of a soundtrack (Bernard Hermann’s score for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” featured a theremin to great effect, “Odds Against Tomorrow” was scored by the MJQ’s John Lewis, and “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music,” for better or worse, speak for themselves) -- hired Mellé with the understanding that he did not want a traditional score for his film. Wise asked Gil to write music that had no themes, no chords, no harmonic structure, and with totally new sonorities. Wise remembered getting Mellé to change parts of the score by telling him, “That little passage in there sounds almost like music.” Using Bebe and Louis Barron’s non-acoustic, electronic film score for “Forbidden Planet” as a signpost Mellé designed and built the electronic instruments (including the percussive synthesizer known as the Percussotron III) used to create the alien tones. For his musique concrète catalog he transformed acoustic instrumental sounds into electronic forms and captured dozens of organic sounds such as the wind, bowling alleys, chain saws, railways and an array of noises emanating from NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory. The album’s original packaging was as unusual as the music. Made of silver foil (see also the Monkees’ Head), the album jacket had a foldout camera-lens front which contained the hexagonal-shaped vinyl. The playing time was limited to eight pieces (26 minutes) due its physical shape. The album’s inner sleeve warned the turntable operator to use manual controls to avoid damage. This post includes an additional 14 minutes (nine pieces) of the score found on a rare bootleg cd issued a few years ago. The soundtrack is bookended by Gil’s two unnerving “Night Gallery” intro themes. The OST & NG theme(s) were my proper introductions to Mellé’s music.

Lastly, highlights from Mellé’s Prestige albums (Primitive Modern, Gil’s Guests, Quadrama), Tome IV, Waterbirds, and a sampling of his film/tv work. 

The Blue Note and Prestige recordings have been readily available, in one form or another, for the past twenty years. Both the eight-track version of The Andromeda Strain and The Sentinel can be found on popular streaming services. Tome IV, Waterbirds and The Organization and Starship Invasions ost’s require a bit more effort to locate.

Farq adds: In addition to screedage above and beyond the call of duty, Sitarswami includes a wealth of pitchers in the loaddown to make the whole deal a multimedia event. Youse bums ain't worthy.

Flipping The Bird Dept.

A rare impromptu smile from a serious-type guy

Charlie Parker is to sax as Django Reinhardt is to guitar. Both play with a level of virtuosity that surpasses all reason, all predicted norms and limitations. It's like they suddenly and inexplicably burst free of the instrument to express themselves directly - one soul sounds like sax, the other like guitar. But that "natural" and deceptively liquid fluency was won through endless practice, hardship ... and inspiration:

"I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn't play it ... Well, that night I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive ..."

The theory is way beyond me, but "I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive ..." is as close as words can get to describing breaking down the door to heaven - which he never claimed to have done. There's a pure shining spirit of living in his playing, which he has in common with Django - through grace, not work. It's something that eluded John McLaughlin, a self-advertising spiritual adept for whom the door never opened no matter how earnestly he knocked. Parker passed through at a cost, and the toll was severe.

The devil has the best tunes? Depends if you hear God on your knees in a cathedral, or with a drink in your hand in a smoky N.Y. dive.

Charlie Parker With Strings may seem like an odd choice, dividing those who hear the strings from those who listen to Parker, at the top of his game. The strings are a setting - a frame for his artistry. The Savoy L.P. Collection presents no such difficulties. Music like rain from a clear blue sky.

Clarence Pune's Sunday Fireside Chats Dept. - How To Demoralize Call Centers

Clarence Pune [left - Ed.] resolving telecommunications issues with "John", yesterday (©Foam-O-Graph)

I don’t know [confesses Clarence Pune - Ed.] about where you live, but in Vancouver [Capital of Canadia - Ed.] I can usually expect a couple of landline phone scams a day.

The set-up call is most often from a tobacco-voiced woman who tries to alarm me that VISA is charging me for a new I-Phone or Amazon has pilfered me for something more alarming.

Press 1 to cancel.

Press 2 to allow.

I usually press one to engage and waste the time of a Mumbai-accented someone who identifies as John.

We would generally go through an attempt at credibility, then an exchange of fuck-offs which neither VISA nor Amazon would likely endorse.

It was good sport but got tiresome.

Then my dog chewed up a toy and left a little rubber bulb that -- when squeezed -- went MEEP MEEP.

Next scam call I went along with option 1 and then squeezed the MEEP MEEP bulb.

“What’s that?” John in Mumbai asked with some alarm.

“It’s the Pearlman algorhythmic bullshit detector.”

No scam calls for about a week, then a sort of tentative one.

I did it again.

A distressed gentleman from South Asia told me I was demoralizing his staff. I pointed out that he phoned me, I didn’t phone him, so fuck you very much.

MEEP MEEP!

Win A Million Dollars In This New Music-Type Puzzle For The Feeble-Minded (Which Is You, Pally) Dept.

So lamentable which has th' Four Or Five Guys© been at puzzles recently, it has been decided to make it playable by the most intellectually challenged, in the hope that youse bums will feel motivated to focus your remaining puzzle-solving skills and WIN A MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!

HOW TO PLAY: With hobby knife or surgical scalpel, cut out jigsaw pieces [above - Ed.] from your screen! Arrange pieces on bed tray to reveal album cover! Start planning that bucket list you'll soon have the funds to accomplish! Add bucket list item to comment! Add CLEW or HINT as to featured album in comment! That's TWO THINGS already! You include TWO THINGS in your comment! Something from your bucket list, and a cryptic ALLUSION as to album! Oboy!

Elderly Lesbians Choose Their Favorite Psych Comps! Dept.

Foam-O-Fone© - Television for the blind!

Many of youse bums will remember our Best O' Th' Year roundup hosted by the Elderly Lesbians! I persuaded Gertrude and Irma to contribute more to satisfy their fanbase here on th' IoF©. We spoke via Foam-O-Fone™yestiddy.

FT3 Heyyy gals! Lookin' svelte and sassy!

Irma Flattery will get you nowhere, young man.

FT3 Not you - me. You guys look like shit.

Gertrude We still look hot to each other.

FT3 The magic of cataracts. You chose a couple albums there. Filling The Gap, Gertie?

Irma That's her speciality!

Gertrude (sing-song) Mommy's got her paddle! Smacky-smacky!

FT3 So, Irma - Psychedelic Disaster Wheel?

Irma You'll have the expanded CD version, but I prefer vinyl.

Gertrude We like vinyl.

Irma Strap you on, bitch.

Gertrude Consarn it, you made me spit my bridgework again. Right in the chamber pot.

FT3 (loud cough) So what made you choose these comps over better-known examples in the field?

Irma Mommy's dirty girl likes it in the field, doesn't she?

Gertrude You're adding moisture to my oyster ...

At this point the signal from the Sisters Of Discipline Home For Sapphic Seniors was lost. Luckily, copies of their album choices are held in th' Vault O' Foam® should youse bums be desirous.

Never Too Late For Screamin'! Dept.

So much has been written [writes Steve Shark - Ed.] about Screamin' Jay Hawkins that it's often hard to separate fact from fiction. It's probably safe to say that Jay himself added to this confusion.

He was raised by Blackfoot Native Americans...he joined the US Army at 13 and saw armed combat in the Pacific...he was wounded in the Korean War...he was middleweight boxing champion of Alaska...he claimed to have fathered 75 children...

What is certain, however, is that he was rather more than his one major hit, "I Put a Spell On You", might suggest.

Those wishing to find out more about him are directed towards their Googles and internets as it's just one specific four year period which is under the spotlight here.

In 1991, Jay signed a record deal with Herb Cohen's reactivated Bizarre label. Cohen was once Frank Zappa's manager, although the two parted company acrimoniously, and the label was then mothballed. Three solo albums were made which featured Zappa alumnus Mike Kennealy, as well as Bo Diddley's son, Bo Diddley Jr, on the first two releases.

The albums were Black Music for White People, Stone Crazy, and Somethin' Funny Goin' On.

All three feature great playing and a wide range of material, often coloured by Jay's off-colour humour. "Amy Fisher is my fantasy girl - I'd love to give her a necklace of pearl". Subtle it's not, although very topical back then...  

There are originals, R&B standards and a few more up to date covers, including Tom Waits' Heart Attack and Vine which almost transcends the original, and was also a minor hit for Jay. Waits' management didn't approve, as it was used in a commercial for Levi jeans. Ironically, the version of Spell on this collection is truly dreadful - a "dance version" (including somebody rapping) which just made me twitch.

So OK, perhaps it's not classic Jay, but it's interesting to hear him with a more than competent band, very varied material, a modern and tight production from Robert Duffey, and a willingness to update his sound. Happily, he sounds as unhinged as ever and his skewed humour is here in abundance.

This is the double CD re-release, with all three albums and bonus tracks - worth having for once - taken from the Bizarre recording sessions. The title is a reference to Jay's potency, with 33, to date, of the 75 children he claimed actually being his genuine offspring. 12 of them even met up for a reunion in 2001!