Well, They Kept This One Quiet, Didn't They?

In spite of my assertion that remasters don't give me a music boner, much, here's one that makes me eat me woids and tent me shorts - something you don't want to witness unless you're into Japanese tentacle puke porn. This year's remaster of one of rock's shining Himalayan peaks slipped out without a word and is stupidly hard to find. As is usual with Spirit re-issues, it comes with an entire CD of file-and-forget live material, driftwood backing tracks and demos, but this here is the album as released, perfect as is, and more is less. It's also at Elon Musk's approved bitrate of @320, just for youse bums what fall into a girlish swoon at the thought of anything less baroque.

An astonishing piece of work, on the cusp of the zeitgeist between the sixties and the seventies and taking the best from both decades, Sardonicus is the full deck, the real deal. This brilliant, revelatory new remaster is the best it's ever sounded - how did it take so long? In the almost impossibly unlikely event of your not having heard the album yet - keep it to yerself, less you suffer our withering scorn and brutal contumely. For the rest of us it's like meeting an old friend - for the first time.

This post made plausible thru Tremolo - high four or five!

Davis Special! Dept.

The music curator/archivist Blank Frank had the idea for this, and put a lot of work into creating it. I'm happy to share my version with his approval.

Blank Frank's collection was titled differently (I went for the obvious) and the tracks were individually tagged with different covers and credited to different line-ups, making it (for me) a little unwieldy. I'm not an archivist, and this version unfairly reflects Blank Frank's knowledge and care, but it is perhaps more easily playable. It's also @192 - the apostolic bitrate o' Christ Jesus - where his was @320, the bitrate o' Shub-Niggurath (the Black Goat of the Woods).

Enjoy the music, eighty swellza-poppin' sides from 1950 to 1987, and visit Blank Frank's blog at https://and-your-bird-can-swing.blogspot.com (which appears inactive but he may have plans for further projects).

With thanks to Blank Frank.

Zig Zag Wandering With Steve Shark (Dept.)

UK rock magazine ZigZag was started by rock journalist and historian Pete Frame in 1969. Best remembered for the beautifully draughted rock family trees that were first seen in the magazine, Frame was also an A&R man for Charisma Records and the manager of Starry Eyed & Laughing, a UK band very heavily influenced by the Byrds.

In 1974, Zigzag was taken over by Tony Stratton-Smith, the founder of Charisma Records, and he decided to put on a concert with some of the ZigZag journalists' favourite acts. Frame was still a writer with the magazine and so had some input when it came to the line up - which may explain the first set!

The main sets in the show - at London's Roundhouse - were recorded but the tapes weren't released, and gathered dust until 2010, when Tony Poole of Starry Eyed & Laughing edited and remixed them for release. He did a great job, too.

There are 5 CDs in the case, with performances from Starry Eyed & Laughing, Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, John Stewart, Help Yourself and Mike Nesmith.

Disc 1 - Starry Eyed & Laughing
This was the band's earliest recording and features material that would appear on their first studio release. I've mentioned these guys on the IoF© before, and if you like the Byrds, you'll probably like SEAL.

Disc 2 - Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Born out of the ashes of Mighty Baby (also featured previously on the IoF©), the band boasted Martin Stone and future Residents collaborator Phil "Snakefinger" Lithman. Much more rootsy than Baby, there's western swing, bluegrass, straight country, blues and rockabilly in there.

Disc 3 - John Stewart
Ex-Kingston Trio, Stewart enjoyed a bit of a renaissance in the 1970s. This set is mostly acoustic, but the last few numbers see him picking up an electric guitar. There's a beautifully stripped-down version of "Daydream Believer", which he wrote.

Disc 4 - Help Yourself
Featuring 3/5 (on the last couple of numbers at least) of the version of Man that was currently touring, this is the "heads'" set and features four long numbers with plenty of jamming. Unsurprisingly, Man fans will probably enjoy this disc. We've also met Man on the IoF© before.

Disc 5 - Mike Nesmith
Yet another IoF© featured artist! Bringing only Red Rhodes - pedal steel player extraordinaire - up on stage with him, this is a very intimate set from Nesmith. He was a ZigZag magazine favourite and it's lovely to hear him hold the audience completely spellbound. Just Mike's voice, his acoustic guitar and Rhodes' pedal steel - perfect.

To get this precious artefact - complete with copious artwork and sleevenotes - just state what your all time favourite live album is.  

Songs From An Eternal Well

You're probably thinking 'PTUI! Dese we gots awready, ya doofus! We wants Tree Dog Night!" But hold on, valued customer, because these are the DVD mixes. Remastering exercises don't give me a music boner - after a couple of tries, it's a marketing grift, and mostly the difference doesn't register as improvement. But remixing, si! - on account which I can hear the diff without squinting at a waveform analysis some snowflake-eared artifact-spotter put up at Steve Hoffman.

Remixed by Mickey Hart for DVD, these discs, even to my ears, even at the IoF©'s lower-than-a-snake's-nutsack bitrate, are a paranormal improvemink - cleaner, airier, deeper. You can hear the texture of the bass strings. Songs no longer fade out before their time, and sound fresh and new, with previously buried detail (steel guitar! background vox!) brought out into the light. Played after these, all other versions sound muffled, like there's something missing. Give them a try - and seek out higher bitrates if that floats your cracker. At the very least, the exercise will serve to remind you - if you needed reminding - what a blindingly perfect couple of albums they are. The Dead drew songs from an eternal well, sang as clear as starlight, and bless their shining souls.

Included at no extra cost for a satisfying consumer experience is The Angel's Share, the companion to American Beauty.

Check out gdforum for details.

Isle O' Foam© Newsdesk O' News Dept. - New Bitrate Compression Chamber Opened!

Hmm - this one's nearly cooked ...

Th' IoF© postbag is full of requests to show more of what happens "behind the scenes" on Fabulous False Memory Foam© Island! To satisfy enquiring minds [Osgood and Vilene Enquiringminds, Elbowrash, WIS - Ed.] we're giving sneak preview of new Bitrate Compression Facility! Oboy!

Subscribers may remember previous exposé featuring Professor U.U. Gefiltefish operating old Bitrate Compression machine! Unfortunately, during testing of new facility Prof got trapped inside chamber and compressed himself to minus value. Luckily he left full instructions for operation, assurance that radiation emitted during use "almost negligible". 

Shewn in above Foam-O-Graph© [above - Ed.], Real Boy Homunculus Howdy-Doody monitors controls! Note default bitrate setting on space-age digital display! Note Knitting Pattern Man With Pod Head relaxing with bucket of SubGenius Nuggets®! Note Sister Rholonne Déodoranté, th' IoF©'s popliar Religiousness Consultant, serving refreshments! Note discreet gold-plated spitoon in corner! Note many familiar decorative accoutrements devoid of meaning yet saturated with terrible significance!

Your V.I.P. visit to new facility is also fun-type interactive game! Can you and your skeevy "sports" bar pals descry long-playing L.P. in Compression Chamber? Extry points for glomming hidden image of Your Genial Host!

EDIT: Only Babs got this one - The Complete Book Of Hours from Green Pajamas. Great album, chock full o' chewns n' romantic malaise (which was to smother Jeff Kelly for later releases). High point: Under The Observatory, just achingly gorgeous.

This post made fungible thru endowment from Art Poppleheffer's Senior Hygiene World™, Scranton PA - 10% off his world-famous Catheter-n'-Varicose Vein Hose Combo to all who show this blog piece! "Wheel-ins welcome!"

We Loved You, We Loved You Not Dept.

It took me way too long to appreciate these guys. At the time, they seemed strictly from squaresville (as absolutely nobody was saying), one of the many second-division U.K. acts scrabbling for our limited record budget. Plus also Allan Clarke seemed like a slatey-faced, woolly-haired cabaret singer and there was a bald guy in a terrible cap.

Starting with For Certain Because ('66), because it's arguably their first "proper" album, and self-written. Listened to now, it seems startlingly good, and if some young group sprang up with it today the world would be at their feet. Tony Hicks looks cool, Nash sinister, bald guy hides behind foliage, and Allan Clarke is on his lunch break.

They made two albums in '67, Butterfly and Evolution, each mirroring contemporary psychedelic moves, with more self-written songs, impeccable playing and production - their harmony singing was unequalled in the U.K. They offered nothing outrageously original, and were slower on the uptake with U.S. influences than The Beatles. But so was everybody - The Beatles were so supernaturally wired to the zeitgeist we thought they were original thinkers.

Nash was getting unhappier with Clarke, and in one of the most surprising square-to-hip career moves of all time landed in Laurel Canyon with Crosby & Stills. Clarke could now openly display chest medallions in unbuttoned lace shirts, and everything seemed right with the world.

Which brings us to Petals. It's not the "missing" '68 album, but it does include the best tracks they recorded before Nash left which remained in the can for decades. I've added three non-album hits which fit just fine, including the dizzying King Midas In Reverse. There are countless anthologies, best-ofs, and bonus track re-issues, but this may be all you need - a sumptuous feast of late 'sixties pop at its heady best.

Cover notes: Petals (note symbolism) and Butterfly are my own work, and For Certain Because my remix. Evolution is perfect.

Saturday Slugfest! Dept.

The magnificent pipe organ at th' Foam-O-Drome©

It's Saturday! [huh? - Ed.] Older readers may remember, in rare moments of lucidity like fugitive sunbeams in a thick, gloomy forest, our popliar FoamFeature© Slugfest Saturday™, where th' 4/5g© get axed to place their bets for a musical cagefight! "That's some swell fun right there!" avers IoF© poster boy Clarence Pune!

Bellying up to each other in the ring are The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Keith Hudson! Whom [grammar - Ed.] do you think will emerge victorious from th' Foam-O-Drome®, and whom [are you sure about this? - Ed.] will be stretchered away in a tsunami of boos and phlegm? 

Study form below, place bets in comment - justify choice, else we think it's guesswork, ya lazy-ass bum. To the victor, not only the spoils (who wants spoils yet?) but Featured Album loaddown!

Mormon Tabernacle Choir: Two hundred Christian souls - number prescribed by the number of boils on Job's butt [Leviticus XVI, LSMFT - Ed.] - and every sphincter crimped on a Brigham Young™ Hickory Buttplug. At weigh-in: 52,000 lb. If they can get a punch together between them, they're looking good!

Keith Hudson: The Dark Prince of Reggae is just one guy, but he's stoned enough for a couple hundred. Tipping the scales at 190lb, and that's just his stash, Keith says confidently, "I and I victorious on Judgement Day."

EDIT: It was Hudson for the win (see comments).  He awards his personal non-fungible digital iteration of Flesh Of My Skin to those who made the effort to place a bet. The rest of youse lazy-ass bums ain't eligible. G'wan- amscray!

If you enjoyed this post, please support Fabulous False Memory Foam© Island by patronising your local record store! Like this: "My! Aren't you a splendid little record store! Well done, little record store!"

Darkness On The Edge Of Pop Dept.

Cover art © Isle O'Foam© Department Of Art Dept. - ain't it swell?

This is a Prune protein shake. Not a complete archive, but the Greatest Hits are present, plus, minus the filler. The R.S.D. cover (printed on clear vinyl with a light show silver Mylar inner sleeve) lacks taste and restraint, but there's no room for either on Planet Prune - everything amped to the max and shuddering in hallucinogenic haze. There's a bitter, dark edge to their pop, sometimes snarly, sometimes sinister, so what's with the jokey name? Prunes are what old guys eat to help them shit. Did nobody mention this? Suggest, I dunno, rutabaga instead? These guys were plagued by fried logic and bad business advice, but at their best, as here, their psychedelia is as real as it gets. Be here now, and wake up where you are.

This most made feasible by grants from the Fly Me, I'm A Banana Foundation, Cucamonga.

The Cross-Eyed Cowpoke At Carnegie Hall

That's one of his time signatures above the barn door.

In his own words: "As far as the polyrhythms are concerned a lot of that came from riding. When you’re on a ranch like that, you’re alone a lot and you’re sent for miles and miles on horseback. You either go crazy, or you start thinking. When I was riding around those hills, the sense of space and the sounds a horse’s hooves made affected me. Someone once asked me how it worked and the easiest way to explain is just for me to beat out those rhythms. You could be bored unless you have an imagination. So I'd always be thinking musically when I had jobs to pump water or ride horseback. I'd lie there under the gasoline motor that was vibrating and I'm singing rhythms against that."

Taught some pianny by his Mom, he's fudging music class at college when he meets Totally Smokin' Hot Babe Iola Whitlock [with one lucky dude, left - Ed.]. Sez she: "At the time we were married, Dave was in the army and he said to me ‘I don’t know what the future is going to be like at all, but I promise you one thing, you will never be bored.’ And he’s kept his promise.”

Spool forward to 1963, when I first hear his Greatests Hits, one of the handful of records in my parent's baffling collection, and he's gigging at the Carnegie Hall, fercrissakes. And here we hand over to Thom Jurek at the ever-unreliable Allmusic, who nails it, once and forever: "For all those who have a big axe to grind with Brubeck,  for all those who claim the band was only successful because they were predominantly white, or played pop-jazz, or catered to the exotica craze, or any of that, you are invited to have all of your preconceptions, tepid arguments, and false impressions hopelessly torn to shreds by one of the great live jazz albums of the 1960s."

Amen to that. I hate that "whitebread" dismissal. It's inverse racism. I hear more earthy authenticity in his playing than (say) Oscar Peterson's salon soirée swing. He makes supposedly difficult time signatures as natural as clopping hooves, or the arhythmic clatter of a water pump. He wrote some swell tunes, led great musicians, changed how we listen to music, and every note was a blast. I saw him late in his life, when he had to be helped across the stage. He was still having a blast.

Who's In Mrs. Myra Nussbaum's Clam? Dept.

Foam-O-Graph© - It's like being there, only closer!™

It's been a while since Body Positivism Anti-Ageism Icon Mrs. Myra Nussbaum had a FoamFeature™, and today she's inviting the Four Or Five Guys© to take a squint inside her clam! That's right, subscribers! Nestling in the moist, glutinous interior is an entertainment-adjacent homunculus! Can you perchance identify the miniature show-biz simulacrum?

Impress confreres with allusive hint, recondite reference, cryptic clew in comments to showcase your savoir-faire! (Allow for possibility of Your Genial Host not immediately reading your mind, FFS.)

Lucky winners of this swell competition will win A ALBUM by featured star! Sayy - why not invite your monobrow pals around for a Clam Party?!

UPDATE: I made this kwizz insultingly easy on account which youse bums gots a lamentable recent histry in this-type thing. Yell ya why this album is swell: It's a well-recorded Vegas gig from his Imperial years, from soup to nuts, insanely professional (check the contractual run-time), and a lot of fun. Even the cover and the title are cooler than an eskimo's nuts.

This post made possible thru Class A drugs.

Pete's Picks Dept. - Gorgeous George

I found [writes Pete] the book Gershwin A Biography by Edward Jablonski in a free box not long ago and realized how little I knew about him. The education has been an absolute joy. And there are even some recordings of the great man, who was a much more accomplished pianist than I knew, as well as a mainstay of Broadway (usually writing with lyrics by his brother Ira, sometimes to my delight PG Wodehouse).

Gershwin also had classical ambitions and kept trying, up till well after he was both rich and famous, to apprentice himself to “real composers,” who generally warned him off, on the grounds that (as Ravel said) making him write bad “Ravel” would damage his great gift of melody and spontaneity. The renowned Parisian Nadia Boulanger turned him down as a student on the grounds that there was nothing she could teach him. He still caught some shit from the old school (too much “jazz”) but whaddyagonnado?

To the music, partly informed by Jablonski & the Internet (notably Allmusic), partly because this was what I could easily get my hands on, sometimes at lowish mp3 rates. Feel free to offer additions! First off, Piano Rolls, a recording mechanism of the early 20th century, many examples of which survive but need work to translate effectively to modern technology. Then more of George, a whole host of great singers who were his contemporaries (he died in 1937 at the sickeningly early age of 38; what did we all miss?), and three moderns, if we can still call Willie modern.

Steve Shark Shakes Hands With A Meal In The Dark Dept.

Mal Dean was to Brown what Cal Schenkel was to Zappa - integral

Poet and lyricist [declaims Steve Shark - Ed.] Pete Brown is known mainly for his work with Cream, but his story begins earlier than that and extends all the way to the present. However, it's the early days that are featured here.

Although he started off as a poet, Pete became an active member of the London jazz scene in the early 1960s and soon began to move into music, forming The First Real Poetry Band, which included John McLaughlin. The band was very successful on the London club circuit and it recorded a series of demos, although none have been released so far.

Brown soon attracted the attention of Ginger Baker of Cream, who was looking for a lyricist, although he got on better with Jack Bruce. The pair went on to write "Wrapping Paper", "I Feel Free", "Sunshine of Your Love" (with Clapton), "Politician", "White Room", and several others. They would also collaborate on Bruce's solo material, including the magnificent "Songs for a Tailor" album.

Brown had since broken up The First Real Poetry Band, as he thought his singing was the weak link in it, and decided to form a new band, with less competent members than the Poetry Band. He thought that such musicians might be more amenable to his style of singing. This didn't pan out, so he decided to seek out more experienced players.

So it was, that in 1968, Brown formed Pete Brown and His Battered Ornaments, which included Chris Spedding, Dick Heckstall Smith and George Khan. Things went very well indeed with a signing to the prestigious Blackhill Management, and then a recording deal with the new Harvest label.

What could possibly go wrong?

Their first album together was called "A Meal You Can Shake Hands With in the Dark" (what a great title!) and it's one of my favourite records of that or any other era. The band is top notch and the songs are all memorable, with Brown's superb lyrics and his voice - never the sweetest of sounds - effective enough to these ears when delivering them. There's jazz, there's blues, there's psychedelia, there's Latin and there's even a bit of a nod to folk.

"Dark Lady" kicks off the album with a continuous modal vamp which changes key to kick it up a notch and then the soloing begins with organ, sax and Chris Spedding playing funk rhythm guitar, as well as fills on slide. More key changes maintain interest and Spedding ends the song with a short solo. There's a lot of free and jazzy blowing here, although it's always anchored by the rock bass and drums.

Another cracking track is "The Politician" - a distant cousin of the Cream song. It starts with a hilarious monolgue from Brown which gives way to some stertorious sax, a brief belch and then it takes off, with lots of slide guitar from Spedding. Brown then tells the story of the Politician in what is esentially a 12 bar blues taken at speed. There's a strange echoing sax solo and more singing from Brown, one more sax solo that skitters about, an organ solo and then (almost) a bass solo. Throughout, Brown portrays the lecherous and corrupt politician of the title - what a good job things have changed, eh?

"Sandcastles" has some great flute playing from Khan and wah-wah slide from Spedding, all laid over a hypnotic Latin rhythm, driven by some terrific bass playing from Butch Potter. Brown's lyrics reveal his more lyrical side, compared to the broad humour of "The Politician".

Almost everyone in those days had to play a blues and the Ornaments were no exception. "Travelling Blues or the New Used Jew's Dues Blues" is a total pisstake. Everyone piles in with blues cliches, and Brown is very funny throughout, with lines like: Yeah, we're rolling across the country, and the colours of the cows are cool.

Anyway, the album did well, the gigs rolled in, a second album was cut and ready for release, and the band was lined up to play at Hyde Park supporting the Stones.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the day before the Hyde Park gig - the day before - the band sacked Brown as they thought his singing wasn't really up to scratch.

Ouch...

So, the Battered Ornaments played Hyde Park without Pete, Chris Spedding replaced all Brown's vocals on the new album with his own, the band faded into oblivion, and Brown went off to form Piblokto, which pretty much followed the career trajectory of his former band. Although Spedding was a better singer (just barely) than Brown, his wasn't an interesting voice and lacked conviction. The Battered Ornaments were simply a more engaging band with Pete Brown than without him, and the punters agreed.

The story doesn't end there, as I said above, but for now it does. Many of the chief players are still alive and still making music, so that's perhaps a good note on which to conclude. Oh, and Pete's singing has improved greatly.

So, what goodies are there to download?

Both Battered Ornaments albums are included - with and without Pete. There are two additional tracks on the second album - an unofficial release in this case - which were the A sides of a brace of singles. One was with the BOs and Pete - also recorded as a demo by Pete's first band with John McLaughlin - and the other with Pete's next band Piblokto. Odd choices for a non-Brown album release, but interesting if you want to try and imagine what Pete might have sounded like with McLaughlin.

Never Better Than This Dept. - 1967

Groovy cover art by IoF© Department Of Art Department Dept.

If ever there was an album that distills the sheer happiness of being alive in 1967 it's this one, yet it tends to be unremembered and unappreciated, and that's down to two things - the group's name and the cover [below, left - Ed.], which combine to give the impression of a cheap Saturday morning T.V. cartoon. You can almost hear the canned laughter and the sound effects. The Young Rascals - zany antics aplenty! Or worse - it looks like a Hallmark exploitation card, something Grandma might buy for a rascally teen.

They were to drop the "Young" bit, and start using hip, sophisticated album art (involving drummer Dino Danelli, who got better at his job), for the following year's sublime Once Upon A Dream. The dizzying stylistic range of that album has its genesis here - it's like they unconsciously encompassed everything about their own musical heritage to produce a Technicolor snapshot of New York. Italian wedding songs, Broadway shows, street corner doo-wop, and Saturday Night At The Apollo. Add in a touch of surprisingly vivid psychedelia and you have one super-swell record album. It's worth noting that the band not only produced the album and played it (with the help of some A-list sessioners) but wrote all but one of the songs. Some heavyweight talent at work here, entirely at odds with the presentation.

Yay for these guys!

T.V.'s Father Mulcahy's Inflatable Country Rock Confessional! Dept.

Foam-O-Graph© - Visual solutions to problems nobody is having

You'll know T.V.'s "Milquetoast" Mulcahy from the hit C.B.S. show AfterMASH, where he was part of a motley crew of renegados kicking Rommel's Nazi ass in the desert! But did you know he's also a big "country rock" fan?! Turns out the irritating, wet-cheeked marsupial has heard many a country rock band in his inflatable confessional, now moored off Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©!

FT3 So, Padre, why are you always so goddamn smug?

FM Bless you, my child, for-

FT3 Bless me? Bless me?! Fuck you!

FM The Lord sayeth-

FT3 The Lord can chew my balloon knot. You are easily the most punchable character in a sitcom, like, ever. With Hawkeye Pierce a close second. Him and his fake smile and his fake laff - which is the same as his fake smile only with his jaw dropped. I tell you, only Frank and Hotlips were worth a damn in that show. Maybe Henry.

FM We each of us have our part to-

FT3 Tell ya what, Monsignor, you just paddle that inflatable confessional outta here. G'wan, amscray!

FM Do you want the albums?

FT3 Albums? Oh, sure. Thanks, I guess ...

FM So ... who would come in third?

FT3 Third? Oh. Roseanne Barr.

FM (shudders) Even I'd punch her. Right in her fat neck.

FT3 Fancy a daquiri?

FM Served by Kreemé?

"So what's all dis levity to me, bub?" you ax, in that adenoidal whine of yours. Well, if you can identify who's confessin' their country rock peccadillos in the above Foam-O-Graph©, you will qualify for TWO of their swell long-playin' L.P.s, that's what!

Don't forget, fight fans - leave clew or allusive hint as to identity of country rock combo! Don't name directly!

This Old School Foam-O-Graph© post made possible thru funding from th' Acme Veeblefetzer Corp., Pork Bend, WIS. A tip o' th' po' boy cap to CEO Smurdley Z. Kowzcnofski!

Susanna Hoffs Babesplains Non-Fungible Tokens! Dept.

You'll know Steamy Suze from top girlie group The Au Go Go's, whose chart-topping hit Girls Just Wanna Have Fun topped the charts back in ?research pse. [fuck you - Ed.] but did you know she is a respected fiduciary consultant? Turns out the diminutive doe-eyed diva [kill me now - Ed.] is quite the investment broker! 

In this, the first in a series of "Susanna Hoffs Babesplains" FoamFeatures®, Sultry Susie gets to grips with Non-Fungible Tokens, which is, like, money for guys what are both rich and dumb. We spoke yestiddy while she prepared for an important Wall St. meeting. Or sleepover.

FT3 Hey Suuze!

SH What am I, a Mexican bus-boy?

FT3 Nice pair of lamps!

SH You're not lighting them up, let me put it that way.

FT3 (laughs) Ha ha! So, you're going to babesplain Non-Fungible Tokens for us while you, uh, fix your hair? You little minx you?

SH Well, okay. The concept of fungibility refers to the ability for an asset to be exchanged equivalently with another asset of like kind. In contrast to fungible assets, non-fungible assets are valued differently based on their unique attri ... bzzzrrrrrrttttttt ...

--- signal lost ---

FT3 Susie? Sweetpants? (rattles old-type receiver cradle) Hello? Operator? Oh darn. Let's give some spindle time to Schunge while we appreciate La Hoffs' eminently fungible assets.

The Schunge story was told in a recent issue of Shindig magazine, should youse bums be desirous. Basically a couple singer-songwriter-type guys whose album was in a sense taken away from them to be arranged and played by Mike Westbrook and his jazz-adjacent pals. It's as obscure as you can get without an internet. You don't care because you didn't read this far, Cousin Dupree.

Chasing Rainbows

Art copyright Isle O' Foam© Department O' Art Dept.

You might think The Story Of Simon Simopath is a quaint little curiosity, not without charm, but too lightweight to be taken seriously or enjoyed unironically. Yes, it has historical value as the first album release by a pop group on Island records, and as the first pop opera, in the sense of it being a suite of songs with some kind of vague narrative thread. Much like real opera, then. But does it still hold up musically, as it did back in '67 when John Peel described Pentecost Hotel as "the loveliest song you'll ever hear"?

Nirvana was never a band, but the close partnership of the strangely strange yet oddly normal Patrick Campbell-Lyons and Alex Spyropoulos, backed by the cream of the cream London session and studio talent. Chris Blackwell didn't stint, and even the cover was an expensive (and unusual, for the time) gatefold. But the ten track, twenty-four minute running time was a head-scratcher. Pop albums back then were generally twelve tracks, even if that amounted to only half an hour on the spindle. Nobody timed albums, but I could count songs, and I knew we were being short-changed. Studying the *cough* story on the inner gatefold gave a clue; Tiny Goddess was mentioned, but not capitalised as an included song like the others. Tiny Goddess - their hit single - had been lifted from the album. Why? Who knows? It was on the second album, so the idea that hit singles shouldn't appear on albums doesn't apply - especially as All Of Us also featured Rainbow Chaser, their biggest hit single. A mystery.

Tiny Goddess was backed by I Believe In Magic, no b-side throwaway (Nirvana cut plenty of those) which fit thematically. The melody pivots on a disturbing - and quite deliberate - flat. These two additional songs bring the album up to a respectable run time and complete the story - Tiny Goddess in the position indicated by the sleeve notes, between Pentecost Hotel and I Never Had A Love Like This Before, and I Believe In Magic as an entirely appropriate, and much stronger, album closer.

Lyrically, the fairy-tale is dated, but the gentle vocals are delivered with an unaffected and touching sincerity, nothing camp or arch, Donovan fey or U.K. Kaleidoscope twee. The essential innocence (the uncharitable might say naivety) of the era is held like a dragonfly in amber. The idea that the songs could hang together as a story - concept albums didn't exist back then - didn't occur to the writers until they were half way through recording. And it's deceptively heavy stuff, involving alienation, mental institutions, and a side order of centaur, with an unconvincing happy ending.

Melodically, it's rich and generous, tunes all over it, under it, running through it, endlessly refreshing, never running dry. A key contributor was mæstro of schlock Syd Dale [left - dude! - Ed.], whose career is otherwise an artistic bust. Here, for some reason, working with what is essentially a pop chamber ensemble, he was inspired to create original arrangements, often putting the musicians through tricky time changes that never sound jarring or forced, perfectly complementing the melancholy beauty of the songs. Syd done good. Listen to the drumming - there's no place-holder time-keeping here. Restrained string and woodwind sections add texture and melodic counterpoint, and often it's the subtle instrumental figures within the arrangement that light the corners of your memory.

Nirvana's subsequent recordings are a queasy mood swing from Champagne to sheep dip. The tension between wanting to rock out, get Euro-pop chart hits, and wallow in show-tune schlock was untenable. Their filler would be filler on Now That's What I Call Filler. So I made a personal selection of the tracks from All Of Us and To Markos III that hang together as an album, consistent in tone and quality. The songwriting chops on Chasing Rainbows are very much in evidence, the melodies as effortlessly memorable, but the chamber clarity is gone - the sound is denser, more electric, and the strings tend to the generic. Lyrically, it's more mature and better written. often with a welcome personal directness. The final track, Black Flower, is as powerful as anything from the era, with its extended coda of (anonymous) wah-wah guitar wailing over the orchestration.

But Simon Simopath, especially in its complete form as here, may well be among the loveliest things you'll ever hear. Don't let the lyrical whimsy - the least important element - distract you from one of the subtlest, and most seductive, pop narcotics. 

Tin Pan Alley in its dying days. The most colorful year in London's history shown in typically chilly black and white. Patrick comes across as quiet, sincere, Alex confesses to personal anxiety being the fount of his creativity. Anxiety about what, Alex?

Cover Notes: The art for Chasing Rainbows (which took me, like, forever) goes against their approach for both the second and third albums [left - Ed,]; grim exercises in black despair and horror, maybe reflecting what they felt at the death of the 'sixties dream. They're undeniably powerful images, but would be more appropriate for Black Sabbath. Let's send them out in a blaze of Technicolor (or at least Todd-AO) glory; full-on, unapologetic psychedelia, and a last wave of the freak flag.