I've Been Eating Broccoli All Wrong And Here's Some Grateful Dead Dept.

And the name of this album is ...

Hey! Mebbe youse bums is eating it all wrong, too! The secret is to junk the floret, the flowery top, and chow down on the stalks. Who knew? Not je until a few days ago, and I credit this fine recording, playing at the time, with the discovery. Turns out yer brocc is a sneaky little bugger, kwide lidrally hiding its light under a bushel. Them stems is sweet as a nut, with none of the hedgehog dandruff bitterness that puts right-thinking fellers off the stuff for life. Eat it! Eat it raw! Or cook how you like - me, I toss it in with the pasta. Right in there, soon as it starts to boil. But the flowery tops get kicked to th' kerb without a second thought. Gee whiz, fellers, that's some swell eatin'!

Anyway, here's the Dead, recorded in '69 by Owsley Stanley - I think, probably - at micro-club Thelma on Sunset [don't look for it, it's not there any more - Ed.]. I first had it as a single-disc bootleg edit, and until recently didn't know that the entire gig was available on Dave's Picks Vol. 10. So I've added the xtry trx, including the mysterious Boners Disc, but kept the bootleg title, which I like a lot, and my replacement cover [above - Ed.], as Dave's Artworks give me hives.

Perhaps the synapse-popping version of Caution will inspire you to culinary breakthroughs, too! Leave a comment, should you be desirous.







This post made degustible thru' funding from Chuck Castaneda's Mystic Cabbage Motor Court, Swayback, NM. 

Celebrate The Perineum With This Unsettling Movie Dept.

Here on Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©, we celebrate the Perineum - that period between Christmas and the New Year - by screening a favorite movie down at the beach. This year the insects gathered in the beam of the projector as original nitrate reels of Dead Of Night spooled through the gate, the ghostly image flickering on a nun's outsize scapular stretched between giant Lucite™ statues of Dick Manitoba and Joey Heatherton.

As a cinéaste, you'll be familiar with this Ealing Studios "portmanteau" production from 1945, applauding its bold chiaroscuro and gothic ambience, speculating on a codified gestalt of English post-war malaise, and acknowledging its lasting influence on the horror genre in both cinema and television. But enough of that shit. It's a varied collection of short stories from different teams that's both entertaining and disturbing, in an entirely effects-free way that contemporary movies can't achieve. The stories are connected by a core narrative of ominous déja-vu [oh, shut up - Ed.] experienced by a visitor at a country house.

So spool it up, dim the lights, and let the ventriloquist's tale haunt the rest of your life. Happy Perineum!

No bats were harmed in the making of this picture, nor indeed appear in it.

Spoiler Alert Dept. - Queen Still Crap

Okay, who farted?

Crap is perhaps unfair. As musicians, they were obviously more than technically competent. They had a global hit with that larky cod-opera song and entertained millions with their live performances, adding to the gaiety of nations and lifting the human spirit, so crap can't be the right word. Who isn't cheered by Fat Bottomed Girls? But I felt unmoved and uninvolved from the beginning. Much like I felt with Bowie, Bolan, the Electric Light Orchestra, Elton John and any number of U.K. chart darlings back-combing their barnets, squeezing into sateen panto motley and getting the Radio One Roadshow crowd swaying on a Bank Holiday weekend. The canteen of British pop offered menu choices of glam or glum, glitter or gristle. Where were the Great British equivalents of Dylan, Steely Dan, Little Feat, Zappa, Santana, Springsteen, the Allman Brothers or the Dead? Clue: not. I mean, apart from the Stones.

In the spirit of Yuletide magnanimity I decided to reassess Queen, as I had Sting (to much personal profit). Maybe I'd been wrong all these years, and missed out on a bunch of swell records! I'm a busy man, so I set my team of researchers to whittle down Queen's extensive discography to a generally-agreed Greatest Album and settled back to have my prejudices shattered and open up a whole new world of popular entertainment.

If you noted the title of this timely and provocative think-piece you'll have anticipated my keen disappointment after struggling through half A Night At The Opera and skipping the stylus over the rest. It seems as alien and vaguely repellent to me as wearing slacks, or having a decorative Kleenex dispenser in the car. Perhaps I'm being unfair, but I'd bet those practices are not uncommon among Queen fans.

What to like not there is? Freddie's voice. He's over-blowing all the time. Declaiming, performing, doing the jazz hands or the wrist-to-forehead, in the grand showbiz tradition of Ethel Merman. The songs? They're show tunes! Nothing here as good as Louie Louie. Brian May's comb-and-paper guitar tone. He made his own guitar from a fireplace! And hammered coffin nails on an anvil for picks! Leave him alooone! If he shut up, I would. The drums sound pretty rockular, though. But that ain't enough.

The time I spent skinning up on New Riders album sleeves was not wasted.

“It’s My Happening And It Freaks Me Out!” Dept.

 

Age shall not wither them ...

The Strawberry Alarm Clock, amazingly, incredibly, awesomely, are still grooving along with the five original members. Carve their names with pride: Mark Weitz, Randy Seol, George Bunnell, Gene Gunnels, Steve Bartek, plus noob teen guitarist Howie Anderson, who's only been with the band thirty years or so. The elderly funsters recreated [above - Ed.] the classic/iconic cover of their first album for their website, which you should scamper over to - take a wild guess -  as soon as you're done here, and buy all their shit. Because they are groovy.

They didn't get the cred they deserved back in the day, because they went unapologetically full on for the hippie look, but these guys were - and still are - great musicians, and great writers. Here they are in the groovy movie Psych Out [AFF©- Ed.]:

And here they are in (I guess) an unused cover shot - who's your favorite SAC?

And here they are in gonzoid teensploitation masterpiece Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls:

Deliverables in comments!

Alternate Universe Jimi Dept.

This is a selection from the alternate studio recordings which first officially appeared on the "purple velvet" box set, confusingly yclept The Jimi Hendrix Experience. I rarely dip into box sets, and hardly ever play them through (Waka/Wazoo is an exception), so this saves me the effort of having to tweezer out the stuff I want to hear, which from this, is mostly this. The tapes were in Chas Chandler's sock drawer for decades, but smell sweet as sandalwood. They have more than just archival interest, and some of the differences are marked.

His playing on Spanish Castle Magic (f'rinstance) leaps from the speakers and shakes you like a mongoose shakes a snake. Nobody sounded this outrageously alive, this fucking furious, before or since. It's not about technique and fretwork dexterity - Hendrix was a sloppy virtuoso. It's about the sound of his soul. At his best, and there are moments in this collection, he snaps you awake with a neon static surge nobody else knew how to unleash.

We don't really need an excuse to spend some time with Jimi, but this may provide you with one. It's at a digestible album length (seventeen-minute sides!) and there's a new cover, inspired by the groovy alternate artwork for Electric Ladyland [above - Ed.]. In this Alternate Universe, you're lifting it out of the racks on the day of release, the sun is shining through stained glass, and there's wind chimes, and Jimi never dies.

This post homologated by the Federal Bureau Of Mind Expansion

Non-Gratuitous Violins Dept.

The King Kong album prompted comments about Lead Violin In Rock (a hot debate topic, back when people cared abut the things that mattered), which prompted me to spin a few pioneering examples. The Flock [Jerry Goodman, above - Ed.] were FoamFeatured Antecedently©, in one of the least popular pieces ever pasted to the front page, so I'm hoping this selection will stir up as much interest!

Showbiz charmer, pal of Charles Manson, drug dealer and convicted torturer-murderer Bobby Beausoleil's 1966 Orkustra attracted David LaFlamme, who smartly bailed for It's A Beautiful Day after establishing the chin cello as a viable lead instrument in rock, and before he could get slain by a bunch of heroin-crazed satanists. "Lucky Bobby" continues his studies to this day at Government College with no student debt to repay.

Sea Train's first album from '68 got hijacked by their label and released as the contract-fulfilling last Blues Project album Planned Obsolescence, a mistake that alienated existing fans rather than attracting new ones. Labels is dumbass. Richard Greene bothers the catgut to rousing effect, and the violin's place in rock is assured. Groovy album, new cover by je, you'll dig it. A consistently excellent band [FFA© - Ed.].

It's A Beautiful Day's first album from '69 is so great it's as great as its cover, so great it is. A big hit, too. I've added Love For You, the only contemporary non-album track by the band, because it slides in perfectly. White Bird is playing as we speak, as white birds fly above the Mekong. It's a beautiful day!

Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking, again from '69, was their first to feature Dave Swarbrick's fiddle, showcased on the extended jamming of A Sailor's Life. And yes, it's a rock album.

High Tide is highly rated by the Mandrax/Quaalude set (hi, Steve!), but not je. First album from 1970 features headachey fiddling from Simon House. Next!

Curved Air's first album Airconditioning made a big impact in the UK in '70, not least for being a beautiful but shitty-sounding picture disc. Darryl Way's violin and Sonja Kristina's tremulously icy vox gave the band a unique sound, and in Vivaldi they had a college-circuit showstopper.

String Cheese were obviously inspired by IABD, but lacked the material. Their lone album from '71 features Greg Bloch's violin - he played on the It's Not Such A Beautiful Day album Today, when LaFlamme mistakenly took a back seat.

Also in '71, Jerry Goodman made an explosive and unexpected return in The Mahavishnu Orchestra's The Inner Mounting Flame, a staggering achievement that owed nothing to anybody and made everything else seem like ... string cheese.

It had been two years since their last studio album Volunteers, and in '72 Jefferson Airplane were no longer skywriting messages people needed to hear. Bark is an album by a band that doesn't know what it's for any more. Papa John Creach was an inspired addition on violin, but not enough to stop their compass spinning.

Note: Some favorites omitted - including yours - because reasons. I ignore John Cale's challenging work with the Velvet Underground because he plays the fucking viola.

Frank Zappa Album Fell Through The Cracks Dept.

The spiffy Waka/Wazoo set, and the associated remasters, make us marvel anew at the great man's pep, vim, moxie, chutzpah, and spunk. But the jazz-centric leanings of those albums were prefigured by this here album, recorded in - heavens to Betsy! - 1969, the same year he recorded Uncle Meat and Hot Rats, with Burnt Weeny Sandwich hot on their heels. Holy profligacy, Batman! It's arranged and mostly written by Frank, and he wires some snarly guitar into the lone Ponty composition. The whole thing is fantastic, blending seamlessly with the aforementioned, and if you don't have it, now you do.

It's evaded being part of the core Zappa canon [big gun - Ed.] mainly, I postulate [miss the mail - Ed.], because it's on the Liberty label, later Blue Note, and has never received the archival reissue treatment of his own-name releases. But it is, in concept and sound, very much a Zappa album. Produced by left coast cool jazz legend Richard Bock, it features a bunch of the Hot Rats musicians. Here's a list, because you like lists, laboriously transcribed keystroke by keystroke from the wiki page so you lazy-ass schnooks don't have to click over:

Jean-Luc Ponty – electric violin (all tracks), baritone violectra (tracks: A1-A3, B2)

Ernie Watts – alto saxophone (tracks A2, A3, B2); tenor saxophone (tracks A2-A4, B2)

Ian Underwood – tenor saxophone (track A1), orchestra conductor (track B1)

Frank Zappa – electric guitar (track A4)

George Duke – electric piano (all tracks), acoustic piano (track B1)

Gene Estes – vibraphone, percussion (tracks A1, B2)

Buell Neidlinger – double bass (tracks A1, B1)

Wilton Felder – Fender Precision electric bass

John Guerin – drums (tracks A2, A3, A4, B2)

Arthur Dyer Tripp III – drums (tracks A1, B1)

Gene Cipriano – oboe, English horn (track B1)

Donald Christlieb – bassoon (track B1)

Vincent DeRosa – descant recorder, French horn, descant (track B1)

Arthur Maebe – French horn, tuba (track B1)

Jonathan Meyer – flute (track B1)Milton Thomas – viola (track B1)

Harold Bemko – cello (track B1)

I seem to remember my vinyl copy had some unintentionally hilarious liner notes by beret-and-pipe jazzbo writer Leonard Feather, referring to "sides" and "blowing" and the like. Like, digsville!

This post transmogrified thru intercession by the Weeping Jesus of Port Authority bus terminal, N.Y.

Close Your Eyes And Drift Away Dept.

A nice bunch of spacey, atmosphery, relaxy, ambienty albums that avoid the pan pipes n' windchimes New Age aromatherapy blandness. Between Interval's Legacy carries you along a river of burbles and swooshes, delivering the promise of that gorgeous cover art.

Rameses B.'s Spacewalk adds occasional vox to the mix, with slippery beats and familiar chord voicings. And more winning cover art. Further explorations into their discography will disappoint unless you're a Balearic enthusiast.

Dharana's Between - astonishingly, from '77 - has a more Easterny vibe (warning - some chanting may be present), some nice acousticy guitar, and organicy texture that's guaranteed to impart luster to your chakras. We'll have to forgive the cover art.

Maneesh de Moor's Sadhana, rather off-puttingly described as "an ethno-ambient journey into Oneness" establishes, as you'd expect, an Indian mood without ever descending into curry-house pastiche. Larvely!

Mantric Muse's eponymous [rock crit advisory - Ed.] album features some very satisfying electric guitar soloing over the urgent rhythms, giving it a distinctly rockier edge, and this is almost as much jazz-inflected prog as spacey ambience.

I tend to ignore this genre (whatever you'd call it) because a little goes a long way, and there's an inevitable tendency to sound alike, but these albums have enough structure, melody, and variety to become much-played keepers. It is my fervent hope, dear freeloading schlemiels, that you find a tiny corner of your lives to accommodate these musical offerings as relief from the corpse-grinding bleeding throat metal bands you find so compelling.

NOW! That's What I Call Groups Named After William Burroughs Novels! Dept.

You'll know the obvious ones from the "pop charts": Nova Express, Dead Fingers Talk, Naked Lunch ...  but have you heard of The Soft Machines? This peppy pop combo hails from the sleepy town of Ipswich, England, part of "The Ipswich Scene" which is taking the nation's youth by storm! Other swingin' groups rockin' the "Ipswich Beat" include The Pink Floyds, Hatfield And His Norths, and The Caravans!

"We're putting Ipswich on the map!" laughs dreamy drummer Bobby Wyatt [left - Ed.], whose fresh good looks have garnered the lads an ardent following amongst the local "dolly birds"!

But what of their "far out" name? Let keyboard maestro Mickey Ratledge, the "intellectual" of the group, take up the story! "What does the name mean?" he grins, "what does anything actually mean?" Brian "The Bass Man" Hopper has a different answer! "It means like a machine," he muses, "which is soft, like a bread roll, and not hard, like a submarine".

Whatever the name means, the music speaks for itself! Watch out, world, the Ipswich Scene is here, and how!

This piece, one of Reg Threadneedle's "Reg's Parade Of Pops!" columns, was copied without permission from Beat n' Pop Music Weekly [original header artwork, above - Ed.]. Threadneedle's career as pop pundit was brought to a halt by his alleged involvement in the Christian Boy Crusaders For Pop scandal in the late 'sixties. Although never formally charged, Threadneedle retired from the scene, eventually dying alone, forgotten, and destitute in a Neasden bedsit.

Elderly Lesbians Choose Their Album O' Th' Year Dept.

 

Goytrude (left) and Oyma on th' cusp o' th' musical zeitgeist, yestiddy.

🎅🏼Longtime grifters at th' IoF© may remember, if their meds have kicked in, our regliar Yuletide feature hosted by saucy sapphic seniors Gertrude and Irma, wherein they choose their Album o' th' Year. So, what have our sexy scissor sisters been turning on their hearing aids - and each other! - for this year?

Irma: I liked that one album by that fat girl.

FT3: Adele? I think that was last year?

Gertrude: We did her already, Irma.

Irma:  (giggles) We should be so lucky.

Gertrude: (gestures) Elbow deep in that bi-

FT3: (cutting in) So! Have you liked any new albums this year?

Irma: Garcia's People.

Gertrude: (raises fist in solidarity, rips out I.V. drip) Solid, Jackson!

FT3: Garcia Peoples.

Irma: What?

FT3: The band's called Garcia Peoples.

Gertrude: (farts audibly, sniffs) That makes a shitload of no sense.

FT3: (fanning air) What about the difficult second album by Fernweh?

Irma: Fernweh? Fernmeh, more like. I think I speak for us both in lamenting the shift to a harder-edged sound and losing the ruralist influence that made the first album so special.

Gertrude: Blow it out yer ass.

FT3: She just did. Any albums by broads? Sorry - chicks. Dames.

Irma: Lana Del Rey moistens my oyster.

FT3: But the records? Seriously? Can she even, like, sing?

Irma: Who gives a shit? Nobody, apparently.

FT3: What about the new Neil? World Record?

Irma: Not as good as Barn. 

Gertrude: I think ... I'm having a diaper failure ...

Irma: Without me? Again?

[Tape ends]

Say, fellows! Did you lissen to any new records this year? Can you remember them? Add a comment, should sudge be your inclination.

Saturday Morning TV Dept. - Batman

The acting in these shows is not bad, it's brilliant. Everyone plays it straight, conscious of the absurdity, never falling into condescension, mockery, or irony - at once two-dimensional and vividly characterful. No knowing winks to camera here; they inhabit this bizarre world with utter conviction. It's high camp yet no-one is really camping it up except Burt Ward. The script eschews [blow it out yer ass - Ed.] cleverness, but it's far from stupid, with an earnestly formal style - everyone in the show is straight man for an absent comedian. 

The show was sneered at (by anyone over forty) for dumbing down television - as if such a thing was possible. Perhaps a laugh track might have made it clear to them that Batman is one of the great TV comedy shows, but its absence was key to the tone. Whatever, it attracted a huge audience and reruns have aired continuously somewhere in the world since its cancellation. Although there's some carping criticism on the internet (come on!) it's insanely enjoyable entertainment, with its pop art styling, hallucinogenic color palette, and maybe the greatest (and dumbest) theme tune in TV history [Neal Hefti - Ed.]. Listen to the drums!

Although initially planned as a Saturday morning show, it burst onto the screens at prime time, with two connected episodes a week, the first ending on a cliffhanger [see above - Ed.]. It went on to three lengthy seasons, until waning excitement and the bat-sets symbolically burning down at the end of the 'sixties brought the show, and the era, to an end.

An appropriately two-part loaddown; Part One - the first two episodes from 1966, in retina-frying quality, and Part Two, the original TV soundtrack album, with bonus Jan & Dean Meet Batman.

Hear their actual television voices! Your copy personally signed by Burt Ward!

This post sponsored by the K.G. Bird Umbrella Company, Gotham.

Improving Timeless Masterpieces Dept. - Simon And Garfunkel

I wasn't playing Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme as much as it warrants. It is very much the first in their Pop Masterpiece Trilogy, but it looks like it belongs with the first two albums - folksy, generic, and underproduced, rather than with Bookends and Bridge, and I'm guessing it's played less and underappreciated simply because of this. 

The original presentation [left - Ed.] looks, well, sappy. Whatever they were, Paul n' Art were too testy and angsty, too New York, to be flower children, and this to-camera pose - pleading rather than introspective - does them no favors. Although it's a beautifully balanced composition, the solid black background works against the gentle, summery vibe of the photography. The font is is fussy, lifted from a Hallmark card, and the title?

It's waaay too long, and it's, well, sappy. Like a scented soap gift pack. And it's not the title of a song, either, but a line from Scarborough Fair/Canticle. Hard to say why they chose it, other than it being as sappy as the photograph, and while sap is embedded in S&G's DNA, it's by no means what they were selling on this album. This is where they - mostly - left Greenwich Village behind, and with Roy Halee's genius for startlingly original arrangements and crystalline sound, set out their stall as superlative musicians who just happened to be making pop music.

They didn't get hip to what impact a great cover can have until the next album. There are an infinite number of ways they could have gone for this one - my attempt [above top, just under heading - Ed.] uses a stretched and tinted Michael Ochs portrait. Rubber Soul had pioneered this kind of distortion, and it seems a more appropriate zeitgeit motif than a bunch of goddamn flowers. Canticle carries a liturgical sense, and I hope I've picked up the monkish vibe in the font. It is at least a suitably serious and reflective look, and Ochs' defining shot catches them separate and together, as they always were.

You likely have this already, but maybe you could give it another spin while staring blankly at the new look. Or not - I'm not your Mom.

My first attempt [left - Ed.]. Better/worse/the same, I have no idea. This would have been a groovy gatefold, with a die-cut frame. Click for bigly.

Other improved S&G albums here.

WIN!! Steamy Love Romp With Moviedom's KEIRA KNIGHTLEY* In Our Grand Xmas Competition!!! - Dept.

 

Foam-O-Graph© - Serving Suggestions For The Visually Impaired

Curvy Keira Knightley [above - Ed.] awaits your bidding at luxury love nest Offramp Motel And Poultry Rinse, Buttway, ND! What better way to celebrate eons-old pagan ceremony of Yuletide than steamy love romp with sultry star of TV's Gal Pals?

Simply enter our swell Yuletide Competition and YOUR FLUIDS could be draining down into an array of pink orifices in a nite of savage romance to remember! Should our luscious lady be not to your tastes, simply write in your celeb of choice! Oboy!

How to play? Why, it's as easy as AB3! Using your own words, simply state the connection between these well-known best-selling albums!

Grand Consolation Prize of loaddown deliverable of above albums to first loser who comments!





*should Ms. Knightley, or your celebrity of choice, be unavailable a substitute will be provided at small extra cost. Participation in contest is agreement to rules and conditions.

So Much More Not Less Dept. - Blue Ash

What a fantastic group! Don't stuff them in the power pop pigeonhole - this is pop/rock. Tough, melodic, an American spin on British influences that include the Stones and the Who as much as, if not more than, the Beatles. This is music made when psychedelic rock had whiplashed into rootsy country rock [see our Pulitzer prize-winning Curse Of The Kaftan series - Ed.] of which these guys none were having. Of. They wanted rock on the radio, not rocking on the porch, and they had chops and energy and songs out th' ass. But they were both anachronistic and ahead of their time, rather than of their time, and under-appreciated then and now. 

The blisteringly good debut [above - Ed.] shows they had deep catalog tastes - an unknown Dylan song, and a surprising Beatles cover, both of which they make their own. Second album, which should have broken them nationally, was issued on the already broken Playboy label.

The band formed in '69, naming themselves after their Ohio home town (it says here). Why the town called itself that is a mystery. Maybe it was after the band. A massive cache of unheard and good songs [left - Ed.] appeared in 2004.

This post funded thru endowments from The Potrzebie Foundation and the Peggy Guggenheim Estate.

Surf's Up! Dept.

A surprise find down on the beach today! From out of nowhere, a "reworked and remastered" edition of the first Beach Boys album. It is unofficial, anonymous, "true" stereo, and fantastic. It may not be quite perfect, but it's by some way the best version I've heard (and I've heard a few). I made a new cover [above - Ed.] which you can slide like a decal onto your files, or use the one that comes with the loaddown. I don't care.

The recent big block Beach Boys reissues have been like a one-way ticket to Shrugsville. This is the kind of thing "they" should and could be doing. It gives me hope that as the technology advances and becomes more widely available, we'll be hearing more unofficial , and revelatory, remixes of familiar albums without having to wait for the record companies to come up with the usual tame and disappointing rehashes.

Pete was a fan, even when the album was a whopping four years old. And there's Paul Revere and the Raiders' Just Like Us. Extra points for identifying other albums in the shot.