Thirty Minutes Dept. - To Slumberland - Slight Return

This took me, uh, like, gee ... a while. It's refreshingly different, yet the signature qualities of the other Thirty Minute curatorial initiatives are present in abundance, to whit: a commitment to entertainment excellence in on-time deliverables, with consumer satisfaction prioritized to the max! And that's the FoamGuarantee© of a swell time!

If you enjoyed the others, you'll enjoy this half as much as I did! If the whole concept leaves you meh, well, that's cool too, dude! It's your trip, and, cordially, fuck you!

You'll recognise maybe a couple of sources, but it will prove a mildly diverting thirty minutes nonetheless. I'll provide a Gemstone File later for your elucidatory cognisance.

SEE NEW LINK AT END OF COMMENTS

This post would not have been possible without generous sponsorship from the following non-profit organisations, to whom I am indebted:

Bunty Cupcake's Blowie n' Burger, Pork Bend, WIS

Frank 'n Furter's Fart Magic (cruise ship bookings only)

The Wizard's Sleeve pub, Nether Frotting, Bucks, UK

Peggy Guggenheim's Nympho Planet, Redondo Beach, NY ("walk-ins welcome!")

Sundar Pichai Chooses His Favorite REO Speedwagon Album Dept.

 

He watches you on the toilet. He takes notes.

You'll know charismatic tech influencer and Target style ambassador Sundar Pichai from that friendly voice in your head urging you to do the right thing, but did you know he's something of a maven when it comes to AOR [Assumption Of Risk - Ed.] albums?

We spoke yestiddy via his personal neural network!

FT3 Sunny-boy! My man! 'Sup, brah?

SP You're still in your sleep clothes? At this hour? Do the right thing.

FT3 Uh ... can we talk about REO Speedwagon?

SP Surely. But moving forward, my request is you prioritise your laundry tasking. Organise the apparel you've just thrown on the chair. Do the right thing.

FT3 You've chosen their first truly consistent album - can you tell us what informed your selection?

SP I have an incompletion with the title. Riding The Storm Out sounds non-best. Surely Riding Out The Storm has preferred optionality? Why did no-one on the focus group pick up on this? Is our mission statement The Right Thing Do?

FT3 Uh ...

SP No, it is not. Do the right thing.

The neural network went into standby at this point. My thanks to Sundar for taking time out from his busy schedule going through neutral color swatches and watching me on the toilet.

Phoebe Cates "Proud" To Be Recognised For Collection Of Early Seventies Albums Dept.

Ms. Cates shows off her collectables poolside at th' IoF©

You'll know Phoebe Cates from her voiceover for the Lego Dimensions video game, but did you know she's also an avid collector of obscure 'seventies rock albums? Relaxing poolside [yetsiddy, perchance? - Ed.] yestiddy, she waxed loquacious anent her passion while Kreemé served signature lemur spleen n' mayo smoothies!

FT3 Heyyy! Phoebes! Lookin' phabulous!

PC (tossing back hair) Which there's something about False Memory Foam Island© that's strangely invigorating! I ain't felt like this since 1982!

FT3 I get that a lot. But tell us about those here albums what you brung!

PC It's so refreshing to be with someone interested in whom I am as a person! These are the first two albums by the Fabulous Rhi-

Unfortunately the tape runs out at this point. Look 'em up on wiki, should youse be desirous. Learn something, crisakes, even if it's useless knowledge that will do nothing to slow the looming climate apocalypse!

Thirty Minutes With Psilly Psymon Dept.

A surprise package of value has come to us today - a mind-melding trip into the witchy Wickerwoman woods of Olde Englande, artfully crafted by Four Or Five Guy© Bambi, who also engraved the cover art on an old coffin lid.

"So for your consideration," [screeds Bambi - Ed.] "Thirty Minutes with Psylly Psymon, starting quite ‘gently but weird’ at Lillywhites party. We don’t know what is happening but as the music changes a witchy English folk song sets a pastoral feel. You start to feel a bit strange as the drums start, the light from the fire casts shadows as the people move around you, before ‘she’ takes you by the hand for a final dance ..."

(Untitled)

 

TL-DR Dept. - Return Ticket To Terrapin Station

Cute, huh? Artwork by False Memory Foam© Department Of Art Dept.

Relax. This isn't an Albums What Never Was, although it started out that way. Terrapin Station was a more than usually problematic Dead studio album. Problematic for DeadHeads™, mainly. The rest of us don't have enough skin in the game to make a hangnail. The band didn't like it much either, and it offended lyricist Robert Hunter so much he did a massive showbiz doorslam flounce. Here's a list of the crimes the album committed:

1 Used LA producer, recorded in LA, FFS

2 Overdubbed strings, horns, choir, arranged by snaggle-toothed, whey-faced Brits in London, FFS

3 Included a schmaltzy Girl's Song, by a Girl, FFS

4 Attempted disco, FFS

It never stood a chance, right? Except that it sold pretty well, their first studio album to go gold since American Beauty. And it introduced the band to an audience who weren't DeadHeads™ but liked Abbey Road and Atom Heart Mother, both featuring a long suite on one side and a bunch of songs on the other. The format was familiar, and attractive to yer average rock fan.

It's a clumsy parade float of an album that paradoxically contains some of the loveliest music the Dead ever recorded. Of the song side only Estimated Prophet and Passenger make the grade, with deceptively complex structures, dynamic performance, and glossy studio muscle. The tepid disco-lite cover of Dancin' In The Streets and grunty fake gospel Samson And Delilah weren't high on anybody's Christmas list, but they saved the worst for last - Donna's Sunrise was the musical equivalent of a weekend at Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness spa. Seemingly flown in from another album entirely, it gave me the horse staggers.

That wasn't all - the last third of the Terrapin suite drifted off down a side track, squandering the mood so beautifully built with a long, boring, repetitive, boring, repetitive, long orchestral fade where the piece cried out for a magnificent terminus, FFS! A resolution also missing in Hunter's own Part Two, which you can struggle through on his solo album, if you hate yourself enough. It's unsurprising the Dead didn't devote an entire album to it, duh. Maybe - just maybe - this had a teentsy-weentsy influence on Hunter's decision to take his quill and parchment elsewhere, in addition to his moral high ground on the production values. A shame, as his lyrics for Terrapin are astonishing:

Inspiration move me brightly
Light the song with sense and color
Hold away despair
More than this I will not ask
Faced with mysteries dark and vast
Statements just seem vain at last
Some rise, some fall, some climb
To get to Terrapin
Counting stars by candlelight
All are dim but one is bright:
The spiral light of Venus
Rising first and shining best
From the northwest corner
Of a brand-new crescent moon
Crickets and cicadas sing
A rare and different tune

The lyrics are matched by Garcia's beautiful composition and playing in sublime synergy. Music doesn't get more musicy than this. It's an album I wanted to play more, but found myself just listening to the suite, and then wandering off before it finished, much like it did itself.

And then, for the first time in decades, I listened to Sunrise, on its own, out of context, and two thoughts occurred to me simultaneantly, rewiring my cerebral cortex and opening a Mystic Door within me. Those thoughts, Dear Reader? 1: It's actually a gorgeous song, beautifully sung, FFS. And B: it sounds like the Terrapin suite. Hmm ... textures, mood, orchestral arrangement, even lyrics - firelight, storytelling ...  wo-ah! Wait a goddamn minute here!

In the fever of divine inspiration, I labored long into the night in the False Memory Foam Island© Laboratory O' Sound® [left - Ed.], ignoring Kreemé's tearful supplications to let her make me happier than any man alive.

The result is now yours to enjoy. Not only has Sunrise been seamlessly woven into the fabric at exactly the right moment, acres of orchestral repetition have been carpet-bombed, and there's a subtle yet richly satisfying coda. Gasp at the audacity of the concept! Applaud the consummate artistry of its execution! Wonder how you ever lived without it!

What you do with that "problematic" first side is up to you - my work is done.

This old-school FMF Legacy© post funded in part by The Steve Hoffman Mullet Museum, Pork Bend OH

 

Credit Where Credit's Overdue Dept. - Michael McDonald

Carly relaxes poolside, yestiddy. "My biggest regret?" she sighs, "Not being Farquhar Throckmorton III's love slave."

Confused? Why is Carly Simon [for it is she - Ed.] heading up what is basically a Doobies piece? Apart from acting as clickbait? You'll have to read the screed to find out, and as you probably bailed right into the comments after leering at the pitcher you'll never know, and it's your loss, ya bum!

Come back with me now - back - back! - as we take a musical journey to those wonderful, whacked-out mid 'seventies! (FX HARP GLISSANDO, CALENDAR PAGES FLYING OFF IN REVERSE, MONTAGE OF CHARLES MANSON, NAKED HIPPIES, BRA-BURNING ETC. TO CHEESY GO-GO MUSIC SOUNDTRACK) The Dubes had peaked the previous year with the chart-topping What Were Once Vices but found themselves sadly bereft of inspiration for the follow-up Stampede. It's nowhere near shit, but the rockin' good-timey formula is getting old, and the epic I Cheat The Hangman sounds nothing like the Doobies, suggesting they were as tired of getting us to clap our hands above our heads as we were. Tom Johnston's health problems (people had problems back then, before they upgraded to issues) meant him stepping back for a while, and McDonald got the call to fill in on vox and keys. McDonald had been singing backup with Steely Dan, "because I could sing like a girl". Previous to that, living in somebody's garage with a yard sale keyboard and no money.

Put A Pin In This: why did Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, two of the most successful bands in the sentient humanoid world, hire him? On account which they wus dumbasses? Or he was?

1976 was the keynote year, and here's where Hall O' Foamer® Ted Templeman steps into the spotlight. He produced Carly Simon's Another Passenger album, which we should talk about, so here it is [below, left - Ed.].

Critically regarded as her "best" album (critics are harsh on Simon; being rich, talented, beautiful, sexy, and smart makes her an easy target for reviewers who are none of the above), Templeman's production pulls in the Doobie Brothers and Little Feat and Van Dyke Parks and Dr. John and Glenn Frey and Jackson Browne and James Taylor and a bunch of the most expensive musicians in L.A. [Los Angeles, a suburb of America - Ed.]. You might of thunk the result would be a bloated mess, and you'd of bin way wrong. Templeman's as skilled with people as he is with studio facilities (a rarity in record producers), and the album sounds at once organic and a little bit lush, which is Carly all over, you ax me. McDonald contributes a song, sings backup, plays keys. I'm betting that, even as a Doobie and/or Feat fan, you probably don't have this. Because *shrug* Carly, right?

Put A Pin In This: why did Ted Templeman and Carly Simon, two of the most successfulest people in the sentient humanoid music business, hire him? On account which they wus dumbasses? Or he was?

Which brings us to the watershed bellwether Doobie album, Takin' It To The Streets [left, Ed.]. Embraced by everybody, especially their accountants, it finessed a radical musical shift without alienating the True Doobie fan. Somehow they sloughed off the headbanging boogie and emerged as a non-elitist, non-ironic Steely Dan (Jeff Baxter migrated with McDonald). One of the album's biggest supporters was Lowell George, who admired the band's brave change of direction. With Johnston largely absent, McDonald was at the heart of the new sound. Suddenly the Doobies were all over the radio with the hit single title track, a song perfect for the times, and McDonald, his immediately identifiable vox and Brill Building pop smarts already fully-formed, was yet to become snot-rocketed by the True Fan.

We took it for granted back then, but the level of musicality is astonishing. Virtuosic, life-affirming, joyous. A seamless mix of blues, back porch picking, jazz, soul, pop, funk, and rock, this is Americana. Today the term means miserablist lo-fi meditations on isolation, grief and loss with a legacy guitar and Mennonite fiddle. Uh, okay. Fuck today. All the best stuff is yesterday. If I have this wrong, and you can point me to a contemporary album (and band) the equal to this, please do.

Put A Pin In This: why did the great unwashed American music lover pull this out of the racks in Platinum quantities? On account which they wus dumbasses? Or he was?

The following year's Livin' On The Fault Line [left - Ed.] was a more confident expression of the Doobie Dan, with achingly gorgeous jazz changes, chilled funk, and slippery soloing. McDonald and a re-invigorated Patrick Simmons more than make up for Johnston's absence, but the hit single, incredibly, eluded them. You Belong To Me was a hit for co-writer Carly in '78, the same year as -

Minute By Minute (Doobie albums appearing year by year) had the Magnum force singles, and the album sales that hemorrhaged from them, but Simmons' contributions tend to the generic, and McDonald is clearly the front man (front n' center on the album sleeve, too). The True Doobie fan was now in open revolt. This wasn't his Doobie Brothers, goddamn it! His air guitar skills weren't called upon, and he felt his bros had forgotten him, and it was all this McDonald guy's fault and BEW FUKEN' HEW DEWD!

Minute By Minute is the most popular album the band ever recorded, which is of course unforgivable, and something must be wrong with it, or at least with the millions of jus' plain folks out there who don't give even a picture of a shit for what critics say, or fans either. But everyone seemed to agree they'd peaked with this one, and the bland followup One Step Closer was two steps back two years too late, with Hartman and Baxter gone, and just the shadow of Patrick Simmons. It's not the stinking wreckage the fans and the critics say - nothing ever is - but yup - nope. We had to wait ten years for the band to reassemble with something like the original spark. Even if it was only something like.

Put A Pin In This: Some people nurture an irrational dislike for Michael McDonald. Some people are weird.

I'll Just Leave This Here Dept.

While I finish the screed for my major op-ed think-piece on Michael McDonald, let's put this up, because it's swell. Torgo's Thirty Minutes reminded me of it, but I was surprised by its absence here. Thus, this. Pretty damn sublime, and if anyone has Mentor Williams' solo album from  '74 ... ?

Saturday Slugfest! Dept. - 2Pac Vs. Brideshead Revisited

From left: Tupac Amaru Shakur, Aloysius, being fisted by dear Tony Andrews, dear Dame Cynthia "Poopsie" Ffagh-Hagge, and dear, dear Jerry Irons. They shot the wrong guy, you ax me.

Older readers [running gag - Ed.] will remember our beloved Saturday Slugfest™ FoamFeature©, wherein we faced off mismatched musical adversaries in a bloody bareknuckle cagefight! Oboy! Them wus swell times! As it's Saturday [eh? - Ed.] we're reviving this popliar feature with perhaps the most viscerally explosive battle-o'-th'-beats yet!

Representing all that is perfect and wonderful and beautiful in life, we have Tupac Shakur with his 1995 album Me Against The World.

And representing the ugly world he was up against, we have dear Geoffrey Burgon's soundtrack to the epic T.V. series about two alpha males forced into a sham homosexual relationship by the pressures of class conformity.

Who will emerge victorious? Will it be 2Pac Against The World, or *cough* Sebastian Against The World? Both albums are included in the deliverable to help you arrive at a just and reasoned decision!

We Are Not Worthy Dept. - Ted Templeman

Ted, the Van Halen years. Tinting by "DAVES PRINT N'DESINE SHOPPE PISMO BEACH!!! WALKINS WELCOME - PHONE AHEAD!! WHY NOT VISIT OUR WEBSITE DAVEDESINE27453@HOTMAIL.COM"

A colossus. A man of distinction, taste, and consummate skill. Also, artistry. Fuck Ted Templeman, culturally appropriating the life that was rightfully mine! Here I am, elderly, infirm, and washed up on the banks of the Mekong River, writing this screwy blog for a bunch of freeloadin' slobs instead of relaxing poolside with a gaggle of swell dames in Sacramento. Instead of being just a bum, which is what I am. Yeesh.

Ted started his musical career age three by winning some harmonica prize and appearing as "Ted the Tyke" on T.V's The Nunkie Bupkiss Show [citation needed - Ed.]. Then he formed The Tikis and got more pussy than a guy could handle with the help of The Harlem Globetrotters. The 4/5G© ain't done nothing to deserve it, but here's a rare test pressing of their unreleased album [antecedently FoamFeatured™ - Ed.].

He formed Harpers Bizarre [antecedently FoamFeatured™ - Ed.] with some ex-cons from a barbershop quartet in Leavenworth and garnered a bunch of good-timey hits. Gee whiz, pop history is a pain in th' ass. You could look this shit up if you didn't know it already. Grab some Harpers Bizarre albums, too, if you have a internet. It was th' Swinging Sixties™ - take a hinge at this here pitcher of moviedom's Raquel Welch [below - Ed.] for valuable historical context and content enrichment!

Photo courtesy Online Watermark Removal

Promoted to Artistes & Repertoire [Fr. - artists and reportery - Ed.], Ted discovered - but wait! We have to look at this here album first, which I'm betting you also don't have, ya cheap grifter. In a forbidden genetic experiment conducted by exiled Nazi scientists in a secret Bakersfield laboratory, Ted split himself into two and performed as The Templeton Twins, figuring to make twice the money. They recorded this here album, which is the biggest yok-fest you'll get all week. It's a bunch of self-serious pop hits (including Light My Fire, McArthur Park and, hilariously, Hey Jude, which will force a nasal beverage spit) arranged in an authentic 'thirties band style. Yes, I know, it sounds twee and camp and like any other 'sploitation release, but it's brilliantly done and lol-out-loud funny for all the right reasons. A lost classic? I say so, and so will you, as soon as you lose it! Let the liner notes tell it like it was:

"An album to watch ... and, perhaps, even to listen to." Say - these are our-type guys!

I was going to pen some more screed here about the swell acts Ted worked with over the decades and the swell albums he produced, but nuts to that, and nuts to you, too, Ted! What have you ever done for me?

4/5g© MichaelSnorkySmith (Real Name Reviewer) sends us this remixed cover art with useful CD-style back. Thanks, Snorkers!

Thirty Minutes Dept. - In Another Dimension

 

Three Or Four Guy© Torgo has labored mightily to bring us the latest in the revolutionary musical initiative that everybody is talking about! That's right, friends! Vulvene and Enis Everybody, of Mons Veneris, NM, are unanimous in their enthusiasm for the Thirty Minutes© servings of psychedelic-style smörgasbörd! "Well," laughs Enis from their luxury duplex home at Happy Heinrich Himmler's Trailer Park, "the wife ain't too keen but I like 'em well enough I guess. Ain't played 'em yet - who has the time? Whut happen to Kreemé?"

This post made possible thru the patience and forbearing of the Torgo household.

Doobie Dept.

Art © IoF© Art Department Of Art Dept.

Never as funky as the Feat, or as cool as the Dan, the Doobie Brothers album sleeves were nevertheless as much skinned-up on as anyone's back in the day. No matter what you think of the Michael MacDonald career gearshift (much admired by Lowell George), for that five album run up to '75 they never put a beat or a note out of place. And they benefitted from the mighty Warner Brothers attention to detail and quality control - great production and great sleeves that did the music justice.

Ted Templeman signed them up after hearing a 1970 demo album, which got bootleg release decades later as Introducing, On Our Way Up, Runaround Ways, Still Smokin', and Excitement, with all the attention to detail and quality control you'd expect from a bunch of Daves working out of their Mom's garage. It deserves an official release - it's a proper album, properly recorded, dammit. Only one of the songs ever got re-recorded, and they're all just swell. So for those who missed it, here it is again, with a title and cover [above - Ed.] that ain't shit.

The self-titled first album [above - Ed.] vaporised. The softer, acoustic sound alienated their Santa Cruz Hell's Angels fan base, and anybody (which was everybody) expecting the greasy Detroit rock the cover promised was in for a disappointment. The album sat uncomfortably in the racks back in '71, alongside label-mate Sweet Baby James Taylor. And Ugly Fat Guy? Who was this for again?

If you ignore the cover (which I like a lot, in spite of it being wrong), the music is as carefully crafted and expertly played and sometimes just plain beautiful as you'd expect from a band who recorded the polished Be Who You Are as a demo. Templeman and Lenny Waronker's production mis-step, aiming to please the James Taylor and CSN crowd, is crystal clear, musical, and hasn't dated a day. The band would find its direction on their third album in '72, a major hit and most people's introduction to the Doobies, but working back to these sidelined albums is very, very rewarding. And something to do while we wait for the new Rain Parade album.

This post made possible thru an endowment from Dave's Mom.

Zsa Zsa Gabor Asks The Musical Question, "Power Pop - For Who Is It For?"

Mrs. Gabor and houseboy take time out for tub tickles, yestiddy!

You'll know moviedom's Iron Curtain cutie from her many award-winning roles in the finest chat shows of her generation - but did you know she has a keen interest in pop music and youth culture? Today she poses the Musical Question - "Power Pop - Who Is It For?" Take it away Zsa Zsa!

ZZG: Bower Bop - 'oo eet vor eez?

Thanks, Mrs. Gabor! That's quite the poser! Power Pop is an established genre- that means type of music! Other genres have their specific and recognisable demographic, or fan following! You're not going to mistake a goth for a heavy metal fan. Well, maybe you are. But what does a Power Pop fan look like? He* looks like he's in a Power Pop band, which he probably is. Thrift store polo shirt, scuffed sneakers, haircut from anywhere they don't care about hair. Kinda nerdy without being tech geek. Glasses are good.

So that about wraps it up for Power Pop. Today's deliverable includes Semisonic's benchmark Feeling Strangely Fine, the first Bird Streets album, and ... something else when I remember what it is [The Uni Boys' Do It All Next Week - Ed.]. It's all swell. If you're in a Power Pop band, you'll dig them, but have them already. If you're not and don't ... form a Power Pop band!

*The pronoun he is used here in a gender-fluid sense and is in no way indicative of gender identification

"Anaheim, Azusa, and Cuu ... camonga!" Dept.

 

That coat! That hat! And hers ain't bad, neither ...

Lifted wholesale from the wonderful Shorpy site is this beautiful shot of Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone (his wife's professional name) arriving in Washington in 1936. I've been bingeing his radio shows ("programs" as they were called) for years now, one a night, falling asleep some way into the second. They're at the life-saving Internet Archive, keeping us sane into the Shitocene Era. If you're unfamiliar with Benny, they may take a little getting used to. The ads irritate, and the sentimental male tenor songs are hopelessly dated, but the humor is as sharp - and gentle - as ever. Decades before Seinfeld, the Jack Benny show was a "show about nothing", or rather a show about making the show, breaking the radio equivalent of the Fourth Wall. A cast of regular characters, and carefully-honed scripts written under his direction, pulled in an audience of 30,000,000 [citation needed - Ed.] for his weekly broadcast, in an incredible run from the 'thirties through the 'fifties, when he moved to TV. A season of shows cost the sponsor a million bucks. Respect.

If you love the Marx Brothers, there's room in your life for Jack Benny. The Internet Archive has a wealth of his radio and TV shows, movies and relevant books, should youse bums be desirous - but beware - once you check in, you can never leave.

This post sponsored by JELL-O! Look for the big red letters on the box!