Perfect Tens Dept. - The Wild,The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle

Medical opinion differs as to the exact time of death of the 'sixties - as an idea, rather than the calendar narrative - with some observing the onset of rigor mortis as far back as '68, or even with The Death Of Hippie in '67 . What we can say with some certainty is that by late '73 the funeral parade had long passed. The British pop scene, as it was still called, was dominated by panto-pop and glam, end-of-the-pier entertainment for the end of an era that mistakenly thought of itself as the beginning of another. Serious Rock had knotted itself into the cat's cradle of prog to satisfy the demands of the Serious Rock Fan, recognised by his lank greasy hair, plutonium-strength acne, and the odor of damp Army Surplus greatcoats.

But hey. This was '73. As a Brit, I wasn't alone in listening to US music almost exclusively. We read Zig Zag and Rolling Stone (a fantastic and essential paper back then), we bought expensive imports with the beer tokens the government kindly gave us, and we wore jeans modeled on the gatefold to After The Goldrush, with patches from mum's rag box and a leather stash wallet hanging hopefully from the belt. But it was an odd year for UK music. Pink Floyd became Grey Floyd, making music for stereo showrooms. Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac lost the plot. The Stones took a step back, not in a good way, the Kinks floundered into camp irrelevancy and everyone woke up after their long Beatles denial. They weren't coming back. Although folk and jazz/rock remained lively, they also remained niche, which was probably essential to their survival.

Proper Rock (and by that I mean proper rock music) continued to flourish and evolve in the US, entirely home-grown, drawing directly and unselfconsciously on a rich heritage that owed nothing to the UK invasion that had liberated it from the Elvis era. The Allmans, CSN(&Y), Lynyrd Skynyrd, Little Feat, New Riders, Zappa, the Dead, The Eagles, Steely Dan, BOC, Joni, Neil, Van Morrison (seen very much as a stateside act), plus too many solo artists to list, with the big MIA of Dylan. And, sneaking a first album into the racks unnoticed at the beginning of the year, somebody called Bruce Springsteen.

I first became aware of him from Pete Scrowther talking him up at the Golden Cross, one of the two places in town you were likely to score, or hear of the night's house party (the other being the Dive Bar, notable for a panoramic Lord Of The Rings mural, sticky floor, and cheap Newky Brown). But the Cross was where what was left of it was at, man. In the late 'sixties, the Diggers had made their Head quarters in the medieval ruins across the street, the "Digger Hole", and in '73 some patchouli still lingered. More importantly, it was where the hot girls lingered, in their charity shop fur coats, black miniskirts and coloured tights, with their long dark hair and red lips and cigarettes. Notably Jane Bayley, whose beauty poleaxed me, and whose eyes I can still see somewhere behind mine. I married one of the other girls eventually, one I wasn't too dumbstruck to talk to. Many, many years later (a lifetime or two) I contacted Jane, and she asked me why I never asked her out. I'm not sure she believed me. Beauty is blind to a mirror.

But yeah. Pete was raving about this album he'd just bought that we'd never heard of. "If anyone's the New Dylan, it's this guy", and as Pete was considered a very cool guy in those days, we - including a couple of others from Shitband, the band I played bass for (that wasn't our name but it should have been) trekked back through the freezing wet streets to his place after closing time to hear the New Dylan. Evidently, no parties that night. That was how you picked up on stuff, not through a pod-brain you gazed at and stroked instead of girls, but through conversation, references in the music papers, random rack flipping and a chance hearing on John Peel. It was enough to grow a network of human connections, a living, organic communal knowledge which was added to almost daily. I'm not saying it was a better way, but that's what I'm thinking. And typing.

Pete's audio set-up was impressive. A standalone turntable (still not a common thing back then) hot-wired through a Mystery Fuse to a guitar amp and a speaker cab the size of a domestic drinks bar, which it also doubled as. We took up positions as laid down in the manual - laid down - and passed the sleeve around, with a couple of poverty roaches, as the tone arm dropped onto one of the few albums I can say changed my life.

None of us spoke, not even when the album was flipped.

There was nothing quite like The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. Maybe echoes of Van Morrison's Caledonian swing, something of West Side Story in its sweeping romanticism, of Dylan in its tumbling, clattering Beat poetry. Yes, but no. Springsteen, the guy from nowhere, had made his own album with the help of the best band in the world also out of nowhere and it was hands down no question the album of the year. Oooff. Who were these guys? Where the fuck was E Street?

Pete didn't have the first album, but assured us that this was the one to break Springsteen worldwide. How could it not? We agreed. It had to. It didn't, of course. Being a Springsteen fan back then was groovy. You could turn people on to him the same way Pete had for us. I can't remember any reviews except for Rolling Stone and  Zig Zag. There wasn't, incredibly, a buzz in the press about him - we had to order the album, and spread the word ourselves.

I made a list of Top Ten reasons why it's a Perfect Ten album, in no particular order, and I just deleted it, because it didn't come close to explaining or evoking or even hinting at what makes this album such a freaking masterpiece. And that is the indefinable magic captured in the groove, and at the heart of it is Springsteen's heart, bursting open with the joy of being in a rock n' roll band, and Vinnie "Mad Dog" Lopez batting the traps, the best drummer he ever had. You only have to listen to the title track and then Tenth Avenue Freeze Out to understand what the Boss lost. E Street is effortlessly, joyously funky and loose; Tenth Avenue a generic clomp nailed to the floor by Max Weinberg's dogged thump. Oh well. That was a couple of years away. Back in the tail end of 'seventy-three, we heard rock and roll future in Pete's front room, and the long walk home through the cold streets glowed with it.

That indefinable magic is still there, locked in the groove. Foreverandmoreagain, the spirit, the spirit, the spirit of rock n' roll, the light that never dies. Give me the beat, boys, free my soul ... I see the fireworks hailing over Little Eden, and I see Jane Bayley's eyes ...

This post dedicated to Ned Youngman, Shitband's guitarist, who was to gift me a ticket to Bruce at Hammersmith Odeon, as a wedding present.

Covfefe Preaupane Photobombs John Hiatt Album Launch Dept.

Covfefe Preaupane, making an honest living, yestiddy

John Hiatt made his first visit to th' IoF© yestiddy to mark a very special re-release of his first album, Hangin' Around The Observatory. As we were settling into th' famed Conversation Pit O' Sound®, the convivial atmosphere was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Professional Swimwear Model And Tiktokker Covfefe Preaupane. "Hey guys, wassup?" she laughed, before being ushered away by Randy Randomguy, th' Isle's Security Officer. Hiatt, ever the gentleman, made light of the incident and we chattedly relaxedly about the album.

FT3 Heyyy! Johnny-boy! It's an overdue honor to welcome you to th' Isle O' Foam©! 

HIATT (laughs) I was waiting until I had something special to bring, Farq.

FT3 And this album is very special! Want to talk us through it?

HIATT Surely! It's a very special audio upgrade of Hangin' Around Th' Observatory [left - Ed.] to @192, exclusive to th' IoF©. I was always unhappy with the sound - as you know it was pressed @128, which was like the standard back in the day. So naturally when Bernie Grundman told me about the state-of-the-art digital compression facility here, the idea was born!

FT3 Bernie Grundman?

HIATT This old guy, wears like a hearing aid? In both ears? Studio janitor got mistaken for the engineer at a Grand Funk Railroad session. Never looked back. He comes in, switches on the mastering machine, all the levels flat, and picks up a check for twenty thousand bucks! Anyway, he's very respectful of your work here, Farq. And this new edition has an immersive soundstage with crisp highs, clearly separated mids, and a rich, buttery low end.

FT3 Twenty large? For switching on a machine?

HIATT What do you think mastering is? It's not like mixing or producing. There's no skill involved. Any fucker could do it, the right machine ... it's like one fucking switch, man, how hard can it be?

FT3 Wow. On the subject of your first recordings, we FoamFeatured™ the White Duck album here a couple days back.

HIATT (laughs) Currently residing in the where are they now pile.

FT3 With that early single, We Make Spirit b/w The Boulevard Ain't So Bad.

HIATT (laughs) Hey! I don't even have a copy of that myself!

FT3 I wanted to add it as bonus tracks but it's impossible to find. It's not even on YewChewb or any of those sketchy Russian sites. It's probably at Soulsulk, but those guys are weird (shudders).

HIATT Maybe one of the Four Or Five Guys© has a copy?

At this point Kreemé arrived with her signature Root Beer n' Espresso Cheerer-Uppers and a bag of pork scratchings, so we took a break while she performed an impromptu demonstration of Apartment Wrestling with Covfefe Preaupane.

This post protected by Johnson's Johnson Wax®

"We're All Bezos On This Bus" Dept.

Bezo rocking sensible slacks, from the days before he hired Vin Diesel as a body double

You'll know zillionaire general store clerk Jeff Bezo from his "share the wealth" philosophy that has made him a much-loved father figure to his loyal staff, and whose modest lifestyle is a model of ethical and sustainable living. But did you know he's also something of an expert on obscure pop n' rock vinyl? Nor did we. Turns out he knows shit about music and cares less, which is why we asked Sanjit Stockphoto [above left - Ed.], th' IoF©'s newly-interned Token Diverse Hipster to suggest today's album freeloads. All he could come up with was Porter and Winchester Mulberry's O Save Me O Dark Owls, a meditation on loss recorded in a brick outhouse during the pandemic. So he can fuck off, too. Just when I was starting to lose interest in this whole piece, Mrs. Myra Nussbaum [right - Ed.] delved in her Muff O' Music® and produced a couple of long-playing LPs that might be unfamiliar to you. So here they are.

Swell album, swell cover

John Hiatt makes his first appearance on record on the second [sophomore - Ed.] White Duck album, In Season [not at left - Ed.] from 1972, the same year they made their self-titled [eponymous - Ed.] debut [at left - Ed.]. As it's already '72, all pop and rock ideas [tropes - Ed.] are already established, and there's nothing original here. Those who pick on the occasional Beatles reference tend to forget that the Fab Four were a very malleable and influenced group themselves, dressing up in whatever garb seemed timely. So you'll hear a little of everything pop-rock here, including some psychedelic touches which in '72 must have sounded nostalgic.

Like many other recordings to wash up on th' IoF©, they're not lost classics, but they are well done, enjoyable, and if they were made today they'd sound extraordinary. Which is not to say that the Young People Of Today are shit, bless. Just that their music is a bit. Sanjit Stockphoto is back on Spotify, swiping through thousands of other songs a robot reckons he'd like on the basis of This Empyrean Loss (La La La) from O Save Me O Dark Owls. Good for him.

 

This post first postulated during a motivational weekend on Jeff Bezo's yacht FUCK DA POORS, Marina Del Asshats, Gulf of Microplastics, FLA. 

 

 

"... but the old men understand" Dept. - Van Morrison and David Gilmour

"Oi! Dave yeh gert gobshite! Oy was gave dis badge by the Quaine of Oirland, and yew wasn't!"

Van Morrison has been trying to out-do John Zorn in uncontrollable incontinence of new releases. Every album - "dropping" every couple of weeks or so - that isn't a cold bowl of bile-n'-spite stew, garnished with oxygen tent sax solos, is desperately clutched at by fans as some kind of return to form, even if that form was set sometime in this useless century. So Orangefield is a pleasant surprise - it's a genuinely enjoyable, good-spirited, well-played and sung live album from 2014, and why he decided to release it now is as much of a mystery as anything he does. On the basis of my recommendation you'll rush out and buy it, but there's an ear canal-crimping @192 in the comments, should you be a lousy grifting bum intent on bringing the music industry to its knees.

The sleeve design looks like Alice Coopers School's Out, and Hotlegs' Thinks School Stinks, but there's a warm human interest story behind it, very possibly the first - and last - in Van's career. Look it up, and have a hankie ready.

Dave "call me David" Gilmour can hold his own with both George Ivan and Rog Waters in the "fuck me I'm one fucking miserable millionaire, me" stakes, and his solo career has been a lesson in underachievement. Even rabid Floyd fans (anyone who hung in there after Dark Side, basically) lost interest in it half way through the first side of that first album nobody can remember the title of even though it was just his name. The best you can say of Gilmour's solo career is that it's modest - he's made like three albums in fifty years, and only his wife bought them. So turning in a pretty swell piece of work at this late stage is as welcome a surprise as Orangefield.

Is it fantastic? No, but it's the kind of album you'd have bought back in the day and "got into" without feeling ripped off. Which for an Old Dude is some achievement. Maybe a little bit fantastic.

This post sponsored by the good people at Senior Underpants Supply Co. Ask for their signature Hi-Waist™ Y-Fronts with the patented Leke-Prufe® security liner!

Rholonne Déodoranté's Classy Classification Class Dept.

Wholesome diet, strict discipline, clean thoughts, inspire classroom diligence

We like to pigeonhole music by genre ("file under popular"), but sometimes the definition doesn't quite fit. Rholonne Déodoranté, th' IoF©'s Religiousness Inclusivity Officer, teaches a popular course here at th' IoF©'s Modern Academy For Girls And Yes Okay Boys Who Want To Be Girls Jesus Christ Who Cares. The following text is copied direct from her course notes.

"Defining genre in popular and other forms of music is primarily a marketing tool used by the music business to target a consumer base. It also serves a valuable retail function in guiding consumers quickly and efficiently to their favored type of music. But sometimes the definition is hard to classify - music may crossover genres. Today's project is the Thorinshield album from 1967 because of course it is. Frequently referred to by reviewers as being sunshine pop, it has very few of the motifs and tropes associated with that genre."

 

 

 

Thorinshield were basically a duo, Bobby Ray and James Smith, augmented by drumster Terry Hand. Ray is FoamFeatured Antecedently™ HERE The production team is A-list; Steve Douglas, Chuck Britz, Hank Cicalo, and Wally Heider, so it's a little puzzling that the overall sound and feel of the album is less lush than you might expect. Arrangements are by Perry Botkin Jr., whose dad played some very nimble guitar for the Billy Mills Orchestra on the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show.

The album takes a few plays to get its hooks in, but its subtle individuality is absolutely worth your time. File under: quality.

This post rendered lint-free by Bertie Bristles Brush Barn, Pork Bend, FLA.

Sheer Lou-nacy Dept. - Metal Machine Disco Music

 

"If you get through four sides you're dumber than I am," said Lou, talking about his RCA kiss-off Metal Machine Music. If that double album wasn't enough, he'd planned a 12" disco version to ram the final nail into the coffin of his contract. It didn't fly. RCA kept him on the roster until Coney Island Baby limped out the following year, and the word on the street was Lou Who? But there's a white label test pressing out there, with the ten minute extended version on one side, and a five minute radio edit [as if - Ed.] on the back. We know that Lou used a PAiA programmable drum set, and the whole thing is just terrible enough to be an Art Statement.

 

 

The pressing got one public play, at David Mancuso’s Loft on lower Broadway. Metal Machine Disco Music got frisbeed into the crowd barely a minute into the groove. "It was a joke," said Mancuso, "but like all of Lou's jokes it wasn't funny." Reed never referred to it again.

Maybe its time has come. Probably not. Here it is anyway.

Vangelis Papapapathanathanassiou - King Of Free Jazz!

Vangelis Papapapathanathanassiou? Hairy-chested and slightly scary Greek composer of stirring synth anthems, he who once punched out an entire press conference because they thought he was Demis Roussos? Free jazz?

Hear me out. We're here to talk about Beaubourg, one of the least understood and most misunderstood albums of the twentieth century. But first we need to define terms: free jazz is associated with a saxophone being ritually abused over a cacophony of random percussion. But in its purest sense - improvisation free of musical structure, it absolutely applies to Beaubourg.

It's solo Vangelis, making shit up as he goes along, using a couple of Yamaha CS-80 analog synthesizers, with a side order of ring modulator, instead of making a sax sound like it wished it had never been born. In accordance with the strict rules of free jazz (no musical form has more rigid rules), he eschews melody, harmony, rhythm, and thematic development. Anybody can do that. If I could find a piano I'd eschew the fuck out of it right now. A child of five could.

But Vangelis is an absolute master of his instruments, and his hands are guided by instinct, inspiration, and superhuman skill, whereas mine could just as easily be fixing a sandwich. And lordy, his hands are busy. Coaxing these sounds out of a pair of CS-80s, in real time, is a virtuoso performance. So what? you opine, a sneer distorting your unlovely face, it sounds like shit to me hahalol.

This is what makes the music so ultimately satisfying; discovering what went into it. It's not unapproachable noise, a random result of pure chance. There is variation in mood, hints of melody, but it's the abstract sound that becomes so compelling, even addictive. It's analog/organic, and if you read my antecedent screed on Bernie Axolotl you may remember his quote: all notes played by hand. There's no looping here, no samples, no sequencing, and minimal overdubbing, maybe none (what do I know). There's a wild genius behind this, and to dismiss it, as some do, as a cynical contractual kiss-off to RCA is to display a musical ignorance of which they should be ashamed, them ignoramuses.

It is gawjuss, is what it is. A blissful soundtrack to ordinary life. Try listening to it - as loud as you can take - as you go about your grubby quotidian routine. Shopping for beans at your local discount superstore. Boosting the catalytic converter from your ex's Ram Truck, or getting your bunion pared. Beaubourg will make your universe seem unutterably strange. Let it work its subtle and extraordinary magic.

As an inducement, here's some slightly more accessible, but much less accomplished, Vangelis:

Swinging London scenemaker Giorgio Gomelski booked studio time in '71 to see if there was any mileage in teaming Van the Man with session jazzbos and fringe rock musicians. It led nowhere, and the tapes were shelved, to be released later very much against Van's wishes by a thieving bunch of crooks. Don't think of these as albums, which they ain't. Think of them as an opportunity to hear a bit of experimental improv for its own sake.

The Dragon gets the nod from fans, with its recognisably rock-adjacent sounds, but Hypothesis appeals for its Brian Odgers/Tony Oxley rhythm section, fresh from the mighty John McLaughlin's Extrapolation sessions.

 

 

 

 

 

Hilariously, there is online debate as to the most consistently accurate, pitch-wise, release of Beaubourg. Go for it!

Eden Ahbez - The Complicated Life And Times Of A Simple Man

Photographs of Eden Ahbez have one thing in common - an expression that does not radiate the contentment you might expect of someone who devoted his life to finding heaven on earth. He looks intensely unhappy. Not even a twinkle in his eye, the hint of a smile. Laughter is a lesson best learned early in life, and young George Alexander Aberle didn't get much chance to be happy.

Born poor in Brooklyn, 1908, sent to an orphanage, Aberle grew up in the depression, becoming a hobo, criss-crossing America in poverty. He got jobs where he could, played a little piano, and ended up in California, the promised land. In the 'thirties, he found welcome and a shared ideology with the Wandervogels,  a bunch of peaceful anarchists, mostly German, who'd rejected contemporary society and lived according to the back-to-nature tenets of Lebensreform. The Nazis had outlawed the movement, but kept the bits they liked - chasing each other naked through the woods, mostly - for the fun-loving Hitler Youth.

Aberle changed his name to Eden Ahbez, cut the soles off his shoes, sat in a tree and learned to play the flute. The first hippie? Not even close. Will Pester fled Germany to California in 1906 to escape military service, growing his hair and practicing free love and lap steel guitar in a Palm Springs shack, when shacks were the only real estate in Palm Springs, and Pester - almost unimaginably - the only white resident. Pester basically wrote the whole Hippie manual half a century before Today Malone sold flowers on Haight Street.

The original Nature Boy, Will Pester, inventing Americana, yesterday. Habitually naked, he dressed formal for the shoot. Note signed postcards - a source of tourist income - in shirt pocket.

Pester acted as mentor to Ahbez, who became the nominal leader of the Nature Boys.

Gypsy Boots top left, health foods pioneer and inventor of the smoothie. He'd later swing into Steve Allen's TV show dressed as Tarzan. Eden, looking unsure of himself, front left.

Ahbez wrote poetry and songs, and composed Nature Boy - ostensibly about Pester - in 1947 while living in a cave. The tune comes from a Jewish song - he’d learned Hebraic melodies at the Brooklyn orphanage. He finagled sheet music to Nat King Cole, who sat on it for a while before realising what a potential hit it was and hunting down the composer, then living rough under the Hollywood sign in some kind of personal manifest destiny. Cole's recording was a monster, monster hit, number one in the charts for eight weeks in 1948, spawning many cover versions by the biggest stars of the age. After royalties were settled, including a generous cut for a previous user of the original tune, but leaving out Dvorak and the anonymous traditional Czech folk composer who would have had an equal claim, Ahbez made a shitload of money which he didn't particularly want, or even need. Money couldn't stop his adored wife from dying of leukemia, or his son from drowning. Heaven on earth continued to elude him.

He cut an album in 1960, Eden's Island (The Music Of An Enchanted Isle). It was no match for even post-army Elvis pablum, and sat ignored in the easy listening racks alongside the straightest and squarest. These days, it's frequently referred to as a "masterpiece", and it would be wonderful if that were true. But he can't sing, and spoken word stretched over an album of bland exotica, featuring his uncertain flute playing, seemed like a product without a market.

Eden Ahbez was an honest, loving man at the genesis of a culture that would spread around the planet, a man who got lucky with one immortal song. He died in '95 after a car crash, aged eighty-six.

SMiLE, guys! Eden n' Bri, Gold Star Studios '67. Maybe the timing of the shot was unfortunate, but these guys aren't exactly communicating here. That's a wood flute Eden's holding. In case you were wondering.

This piece is a massively abbreviated account of an incredible, complex, and still largely undocumented life. An internet search will turn up a wealth of material.