Secret Origins Dept. - The Beatles

 

For Girls! Dept. - Soft Machine For Girls!

Cover Art© IoF© Art Department o' Art Dept.

 

Inclusivity is a long and revered tradition here at th' IoF©! Our trail-blazing recognition of basic human rights for Bikini Testers has garnered plaudits worldwide, and our award-winning For Girls! series has adapted the most off-puttingly "difficult" bands to the sensitive tastes of the "weaker sex" (bless 'em!). Think of the series as the musical equivalent of Classics Illustrated comics [below left - Ed.] ! Those popular abridgements of otherwise unreadable literary masterpieces such as Moby Dick and Don Quixote instilled a love of Fine Literature in a whole generation!

Yes, we like to think that the For Girls! series is of equal importance! No longer shall the little lasses feel excluded from the fun of listening to "boys only" bands such as Captain Beefheart, the Velvet Undergrounds, the Led Zeppelins, the Pink Floyds, the King Crimsons, and now, the Soft Machines!

We've smoothed out those "rough edges", concentrating on the more hummable qualities of this oft-challenging combo! And although the purist may carp that some of the selections - blended seamlessly into a Thirty-Minute Medley O' Melody™ - are solo performances, no dolly-bird is going to bother her pretty little head about that!

So, if you know any girls [you're kidding, right? - Ed.], or maybe someone you know does, why not give them a copy of this swell long-playing album LP record? Its feminine allure is heightened by the oh-so-sensitive cover design,  making it a swell companion for her Peter, Paul and Mary albums!

 

This piece created in a fit of cabin fever during the rainy season. Please address all complaints to Babs.

Softs, Separately Dept.

IoF©, yestiddy - rock n' sex god Hugh Hopper awarded prestigious Best Avant-Garde Record By An Ex-Soft Machine Bass Player Award from Bikini Testers Union Local 101!

 

Hugh Hopper's 1984 [1973, left - Ed.] oughta bin called 2001, because it was at least as far ahead of its time as that. That doesn't mean you'll want to listen to it, though, but its minimal, glitchy, scratchy, ruminative, and occasionally terrifying tone will at odd times be just the ticket, by George! Heavy Friends sittin' in on the dada-esque swing sessions include John Marshall (later sacked from the Soft Machine by Mike Ratledge), useless nuisance Lol Coxhill [lol - Ed.], Pye Hastings, Gary Windo, Malcolm Griffiths, and Nick Evans.

The deliverable is the hen's teeth Japanese edition, with slewage of xtry trx. Huzzay!

 

Robert Wyatt's first solo album [1970, left - Ed.] remains as challengingly daft as when a handful of Softs fans bought it just before it disappeared entirely. It plows much the same gritty, avant-gardey furrow as 1984, but with the frosting of occasional vocal whimsy. You have to admit his strenous efforts to avoid anything approaching a tune were remarkably successful.

A bonus is the inclusion of no extra tracks. Look, I like it, okay? Sometimes.

Kevin Ayers' first solo album [1969, right, no, just me having a little fun, left - Ed.] has tunes, charm, restrained whimsy, and never takes itself seriously. It's lovely album, and laid the foundation for the second most successful solo career of any member of Soft Machine! Which is setting the bar a bit low, but anyway. David Bedford knits sumptuous orchestral upholstery, and Mike Ratledge (possibly my Second Favorite Keyboard Player Of All Time) contributes anteater nose-blowing.

If Hopper's solo was ahead of its time, then Ayers was behind them. By 1969 the sixties were yesterday's mashed potatoes, and Joy Of A Toy sounded, and looked, like a relic from a past age. Five swingin' bonus tracks! It's like the seventies never happened.

As an inadequate thank you to all youse freeloadin' bums what has stuck wit' th' IoF© thru th' years (over 30,000 page views since the last post, by George!), these three warmed-over biscuits are added to the deliverables AT NO EXTRA COST to you. Mr. and Mrs. Music Consumer!

 

Yes, these three long-playing LP album records will be included in your sumptuous Softie package whether you want them or not! Play them in the Camry as you deliver the kids back to their mom! Oboy! Some swell fun right there!

Here's Mr. Ratledge, practicing his fingering at Saint Trop, summer of '67:

 

Ratledge kind of wandered away from the music business after leaving the Softs, the last original member to bail. I think he made a soundtrack to a TV documentary about moustaches, and various other bits and pieces, sacrificing his unique carpet-gargling tone for the anonimity of the synthesizer, but that's about it for the solo career. Good for him, I say. Other Fun Facts: he garnered a Philostophy Prize at Oxford (which is like Nerd Academy), married Marsha Hunt [phwoar - Ed.] and died this year, age 82, "after a short illness", the last of the original line-up to leave the planet. Good for him. A life lived.

 

This post funded in part by Adult Chew Toys™, Buttmonkey, NV.

Why Should I Do All The Work? Dept.

  

As Edfray (notveryprettymusic) said: "We have reached two million plus page-hits. Time to hang up the spurs and lay back."

Crawlspace Collectables Dept. Push-Button Radio And Cut-Up Culture In The City Of The Angels

 

 

 

 

 

William Burroughs knew what was happening before it happened. He sensed the fragmentation, the fissures spreading from some cultural San Andreas Fault, and he did his best to express it with the tools he had - typewriter and scissors. Teens hearing God in rock n' roll didn't wait for salvation, they punched the car radio buttons, cutting up the narrative - we want the world and we want it now. TV remotes enabled the visual equivalent, an optic restlessness mirrored in avant-garde film editing. The phenomenon coincided with the fractured vision of LSD. The confluence, the crucible, the fractal fringe of the fun zone®, was LA pop culture, an alchemical fusion of art and commerce not seen before or since. Maybe the people would be the times.

Three albums reflected and created the times; Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, Brian Wilson's SMiLE, and Zappa's Lumpy Gravy. Recorded simultaneously, each explored new studio techniques to break the flow, to shuffle and reshuffle the familiar into the unexpected, the bizarre, and the beautiful. And the funny. That's something often forgotten. Jokes are the first to the wall in the kultural putsch - you can see it happening now - woke is no joke. Smile is not a frown. Song Cycle's best gag is that it contains no songs at all. Lumpy Gravy is both a broken mirror reflecting LA, and an extended pants-down snork at its pretensions.

It's also worth noting that none of these albums was inspired by, or referred to, or needed, the "British Invasion," and that the over-regarded Beatles were already several steps behind the West Coast. Pepper, played after these, sounds like what it is, a Hallmark greeting card from a week in Hashbury. A little patchouli scenting the toytown vaudeville, but essentially business as usual. These three revolutionary albums blew the business model apart, a new American Gothic, a stained glass window constantly shattering into multi-colored shards.

Song Cycle was originally to be called Looney Tunes, a title that reflects its cartoonish playfulness, and I've given it a cover which combines LA's high society with its low humor. 

 

Mono and stereo Song Cycle re-upped by request.

"You Shall Hereon In Be Known As" Dept.

 

Notes: "Edit" means it has been futzed about with in one or more ways, not that it has been cut (!). Forty-five minutes is stretching it for an album, but fine for a CD. There are hours of outtakes and alternates for The Spotlight Kid, but I've added only those which I thought would lively up its bad self, because that's the main intent here. The biggest missing is Funeral Hill, which is a complete song but has never received a final, polished mix (it sounds like shit, pretty much) and is also another downer, man, and there are enough of those already!

I hope the connections with Lick My Decals Off, Baby are clearer with this "iteration", making it a more satisfying companion to that and Clear Spot, and less of a stand-alone "genre" album.

Mo' Beef on th' IoF©:

https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-tragic-band-horrible-and-vulgar-but.html

https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/07/up-close-and-personal-dept.html 

https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/02/kreeme-kurates-dept-captain-beefheart.html

 

This damn thing gave me the horse staggers to complete. I hope you think it was worth it!

Walton Goggins' Lesbian Cruise Disco! Dept.

Every downloaded deliverable PERSONALLY SIGNED by Walton Goggins!

 

You'll know H'wood leading man Walton Goggins from his unforgettable role as Enis McPenis on Amazon Prime's Cracker Carnage, but did you know his side hustle is DJ'ing on luxury cruise ships!? Walt told the story poolside as Kreemé [18 my ass - Ed.] served signature processed ham packet water n' snailfoot smoothies!

FT3 Heyy Waltie-baby! Th' Gogster! Lookin' gooo-ood! 

WG Why, thank you, Farq!

FT3 Bring us up to speed anent your briny stints as nautical tunemeister!

WG It all started when I landed the DJ gig on Lesbian Cruise lines. I'd always wanted to visit th' Isle O' Lesbian which is as you know one of the Roman-style isles set as they are in the wine-dark waters of the Augean Ocean. But imagine my surprise when I discovered it was a floating hen party! The whole deal was for babes too old or homely to get a guy! So naturally I made up a mixtape of tunes they could relate to, get them out on the dancefloor even though there was like no guys to ask them!

FT3 And you've like brung signed souvenir digital-style CD discs to pass out to th' Four Or Five Guys©?

WG I surely have, Farq! I think they'll enjoy the oh-so-feminine selections!

FT3 I'm sure they will, and can only add they make swell gifts for any lonely gals what can't catch a man! Thanks for swinging by!

This post made possible by a disturbing lack of good taste and sense of restraint. To get the full force of the embedded humor, you need to download the deliverable AND read th' screed.

The Family That Plays Together Dept.

Cheersh! *hic*. Note Chappo taking a modest position far left - even though he had a magnetic stage presence, he was no showboat (like, f'rinstance, Rod Stewart), and the band was a true band of brothers.

Another binge-fest for a band that hasn't yet garnered enough IoF© real estate, Family. One of the most idiosyncratic, eccentric, and flat-out fantastic bands ever to conquer the UK's prestigious polytechnic circuit, Family left a legacy of albums that qualify as first tier releases. As thirsty as the Faces, Family sobered up in the studio, never short changing, always delivering. Great covers that spared no expense, either.

1968. Aaaaaah.

 

Designed by Swinging London groovy graphic designer Alan Aldridge. Him what done the Beatles Illustrated Lyrics books.

 

 

 

Th' th' that's all, folks!

It Crawled From The Crawlspace Dept. - Return Of The Nez

I used this image before it appeared on the official "Different Drum" comp. Just sayin'.

In 1968, Michael Nesmith went to Nashville and recorded an album's worth of songs, mostly his own, with Nashville's own "Wrecking Crew", the studio musicians who constituted Area Code 615. There were no better musicians on the planet. John Sebastian wrote Nashville Cats about them. And Nesmith was an accomplished songwriter with a  bunch of tunes that deserved the best. The resulting solo album, spectacularly lovely as it was, never materialised. Because Music Business.

Some of the songs drifted onto Monkees albums, others waited decades before Rhino anthologised them. Nesmith has denied (in his splendid autobiography) ever thinking he was inventing, or even playing, country rock. "I was playing country music," he says. But here, on several cuts, his pop smarts show through just as strongly as his country roots. Nesmith sings bang in the middle of the note, in the tensile tone so many Texans have, like stretched barbed wire, and the band plays with that country-sprung back-porch beat that never gets old.

So here it is, hi-fi enthusiasts! The best album he never made. That's okay. Don't thank me or nuthin'. I'm having more fun than you are.

 

Always a pleasure to re-up th' Nez, this time in response to a request from Dr. Fu Man Chu.

 

Whatever Happened To Judy Mayhan? Dept.

Judy Mayhan has one of the greatest country/rock/blue-eyed soul voices I ever heard. She has that heartbreak catch, that undersung shiver, like it's all about to fall apart. She has restraint and power, and when she hits the high notes the top of your head lifts off.

She also has the most astonishing lineup of backing musicians on this, her second [sophomore - Ed.] album. Duane Allman, playing with exquisite taste, all over it. Lowell George (rhythm guitar and flute!), and the godlike Richie Hayward. Warren Klein (Fraternity Of Man) on sitar (!), Arif Mardin on string arrangements. The Muscle Shoals mafia on everything else. But this is absolutely Judy's show, she's not drowned out but lifted up by the session talent.

Did I mention the songs? They're terrific, and she wrote 6/10ths of them. The album plays out with versions of You Are My Sunshine and I Shall Be Released that evoke Joe Cocker at his finest.

Oh - nice sleeve, too!

This post made possible by reading about the album in Ben Fong-Torres' book about Little Feat, Willin'. He doesn't mention how great it is, though. Psychfan provides links to two other albums [below - Ed.] in the comments.

 

The Spirit Is Willing Dept.

Lovingly color-corrected from original source. You don't care.

All albums enhanced from raw FLAC files to @193©, using IoF©'s patented Human Ear™ process. You'll discover a new world of sound excitement listening to these swell LP recordings, pre-adjusted for RIAA curve!

Tweaked so subtly [above - Ed.] you didn't notice!

 

Copyright© law makes this [above - Ed.] impossible in the real world, but th' IoF© ain't that.

Tweaked so subtly you didn't notice!

 

This crappy quality [above - Ed.] is the best available. Gee whiz. So much for th' internet.

 

 

A change of pace for a while. Spirit have been guests on th' IoF© intermittently, but they deserve their own dedicated timeshare accommodation. They're just a magical magic band I've loved forever, always found time to listen.