Crawlspace Collectables® Dept. - The Other Papa

A Crawlspace Collectable, re-upped by request!

Denny Doherty was noticeable for being the least noticeable of The Mamas & The Papas. Cass Elliot and Michelle Phillips, each in their own way, had gravitational fields capable of pulling lesser planets into orbit. Then you might notice the lanky one, the bearded boho with the jazz hat, but you'd only be vaguely aware of Papa II, Denny Doherty, even when he was singing. It's a quality that suffuses [what do you think this is - Pitchfork?? - Ed.] his first album, Watcha Gonna Do (1970). No great statements, no grandstanding, no pretension. Just that sublimely easy voice, songs sweet as summer, and a mouthwatering production from Bill Szymczyk (remind me to copy-paste that next time) using the Record Plant pool of perfect session talent. Perhaps because of the laid-back feel, it's an album that sneaks up on you, and you suddenly realise you couldn't live without it.

Millennials didn't invent the ecology movement. Album sleeve shows Denny, Pacific Palisades, yesterday. Watcha gonna do?

It didn't exactly bring him any more attention that he'd gotten being a Papa. A second album, the ominously titled Waiting For A Song, caused even even less excitement in '74, not even getting a release in the U.S. of A. The boilerplate critical view (Allmusic, ffs) holds that it documents a personal breakdown, drenched in depression, a man at the end of his tether. Absolute back story bullshit. He may have been battling his demons, but it doesn't show here. A couple of the songs express regret, and a wish that the good times could roll around again, but that doesn't make the album Skip Spence's Oar, not by a long way. And M&P songs weren't free from regret - California Dreaming? Monday Monday? You only have to think about the lyrics while they're being sung, which a lot of people didn't, like for Every Breath You Take, or Born In The USA.

The production, and the material, take a step back from the Malibu hippie vibe of the first album to a mainstream pop approach. Cass and Michelle back him up, and the whole thing sounds more like a worthy collection of Mamas & Papas outtakes (even the covers are as corny as M&P choices) than the more introspective singer-songwriter direction he might have taken. It's a less hip piece of work, and the string arrangements tend to the generic, but it's full of delights, his voice is still gorgeous, and the way it's been dismissed and forgotten is - oh well.

This FoamExclusive® collection brings together the two albums, and the essential extra tracks that were included on the expanded first album re-issue All The Things, and the stunning Columbia single from '73, which wasn't. Plus a perfeshnial-quality cover you'll be proud to display! All part of th' IoF© T.O.S.

It's Dorky Day!

Dorky

Dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky.

Dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky [Dorky dorky - Ed.] dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky.

 Dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky.

Dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky.

Dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dork.

 Dorky dorky dorky. 

 

 Dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky dorky.

 

 

 

Crawlspace Collectables® Dept. - Elegies For The Last Golden Era

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

From 2019, this "nuanced and perceptive" (internet review) piece serves as a benchmark for music blog quality.

These albums, recorded months apart, are generally considered disappointing endings to distinguished pop careers, almost footnotes. Although The Mamas & The Papas' People Like Us received a probably now forgotten boost from Sean O'Hagan a few years back (decades? I've lost count), and enjoys respect from the ever-perceptive Japanese pop community, it still resides in the where-are-they-now category for most. I neglected it for many years for the usual reasons: it limped out on a budget label in the UK (where I was residing at the time), had no hits, and the group were then terminally nothing to nobody. Move on, nothing to see here, right?

Fast-forward to sometime in the late eighties, when I was in Berlin trying to finish a horror movie screenplay for a German independent producer ("the paper plane must fall with more melancholy!!"), an experience as grim as you imagine. But he had interesting taste in music, and one of the albums I pulled from the pile was People Like Us. He didn't rate it highly, laughing mirthlessly at the notion it was a lost classic, but I was hooked, and have remained so. The boilerplate critical dismissal always mentions the back story of a band already broken up, the lack of true ensemble singing, the sidelining of Cass Elliot, and yadda yadda. Color me I don't care. It's a beautiful album, made by people incapable of turning in a cynical performance. Cool as a dawn breeze off the ocean. The only album this group could have made at that time, and encapsulating the times with crystal definition. The end of the sixties, dealing with the damage, and the uncertainty of what was to come, yet still managing to bliss out on blueberries for breakfast.

Waterbeds In Trinidad was The Association's last album, barely scraping into the Billboard top two hundred. We can assume that the irony of the title in combination with the cover image was lost on most. Irony is never a good marketing hook. But its monochrome nostalgia has something in common with People Like Us, and the music shares that mature melancholy the movie producer missed in the fall of the paper plane. Again, it's a sheerly beautiful album made by seasoned professionals, and if we consider it a lesser work than, say, Cherish we're doing the band, and ourselves, a grievous mis-service. No more waterbeds in Trinidad for these guys. No more love-ins and dancing in the park. The dawning of Aquarius turned into a chill wind, and the sixties were already a dream.

 

 

Professional Bikini Tester Accuses Isle O' Foam© Of Deplatforming, Exclusioning

VoCalle Fry tests bikini top for elasticity, yesterday

 

Speaking from the comfort lounge at the Pork Bend (TX) Lube n' Wax Center yesterday, professional bikini tester VoCalle Fry [above - Ed.] stated IoF© policy of recycling old content actively deplatforms bikini testers. "The profession of bikini testing has been quietly canceled by so-called Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©. The last time a bikini tester was featured was, like, I can't remember? [October 29, 2024 - Ed.] Anyway, Mister Farquhar Throckmorton III needs to get his head out his ass, because professionals in the garment safety industry such as like I were the only reason guys ever visited the place in the first place, duh."

(©Associated Press)

I reached out to Ms. Fry to suggest a compromise. If she pretends to know about a couple of second-rate psychedelic albums from the 'sixties, I am happy to showcase her professional skills. Happily, she agreed to having the albums seamlessly "photoshopped" into her picture in a tasteful way, and to reading from a card in an interview to give content-hungry visitors the impression she knows what she's talking about. Above all, I insisted, the content will be respectful of the bikini testing community. Too many people take a sniggering, immature and sexist view of what is a demanding and dignified career choice.

FT3 Heyyy! VoCalle baby! Lookin' hotter than a two dollar pistol!

VCF Likewise I'm sure. You want I should read the card?

FT3 Go for it, baby!

VCF Okay ... uh .. The Little Boy Blues and the Human Beinz were psi ... psycodeli ...

FT3 SY-chodelic. You don't pronounce the p. And it's Little Boys Blue?

VCF [wrinkles nose] puh-SY-chodelic bands which ... uh ... 

FT3 Tell you what. Rip up the card, sweetpants. Your work is done.

ED>- PSE ADD RESRCH WOODLAND OF WEIR AND EVOLUTIONS HERE DON'T JUST COPY PASTE LIKE LAST TIME [Blow it out yer ass - Ed.]

 

 

We Are Not Worthy Dept.

Django, third from right, with his family

 

Django playing violin for his son

 

 

 

 

Crawlspace Collectables Dept. - Cross & Ross

 

The cover and title it deserves.

SPURIOUS HISTORY:

England, 1972. In the rain. Keith Cross and Peter Ross wanted out. "A new start, somewhere in the sun." Somewhere turned out to be Nassau, in the Bahamas. "Chris Blackwell was thinking of setting up a studio there, so he flew us all out to test the vibe." At Compass Point, the gray U.K. seemed a world away, and the sessions effortlessly produced a blissful, one-of-a-kind album.

Maybe predictably, the summery, airy feel didn't connect with rain-soaked Brits,  and Blackwell was forced to offload the project to Decca, who repackaged and retitled the album in a hope to catch the wave of prog gloom. "We went from Hawaiian shirts to greatcoats, for nothing. The press department concocted this story about us falling out, because Brits love that, but we could do nothing about the music, which nobody understood. Still don't."

So here it is, as it should have been, direct from the shores of Th' Isle O' Foam© to you, wherever you are. Surf's up.

TRUE STORY:

These guys were pissed off. With each other, with the music business, with everything. How they managed to cut such a sublime album is beyond understanding. But they crippled it with a typically Brit defeatist tile, Bored Civilians, and used a cover design that might have perfectly expressed their own disaffection and the state of the U.K. at the time, but only served to depress the shit out of everyone who saw it [left - Ed.]. It also grievously misrepresents the music, which is some of the most uplifting, blissed-out, melodic, West Coast rock the U.K. ever produced. They snatched defeat from the mouth of victory with this one, the daft buggers.

Three worthwhile extra tracks, fifty-six minutes of heaven. 

 

 

 

 

 

From a few years back. If you missed it then, don't now!

Work In Progress Dept. - Thirty Minutes On The Road

 

Thirty Minutes Dept. - In Lost Albion

There's nothing jingoistic about this, no anthems, no patriotism. It's not about a nation, or the characteristics of its people, even as it is all absolutely English*. It's an evocation of the spirit of Albion - the lost Eden, the garden of heaven, which is gone now, even as a prayer. Just as the land shapes the people, so the people shape the land, and the Albion of William Blake and Samuel Palmer is so twisted out of shape as to be unrecognisable. Yet the dream still lives, in memory. We can see it in Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale, in Palmer's luminous vision (that's his genius adorning the cover), and hear echoes of it in Sandy Denny's heartbreaking voice.

This is a dream (as the repetition of the word might suggest), and has the shifting, disjointed non-linearity of a dream. There are four undefined sections, merging into each other: Pastoral, At War, The Dark Side Of The Maypole, and At Sea. It does not pretend to be an overview of English musical tradition, or to tell any kind of story.

This has been by far the most labour intensive** and satisfying Thirty Minutes I've made. Many days researching, assembling, editing and mixing, with countless playbacks and adjustments. Unlike my other Thirty Minute projects, most of the elements were unfamiliar to me; I started with a vague idea (as Picasso recommends) and found what helped to express it, and what didn't, by experimentation rather than design.The biggest surprise for me has been opening my ears to Delius - better late than never.

Link 

Words and music include extracts from (in no particular order): Williams Shakespeare and Coleridge, Bert Jansch and Sandy Denny, the Third Ear Band, Arnold Bax, Wilfred Owen,  Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Tavener, Fredericks Delius and Kelly, Arthur Machen (guest Welshman*), Al Bowlly, Trad Arr, Peter Warlock, George Butterworth, and, exploiting the compiler's privilege, myself.

**A lie. Tear The Top Right Off Your Million Dollar Head is the most detailed and complex.

Thanks to Archie Valparaiso for his technical assistance! And, if you did, you, for reading and listening.

 

 

 

From Th' IoF© Library O' Books Dept. - The Fan Man

William Kotzwinkle's The Fan Man is about this guy Horse Badorties, right, and it's awesome, and you should like, read it, well, I don't mean should, right, it's your trip, man, but it'd be kinda cool if you did, or you could just like dig the pictures. Have a nice day!