The SMiLE You Send Out Dept. - Jack's Mix

Here ya go, Jack, have a new cover!

 

If like me you're a little too obsessed with SMiLE to be considered quite safe to be around, you'll embrace this new mix to your hollow bosom with hoarse hosannas and squirty tears. It's by Jack, that's his name, and it's on YewChewb and now it's downloadable here with a new cover. It's of the kitchen sink everything-in school, but it flows like a river, and the new material seems very successful. In spite of leaving nothing out, it lasts an entirely reasonable fifty minutes. It's a keeper. The beginning - dropping a dime into a jukebox - is inspired, and there are many wow moments throughout. Out-freaking-standing!

More SMiLEs here and there

 

This post homologated by Swivel-Eye Loons For SMiLE™ 

 

 

Math Rock Just Doesn't Add Up Dept. - Automatic Fine Tuning

I like this album (which almost inevitably I "had on vinyl back in the day") more than I should. It goes against so much of what I hold dear - the values of the traditional family fireside; crumpets oozing melted butter, Children's Hour on the wireless, the drone of the Spitfires overhead, the crack of willow against leather on the village green, snorting blow off a hooker's tit in a roadhouse toilet on Christmas Eve ...

It's challenging, except not. It should be challenging. One rigorously composed thirty-minute instrumental split over two sides, a shorter instrumental named after the flowers your Grandmama liked to steal from the crematorium on her way home from the off-licence, and a slightly grunty attempt at a hit single, the only vocals on the album. Twin guitars playing relatively complex pseudo-classical themes and taking breaks for ripping nostril-hair shred solos. It's relentless. I mean, I should hate it, but it slips through very pleasurably.

AFT may be an early example of Math Rock before Math Rock sucked all the fun out of it. Which brings me to Angine de Poitrine [Fr. Chest Fever - Ed.] with their challenging microtonal noodling and playfully dada-esque image [left - Ed]. They're undoubtedly clever, but it all revolves around counting off patterns, not my cracker salt, and I can't help thinking they need Captain Beefheart doing his thing in the foreground. 

 

 

 

This post funded in part by Babs Tabs n'Crabs, Pork Bend, OH

 

 

Hicks From The Sticks Dept.

Dan Hicks. Winner of Okayest Dude award six years running. Swell musician, songwriter, great pinochle player. Inventor of Pickleball®, and First Cowboy On The Moon. What more need be said? He was the most talented original Charlatan (a pretty low bar), and pioneered the use of oleomargarine in contract flooring. His portrait, by Leonard Nimoy, hangs in the Vatican. September 3rd has been named Dan Hicks day in Spitoon County, Colorado. He owned the world's largest private collection of Oil Rigs, and kept axolotls.

But enough of this dry historical encomium. The important thing is, fun. 

 

This post encouraged by the interest of 4/5g© D, CA

It's Th' Zorn Zone! Dept.

 

This just in! ZornStock© will be held this year at the Groban Supply Co. lot in leafy downtown Burnside, Chicago!

Zorn, left, and Mrs. Myra Nussbaum approve location, yestiddy!

 

"It's really the dream ZornStock© venue!" gushed the challenging saxophone stylist yesterday. "The dystopian æsthetic will lend post-holocaust feels to the première of my Missa Novus Ordo Depressivus, which lasts just short of two days if we live that long!"

Longtime collaborator and Event Hostess Mrs. Myra Nussbaum agrees! "I'm cooking some of my world famous Schnitzengrüben Patties whilst doing interpretive dance!"

The Kronos Quartet have been booked as support, and wacky funster Fred Frith will be forcing kids to inflate imaginary balloon animals in the Tots' Tent! Tickets are still available, so pre-order now to avoid disappointment!

 

This post autoclaved in the burning fiery brain fever of hot season Siam! 

 

 

 

Better Than I Remember Dept. - The Charlies

Original unused cover design featured, like, literally coolest F1 driver, like, ever. Literally.

My first impulse, back in whenever, was to boo these upstarts for appropriating the name of a very important, if not actually that enjoyable, West Coast band from the Acid Years (The Charlatans, in case you're having attention issues). It was like a new band calling themselves Country Joe And The Fish, as far as I was concerned. But that first single [Indian Rope, 1990 - Ed.] was pretty damn swell, I had to admit. Good enough to turn me into an Accredited Charlies Consumer, the kind of unthinking, cash-rich fan every band needs. Then real life interrupted for a few decades, as it will, and my fansomeness only reactivated a week or so back with the release of the Somethingieth Anniversary edish of Some Friendly, their funkified first album.

Rholonne Déodoranté

 

I didn't think time would be kind to it. But it sounds better than I remember. It's always a delight to listen to a real band with a proper rhythm section, and the drums n' bass are so deep in the pocket they're rattling your kneecaps [This is very good, Farq. I don't often compliment you, but this is exactly the kind of content the internet needs right now - Ed.]. Add some acid jazz Hammond B3 and guitar that leaves you wanting more, and they cook up a timeless funky stew that leans into psychedelia just enough to invoke the term. Tim Burgess had the looks and the presence, but his voice is that rather weedy English placeholder thing, nothing to make the hairs on the back of your neck bristle. The Ian Brown school of underachievement. And the songs tend to the unmemorable, unless you play them a lot, which you just might. Because the album is absolutely playable, all the way through, with just enough variation to keep a grin on your face as you essay some ill-advised dance moves.

 

I wish they'd been able to use the original cover (the Marlboro thing scuppered it), because James Hunt has exactly the cool swagger of the music, and there's maybe a resemblance to Burgess. But here it is, probably its first public appearance.

 

Fast forward thirty-five years ...

The Charlies redux. Thirty-five years of setbacks and calamities, deaths and disappointments. The melodies are stronger, Tim's voice has improved with age, gaining a little grit. The sound is lush and deep and wide, but the album never dips into the generic - there's care and skill and imagination in every beat, every note, and it's distinctly a Charlatans album - couldn't be anybody else.

The original cover is terrible, almost inevitably, a scruffy, half-thought out, almost cynical example of this-will-do-ism. They have form here. So here's an alternative I crayoned up which has some resonance with the title, without even knowing the back story. 

Richard Luttrell wrote this letter and left it at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. along with the photograph he'd kept.

"Dear Sir, For twenty two years I have carried your picture in my wallet. I was only eighteen years old that day that we faced one another on that trail in Chu Lai, Vietnam. Why you did not take my life I'll never know... Forgive me for taking your life, I was reacting just the way I was trained..."

In March 2000, Luttrell travelled to Vietnam to meet with the daughter of the man he met on the trail in Chu Lai. [PBS War Letters - Ed.]

Most album covers are missed opportunities, rushed afterthoughts. They have an incredible, undervalued reach. Listen to the last track on this terrific album, and think of that boy sent to kill strangers in a strange land. Still happening.

 

This post made possible by the magic of muscle memory. 

 

 

GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY! Jimmy Durante - Godfather Of Surf? Dept.

Say, fellows! Can you descry producer's credit, bottom left?

You'll know veteran comedian Jimmy Durante from previous visits to th' IoF© [here and here - Ed.], but did you know he has an important role in the development of surf music? As unlikely as this sounds, it's more unlikely that you did, given your lamentable education and lack of interest in the really important stuff, so I'll tells ya! Those of you with short-term memory skills undimmed by the passing of the years may remember the last piece to appear here a couple of days back, featuring Michael Lloyd's tragic descent into music biz success [Here's a link so you don't have to scroll and make your eyes go funny - Ed.]. During the course of my research I learned that Lloyd's Godfather was none other than Th' Shnozzola hisself, James Q. Durante! But wait! There's more! But first, take a hinge at this ultra-rare piece of movie memorabilia from the collection of the late Gene Siskel:

Only evidence that movie ever existed!

 

That was fun, wasn't it? Probably the most fun you're going to have all day, which is simultaneantly heartwarming and throat-slashingly pathetic. But back to 1963 or whenever it was. Lloyd was in the successful surfbeat combo The New Dimensions, what you ain't heared of because frankly you don't care that much about anything since your ex torched your trailer home with your Pokemon© collection still in it. But this band could actually play, looked spiffy, and got to support some major major acts, such as like f'rinstance the Beach Boys. Wow! Great Concert! And it was th' Shnozz what gifted the young Michael Lloyd with an actual Fender guitar, which was like giving him a Cadillac full of blondes in bikinis. Anyway, they wus dumb kids and signed a contract with a couple of feckless rubes just off the Azusa bus, ensuring no income from their three record albums, the first of which is today's FoamFeature™ Deliverable, and as far as I'm aware the only place you'll find it in this condition on the internet. It may be on SoulSuck, but so what. (Mildly interesting factoid: it was because of SoulSuck's frosty, insular, no-help attitude that I started this blog thing.)

It's surprisingly fantastic. There's some real production imagination added to musical skill making it a cut above most surfbeat albums. As it's on the dump-bin Sutton label, there are no credits (so musicians and composers lose their royalties), no band picture, and the producer's name - which really interests me - is illegibly small, bottom left front cover. William J. Something? Robert J. Whomever? He knew his stuff. It's in true stereo, not a standard thing back in '63 and totally unexpected on a no-budget label like Sutton. There's always something fun and imaginative happening in the arrangements and mix. And it's twenty - count 'em! - fun-packed minutes long! Hoo boy!

After cutting a couple more albums, with an ill-advised Hail Mary pass at soul, the band [left - Ed.] morphed into ... ta daa! ... dese guys:

... and let me tell you, it's a crushing disappointmink. They're basically a franks n' beans white blues band. Yes, they played on the Strip and were probably great fun to watch at Pandora's Box, and yes, they had top-line talent supporting them on the album - Bones Howe, Larry Knechtel, Hal Blaine, Mike Deasy, and ... Warren Zevon. And they were pretty good players and singers themselves (although Lloyd had moved on). But it's as exciting as waiting for dial-up in Uzbekhistan. There's a version of Smokestack Lightning that lasts until next Thursday and is nearly as crushingly wretched as Love's version on Da Capo, with a drum solo that will have you frantically climbing a tall building to jump off. I'm not uploading it, as a pubic cervix. The New Dimensions album is better in every way, except the cover. Perhaps. I should mention Art Guy, who was not the graphic designer but the drummer. The graphic designer was probably Drum Guy.

Cooling to my theme ...

This "evolution" of pop into rock is a clear illustration of what was lost. By '69, when the Smokestack Lightnin' album limped out, surf music was dead in the water - SWIDT? - and times were suddenly grim. The brief Technicolor burst of the Summer Of Love had faded into clouds of foreboding. Nobody was playing the ridiculously-named Surf n' Bongos album, or even remembered the group. "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" may work sometimes, but not here, for what was gone was innocence, and that's gone forever in pop, evolving into today's AI shuffle of familiar elements. Doesn't matter if it's an algorithm or the more insidious human version, pop is a constant reshuffle of an old, old hand. In '63 The New Dimensions were a product of a scene (don't sneer, it's exactly the right word) that was exciting, fun, and fresh. Dick Dale and a few others were doing it already, but it was happening, right there and then, the product of a limited but intensely vivid youth culture with the money and the time to get it moving. There was no playbook, they weren't ticking boxes, they weren't playing within a tradition, but they were having as much fun as they knew how.

The Smokestack Lightnin' album is no fun at all. It's unfair to single it out, perhaps, there were hundreds of bands worldwide doing the same thing, grabbing at shreds of authenticity by appropriating black culture. Check out the seriousness of the cover shot. Po' boy caps, 'tache n' glasses ... not a surfboard or a smile in sight. I'm not a great fan of the real blues. It's not a question of musical quality or whatever, I can't feel it's speaking either for or to me. It's as distant, culturally speaking, as biergarten polka, and perhaps shamefully, as boring. But whiteboy blues bands I have even less time for. They have that late 'sixties, early 'seventies dreariness, a sense of hunkering down paranoid post-acid bleakness and death of dream that I remember all too clearly.

No, we can't be frugging to The New Dimensions supporting The Beach Boys in '63, but playing the record re-ignites a spark of innocence. The memory of it can be indiscernible from the real thing. What, me worry?

This post made possible by a heatwave that's keeping me indoors, chugging ice-cold water in front of a fan (one of my many lol haha).

Michael Lloyd's Descent Into Easy Listening Hell Dept.

Michael Lloyd and Kim Fowley were not a likely partnership. Fowley wasn't looking for partners, only victims. There were plenty back on Sunset Strip in the 'sixties, where he was a towering, Svengali-like egomaniac with a talent for self-promotion and an insatiable appetite for the young girls who drifted onto the Strip with confused dreams of stardom or freedom or whatever.

“Look at who I am," he said, as if self-awareness was enough in itself, and somehow admirable, "I’m an uneducated, untalented, bad social skills, horrible intimacy skills, unattractive, horrifying, dark, cadaverous, too-tall presence.” Groovy. "Because I’m basically an asshole, a piece of shit, no one’s interested in going any further to see if there’s any depth of talent, character or intellect.” There wasn't - what you saw was what you got, a hippie Trump whose sucking tentacles of ambition never reached beyond LA, where his name appears like a sexually-transmitted rash across the music industry.

The classically-trained Michael Lloyd had his own band at Beverley Hills High School, and recorded some early surf singles with Mike Curb. He also had the talent, good looks, and charm denied to Fowley, who signed him to a publishing deal, finagled him into recording his desperate Love Is Alive And Well album and introduced him to rich-kid wannabe rock star and tambourine slapper Bob Markley, another Sunset Strip sex creep. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was the Markley-funded masterplan to get little girls into his bed. However good the records are, and they are, his explicit lyrical confessions - or bragging - make them nearly unlistenable. Yikes.

Lloyd, apparently, floated over all this gutter filth without being touched by it. He helmed the proto-punk psychploitation Psychotic Reaction by the un-group The Fire Escape, and cut the St. John Green album [here - Ed] with Fowley, both on cash-grab labels.

Story so far: fresh-faced rich kid gets suckered into Sleazy Street by show-biz vampires. How does this play out? Not well, obviously - a descent into drugs and cults, sordid sex and an ugly death, the tragic waste of an All American Boy, and a lesson for us all. Except, not.

In '68, Lloyd wrote, played on, produced and arranged two albums: The Smoke, and October Country. He penned very nearly all the songs, produced and arranged everything, and Fowley only got to write some sleevenotes, boo-fucking-hoo. His absence is like a ray of sunshine. The qualities that made Lloyd valuable to Fowley - talent, mostly - had gotten him noticed by music biz professionals. Each of these albums is a gem, and better considered, given his total involvement, as by Michael Lloyd.

October Country (a real band) were uncomfortable with the groovy LA scene, and all became propane salesmen, Jehova's Witnesses, industrial felt pressers and pet beauticians. The Smoke was another un-band, but the full sound is distinctly LA session finest, an only slightly sub-Brian Wilson pocket pop masterpiece. Why weren't they marketed as Michael Lloyd albums? I'm guessing he was too modest, not that interested in being a star, and considered them as side projects, like the Fire Escape and St. John Green albums. Just records.

And then things went weird.

In 1969, Mike Curb appointed Lloyd, then aged 20, as vice-president in charge of A&R at MGM. Twenty freaking years old. What were you doing at twenty? I can't remember, but I certainly wasn't cruising Sunset Boulevard in a soft top Camaro. Curb, squarer than a bathroom tile, was purging MGM of anything vaguely drug-related (including the Velvet Underground and The Mothers), and Lloyd moved seamlessly into high-end MOR, squeaky-teen pop, and major movie soundtracks, his psychedelic pside projects quickly forgotten. He's still alive and scarily youthful and charming, and Fowley is none of the above. But as is the way of these things, Fowley is still revered for being "a character", "chameleon-like", and even a "legend", while Lloyd is mostly forgotten by zeitgeist types, and happier that way. Today's deliverable bundles The Fire Escape (a great little album, against all the odds), a re-covered October Country, and The Smoke.

Mike in the middle, of the road

 

This post funded by Mike Curb's Hair Helmets© - "all the protection of a crash hat, all the style of Dick Clark!"

Explain The Title And Win The Album! Dept.

 

Bang!

Thirty Minutes Dept. - Sounds From Uranus!

This is what Uranus looks like! Actual photograph! Of Uranus!

 

This is yer actual gas music from Uranus! Captured by the zircon-encrusted antenna of NASA's deep space probe Voyager! It's what Lou Reed was trying for with Metal Machine Music, but much more interesting, varied, complex, listenable, and human - Now That's What I Call Minimalist Drone! You'll dig it to fall asleep to, or have blasting from the holodeck when unexpected guests drop by! Play it in the car on long road trips, and see where you wake up! Slowly pump it up as background noise at work while you deal with that irate customer! Trip out to it at the Waffle House™! It's the soundtrack to the far side of tomorrow, today!

 

This post made possible thru th' cooperation of the wacky geeks at NASA!

It's Da Boids! Dept.

"Complete" version of Ballad Of Easy Rider, under its original title. Thirty tracks. From 1969, with Peter Fonda as Jim-Roger McGuinn, and Dennis Hopper as David Crosby. I was so dumb/stoned when I saw this I thought it was really real, but the realest thing about it was Jack Nicholson's performance. There's acting, there's movie acting, and there's Jack.

Original screed here.

And here's what Sony Japan did:

  ... and ze Frrrrainch version (e-hon e-hon e-hon):

 

 

AOC On Th' IoF! Dept. - Forager

My closest bestie Alex with her own vinyl Foragers album, yestiddy

The greatest prexy the USA will never have, on account which youse bums just ain't civilised enough, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also one heck of a dame. Babelicious, even. And, it turns out, a frequent passing visitor to th' Isle O' Foam©. "I'm always grabbing the second-tier psych,'" she laughs, "but I'm too busy fighting the apocalyptic shitstorm of ignorance and evil in my shithole country to leave a comment!"

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez [left - Ed.] slurped one of Kreemé's signature Mountain Oyster n' Buffalo Knuckle smoothies as we relaxed poolside to the soothing melodies of her latest discovery, Foragers' debut album Even A Child Can Cover The Sun With A Finger.

FT3 Gee whiz, AOC-

AOC Please! Call me Alex, Farq? All my most intimate friends call me Alex. And I feel we've bonded somehow ...

FT3 (running finger around collar) Woooof! Well *cough* Alex, gee whiz ... this group is so new to me I ain't even a'heered of 'em, so new which they is ...

AOC Come sit next to me, Big Guy!

FT3 *kaffkaffkaff* Well, okay then. Ha ha! Just let me .... roll up my Yo-Yo string here ...

AOC I'm lovin' me a man who can handle a Yo-Yo! You're so masterful ...

FT3 Ha ha! Sure sounds like a swell album! Yessiree Bob! Or would do if I could stop this rush of blood in my ears ...

AOC (breathing in FT3's ear) Is that the only rush you're feeling? Let's take a look ...

FT3 (unnaturally high voice) YIKES!

AOC Why, Mister Throckmorton! You're ... mmm ... !!!

 

[Tape runs out at this point, as does all self restraint - Ed.]

This here album is the best debut I ever heard, or might as well be. These guys are going to be (excuse my French) énorme!

 

Gahd, I love this woman ...

 

Once Again I Am Asking You To Freak Out! Dept. Now With Added Sensible Screed!

This is #2 in an exclusive limited series of alternate covers! Collect the set!

 

You'll know Bernie Sanders for his role as "Gwampa Wobbly" in NBC sitcom Those Commie Motherfuckers! but did you know he's possibly the greatest living authority on Frank Zappa's The Mothers Of Invention [popular beat combo - Ed.]?

Bernie "sits in" with Turtles of Invention!

 

Here's th' Bern waxing loquacious anent The MoFo's seminal first long-playing elpee album:

"Hi, pop teens! Not many folks know that Freak Out! was actually the second iteration of the famed album! The original mix became available a while ago, rather misleadingly entitled  The Alternate Freak Out! - if anything, the album as issued is the alternate version. And even worse, it had a cover that made you throw hot chunks! So my good friend Farq has crafted an Art Design that fits the music like a pair of hand-knitted mittens! The deliverable is my own rip @320. Remember to register to vote!"

Thanks, Bern! And if you see AOC, could you ax her to swing by th' IoF© for an intryview? And, uh, a neck rub? Big fan!

In the interests of transparency, I should point out that there seems to be an agreement that this is essentially the same mix as the first album, with a couple, maybe three, snippets that got snipped out for the official release, and the tracks in a different order - but (and it's a big one) this simply sounds better. Clearer. It really is like hearing it for the first time. So how this can be accomplished without it being a different mix is a mystery to me. I got it from thepoodlebites @upvhq blog, where you can grab it at flac quality, if that butters your parsnip, with the original crap bootleg sleeve.

The Biggest WTF? Album Of All Time

Freak Out! was recorded in April, 1966, at exactly the same time as Revolver, and a few weeks after Blonde On Blonde and Pet Sounds. Let that sink in. What was in the actual air back then? Each of these albums, in its own characteristic way, represents some kind of pinnacle of zeitgeist art. Yet Freak Out! is rarely grouped with its peers because ... well ...

Jeannie Vassoir, the Voice of Cheese

  

Pet Sounds, Revolver, Blonde On Blonde have consistency and a readily-understood integrity. Nobody scratches their heads when listening to them, each has a recognisably distinct character. Freak Out! is all over the place, like a coked-up squirrel with ADD in Nutz-'R-Us© on Black Friday. Zappa thought of it as a satirical concept album, which it may be, but even those pop fans who knew what satire was (there must have been a couple) didn't give much of a fuck about it. Satire in any form is not that potent a weapon, or that big a laugh, and when it's unfocussed ("everybody sucks, including you") it's reduced almost to meaninglessness. And if the satirical edge is blunted by an affection for its target (as doo-wop is here), everybody gets confused.

Zappa thought it was going to be a big hit, and so did Verve, encouraged by the swivel-eyed enthusiasm of producer Tom Wilson, who was on acid in the studio. They were strange times. That Zappa got to make another album is a miracle, after the big-budget Freak Out! crawled briefly to the coveted 130 spot on the Billboard chart, and was one of the first albums to be thrown in the dumpster when Verve hit the skids.

Like most Zappa albums, Freak Out! is just as relevant, enjoyable, and confusing as it was back then. Nothing was changed by his satire, but then that's satire's failing, or yours, not his. Seen in a certain light, it becomes a perfect condensation, synthesis, and palimpsest (if you will) of his life in music. Everything he did later is here in embryonic form, a tiny zircon-encrusted Fabergè chocolate egg, perfect in every sticky protruberance, a Sistine Chapel ceiling on velvet, a 3D Mona Lisa with her tits out. File under: geniusness.

This post funded by Larry's Used Lube™ - "The lube Larry used!"

 

 

It Was Fiftyish Years Ago Today Dept.

 

Click!

TV Heads-Up Dept. - The Capture

We're two episodes in of what seems to be a well up to par third series. If you've missed out, grab the first two series first, from the usual shady corners of the internet. You'll find it hard not to binge watch. Impeccable everything, from the script up. It's that rare thing, an intelligent thriller. Great ideas, great execution, and nearly into SF in terms of beyond cutting edge technology. Aaaand ... no disappointing series endings! Things are wrapped up nicely, possibilities are suggested, leaving you thirsting for the next series. Utterly brilliant, really.

Executive producer David Heyman could have made me rich and famous by filming Helium, but chose instead to make the Harry Potter movies, and himself a billionaire. His loss, right?  

 

 

The Great Jazz And Pop Vocal Albums Dept.

Will Friedwald's book of that title is a wonderful read. His knowledge and enthusiasm are a winning combination of fan worship and critical smarts. Of course, we may not agree with his choices ("it's all subjective, innit?" - The Internet, yesterday) but that's part of the fun.

Fred Astaire [left - Ed.] cut one of the very first albums, back when an album was just that - a bound book containing pockets to hold the discs - and it's one of the first albums Friedwald talks about. Fred was the last to claim any merit as a singer, and he has my wholehearted support in this, although Friedwald elevates him to the ranks of the greats (he also rates Chet Baker, another no-voice vocalist - who's next? Claudine Longet?).

Still and all, if you're in the mood for some very sophisticated light and cool combo jazz, which this surely is, you'll dig this. There's an added-value bonus in the download!

Can't think of anything to type here - maybe later.

Penn & Teller's Psychedelic Prestidigitation! Dept.

Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, yesterday

You'll know Jerry Penn and his youthful ward Dick Teller from their kids' TV show Saw Your Sister In Half! but did you know they host a weekly Psychedelic Psalon at their luxe private ballroom at the Old Grain Silo in downtown Pork Bend? You do now!

This week the dapper duo will be playing all volumes of Electric Psychedelic Sitar Headswirlers in an epic all-nite freakout! And you're invited! Far out, huh, kids?! Here's husky bath-house posterboy Jerry to open proceedings!

JP Hey kids! Tonite we gots-

FT3 Sorry, Jer, but that's all we have time for, so it's back to the studio and Marvinia Geeky [left - Ed.] with the Nude Traffic Roundup! [APPLAUSE, BURLESQUE STRIPPER MUSIC]

 

 

 

 

This post brought to you by Jiminy, George, and Crikey

 

 

Happy Days Are Here Again! Dept.

 

 

The clearest analysis of Trump's insane war is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcXfcXJvMXg

Robert Pape knows what he's talking about. Listen to the man. It's a long-play information dump that we need right now.

No diesel in my little town today, and a cap on petrol/gas. The sheer scale of Trump's ineptitude and his trailer-park hillbilly administration is staggering. He's killing everybody.

 

This post made possible by Ignorance and Greed, two reassuring constants in a world of change.

Give The Drummer Some Dept. - Billham Cobly

My man Billham, smackin' th' traps!

 

The first drummer I heard who had an immediately recognisable signature sound wasn't Ringo Starr - he was the first I knew by name - but Keith Moon. I didn't know if he was technically any good or not (still don't), but his full-on style was his alone, like he loved the drums but also wanted to beat the shit out of them. Scary guy. But the one I came to worship was Billy Cobham, first heard on the first Mahavishnu Orchestra album. He was busy, but never unnecessary, every faster-than-thought beat in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, and he sounded like nobody else, that tash-tash-tash cymbal. He drove the beat but never rushed it, and he was all over the kit, which is what I like to hear. Not for me the *cough* motorik minimalist metronome, I want value from my album investment. I paid for those drums, and I want to hear them.

He's also a first-rate composer, and his solo albums have always had melody at the heart of them. It's like he's playing chords on his kit. Spectrum and Crosswinds are both pinnacles of musical excellence, no matter how you label them, and I listen to his solo works far more than I listen to McLaughlin's. Today's deliverable is a sweet pair of albums he recorded in rsrch date pse ed [pse fuck yourself - Ed.], featuring luxe arrangements of older tunes and a few new ones. His Panamanian roots are showing in the steel pans and the Caribbean lilt, and there's nothing too brow-furrowing here, which is a good thing. Pure enjoyment.

I'm guessing this was designed by Stevie Wonder

 

If you know what this is about, Billham may have to kill you

This post made possible by funding from the Old Guy Underwear Xchange, Pork Bend, Alaska

Library O' Books Dept.

If you have the interest and attention span to read this screed, you might click on through to the comments, where you can download the book, if you're the quiet, bookish type.

The Back Story

I wrote the first version of this book soon after I moved to Paris, back in the Last Century. I moved in a ragged circle of arty types (featured in the book, some pretty much directly from life), drank a lot, talked a lot, the whole boho thing. I wrote it in a fever, convinced of my genius, and it was unworthy of both the idea and me. Got nowhere, and deservedly so. Since then it's passed through four versions, each quite different from the previous, with a new title but the same idea (or concept, if you like). They followed the first down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. This is the final one - I really don't think I could write it better.

The Literary Agent Is Not That Passionate About Books

The people I knew in the book trade back when Helium was published (the little book that changed my life) are all either dead or retired. I need an agent to get this on a publisher's desk. To get an agent you first have to research those who claim to be interested in the type of book you're submitting. Then you make a submission by email, following specific guidelines. They may trash a submission if it doesn't conform to these guidelines. Generally you write a covering letter (what kind of book it is, what it's about etc.), add a synopsis, a short bio, and attach the a sample of the book. Some especially irritating agents ask for an "elevator pitch". This was a thing waaayyy back in the Last Century, and I made a few myself in Hollywood. You have to sell the book in the briefest way possible, which is impossible. But some agents think it shows them to be dynamic and finger-snappy.

Agents aren't that interested in books. That's the first thing to remember (they can't write, they're not authors, they're in Sales and Networking). Their first and overriding consideration is their career. They don't want to appear to fail by backing the wrong horse, so they place as few bets as possible, and then only on favourites. Risk management is everything. I have so much working against me - everything except quality - that no agent is going to go out on a career limb just because I can write. Are you crazy?

I made individually-formatted submissions to over twenty agents (in the UK and the US), who said they were interested in exactly the type of book I'd written.

I haven't heard from any of them. Not so much as one single boiler-plate rejection. My submission was trashed. For whatever reasons, I don't tick their boxes. Fine, times change, and an ugly old white guy isn't at the top of anybody's Christmas list. But the book should be, regardless of who wrote it.

Self Publishing Is A Bust

"Hey!" you say, suddenly inspired, "pretend to be the author they're looking for!" Yeah, no. This has been tried and the ruse never lasts, and only backfires on you. "Self publish!" you cry enthusiastically. "It's the publishing model of the future, today!" And again, yeah, no. Do you know how many books are self-published on the Am*z*n platform? Millions. Literally, millions. Thousands of new titles every day - some of them not even AI-generated. You'll only get traction if you already have a social media presence. Then you can shill your book to your followers. I have no social media presence, and I don't want one.

So what, then?

You can get the results of thirty years of literary endeavour free, gratis, and for nothing, right here. I'm not submitting it for your consideration, and to be honest, if you don't like it you can stick it up your ass. I wrote it for me. At least this way it will get read by three or four guys. And if you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed writing it, then, as I'm fond of saying, I'll have enjoyed it twice as much as you. Which seems about right.

Oh - and Stephen King? Knock yourself out.

 

The cover: I did this in about ten minutes. Could be better, but the mood is right. No, agents aren't interested in seeing your cover design idea. Go away.

Roots N' Dub Dept. - Bim Sherman

My knowledge of roots and dub is nowhere near as deep as my love for what I am familiar with. I can't explain why it made an immediate connection with me where (say) the blues never has. I'm as white as Navin Johnson in my musical DNA - Perry Como is my soul brother - so it's strange that a culture so alien to my own whitebread suburban seemed such a natural fit. I'm not claiming that even the finest set of white rasta dreads would make me welcome at a Kingstown chalice party, or that I found the whole Black Starliner thing particularly convincing, but the music ...

John Peel, inevitably, gets the credit. I heard Two Sevens Clash on his show, my first roots album, and after that Bob Marley sounded, well, a little thin. Chris Blackwell deserves all credit for introducing Jamaican music to the UK, but he left something behind - he couldn't pull out the roots, and they were hard to find. And I'd kind of moved on by the eighties, filing roots and dub as a geo-historical [is this a word? - Ed.] phenom. New reggae seemed to be burping with synthesisers, and even worse, drum machines.

So learning about Bim Sherman recently has been a revelation. Long story short - brought to the UK by Adrian Sherwood, recordings fall into Jamaican and post-Jamaican. The album that turned me on (man) was the recent reissue of Ghetto Dub ['88 - Ed.] which doesn't feature his incredible voice but struck me as the true heart of dub, and sent me scurrying back through his extensive (and it has to be said patchy, in later years) catalogue.

 

Today's deliverable is Ghetto Dub and Across The Red Sea ['82 - Ed.], both pretty fucking amazing. If you're unfamiliar with Bim, this is as good a place to start as any. Speaker-rattling, bowel-churning bass, space as deep as the Mariana Trench, heavenly vox, mind-warping FX, this is the real deal. Nice tunes, too!

 

(This post has generated the lowest page hits and least interest in IoF© history)

Squeez Whiz Dept.

 

Just gawjuss. You'll want it to play twice the first time you hear it.

Wilf Brimley's Psychedelic Psunday Pstash! Dept.

Wilf at the top of his game, yesterday! Copyright Foam-O-Graph©

You'll know lovable curmudgeon Wilford Beauregard Brimley as TV's Corporal Crustypants from NBC's short-lived sitcom Ass Patrol! But did you know he's an enthusiastic advocate of the psychedelic experience? A regular visitor to th' Isle O'Foam© [here and here and here and here and here and here and here and also here, and those are links fuffucksake - Ed.], Wilf has agreed to be your host this and every Sunday in what will be a do-not-miss diary date for th' Four Or Five Guys©!

So leave us let th' Brimster get this multicolored ball o' wax rolling!"Howdy, Foameteers®! It's sweet Sunday here on th' 'I Love Home' and here's some swell music to file alongside all them other downloads you never got around to listenin' to! Back in the day, grabbin' these elpees was trickier than pullin' eels from a mudhole, but what with this new-fangled electric radio technology you can be diggin' the sounds in the twitch of a possum's whisker! So throw back a tab of backwoods acid and join in the fun while it's still here to be joined in with!"

Today, Wilf Brimley's Psychedelic Psunday Pstash is a whole mess o' first-class second-tier psych on the ever-optimistic Mainstream label; twelve albums I haven't the energy to paint the covers for. Here's FoamFavorite™ Kreemé [eighteen my ass - Ed.] to introduce those albums in full:

✌🏻December's Children
✌🏻Freeport
✌🏻Lacewing
✌🏻Superfine Dandelion
✌🏻Tangerine Zoo (x2)
✌🏻Tiffany Shade
✌🏻Jellybean Bandits
✌🏻Art Of Lovin'
✌🏻Growing Concern
✌🏻A Pot Of Flowers (bonus)
✌🏻Bohemian Vendetta(bonus)

 

 

 

 

 

No serious collection of second-tier psych is complete without these swell recordings! Everything upgraded to @193, incorporating audio frequencies beyond the human ear's capacity to hear! (Last two albums are late additions with a separate link, in comments).

This post pre-sprayed with Auntie Em's Antipossum Antidote™