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Ever mindful of the technological expectations of today's internet enthusiast, False Memory Foam© is proud to announce a blogging first - the introduction of an exclusive free Wi-Fi service for its readers!

Simply "log on" with the "device" of your choice and start "surfing the internet"!

This is the first of a program of features and amenities we're rolling out to make the False Memory Foam© experience meaningful and relevant to you, our valued customer!

Ritz Cracker

It was the the song titles on that first Church album that got my synapses popping like bubblewrap; Unguarded Moment, Bel-Air, Is This Where You Live, Memories In Future Tense ... I just knew it had to be good. And there was a long track! All proper rock albums have a long track. The music didn't disappoint - a rush of guitars, Kilbey's off-kilter croon, and tunes that got stuck in and wouldn't let go. Real choruses. Real guitar breaks. Real poetry that really meant something, even if you weren't really sure what. Back then, when musicianship of this calibre seemed to be beyond anyone under thirty, this was manna from heaven. In the following decades, I've bought everything the band's done. I'm a fan. I'm aware that those first few albums (up to but strangely not including Starfish) are the most special for me, and still the most-played, but the band have never stopped making music worth my hard-earned dollar.

Live In New York was recorded at the start of their breakthrough tour of the US [United States - Ed.] at the Old Ritz, and it's the live album they should have released. As old a fanboi as I am, I have to admit that most Church bootlegs I've heard are, er, unworthy of them. Never had the good luck to see them live, but those who have attest to the power and excitement they generate, so it's unfortunate that this recording never got an official release, because it's wildly, insanely great. Recording quality is very, very good, setlist impeccable, and the band whips up a fucking storm. Plus I done a cover redolent of the period.

I asked Steve if I could post it here, and he said, "Post it by all means mate." So here it is, in all its bohemian finery, nearly two blazing hours of The Church in New York, finishing with a melt-down sixteen minute You Took you'll need therapy to recover from.

None More Bing

Possibly the first LP [long-playing record - Ed.] I ever heard. From '58, it represents everything good from an era about to be ended by rock n' roll. Two great voices blending like peanut butter and jelly into a sequence of songs too modest to call itself a concept - a voyage around the world in song!

Let's take a voyage around that cover first. A commercial art masterpiece from when the big record companies employed talented in-house art departments, everything fits harmoniously, the layout, the typography, the colors. They built a set for Bing and Rosie to pose in. The wardrobe department kitted them out in some swell threads, and the make-up artist even faked "panda eyes" from an imaginary ski-slope. These days [an old person grumbles - Ed.] an instagram snapshot is enough; a few bare trees or some miserable girl hiding her face in her hair. Or a fucking badly-drawn owl. Or a grim bloke with a beard standing up to his waist in water. Any old shit goes. Anything to avoid looking professional. But look at this, to cheer yourself up. It's a shame you can't turn it over, because there's a swell map [lo-fi indie band - Ed.] with their route marked, and some snappy liner [sleeve - Ed.] notes.

Then there's the music. Billy May arranged it and his band played it, and that guarantees it swings like a donkey's nuts. The songs are chosen for geographical appropriateness, and the lyrics are frequently, and delightfully, adapted to the personalities and the times. Bing sings "when Elvis bows, I just nod", and Dino's pizzas get a product placement, as does Bob Hope's nose. It's all unforced, unironic, guileless, but very smart, fun.

And remember that Bing was a legendary mellow toker, and sucking on a hemp straw between songs. Remember too that he invented the close-up microphone technique, and nobody who knew him or worked with him had an unkind word to say about him (that vicious slur about him scuppering his brother's career is just that). And remember Rosie, in addition to being a swell gal and a swooningly accomplished chantoozie, was George Clooney's aunt.

So, probably the first album I ever heard, and I've been listening to it with undiminished pleasure for six decades or so. You should be so lucky.

EDIT: Lookee here! You can pretend you flipped over the cover while you're digging the tunes! Note how album is TRUE STEREO. In '58!!

RSD Special!!

It's that time of year again, when Millennials with more money than sense - that is to say, all of them - camp overnight outside indie record stores to grab that limited edition RSD collectable investment! Fevered hipsters will be hungry to snap up this 10-inch from Gap Year Records. It's on 845gsm brown vinyl sourced from shade-grown sustainable polymers, and the sleeve is printed on recycled homeless dwellings, with inks made from vegetarian body waste. That alone is enough to ensure its investment value, even at 2,995 bucks a pop!

The music is something special, too! The Miserable Bastard Brits Play Non-Stop Party Hits! is a compilation curated by Paul Morley [who? - Ed.] featuring exclusive covers by Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, Polly Jean Harvey, Jim Kerr, Roger Waters, Richard Thompson, Morrissey, Shawn Ryder, John Lydon, and Amy Winehouse. From Paul Morley[who? - Ed.]'s sleeve notes:

"Back in the Golden Age Of Pop (around November 3rd, 1983), involuntary celibacy, medication, and tinnitus were the sex, drugs and rock n' roll of an entire generation of "a certain kind of creep" (as Elvis Costello famously described his fans). The posters on their bedroom walls - they still lived at home, so Sellotape was banned! - featured the musicians on this record. Musicians who caught the zeitgeist of the UK in all its rain-soaked glory, and who now re-imagine the pop hits of the day. Only a Jim Kerr could see the inherent existential despair of Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs, or a Morrissey capture the Proustian melancholy of Agadoo-Doo-Doo (push pineapple, shake the tree). Polly Harvey's re-imagining of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep is at once a meditation on loss and the politics of the liberated vagina. The discovery of an early demo tape by Nick Drake - an anguished cover of Ken Dodd's hit "Happiness" - is the icing on the cake."

None More Hot

Frank's timeless masterpiece was, of course, recorded pre-CD [compact disc - Ed.], and had to restrict its length to album sides. There was more material recorded during the Hot Rats sessions, but not enough to fill a double disc, so Frank [Zappa - Ed.] made the necessary editorial decisions and left some fine, fine music wriggling like baby snakes on the cutting-room floor.

What we have here, dear friends, is an assemblage of the available music from those sessions, artfully programmed to deliver the quality experience today's hi-fi enthusiasts demand. One hour and change crammed with the modern jazz-rock stylings for which Mr Zappa [Frank - Ed.] became the audio entertainer of choice for the smarter consumer.  Be it patio barbeque, poolside brunch, cocktails when unexpected guests drop by, or simply getting blown by a toothless crack-whore in the back of the family Camry, you'll find Hotter Rats the ideal musical accompaniment!

Supplied at no extra cost is a lysergically over-heated cover [shown left - Ed.], ideal for framing or cat litter. This, dear friends, is the kind of content you have come to expect from False Memory Foam©, the blog at the fractal fringe of the fun zone! Remember to tell all your friend about this swell blog! Hoo boy!