Don't you wish there was a Frank Zappa record you could play at any time, from your son's B'rit Milah [Britney/Miley pop duet album - Ed.] to your own funeral? Something nice n' easy, like Sunday morning? Something that wouldn't bring a blush to the cheeks of the gurl next door? Well, this ain't it, but it's close. No lyrics, so nothing sweat-inducing here. No actual rawk music, nothing atonal or challenging. Almost.
This is a single-track compilation/mix/edit of Frank's chamber music pieces, the sweet little melodic moments he'd throw into the mix just to show he could do this stuff standing on his head. You try standing on your own head sometime, and you'll get a glimpse of his genius. Being Frank, of course, there's still beaucoup of weird-ass chord changes, time signatures more complex than algorithms, and tunes that sound as if they're being played sideways by tin toys.
The cover - one of my very favorite images of Frank - was taken as part of a Life magazine photo-feature about rock stars and their parents. There was a swell shot of Grace Slick with her mom in their palatial home, too. I could be wrong about all this.
Anyway, here's thirty minutes - Verve album length - of Frank's cocktail audio. A little nostalgia for the old folks.
This is an amusing little piece I found while performing a routine home invasion to support my crack habit. You never know what you will find on these expeditions! It was only some years later that I got around to playing it, after a career hiatus in Joliet, and it has some musical as well as historical merit. The liner notes give no information about venue and dates, but the album was pressed by Fontana in 1967, and I'm guessing they're live recordings from Ronnie Scott's famous Soho [London - Ed.] club in the same year. The future jazzrock fretmelter is here in mellow mood, "sitting in" with a couple of different line-ups. Put on your jazz beret, light up a Gauloise, and imagine yourself wondering what the fuck you're doing at Ronnie Scott's when all the dolly-birds are a few blocks away at The Marquee. Which is probably what Johnny McLaughlin was doing.
There's a school of thought that maintains The Bangles were the last great true pop group. If we leave aside the "girl group" thing, Bananarama don't count. They had less credibility, and much less talent, than The Archies, never mind The Bangles. But The Bangles were not only real musicians in a real band - they had huge, world-wide pop hits. And the greatest hit of them all - the swoonsome Eternal Flame - was written by them. Well, one of them. The one everyone fancies like hell. Not that the others aren't fanciable. Or talented or whatever. It's just that, well, Ms. Hoffs ... uhhh ... be right back.
Where were we? Oh - Susanna Hoffs. Oh, Susanna! Did ever anyone, ever, in the history of anything, wear a Rickenbacker as well as she did? Mmm. Sorry - getting distracted here. Be right back.
O-kayyyy! She also had and still has a thriving, though not quite Eternal Flame-rekindling, solo career. And she recorded a solo album that never got released,
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| Who's driving the car? |
which isn't exactly hard to find in the seething souk of illicit contraband that is the internet, but here it is for those that missed it. I've also added the Live At The Ritz boot from '84, which shows what a deliriously exciting band they were live. Kick arse, in fact!
During the giddy hey-day of Eternal Flame, when I was coincidentally renting a dumpster apartment across the street from Ms. Hoffs' LA home, I was lucky enough to secure a personal interview with her by telephone, a transcription of which follows:
SH: Who is this?
FMF: [breathing]
SH: Hello?
FMF: [breathing heavily]
SH: Is this the creep that stole my laundry?
FMF: [breathing faster]
SH: I'm calling the cops on you, you freak! [slams phone down]
FMF: [into dead line] DON'T CLOSE THE BLINDS!
[siren in distance]
On April 6, 1988, Larry Carlton was shot point-blank in the neck by some punk at the door of his Hollywood
Hills home. He thought he was going to die, but survived through crippling nerve damage to resume his guitar-playing career. So there you go. Tell me about your bad knee.
An Allmusic second-stringer, lacking the critical smarts of the great Stephen Thomas Erlewine, describes Carlton's second solo offering from 1973 as "disappointing" and his singing as "toneless". Our critic, thumping his desk with his tiny fist, demanded and expected more fretwork and a different voice, yes he did. Well, boo fucking hoo.
That voice first. Toneless? The album is either called Playing/Singing or Singing/Playing, depending
on which side of the sleeve you look at. The Playing side has him
looking happy, the Singing less so. He needn't have worried. In the same year, Michael Franks released his first solo album [to be featured on FMF©, -Ed.] and Carlton's voice fits perfectly into the same category. Neither aims for a sweaty vibrato or rock n' roll raunch. They can both hit the note, they just don't care to hold onto it until it dies of old age. Laid back Left Coast stylings owing more to Astrud Gilberto than Janis Joplin, which is fine by me.
Not enough guitar? Are you nuts? But this is a songs album first and foremost, so the guitar takes its place, and here's the surprise that lifts this album into the must-haves. The quality of the material. There are no covers of pop hits du jour [French for soup - Ed.] here, unlike his first album. The songs are all-new and all-fantastic, from Allen Toussaint-inflected funk to unexpected tugs at the heart-strings. The kind of songs that are old friends the first time you hear them. And in the too-short running time (remember too-short albums? What happened to them?) he delivers a couple of how-the-freaking-fuck-did-that-happen?!? instrumentals, kicking in the stomp boxes to remind you that at his best, he was the best. And Larry Carlton was always at his best. That's why Steely Dan picked him up and dusted him off and gave him a studio tan for the next few years.
Anyway, to be fair to our Allmusic hack, nobody else quite got a grip on what Carlton was doing with this album either, until the Japanese caught on to it a few zeitgeist-shifts later. It's pop music. You know - the greatest and finest artform ever created.
And the punk with the gun? Who knows? And I think that's the point.
Before Harpers got Bizarre, there were The Tikis. They cut enough tracks for an album, just barely, but made a pact with Satan and shape-shifted into a Finnish despair metal band instead. Satan, unhappy with their sunny harmonies and cheerful studio banter, released them from their contract and they enjoyed international fame as the 59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy - Ed.] hitmakers. Ted Templeman went on to produce a whole bunch of fine albums (look him up on Wiki - what am I, your typist?) and the world is a better place for having him in it. But let's raise a glass of fern-bedecked neon-sour-colored Kahaluu cocktail to this, my tribute to a Forgotten Band. Pay Attention To ... The Tikis!
