If you dig Feat boots, you're likely to have this one. Voted Best Bootleg Of All Time by the Daughters Of Dixie Housewives' Association for three successive years, it was personally recorded by Lowell George himself, on his own Radio Shack© Portable Tape Recorder [see it at the Wilf Brimley Memorial Memorabilia Museum And Bait Shop, Okefenokee Swamps, FL - Ed.]. Gee, is it swell!
The original bootleg cover, fine in it own way, is here replaced with our exclusive luxury wipe-kleen image in haunting Foam-O-Vision© to enhance your ownership pleasure. Sayy - is that an original Neon Park painting? It sure is! Mr Park explains, "I created this iconic image by painting the tires of my '59 Edsel with red lead primer and then backing it up over this picture of Marlon Brando what I done. Why? Whaddya mean why?"
If you download just one Little Feat bootleg you have already today, download this one already! Today!
Older readers - who am I kidding - all five of you are older - may remember we have a running feature on how bands threw off the trappings of psychedelia during the great Paisley Purge of '69. Many adopted a rustic Americana style decades before that term was invented by some asshole with nothing better to do. Part of that whole back-to-the-land movement that lasted until everyone realized it meant getting your hands dirty and went into advertising instead. Or therapy.
Circus Maximus were on Sam Charters' Vanguard label, which boasted Country Joe & The Fish and other fine, fine acts such as ... such as ... Elizabeth? Uh ... anyway. Charters showed his Love Generation credibility by changing their name from Lost Sea Dreamers, because he sensed a drug connection there. No pulling the wool over old Sam's eyes! They made a couple of sorta okay albums, had a minor radio hit with Wind, before irreconcilable musical differences - helped, one imagines, by lack of sales - drove them apart. Here's where we warm to our theme.
One of the creatives, Bob Bruno, wandered off into the humid primordial jungles of free jazz, and apparently never returned. The other, Jerry Jeff Walker, (real name Ronald Crosby *snork*) cannily flushed his love beads, emerging from the cubicle a folksy Bitter End troubadour, and wrote the best-selling and irritating hit Mr Bojangles, included on his second solo album, Five Years Gone [see the Jerrystock piece - Ed.] Against all the odds, he cut an album in '72 that stands as some kind of craggy pinnacle in Outlaw Country, and of the three albums blister-packed here for your audio convenience it's probably the only keeper. You want timeless? You want great, great songs? This album will put sawdust on your porch.
The calendar! What mysteries lie behind its ordered, boxy facade? Plenty, but we're here not to question the very essence of the idea of sequential time but to celebrate the arrival of an old friend called Sunday. Sunday sleeps late, pads around the house in a worn-out robe nursing a mug of java. Sunday considers the twenty million things to do from a philosophical distance - hey, no rush - that shit'll be there tomorrow. And Sunday pulls out a certain kind of album he'd play no other day.
Today's Sunday Selection© is a real test of your humanity. If you can listen to this in a simple state of relaxed pleasure, with no taint of irony or guilt, then kudos, pally. This is as good as it gets. If your mood is complicated by notions of taste, hipness and critical stance, then maybe Sunday ain't your day just yet.
Going Places, from '65, was a Number One album everywhere in the world. From Khazakstan to Constantinople, From Yemen to ... to somewhere else beginning with a Y [how about Yugoslavia, you moran? - Ed.] ... its breezy melodies wafted from the nailtician, the drive-thru, the bowling alley, the cat-house, and the carwash. And boy, did the gals ever swoon for Herb's handsomeness! Mr Alpert wasn't only a dreamboat, he had business smarts out the ass. You know he's the A in A&M, but did you know he's also the A in AT&T? You should be so smart. And check that cover. You think Abbey Road is iconic? Four blokes crossing the street? Pffft. Here's Herb being served a sky-high cocktail by a leggy waitress posing on the wing of his own plane! That's what I call in-flight entertainment! Have an irony-free Sunday, folks!
John Peel already had US radio DJ experience before he joined Radio London, the UK's legendary pirate radio station in '67. Allocated the unpopular London After Midnight slot, he quickly changed the show's name to The Perfumed Garden and began doing what was then called his own thing. No-one else was in his tree at that time (nor later, when he embraced punk with the same fervor) and his choice of music was based on first-hand experience of what was happening in the US. The show started in May '67 - what you - Mister John Q Public of Anytown USA - have here is a blister-pack of shows July through August that year, when the station was forced to close. BOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! The Man Can't Steal Our Music!
It's apparent from the first few seconds that Peel knew his subject - he knew it was Shawn Phillips playing sitar on the first track. Nobody had heard of Phillips back then (he's getting a piece at FMF©). The quality is pretty awful - exactly the fidelity I heard it at, listening to my transistor radio through a flesh-colored deaf-aid earpiece. Re-live those magical radio moments in the comfort of your own home (if you have one)! Thrill to the nascent musical revolution that heralded the Age of Aquarius! Weep with despair at what the fuck happened to everything since!
To celebrate our centennial today - that's right, one hundred years of hi-valu posts! - we're premiering our new masthead! [Above - Ed.] Hoo boy! This hauntingly lifelike photographic image, reproduced in patented Foam-O-Vision©, is suitable for framing and will elevate the tone of den, lounge, or solitary confinement unit! Imagine the looks on your fancy friends' faces as they admire your artistic sensitivity! Why, you'll have savoir-faire out the ass!
It shows the ritzy opening ceremony of the new FalseMemoryFoam© headquarters at the corner of Eat Me Ave. and Bumfight Bvd., in leafy Las Vegas, Nev. Gee! What a bummer you couldn't be there! Sayyy - is that the Monkees?! Hi, guys! And there's Cody, playing Bunny Girl hostess! It was the swellest party you were never at!
 |
| Actual size |
EDIT: We have a winnah in the grand Spot The Monster competition! B-B correctly identifies Godzilla, and wins this swell miniature drinks globe!
ADDENDUM: B-B has not yet claimed his prize, shiftless merry-andrew that he is, so Bob's inspired guess of Babe, although wrong, wins! Get that check in the mail, Bob!
