In the first Mrs. Myra Nussbaum Memorial Lecture [FoamFeatured antecedently - Ed.], I made a persuasive case for Why Classical Music Is Shit. Or at least sounds like it. But it also looks like it. With few exceptions, classical albums feature shit stock landscape photography or shit antique paintings, or shit photographs of the artiste.
And those old-timey longhairs didn't help any, naming their compositions with all the poetry of auto part numbers in a factory catalog.
But it doesn't have to be like that, especially here, at Froth Central©, where we can basically do what the fuck we like. This is the first, and possibly the last, in a series that shows what classical music could look like if approached from the 21c.
The Music Convention were nutsoid. This swell collection is called, inadequately, The Psychedelic Pop & Surf Sounds Of The Music Convention. They do some 20's-style stuff that sounds like Sopwith Camel, a cover of Nilsson's One, some swimmy pop-psych with sweet harmonies, some savage surf instrymentals (with the accent on mental) with lashings of hang-ten electric sitar. If that's not enough to wax your board, check out their duds on the cover. Nutsoid to the max! But - they could play. Not that they let technical ability stand in the way of having fun. The Music Convention - th' Isle O' Foam© salutes you!
Hortense Vavavoom [at left - Ed.] stopped by th' IOF© yestiddy to offer her clickbait service.
HV My stats [36-24-33? - Ed.] show your blog is dying on its feet, Farq.
FMF© Why, thank you!
HV And I'm here to inject a little vim, moxie, pep and gusto into the place!
FMF© Gee, Hortense ...
HV For a small down payment and affordable monthly installments, I'll allow your blog to post a picture of me what's guaranteed to have them horny old bastards piling onto your island in their thousands!
FMF© I'm not sure that "horny old bastards" are my target demographic.
HV Maybe you'll get the Sturgis crowd here with their two-wheeled lifestyle transportation solutions!
FMF© Uh - I don't think so, Hortense. But do you have some music you'd like to share?
HV Well, how about Blood Sweat & Tears Live From The Psychedelic Supermarket 1968?
FMF© Is this an audience recording?
HV Of course it is. But it's pretty good.
FMF© Well, okay then.
HV Can't interest you in my service?
FMF© I don't think so. When the time comes that I need to post cheesecake to keep my pulse popping, I'm shutting up shop.
(Sorry, guys! But we have certain standards here and I'm not prepared to pander to the common herd, to debase the high tone we have struggled to establish, to compromise our rigorous ethical stance, for a few extra clicks!)
Peanuts Molloy brought this guy up on a mainland internet forum, and it occurred to me that Michael Chapman might not be as widely known, especially in the Benighted States, as I assumed.
So these are for the One Or Two Out Of The Three Or Four Guys© who haven't yet heard (of) him, so they can brag to their lowlife pals at the racetrack dey wus always into dis guy.
His first three "proper" albums, 69-71, presented at a hauntingly lifelike 192. Like, digsville.
Make-out music for the cocktail generation. In the two-car garage, his
Buick Skylark, and her Nash Rambler. And spinning
on the hi-fi console, Lover's Rhapsody.
Pilsbury Greaseboy Jackie Gleason, much lampooned by Mad Magazine for his Renaissance Man pretensions and today widely forgotten, cut this 10" in 1953, writing and arranging the suite that takes up side one. So - if my calculations are correct - this is the first pop concept album, just sneaking ahead of Frank Sinatra's from the following year.
It's whiter than White Christmas, but there's something naggingly Not Shit about it. It's not camp, it's not cheese. There's some real skill here - composition, arrangement, and performance, and at the root of it, artistic intent. Sure, go ahead, yok it up, you juvenile delinquent you. Or - you know - fire up a couple of Daiquiris and let it do its stuff. Even if your own stuff is past its strut-by date.
