Steve Shark Shakes Hands With A Meal In The Dark Dept.

Mal Dean was to Brown what Cal Schenkel was to Zappa - integral

Poet and lyricist [declaims Steve Shark - Ed.] Pete Brown is known mainly for his work with Cream, but his story begins earlier than that and extends all the way to the present. However, it's the early days that are featured here.

Although he started off as a poet, Pete became an active member of the London jazz scene in the early 1960s and soon began to move into music, forming The First Real Poetry Band, which included John McLaughlin. The band was very successful on the London club circuit and it recorded a series of demos, although none have been released so far.

Brown soon attracted the attention of Ginger Baker of Cream, who was looking for a lyricist, although he got on better with Jack Bruce. The pair went on to write "Wrapping Paper", "I Feel Free", "Sunshine of Your Love" (with Clapton), "Politician", "White Room", and several others. They would also collaborate on Bruce's solo material, including the magnificent "Songs for a Tailor" album.

Brown had since broken up The First Real Poetry Band, as he thought his singing was the weak link in it, and decided to form a new band, with less competent members than the Poetry Band. He thought that such musicians might be more amenable to his style of singing. This didn't pan out, so he decided to seek out more experienced players.

So it was, that in 1968, Brown formed Pete Brown and His Battered Ornaments, which included Chris Spedding, Dick Heckstall Smith and George Khan. Things went very well indeed with a signing to the prestigious Blackhill Management, and then a recording deal with the new Harvest label.

What could possibly go wrong?

Their first album together was called "A Meal You Can Shake Hands With in the Dark" (what a great title!) and it's one of my favourite records of that or any other era. The band is top notch and the songs are all memorable, with Brown's superb lyrics and his voice - never the sweetest of sounds - effective enough to these ears when delivering them. There's jazz, there's blues, there's psychedelia, there's Latin and there's even a bit of a nod to folk.

"Dark Lady" kicks off the album with a continuous modal vamp which changes key to kick it up a notch and then the soloing begins with organ, sax and Chris Spedding playing funk rhythm guitar, as well as fills on slide. More key changes maintain interest and Spedding ends the song with a short solo. There's a lot of free and jazzy blowing here, although it's always anchored by the rock bass and drums.

Another cracking track is "The Politician" - a distant cousin of the Cream song. It starts with a hilarious monolgue from Brown which gives way to some stertorious sax, a brief belch and then it takes off, with lots of slide guitar from Spedding. Brown then tells the story of the Politician in what is esentially a 12 bar blues taken at speed. There's a strange echoing sax solo and more singing from Brown, one more sax solo that skitters about, an organ solo and then (almost) a bass solo. Throughout, Brown portrays the lecherous and corrupt politician of the title - what a good job things have changed, eh?

"Sandcastles" has some great flute playing from Khan and wah-wah slide from Spedding, all laid over a hypnotic Latin rhythm, driven by some terrific bass playing from Butch Potter. Brown's lyrics reveal his more lyrical side, compared to the broad humour of "The Politician".

Almost everyone in those days had to play a blues and the Ornaments were no exception. "Travelling Blues or the New Used Jew's Dues Blues" is a total pisstake. Everyone piles in with blues cliches, and Brown is very funny throughout, with lines like: Yeah, we're rolling across the country, and the colours of the cows are cool.

Anyway, the album did well, the gigs rolled in, a second album was cut and ready for release, and the band was lined up to play at Hyde Park supporting the Stones.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the day before the Hyde Park gig - the day before - the band sacked Brown as they thought his singing wasn't really up to scratch.

Ouch...

So, the Battered Ornaments played Hyde Park without Pete, Chris Spedding replaced all Brown's vocals on the new album with his own, the band faded into oblivion, and Brown went off to form Piblokto, which pretty much followed the career trajectory of his former band. Although Spedding was a better singer (just barely) than Brown, his wasn't an interesting voice and lacked conviction. The Battered Ornaments were simply a more engaging band with Pete Brown than without him, and the punters agreed.

The story doesn't end there, as I said above, but for now it does. Many of the chief players are still alive and still making music, so that's perhaps a good note on which to conclude. Oh, and Pete's singing has improved greatly.

So, what goodies are there to download?

Both Battered Ornaments albums are included - with and without Pete. There are two additional tracks on the second album - an unofficial release in this case - which were the A sides of a brace of singles. One was with the BOs and Pete - also recorded as a demo by Pete's first band with John McLaughlin - and the other with Pete's next band Piblokto. Odd choices for a non-Brown album release, but interesting if you want to try and imagine what Pete might have sounded like with McLaughlin.

Never Better Than This Dept. - 1967

Groovy cover art by IoF© Department Of Art Department Dept.

If ever there was an album that distills the sheer happiness of being alive in 1967 it's this one, yet it tends to be unremembered and unappreciated, and that's down to two things - the group's name and the cover [below, left - Ed.], which combine to give the impression of a cheap Saturday morning T.V. cartoon. You can almost hear the canned laughter and the sound effects. The Young Rascals - zany antics aplenty! Or worse - it looks like a Hallmark exploitation card, something Grandma might buy for a rascally teen.

They were to drop the "Young" bit, and start using hip, sophisticated album art (involving drummer Dino Danelli, who got better at his job), for the following year's sublime Once Upon A Dream. The dizzying stylistic range of that album has its genesis here - it's like they unconsciously encompassed everything about their own musical heritage to produce a Technicolor snapshot of New York. Italian wedding songs, Broadway shows, street corner doo-wop, and Saturday Night At The Apollo. Add in a touch of surprisingly vivid psychedelia and you have one super-swell record album. It's worth noting that the band not only produced the album and played it (with the help of some A-list sessioners) but wrote all but one of the songs. Some heavyweight talent at work here, entirely at odds with the presentation.

Yay for these guys!

T.V.'s Father Mulcahy's Inflatable Country Rock Confessional! Dept.

Foam-O-Graph© - Visual solutions to problems nobody is having

You'll know T.V.'s "Milquetoast" Mulcahy from the hit C.B.S. show AfterMASH, where he was part of a motley crew of renegados kicking Rommel's Nazi ass in the desert! But did you know he's also a big "country rock" fan?! Turns out the irritating, wet-cheeked marsupial has heard many a country rock band in his inflatable confessional, now moored off Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©!

FT3 So, Padre, why are you always so goddamn smug?

FM Bless you, my child, for-

FT3 Bless me? Bless me?! Fuck you!

FM The Lord sayeth-

FT3 The Lord can chew my balloon knot. You are easily the most punchable character in a sitcom, like, ever. With Hawkeye Pierce a close second. Him and his fake smile and his fake laff - which is the same as his fake smile only with his jaw dropped. I tell you, only Frank and Hotlips were worth a damn in that show. Maybe Henry.

FM We each of us have our part to-

FT3 Tell ya what, Monsignor, you just paddle that inflatable confessional outta here. G'wan, amscray!

FM Do you want the albums?

FT3 Albums? Oh, sure. Thanks, I guess ...

FM So ... who would come in third?

FT3 Third? Oh. Roseanne Barr.

FM (shudders) Even I'd punch her. Right in her fat neck.

FT3 Fancy a daquiri?

FM Served by Kreemé?

"So what's all dis levity to me, bub?" you ax, in that adenoidal whine of yours. Well, if you can identify who's confessin' their country rock peccadillos in the above Foam-O-Graph©, you will qualify for TWO of their swell long-playin' L.P.s, that's what!

Don't forget, fight fans - leave clew or allusive hint as to identity of country rock combo! Don't name directly!

This Old School Foam-O-Graph© post made possible thru funding from th' Acme Veeblefetzer Corp., Pork Bend, WIS. A tip o' th' po' boy cap to CEO Smurdley Z. Kowzcnofski!

Susanna Hoffs Babesplains Non-Fungible Tokens! Dept.

You'll know Steamy Suze from top girlie group The Au Go Go's, whose chart-topping hit Girls Just Wanna Have Fun topped the charts back in ?research pse. [fuck you - Ed.] but did you know she is a respected fiduciary consultant? Turns out the diminutive doe-eyed diva [kill me now - Ed.] is quite the investment broker! 

In this, the first in a series of "Susanna Hoffs Babesplains" FoamFeatures®, Sultry Susie gets to grips with Non-Fungible Tokens, which is, like, money for guys what are both rich and dumb. We spoke yestiddy while she prepared for an important Wall St. meeting. Or sleepover.

FT3 Hey Suuze!

SH What am I, a Mexican bus-boy?

FT3 Nice pair of lamps!

SH You're not lighting them up, let me put it that way.

FT3 (laughs) Ha ha! So, you're going to babesplain Non-Fungible Tokens for us while you, uh, fix your hair? You little minx you?

SH Well, okay. The concept of fungibility refers to the ability for an asset to be exchanged equivalently with another asset of like kind. In contrast to fungible assets, non-fungible assets are valued differently based on their unique attri ... bzzzrrrrrrttttttt ...

--- signal lost ---

FT3 Susie? Sweetpants? (rattles old-type receiver cradle) Hello? Operator? Oh darn. Let's give some spindle time to Schunge while we appreciate La Hoffs' eminently fungible assets.

The Schunge story was told in a recent issue of Shindig magazine, should youse bums be desirous. Basically a couple singer-songwriter-type guys whose album was in a sense taken away from them to be arranged and played by Mike Westbrook and his jazz-adjacent pals. It's as obscure as you can get without an internet. You don't care because you didn't read this far, Cousin Dupree.

Chasing Rainbows

Art copyright Isle O' Foam© Department O' Art Dept.

You might think The Story Of Simon Simopath is a quaint little curiosity, not without charm, but too lightweight to be taken seriously or enjoyed unironically. Yes, it has historical value as the first album release by a pop group on Island records, and as the first pop opera, in the sense of it being a suite of songs with some kind of vague narrative thread. Much like real opera, then. But does it still hold up musically, as it did back in '67 when John Peel described Pentecost Hotel as "the loveliest song you'll ever hear"?

Nirvana was never a band, but the close partnership of the strangely strange yet oddly normal Patrick Campbell-Lyons and Alex Spyropoulos, backed by the cream of the cream London session and studio talent. Chris Blackwell didn't stint, and even the cover was an expensive (and unusual, for the time) gatefold. But the ten track, twenty-four minute running time was a head-scratcher. Pop albums back then were generally twelve tracks, even if that amounted to only half an hour on the spindle. Nobody timed albums, but I could count songs, and I knew we were being short-changed. Studying the *cough* story on the inner gatefold gave a clue; Tiny Goddess was mentioned, but not capitalised as an included song like the others. Tiny Goddess - their hit single - had been lifted from the album. Why? Who knows? It was on the second album, so the idea that hit singles shouldn't appear on albums doesn't apply - especially as All Of Us also featured Rainbow Chaser, their biggest hit single. A mystery.

Tiny Goddess was backed by I Believe In Magic, no b-side throwaway (Nirvana cut plenty of those) which fit thematically. The melody pivots on a disturbing - and quite deliberate - flat. These two additional songs bring the album up to a respectable run time and complete the story - Tiny Goddess in the position indicated by the sleeve notes, between Pentecost Hotel and I Never Had A Love Like This Before, and I Believe In Magic as an entirely appropriate, and much stronger, album closer.

Lyrically, the fairy-tale is dated, but the gentle vocals are delivered with an unaffected and touching sincerity, nothing camp or arch, Donovan fey or U.K. Kaleidoscope twee. The essential innocence (the uncharitable might say naivety) of the era is held like a dragonfly in amber. The idea that the songs could hang together as a story - concept albums didn't exist back then - didn't occur to the writers until they were half way through recording. And it's deceptively heavy stuff, involving alienation, mental institutions, and a side order of centaur, with an unconvincing happy ending.

Melodically, it's rich and generous, tunes all over it, under it, running through it, endlessly refreshing, never running dry. A key contributor was mæstro of schlock Syd Dale [left - dude! - Ed.], whose career is otherwise an artistic bust. Here, for some reason, working with what is essentially a pop chamber ensemble, he was inspired to create original arrangements, often putting the musicians through tricky time changes that never sound jarring or forced, perfectly complementing the melancholy beauty of the songs. Syd done good. Listen to the drumming - there's no place-holder time-keeping here. Restrained string and woodwind sections add texture and melodic counterpoint, and often it's the subtle instrumental figures within the arrangement that light the corners of your memory.

Nirvana's subsequent recordings are a queasy mood swing from Champagne to sheep dip. The tension between wanting to rock out, get Euro-pop chart hits, and wallow in show-tune schlock was untenable. Their filler would be filler on Now That's What I Call Filler. So I made a personal selection of the tracks from All Of Us and To Markos III that hang together as an album, consistent in tone and quality. The songwriting chops on Chasing Rainbows are very much in evidence, the melodies as effortlessly memorable, but the chamber clarity is gone - the sound is denser, more electric, and the strings tend to the generic. Lyrically, it's more mature and better written. often with a welcome personal directness. The final track, Black Flower, is as powerful as anything from the era, with its extended coda of (anonymous) wah-wah guitar wailing over the orchestration.

But Simon Simopath, especially in its complete form as here, may well be among the loveliest things you'll ever hear. Don't let the lyrical whimsy - the least important element - distract you from one of the subtlest, and most seductive, pop narcotics. 

Tin Pan Alley in its dying days. The most colorful year in London's history shown in typically chilly black and white. Patrick comes across as quiet, sincere, Alex confesses to personal anxiety being the fount of his creativity. Anxiety about what, Alex?

Cover Notes: The art for Chasing Rainbows (which took me, like, forever) goes against their approach for both the second and third albums [left - Ed,]; grim exercises in black despair and horror, maybe reflecting what they felt at the death of the 'sixties dream. They're undeniably powerful images, but would be more appropriate for Black Sabbath. Let's send them out in a blaze of Technicolor (or at least Todd-AO) glory; full-on, unapologetic psychedelia, and a last wave of the freak flag.