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| Proud parents! |
These guys are neighbors of mine here in fragrant downtown Las Vegas, NV. I knew they'd been trying for the longest time to have a family, but when they gave birth to a baby tiger I was as surprised as they were.
I kept my distance when I visited the proud new Pop n' Dad down at The Mamie Van Doren Memorial Veterinarian Hospital. Those claws can be sharp! (And I didn't trust the tiger cub, either).
S&R: Well hey there, neighbor!
FMF©: Gee! Dat's some hairy baby youse guys gots!
S&R: We are truly blessed.
FMF©: I brung yez some pickles.
S&R: And we have a couple of albums for you, sweetcakes! Life Is But A Dream, by Wichita Fall, and Miss Butters, by The Family Tree. They're both from '68, which we've always thought of as Peak Concept. The Family Tree was an early Bob Segarini project, and Wichita Fall was an LA band whose album got the most lavish orchestral arrangements! We thought they'd find a home at Th' House O' Foam©.
FMF©: Dat's swell. Well, I guess I better be goin'.
S&R: Toodles! Thanks for the pickles!
If you have more information - even made-up shit - on these albums then please do feel free to make a comment. If you have any Siegfried N' Roy stories, also too.
If there's one album that sums up the spirit of sixties pop - and by extension the sixties - it may be this one. Once Upon A Dream wouldn't be the first choice of many, because it's perceived as a minor Pepper clone, or embarrassingly naive, or pretentious over-reaching, or way past its sell-by date, or simply because it's by The Rascals (seriously?).
Well, yeah. If you want to go that route, you can file it under charming period piece or whatever and move on. Which I did for many years. It seemed all of the above; the sound of a pop group punching over its weight, trying to cover all the bases without reaching one. Enough sporting metaphors already. But for reasons I can't explain, repeated plays have revealed what a gorgeous piece of work this is. Here's a quote from a very informative Allmusic review: "It's an under-celebrated masterpiece of the psychedelic era and belongs next to Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's on the shelf, because it is easily as sophisticated, and once heard in its entirety, can never be forgotten." He's right, and I join the ranks of believers who love this album as much as those sixties benchmarks.
So why is it under-celebrated, under-rated, and under the radar? Why doesn't it ever make the Top Fifty Greatest Pop Albums This Week You Must Hear Before You Die lists? Why am I asking you? Me, I don't have a clue. But I think it may be because of its stylistic range. An entire album could have been recorded in the style of any one of these songs - even the OTT soundtrack swell of My Hawaii - and been a success. There's everything sixties in here, from blue-eyed soul to sitar bliss-outs, and it's all too much. But in a good way, without the slightest taint of irony or cleverness; the album is saturated with the spirit of hope and peace and love, and not without a certain sweet melancholy. Once Upon A Dream - remember? Back when there was one? It's still here - listen.
Check out this seemingly unexceptional cover. Hard to see now what was so unusual about it at the time, but it was the use of empty space above their heads, with the bodies "bleeding off" the bottom edge. This was almost a Blue Note approach to design - almost, because a jazz album would never have featured the musicians sitting on their asses sulking and pouting (probably). And that typography is sensational.
Once again, this is a swell fan-compiled collection of (allegedly) all the tracks associated with the recording of this album. Thirty-eight of 'em. I haven't forensically examined this, and I'm not a Byrds archivist, so if there are omissions and errors, I apologise.
This was the last album Gene Clark was wholly involved in, because the rest of the girls bitched about his greater earnings from his more successful songwriting. David Crosby was throwing hissy fits that his own material and selections weren't being used. And everyone was simply livid about Jim-Roger McGuinn's close relationship with Terry Melcher. Show-biz kids, huh?
In internet terms, this, at eight months old, is ancient history, and may be familiar to you. But it was new to me, and seems too False Memory Foam© a thing not to feature. Simply follow the simple instructions in somebody's "tweeter" (me neither) below for instant mirth.
I hit Florida pay dirt with this:
Man run over by lawn mower while trying to kill son with chainsaw.
I was reading a review of Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits, and was struck by this: "[they] suffered endless
persecution from the British government because of their wild ideas." Oh really? Pardon my mirth. The idea of this privileged bunch of middle-class nuisances toying with the "shocking" edge of the avant-garde being endlessly persecuted by anybody but music lovers is laughable - and not in a funny way. And if they really wanted a "wild idea", how about this? Write a fucking song. But no; the Throbs were/are too busy deconstructing and being ironic and polemical on our asses to debase themselves to show-biz levels of professionalism.
Which brings me to Nara Leão. There's a fantastic story behind this album - about real persecution - that I'm too lazy to paraphrase, and it's too long to copy-paste. Being the in-demand swell that you are, you probably don't have the time to read it, but you can at least listen to the album. It's not Throbbing Gristle, but hey ...
