Great Klassix O' Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Wensdy Krumbtacular!

Hoo boy! Will your skeevy so-called pals at th' pool room ever flip when you turn up with today's Compendium o' Culture! It's all three (count 'em!) issues of that esteemed organ of intellectual analysis Snatch, what troubled genius R. Krumb limned wit' a bunch o' like-minded confreres back in '69, when guys could still do this shit without gettin' pussy-whipped by a bunch of dames! Them wus th' days huh, pals! Why - we wus ridin' the Tunaville Trolley to Beaver Street, foist class!

Relive the Sexual Revolution in the privacy of your own underwear with this strictly Adults Only heritage collection!

The Sly n' Robbie Story Dept. - Part XVI

Older readers will remember how we left the dubwise duo in part XV, desperately bailing their coracle as Hurricane Hortense whirled across Puget Sound at the turn of the century. Would their frail barque survive?

Weakened by days with only blisters and toenails for sustenance, their oilskins in tatters, their eyes blinded by spume whipping from the towering waves, things looked bleak for the storm-tossed twosome. "Caulk the mainbrace!" cried Robbie, his voice a hoarse croak in the thunderous roar. "Scupper the harpoon!" screamed Sly.

Luckily they made it to Kingston, Jamaica and Electric Lady in New York in time to cut this satisfyingly obscure dub platter in '84. Luther "Luxury Vehicle" Vandross and sultry siren Brenda White [left - Ed.] add backing vox. Only released in the Netherlands, which is like Holland, for what they call the Dutch market, where the hemp-loving herring enthusiasts were so confused by the deal they forgot to put the artist's name on the album sleeve. It sank without trace, only to wash up on the shores of Fabulous False Memory Foam Island© many years later. 

Pimp My Classic Iconic Album Cover Dept.

Joni Mitchell's Blue sleeve worked fine on the original vinyl release (getting the inks right wasn't as easy as you might think), but as a postage-stamp size image on your hand-held device it loses impact and definition. Thus this. Gawd, I love this woman and her butterfly jazz genius.

The cover to Pet Sounds is legendarily awful. If you like it, it's because of familiarity and good associations. I say the hell with it, and let's give Brian his due. The European Intellectual look suits him, don'cha think?

Country Joe And His Fishes lost the visual plot with their third album Together, one of the worst-ever covers for a major-ish group. Here's something that reflects the gestalt (baby) with zest, gumption, moxie, and not a little pizzazz. Plus, teaches the Beach Boys a thing or two about using goats.

Captain Beefheart was no dreamy teen idol, but he could look pretty damn mythic, and it's a shame his pan wasn't featured on the later albums. This Bat Chain Puller cover uses some of his painterly explorations, color-intensified.

Click for embiggerment. Printed out and laminated, they make swell drinks coasters for when unexpected guests drop by!

Sinatra On Sunday

If you have "woke" concerns about Sinatra - if you find any aspect of his personality or act, uh, problematic, I cordially urge you to go fuck yourself. And after you've done that - or even whilst - watch the Netflix bio-doc All Or Nothing At All. Amazingly, against all the odds, it tells the balanced truth about the man and the kind of life that is no longer possible to lead. Larger than life, wilder and deeper and richer than the shadow-world entertainment we accept today, with its neutered mediocrity, its hypocrisy masked as appropriateness, its crushing banality delivering at best a degraded echo of its source.

Popular culture - and Sinatra built the stage for Elvis to step onto - created the greatest art of the twentieth century. Art that spoke directly to people who gave a shit about "art" but knew when their hearts and feet and minds were moved. America in the twentieth century, for all its faults (spoiler - this is earth, not heaven) produced the greatest art the world had seen, articulated by the huddled masses for their own pleasure. But the millennial clock ticked over, and that time in the sun is gone. There is no new Sinatra. There isn't even a new Robert Goulet.

Live In Seattle '57 is a rarity (for which we can thank my friend Scotch) originally a bootleg and eventually released in 1999. Nelson Riddle swings the baton for nineteen of the greatest songs ever written, a live recording that many Sinatra fans rate as his finest. Play a little loud. Get a little drunk.

Secrets Of Th' Isle O' Foam© Dept. - Th' Swell-O-Meter®

Professor U.U. Gefiltefish yesterday. Swell-O-Meter®: model's own

Y'know, subscribers, one of the most axed questions here on Fabulous False Memory Foam Island© is, how the Dickens do we know if an album is swell enough to be FoamFeatured™? Glad you axed, youngster! The answer is at once simple yet fraught with a fractal complexity that threatens the very foundations of Rational Thought. Our back-room boffin, Professor U.U. Gefiltefish [see Foam-O-Graph™ above - Ed.] took time out from combing Kreemé's Kirlian Aura to answer:

 "In layman's terms, the swellness of an album is measured with with my patented Swell-O-Meter®, a portable device which evolved from the Neil Young Shit-Not-Shit-O-Meter® [FoamFeatured™ antecedently - Ed.]. Again in terms adapted to the meanest intelligence, the Swell-O-Meter® is connected by co-axial cable to the gramophone playing the album under consideration, and a reading registers on the dial you see on the face of the device. Obviously, this simple operation belies the advanced scientific theory and empirical application that went into the creation and development of the apparatus. Also there is some risk of low-grade plutonium leakage involved in the process, so the operator is required to wear specially-designed protective gear."
 

Thanks, Professor! Let's try the sucker out on this here album by Suntreader! Sayy ... we're getting, what, a six, six point five? That counts as swell, by George!