It Crawled From The Crawlspace Dept. - Rodrigo Amarante [Added Content Advisory]

GOOD TO SEE THIS REPEAT POST IS GETTING A LOAD OF HITS - A BEAUTIFUL "KEEPER" ALBUM YOU DON'T SEE OFTEN!

Fans of the Netflix series Narcos may remember the theme song; it sounded like the oldest and saddest song in the world, sung by the world's oldest and saddest man. It was written and sung by Rodrigo Amarante, whose first solo album, Cavalo, 2013, didn't include it. The album also had no cover, just a plain sleeve with functional lyric inserts. Sometimes, less is less. It seemed like Amarante was going out of his way to keep his work a secret. It worked. I hope he was happy selling five copies, in spite of being Rolling Stone's sixth best album of that year.

There's one hurdle you have to overcome before you listen to this. It's sung in a mix of Portugese, French, English, and Japanese, and you may be allergic to songs you don't understand. Like, you know, about fifty percent of pop and rock songs sung in English. Louie Louie? What's that about?

Musically, it has an idiosyncratic genius that reminds me - some - of Brian Wilson's Smiley Smile/Friends/Wild Honey period. There's that spare clarity, that same hallucinogenic use of instrumental texture, that same feeling of being conceived in a crystal bubble floating above our world. And the songs, like Wilson's, are very much his own, and couldn't be anyone else's. One listen might make you a fan for life. A frustrated fan wanting more.

I added the missing Narcos song, Tuyo, and done did him a sleeve design what which I like to think reflects the chromatic brilliance of his music. This is gorgeous stuff.

 

More, sorta, came with a second solo album, Drama, a scant eight years later, and at least he got a cover together this time [left - Ed.]. It sounds a little less magic than the first, you ax me, but your mileage may differ. Since then, disregarding a soundtrack for Entebbe, a movie dubbed "dull" and "pointless" in the most charitable reviews, nada.

Dude, where are you?

The Association Recovered Dept. - 1969

 

The Association's self-titled [eponymous - Ed.] album from '69 slipped between the cracks in the fracturing counterculture like everything else they did after their last proper hit single two long years previous. Too square for the hip, too hip for the square, they were a band that just didn't fit anywhere any more.

In a misguided attempt to look conceptual - or something - they saddled the album with artwork [left - Ed.] that better suited hard blues-rock than ... than ... the uncategorisable music they were making. You can almost hear the design being pitched - it's like they discovered Stonehenge on the moon, man! And the stones spell out your name! How freaking far out is that? Right? Amirite?

So anyway, I came up with an alternative that better expresses the mood of the album, and if I have to spell that out for you in moon rocks I've failed, haven't I?

If you know the band only from their sappy sunshine pop hits (don't get me wrong - I love sappy sunshine pop hits) the adventurousness and idiosyncracy of this album may come as a surprise. Some of it is a little weird? Upspeaking? Weird and beautiful. It really owes nothing to anyone, except Brian Wilson, and we all owe him.

I've melded in a rare contemporary song, Carney Creek, for that full girlfriend experience, but left the track order unchanged.

They never made a bad album, but this is truly special.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG

This post ratified by the Pop Of Rome (Pop's Plumbing n' Pipe, Rome, KY)

 

Perfect Tens Dept. - We're Only In It For The Money

Who's your dreamiest Mother?

 

Any choice of a Zappa Perfect Ten is going to be contentious, but as a general rule the later album design - and defining later is contentious - can be a tad bland (you know what I mean), and Cal Schenkel's art is anything but. There are few rock act/graphic designer partnerships that reach the Lewis Carrol/John Tenniel level of synchronous symbiosis, but Schenkel and Zappa kicked the entire rock caboodle to a scary new location and dared you to join them.

Calvin sez: "Frank came up with the concept early that summer, and we rushed around trying to find props and get it in the works as soon as possible. I went out and bought a bunch of old mannequins to convert into wax figures of the Mothers. This was accomplished in an old loft, high over the Garrick Theater/Café a Go Go complex. Many hours and pounds of plaster served in the task. The photography was done by Jerry Shatzberg, a real photographer, in a real New York photography studio. This was my first actual album cover and I was impressed. Other than the wax dummies and the collage in the background of the front cover, I mostly just got to art-direct the thing."

Is this the first example of a pop album being deliberately offensive? It's been claimed that the gatefold [above - Ed.] was spoofing the trend for rock bands to drag it up, but that didn't really start until the 'seventies. Jerry Schatzberg pulled it off with The Stones (er ...) back in '66 [left - Ed.], but that was in the same satirical spirit, more Monty Python than Mame. So the target of the barb was, of course, the Beatles, who'd adorably camped it up as toytown soldiers for Sgt. Pepper. You want dressing up? Zappa was saying, how 'bout these apples?

The original outer cover, before it got flipped by the suits at Verve, already fouling their Jockey shorts over the lyrical content, was Schenkel's virtuoso riff on Peter Blake's Pepper assemblage. Go here for the roll-call. That's really Hendrix, too - groovy! McCartney weaseled out when Zappa asked him for permission, saying the matter should be left to "business managers". The perfect example of Corporate Shill vs. Artist.

In '68, nobody under thirty was snickering at The Beatles. Only the Vegas supperclub tuxedo set was roasting the hippies. Zappa was being offensive to everyone, from LBJ's Great Society, to the record company, to the counterculture, to the pop establishment as exemplified by their most respected icons and their fans, right through to - and this is incredible - us. His audience, the saps what scarfed it up, making it a Top Thirty album. It's this inclusivity - if you will - that makes the album a satirical benchmark without peer. Satire is generally comforting for the side that's not being targeted. Zappa leaves nobody out - everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, and don't kid yourself.

Satire usually has a short shelf life, but WOIIFTM has outlasted its targets by being musically outstanding (rewarding limitless plays) and snork-out-loud funny. It also stands as an accurate documentary of 'sixties LA culture and a bleak vision of our own future-present. In 2005, the U.S, National Recording Registry lauded the album as "culturally, historically, and æsthetically significant ..."

Excellent musical analysis here, should youse bums be desirous!

James Taylor Must Die Already! Dept.

You, probably, when you had hair. And friends.

 

Are you ready to rock? This, in '74, was the most-asked question of the nation's teens, and the answer was an overwhelming affirmative! Yes! they cried, we are ready! Are we going to have a good time? You betcha! And their 8-track entertainment of choice en route to see Journey at the Cow Palace? Why, that would be these here three albums! Or two of them, anyways!

 Montrose! Are we ready to rock? ARE WE READY TO ROCK???!!! Fuckin' A!

 Rick Derringer! Are we ready to rock? ARE WE READY TO ROCK???!!! Fuckin' A!

 Left End! Who?? Getting stiffed by their management ruined their career, but on the evidence of this swell album, they were already ROCKIN' THE HOUSE DOWN while you were still back-combing your hair in the bathroom! Fuckin' A!

 

 

 

 

 

The question, of course, remains as vital as ever, though not as oft asked. Are you, th' Four Or Five Guy©, still prepared, at least mentally, to rock? I am. When the call comes, I will be there, raising my thin fist as the liturgical response whistles thru my bridgework. Yes, I am ready.

 

 

This post inspired by a sudden desire to hear some straight ahead, unapologetic rock n' roll with a shit ton of electric fucking guitar. TURN IT UP!

Irritating Irish Tenor Dennis Day Hosts IoF©'s Irish Tenor Week! Dept.

One year's free subscription to th' 4/5g© who can explain what's going on in the background!

 

You'll know irritating Irish tenor Dennis Day from his Blarney ballads on The Jack Benny Radio Show, which, together with the pummeling huckster ads make the show nearly unlistenable today. Back then, only Crosby and Sinatra offered relief from the baffling fad for flutey-voiced male vocalists building to the high octave on the last trembling note. Day wasn't the worst offender, he was a talented mimic and likeable character actor, but if I ever hear him sing Clancy Lowered The Boom again I'll t'row th' wireless out th' window, dat oi will, bejaysus and begorrah. Here it is, should youse bums be desirous:

So that about wraps it up for Irish Tenor Week here at th' IoF© (we're starting it retroactively)! By way of a reward here's a swell and mostly unknown slab of polished yacht rock from another D.D., Dane Donohue, who doesn't cover Clancy Lowered The Boom. Even if yacht rock gives you gas, you have to admit this is as good as it gets. Look it up on discogs or something, or go here for the skinny.

This post mediated by Uncle Sturdley's International Criminal Court, The Hague, Coon County, TN.