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Firesign Theatre, First Family 466, 465, 464

ALBUMS:  Firesign Theater: ‘Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand me the Pliers” (1970);  Eat Or Be Eaten (1985);  and, The First Family Vaughn Meader. (1962)

This is comedy which is hard to keep fresh once infused in beloved vinyl.

Firesign Theatre was a brilliant  comedy troupe from another time. America’s Monty Python, sort of.

They did live shows, radio and lots of records.

The two FT albums I have are considered among their best, ‘Dwarf’ is often cited as groundbreaking in 1970 when it came out. In 2005, Dwarf was added to the National Recording Registry, a list of sound recordings that “are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the U.S.’ Dwarf was also called by Rolling Stone Record guide as the best comedy album of all time.

I’m throwing in  a non-Firesign record,  Vaughn Meader’s First Family, a successful parody of the JFK White House.  It is definitely dated coming from 1962.  But you wouldn’t believe how popular this was  at one time.

Dwarf and Eaten use similar techniques even though 15  years separates them. Firesign use what I’ll call the ‘drop-in’ method of listener interaction. The listener is dropped in to the middle of something, anything,. It could be a fake advertisement, or the middle of a dialogue between friends.

But while it sounds random,  there’s a narrative thread running through, at least In Dwarf.  It’s a story about George Tirebiter,  a former child actor who lays around and watches late night TV. The narrative frequently is interrupted when Tirebiter changes channels.

Lots of a great work on the recording using voices on radios, TV, or telephones, ambient sounds galore and that effect where it sounds like someone is in another room. And walks by  in stereo.

WIth Firesign, the aural presentation is an art; the records demand audience attention to stay on their toes as funny bits just  parachute in without warning.

As I said earlier, humor on vinyl is a difficult medium to stand the test of time.  I’m guessing there’s not a lot of market out there for old comedy albums, unless deemed a classic.

But in some way I guess you could say  that about music.  There are timeless songs but there are also a  lot of songs that don’t date well:  I don’t think we’ll have to wait until 2525 to see if Zager & Evans had a point. And that was their best song!

One piece on the’ Eat or be Eaten’ album is an advertisement to see Bob Dylan live at the Met where he’ll be singing opera in Bavarian and German languages.

“It’s just like the 60s,’ the advertisement spokesman says. “No one can understand a word he’s saying. And that’s when Dylan’s at his best.”

Vaughn Meader’s White House with JFK was apparently  all the rage back in the early 1960s. It’s amusing in spots such as when all the world leaders gather together and give their sandwich orders.

But there’s a lot of jokes and laughing about stuff that in 2018 sounds sounds like an inside joke.

According to the Wikipedia page, the album,  issued by Cadence was honored as “the largest and fast selling record in the history of the record industry’ selling at  more than a million copies per week for the first six  weeks.

Can that be true?

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The Four Tops — 467

ALBUM: The Four Tops

For me with the Four Tops it starts with ‘Reach Out I’ll  Be There,’ which is one of the top soul/rock songs of the 1960’s,  and likely beyond. On top of that  they dish out such timeless Motown  winners as ‘Standing in the Shadows of Love.’

They had many many more charting songs which all but ignored the era’s trend toward the psychedelic sound in favor of straight rock ‘n soul.

The vocal group, spanning four decades, worked with the successful writing team Holland-Dozier-Holland in the early part of their career.

Singer Billy Bragg wrote a song about the baritone lead singer called  Levi Stubb’s Tears.

Fraternities and sororities across the nation applaud the Four Tops for providing their soundtrack to the big parties that comes with higher education (at least these were the songs popular at frats and sororities in my college-going day): Songs like “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch); ‘It’s the Same Old Song;’ and ‘Baby I Need Your Loving.” Be careful readers. Just reading the song titles out load will load that song on a loop in your brains.

Baby I need your loving, got …. to have all your loving .   

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John Fogerty — 468

ALBUM:  John Fogerty (1976) 

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$

This is Fogerty’s first album after splitting with the outrageously sucessful Creedence Clearwater Revival. The first tune,’Rocking All Over the World,’ is  a riff-laden  anthem that sounds like — hmm who could it be? — Oh yes:  Creedence.-

Much of the album, for that matters, sounds like CCR. Although I can’t  put my finger on it, there seems to be slightly less ‘choogling’ energy in the songs as I remember was in the CCR  recordings. It could be my imagination. I’m talking about some of that soulful oooomph that you hear in ‘Long as I See the Light or the forlorn traveling musician song, Lodi.

‘The Wall’ and ‘Traveling High’ are throwaway rockers — Fogerty does his vocal thing but the songs are just not too strong — relatively speaking.

Jackie Wilson’s ‘Lonely Teardrops’  sounds like it was more fun for Fogerty than the listener. It’s not a bad cover but this is one of those times where I say, let the 1959 version stand.  Fogerty does inject with some nice retro guitar sound.

‘Amost Saturday Night’ is the other rocking standout in this group.  Catchy, another CCR sounding song that you’d expect to hear on the radio.

And as much as I thought the ‘Teardrops’ cover was unnecessary, I really enjoyed the Sea Cruise cover.  Go figure.

Overall, great stuff, especially for CCR fanatics — of which I am — or used to be anyway. They were one of my first favorite bands. I was about 10. So I have just about run my time with them. But every now and then (on Halloween?)) I like to put out some CCR and cranik it up because Fogerty could sing it.

“I see a bad moon a-rising, I see trouble on the way.’

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Peter Frampton — 469

ALBUM: Frampton Comes Alive  (1976)

OK, those who were teens in the 1970s, get out of your La-Z-Boys and find the  vinyl collection (warped and mildewed) you have stashed in the garage or basement closet.

Pull out your ‘Frampton  Comes Alive.’  I’m talking mostly  to white boys here because High School musical tastes were as segregated  as church. Except for the back parking lot crowd, where integrated groups would be listening to  Rick James AND Led  Zeppelin. Or Emerson Lake and Palmer AND George Clinton. But it seemed every white kid 15 to 18 years-old had Frampton Comes Alive in 1976.   I’m basing my anecdotal recollections on my own high school in Athens, Ga.  And there is obvious hyperbole here, but do you know how many records he sold?

Image result for how many albums did frampton comes alive sell
Frampton Comes Alive! sold 11 million worldwide and was the best-selling album of 1976  in the US, with 8 million copies sold. It’s been called the biggest selling live album of all time.
Frampton wasn’t particularly innovative, But  he was  good at what he he was doing — playing rocking guitar and looking good in an unbuttoned shirt.

The former Humble Pie guitar player on this album shared to the wider world a vocorder which allows you to sing with the guitar. It sounded a little like a robot as Peter would sing: Do you feel like we do?

My theory on how Frampton  Comes Alive became one of the best selling albums of all  time is the tremendous crossover with females and males. Not sure how to explain that.

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Focus — 470

ALBUM: Moving Waves (1971)

This was an album I purchased on the virtue of one song: Hocus Pocus, a much peculiar song that actually charted high in the early 1970s.

The six-minute ‘album’ version will be sure to get  you a speeding ticket if driving, as the crunchy riffs bang out a head bobbing heavy metal hook. Kind of like ‘Radar Love’ only harder.

And weirder. Almost weird enough to call it a novelty song.

Why? Because sprinkled in between the wall of metal come pit stops in which the instruments quiet down (except drums) and somebody yodels, I mean full out yodeling like Dutch mountain music, if there was such a thing. That yodeling rondo-ing back and  forth with the guitar riff happens a couple of pit stops. Then at the next (third?) pit stop there’s a Jethro Tull-like flute solo followed by scat singing, and finally what I can only describe as helium-laced nonsense vocals and blazing guitars. There you go.

If you don’t think  you know this song, give it a listen, you might have heard it. Since buying it in a bargain bin for the song, I almost never much listened to the entire album.

There is a shorter version radio single of Hocus Pocus, which besides being shorter, opens with a funky riff, turns into the guitar solo and then it’s yodel time again.)(

The rest of the album is sometimes good in a progressive rock sort of way (such as the obligatory 20-minute album side length song.) Kind of like ELP or Genesis. Not my particular cup of tea. But Hocus Pocus is pretty cool on a listen many years later.  That songs takes the ELP and puts a little Grand Funk Railroad and Beat Farmers silliness into it. (The Farmers’ semi-famously had a song, ‘Happy  Boy,’ featuring gargling, kazoos and ‘hubba hubba hubba’ in it.

Some critics liked it, others didn’t.

Benjamin Ray at Daily Vault Reviews  gave it a C- and said: You know how sometimes you hear a hit song and then pick up the album, hoping the rest of it is just as good? This is not one of the times where that happened.

Meanwhile, AllMusic gave ‘The Best of Focus’ four-and-a-half stars and said it could have used a little more “Moving Ways.”

Go figure, one person’s ‘more cowbell’ is another’s ‘less cowbell.’

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Steve Forbert — 472

ALBUMS: ‘Alive on Arrival; (1978); Jackrabbit Slim (1979); Streets of this Town (1988);

MVC Ratings: Alive 4.0/$$$; Jackrabbit Slim 4.9/$$$; Streets 4.5/$$$$.

I blinked once and it was gone..

A poignant line in his 1988 album ‘Streets of this Town’ digs at the heart of Forbert’s pathos.

I used to to think this was guilty pleasure music.  But after re-listening to Forbert I can throw the guilty out. This is just a pleasure — and part of that is because of  his  pain.  Forbert suffered early from  Dylan comparisons like all those at that time with a guitar  and a catchy songs that paint a picture. He suffered because of the high expecations, early success and youth. Look at the cover of ‘Alive on Arrival.’ He’s a baby-faced kid, albeit with a 50-year-old Rod Stewart/ Dylan-esque voice.

Forbert isn’t Dylan. He’s a pop-folk singer who slung his guitar over  his  back and left his crappy-but-it’s-mine Mississippi town for  NewYork city. His first album ‘Alive on Arrival’ was, at least side one, a slam dunk. He opened the album shutting a door on his past by calling Laurel, Miss., a ‘dirty stinking town.’

Forbert was from Meridian, which was near Laurel (can you smell it from there?)

Steve Forbert

For an in-depth Rolling Stone piece at the height of his initial success, go here.

That debut set up the expectations. He came out next with an album that had a blockbuster single ‘Romeo’s Tune,’ a momentary brush in 1979 with the stratosphere. I saw him on the heels of that second album and remember a great show in Atlanta at a small venue.

But alas, like many, the follow-up pressure seemed to have gotten the better of him for a while and he made the scene in New York but  watched his creative space get smaller.

From ‘I Blinked Once,  10 years after Romeo:

The  nineteen seventies was ten long years,

was  ten long years to sing a song

It kicked off madly with a New Year’s cheer

I blinked once and it was gone

Gone, gone I blinked once and it was gone

Looking from present, he has a strong body of work and has had excellent musicians behind him on various albums including Wilco and Nils Lofgren. In addition to these vinyl records, I have about three other Forbert CD’s,each good in their own way.

Favorite line from a good song called, January 23 – 30, 1978: “Some say life is strange, but compared to what, yeah.”

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Ellen Foley — 474

 

ALBUM: The Spirit of St. Louis (1981)

Talk about an eclectic resume.

Foley went from Night Court to the Clash to Meatloaf.

She was an actor on the  popular American comedy show Night Court and has done other TV and Broadway.. She later became an item with Clash band member Mick Jones and provided vocal back-up on the album Sandinista (Hitsville UK was one)>

Jones wrote ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go.’ about  Ellen.

She put out a couple of her own albums including this one I have on vinyl. It’s an oddball assortment of pleasant sounding songs  with avant garde touches such as those in the Salvador Dali song. All Clash band members play on this but are so unobtrusive you can’t barely  tell. (Maybe they should have intruded more).

Far and away the best song on this albums is ‘The Shuttered Palace.’   which  opens the album flush with innuendo.

To the sons of Europe: won’t you come inside
My shuttered palace and I am the bride
Now I’m a woman, I walk past your café
To the sons of Europe, I call out and say

<Check video below.>

‘Torchlight’ backed  by the Clash was also good.

She later became known for  her duet (with the innuendo stripped off) on Meatloaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Light.’

If you can find this one in  a  used or bargain bin setting it’s worth at least $5.

 

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Funky Kings –475

ALBUM: The Funky Kings (1976)

First off, the Funky Kings aren’t.

Sorry but if  you are going to put funk in your name, you better  be Funkadelic. Otherwise, it’s like leading with your chin. This is nice folky, poppy, singer-songwriter-y music. But no funk in sight.

The Funky Kings were a super group of sorts. Too often they seemed under the influence of Kryptonite.

They started in 1976,  a bunch of guys for whom there were high expectations. But the album — the one album — was like a feather in a gust of wind., spinning, floating, oops where did it go?

They don’t even have a Wikipedia page for chrissakes.

There was Jack Tempchin, Jules Shear, Richard Stekol, Bill Bodine, Frank Cotinol and Greg Leisz. It was SoCal  easy swinging soft rock.

Tempchin  was a prolific songwriter with the Eagles’  ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’  and ‘Already Gone’ under his songwriting belt. Jules Shear went on to form Jules and Polar Bears which met with minor success.

The biggest hit  on this  Funky Kings album was “Slow Dancing’ a piece written byTempchin that is so soft and catchy, it made the Easy Listening charts. It took Johnny Rivers to cover it with a little more ooomph to put it high on the Billboard charts.

Don’t get me wrong there are nice songs on this,  just not enough apparently  to fuel a Wikipedia page 40 years later. Check out ‘My Old Pals.’

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Fleshtones — 476

ALBUM:  Fleshtones (‘Live in Paris 85’)

Should be the Kingsmen ‘Live in Paris 64’

They seem like a lot of fun live, the Fleshtones that is. I like the honking bad sax.

Al little B-52s, a little Ramones.  Slight Cramps.

Hey they are the Fleshtones. I also have a CD of them playing rocking hard Christmas music.

Certainly this ragged Louie-Louie-propelled music isn’t for everybody and even those that like it, like this 58-year-old man, can only take about 17 minutes of it. But that’s 17 minutes of pleasure.

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Fleet Foxes – 477

ALBUM: Crack-Up

I am going to keep listening to this  album. Even though right now I don’t get it.

The heavy two-records of vinyl comes in an elegant package, sophisticated design.

The music is slow, sometimes building building to, what? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. It’s one that, as with Father Misty’s Pure Comedy,  deserves more listens to figure out what it is  I cannot figure out. Josh Tillerman, aka as Father Misty, used to be the Foxes drummer. He left the band some time ago but you can see the connection still. between their sounds.

With Fleet Foxes, I started like I do with music, especially newer music like this. Ii ask the question::  Who do they sound like? Who did they grow up listening to?

Knee-jerk reaction would be to call them a modern Fairport Convention, a big folk rock band. But Fairport songs are  more structured and are grounded in the European folk traditions. The Foxes run away from tradition  and  then shyly come back. Sometimes it just  feels like so much background music even though they are making valiant attempts to whisper in your head. Other touch tones I threw on the wall to see if it stuck: Roxy Music, Sade, Nick Drake, Arcade Fire,Robert Wyatt. Was going to say OMD (Orchestral Maneuvers  in the Dark, but OMD a little more poppy, as was Sade.

So I don’t know. Really hard to pigeon-hole, which is not a bad thing. Now if their multi-talented selves could figure out a way to avoid fading into the wallpaper. Again I’m coming at this with no context of their other work, and I’ll keep listening.

Another Ocean is a beautiful song but even it seems to fade into mist.

A commenter on their YouTube video said previous works have been more earthy and that this one is more watery. I’ll buy that.