The Marmalade is not a Scottish band with a lot of character. There is a good song here and there, but then there is Man in a Shop, a record I have been obsessing with for the past 12 months. It's strange how a song or recording hits you when you at least expect it. I think I was intrigued just by the title; what does it mean to be a man in a shop? Before we go into that subject matter, it is best to describe The Marmalade's music as very radio (at least in the UK) friendly with touches of Roy Wood's The Move mixed with the vocal abilities of The Hollies. Which sounds good on paper, but they don't have the Roy Wood genius of writing tunes. Still, they came up with Man in a Shop.
The song is full-on psychedelic chamber-pop with a certain amount of sadness—a cocktail of a tune that I couldn't avoid at any cost. I don't know if MIAS was a hit or not, but I don't understand how such a brilliant piece of earworm music could have failed. Reading the lyrics off the computer screen seems to be about a male shop owner who runs a clothing boutique for women, and is soft (in the head? Sexually?) and is lonely. There is a crowd of girls outside looking at the display window and admiring the mannequin or doll wearing the clothes for sale. He puts up a new dummy in the window and throws the old one into the basement. One can also read that this is about a psycho-killer. There is a weird communication between the kids outside the shop and the man (very much) inside.
The song opens with an electric guitar playing backward. Any record that starts off with a backward guitar is more likely be a masterpiece as a rule. And then when you add trumpets to the backward guitar, well, you're close to God. Even though I have my suspicions about this 'man in a shop.'
On one level, a knock-off compilation of bits and pieces of David Bowie's music career output in the year 1982, issued and compiled in Italy by Carlo Basile and Fabrizio Ferrucci. It depends on how one defines 'rare' these days, but finding these recordings on one vinyl disc is rare. Although I have a few on 45 rpm singles, I didn't have any of them on an album.
Basile and Ferrucci, whoever they may be in the Italian music world, did a fine collection of Bowie songs. Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola (translated title into English is Lonley Girl, Lonely Boy), the Italian version of Space Oddity. The pleasures of hearing Bowie singing in Italian and German for Helden (Heroes) are worth the package for me. But it's really having Velvet Goldmine, Holy Holy, Moon of Alabama, and the instrumental Crystal Japan that makes it a must-buy.
I first bought this album in the year it was released, which is 1967. For over 50 years, I have purchased "Procol Harum" over and over again. I have four different editions of the record on vinyl, and at least one in the CD format. Why I love this album since I was 13-years old is a bit of a mystery to me. Most of the music on "Procol Harum" is sad to me, and I'm attracted to melancholy melodies and performances. Perhaps it's the inner-goth in me or that the music brought images to my head. To this day, I really don't know what the lyrics for"A Whiter Shade of Pale" are about. I haven't even bothered to read them. There also have been a few covers of this song, and every one of them is a good one. Of course, Procol Harum's take on their song is the best. Gary Brooker, the vocalist, composer, and pianist, has a soulful singing voice. The lyrics by Keith Reid are rich in imagery and detailed with specific descriptions of incidents or objects. I dwell on the mystery, but I don't want to know or have the answers. Procol Harum's music lingers like a faint appearance of marijuana. I remember reading an interview with Robbie Robertson of The Band putting down "A Whiter Shade of Pale" as an imitation of the song "When a Man Loves a Woman" and thinking he's an idiot. To this day, I can't really listen to The Band due to what he said about my favorite song.
If one has to choose one edition of this classic album, it would be "Procol Harum" reissued in 2019 by Fly Records (distributed by Forced Exposure in America). It's a double album set. The first disc is the original album in mono. The second disc is a collection of b-sides and some a-sided singles that didn't make it onto an album release. The other great classic Procol Harum song is "Homburg." For one, I love the idea of a song named after a hat. It's a beautiful melody, and there are two versions of it on the album. The seven-minute version is superb. Perfection in every manner possible. Plus, there are Italian language versions of "Quite Rightly So" and "In The Wee Small Hours of Sixpence." After so many years, I now feel satisfied with having this one version of a perfect album.
Johnnie Ray is one of my favorite figures in 20th-century pop music. He's the bridge between icon Frank Sinatra and icon Elvis. Visually I love his hair, and even more important, he would wear a bulky hearing aid on stage for one of his ears. Vulnerable, handsome, and intense. Ray can convey misery and loneliness like no other being. There is something alien about him, probably why David Bowie wanted to play him on the big screen. Johnnie Ray has done many magnificent recordings, but nothing as brilliant and special as "Soliloquy of a Fool."
It's a song of regret and sorrow, but what makes it unusual is the music's production and arrangement. It is credited to Ray Conniff and his Orchestra, which means 'middle-of-the-road' arrangements typically. The instrumentation is basically Johnnie's echo-laden voice, a minimal electric organ, and some electronic or heavy echo percussion that is even more minimal. It's an extraordinary record as well as being truly beautiful.
I'm dying to know the history of this song, but especially the recording. Conniff co-wrote the song, and I'm guessing he wrote the music. I suspect that it wasn't a hit, and in fact, it's the b-side of the single, with the A-side being "Miss Me Just A Little." Nevertheless, a small but stunning masterpiece.
Middle-aged male jet setters in 1963 would fly to Tokyo for business and, of course, pleasure. With their business accounts, they can stay at 5-star hotels such as The Prince or The Imperial and go to the small but exclusive bars in the Ginza. These bars would have hostesses where they pour your drinks and laugh at your dirty jokes. "Midnight in Tokyo," recorded in Tokyo and in 1963, is the soundtrack to that type of life.
When I first started to go to Tokyo in 1989, there were traces of the 1963 lifestyle. Still orientated to the Japanese salarymen who have expense accounts through their company or visiting businessmen from America and Europe. That world still exists, but the outside world is much bigger now. Still, there is a romantic feeling for the decade of beautifully neon-lighted streets in the Ginza. It's still there, but more of a shopping experience as well as a location for refined dining and drinking pleasures.
The Tokyo Boys made only one album, and it is this piece of exotica. Mostly big band instrumentation but filtered through various Japanese or Asian melodies. There's the Latin rumba, but with touches of the orient. For me, the album reminds me of the soundtrack to a lot of the 60s Yakuza films. I'm not sure if there is an original Tokyo Boys album release in Japan. Still, MGM records made this album as part of their "21 Channel Sound" series. The technique is that they used 21 microphones in the studio, a big thing in 1963. Of course, it's well-recorded, but the purpose here is to transport the listener to another world. One where they can enjoy the fruits of labor, work, and the all-night drinking session with one's fellow office workers.
Martin Denny took the listener to Hawaii or other ports of "exotica," but here in "Midnight in Tokyo" is a destination to one getting lost in Japanese elegance. It's a myth, but when you are a broke listener in one's studio apartment, this is the world of escape pleasures.
There are many compilations of Joe Meek's recordings or productions, especially in the CD format. Still, on vinyl, this album is my favorite of the lot. It's not extensive but put together with great taste and intelligence. I suspect that this is a bootleg, so I'm not sure if the editing of this compilation was one because they had no choice, or by design, an excellent representation of Joe Meek's music.
"The Emotional, Cosmic & Occult World of Joe Meek" (great title, by the way) covers a lot of ground within its 12 cuts. The most well-known 'hit' song here is John Leyton's classic "Johnny Remember Me." The others are obscure to everyone except for the hardcore Meek fan. The album opens up with The Blue Rondos' "Little Baby," in which Ricky Nelson meets Roy Orbison and is a great song/recording. The drums' thump-thump sound is here, which is very much a Meek trademark, but also the echo on the vocalist's voice, which sounds like it is coming from a world beyond us. It's eerie, beautiful, and sexy.
Speaking of thump-thump drums, we have The Outlaws' "Crazy Drums," a fantastic percussion workout edited by Meek and played by Meek's guitar great Ritchie Blackmore. The Moontrrekkers' "Night of the Vampire" has a galloping beat with horror sound effects. One of the remarkable instrumentals that seem so right and is the definition of perfection at work. Meek worked a lot with Glenda Collins, and here we have a great tune, "It's Hard To Believe It," that confronts the optimism of the space age in the early 1960s. There are also two songs from the Meek masterpiece "I Hear A New World," The Blue Men's "The Bublight" and "Valley of the Saros." On one level, it is kitsch, but Meek took space travel, aliens, and the after-life very seriously. For one who wants to put one foot forward into the Joe Meek world, I strongly recommend "The Emotional, Cosmic & Occult World of Joe Meek."
It was sex/filmmaker Russ Meyer's birthday a few days ago, or maybe yesterday? What a remarkable film artist. I remember going to see a film retrospective on Hollywood Blvd and being transported to an extraordinary world. Only two filmmakers affected me in that sense. The other director was Fassbinder. Both are obsessed geniuses who transform their landscape into a private space that becomes public. For me, there is nothing sexy about Meyer's work. It's about sex without the sexy feeling, which is very odd. Also, since he's the cinematographer and director/writer, one enters a place with its own sense of rhythm and rhyme. Meyer is a unique artist. Exploitation is his soul, and the crisp black and white images of his early films are a wonder in itself. But also in his color films how blue the sky is. Nature, tits, ass, and Russ Meyer.
I like it but don't love Jefferson Airplane. I'm very fond of vital voices within the band, mostly Marty Balin with a side dish of Grace Slick. Their 1969 album, "Volunteers," is the Hippie Revolution's height, and I like it for that reason. Although I do have to say that there is also another voice on this album that I adore. It's Nicky Hopkins piano playing throughout the record. It's an interesting road that leads Nicky from being the piano player of the British Invasion to the heart of the San Francisco Hippie scene. His playing is lyrical, and at times I just listen to his keyboard work and not listen to the rest of the music. Which is an odd thing to do, but the joy of hearing the piano among the guitars, drums, and voices is really the essential part of the music.
"Hey Fredrick" is Grace magic. Her voice soars, the guitars (Paul Kanter and especially Kaukonen) twang with intensity, jazzy bass by Jack Cassidy, and Nicky's piano underpin the music as like adding salted butter to a slice of warm french bread. Eight minutes or so of bliss. The great thing about the Airplane is that they have the folk music aesthetic as a foundation, but it can lead to free-form jazzy rock with no fear of falling off the ledge. So yes, I don't love everything they do, but when they hit the spot, it's a bullseye.
The good news is Artbook @ Hauser & Wirth is open to the public. The other good news is that they have signed copies of my book TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World" in stock as well as my other books "Sparks-Tastic" and the book of poems "The Plum in Mr. Blum's Pudding" The store's hours are 11 to 6 PM.
Phone Number: (213) 988-7413
PAUL JONES - COME INTO MY MUSIC BOX, 1969 (COLUMBIA)
There are so many great singers from the British Invasion era, but my favorite voice from those times is Paul Jones. Brian Jones had the good taste to think of Paul being the vocalist before approaching Mick Jagger for the Rolling Stones. Instead, Paul Jones ended up being the lead singer in the band, Manfred Mann. His work with that band is exceptional. The Manns were unique because they were basically Jazz musicians who did pop but thought out their arrangements in the school of jazz or rhythm n' blues. They did the best cover versions of Bob Dylan's music as well. The band could be crass in their commercial taste, but always with the sophistication of a master musician. At the height of the swinging 60s, Jones left Manfred Mann to become an actor and solo artist. Although his solo career has its peaks and lows, the one thing that never failed him was his voice. He can sing the alphabet, and he would bring out the complexities of joy, despair, and love within the letters. If one has to choose his best solo work, it would be 1969's "Come Into My Music Box."
The album title is a very descriptive approach to the music on this record. We have everything from "Aquarius" (from the ultimate 60s musical "Hair") to The Band's "The Weight." It is like Jones wanted to express all his love on one LP. The album, in a manner, is a compilation, due that are five separate producers (John Burgess Norman Newell, Peter Asher, Mort Shuman, and Paul Jones), including Tony Visconti making the arrangement and conducting on the song "Pick Up In The Morning." Listening to this 52-year old album, it is clearly a record to define the end of the 1960s.
Paul Jones's solo either had a blues obsession, but he can also portray himself as a West End musical singer. "I'm Here To Nudge Your Mind" and "Aquarius" come off as a groovy version of the mainstream world of theater. There are traces of early Bowie, which suggests that David followed Paul Jones's presence in the pop world. By chance or design, Paul covers my two favorite songs from the 60s. Donovan's "Celeste" and Procol Harum's "Homburg." "Celeste" suits Jones's voice, and he does take a Donovan baroque Folkie song into a theatrical song piece. "Hamburg" in Paul's world becomes a baroque psychedelic pop masterpiece. Using filters on the vocals can be seen as overkill. Still, it is powerfully effective when it kicks into his voice with echo.
"Come Into My Music Box" is very much a variety show set on the LP format. It's a series of puzzles that fits perfectly together. In theory, this could have been a disaster. Still, the choice of songs and the genius of Paul Jones's approach to his material is a superb listening experience.
The image below is the 'now' me, or the adult. If you wish to purchase a SIGNED copy of my memoir about my youth: TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World (City Lights) you can do so here: Signed Copies of TOSH here
Tosh and Kimley are joined by author Darryl W. Bullock to discuss his new book The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran the Swinging Sixties. Rock ‘n’ roll as we know it would not exist if not for this group of gay men in the U.K. during the late fifties and sixties fondly referred to as “The Velvet Mafia.” Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein, Joe Meek, Lionel Bart, and Robert Stigwood are some of the major players in this book who left an indelible mark on the pop/rock world. At a time in the U.K. when being gay was illegal and when pop music could only be heard from pirate radio stations, they managed to push the needle forward and open up a culture that allowed us all to swing!
Theme music: “Behind Our Efforts, Let There Be Found Our Efforts” by LG17
One can purchase a SIGNED copy of my memoir TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World (City Lights) here:
THE VELVET MAFIA: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties” by Darryl W. Bullock (Omnibus Press) 2021
If I had my own record shop, I would name the shop after Darryl W. Bullock’s book “The Velvet Mafia.” In my shop, instead of having sections or categories on artists, I would have Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein, Joe Meek, Robert Stigwood, Simon Napier-Bell, and Andrew Loog Oldham sections. Since these gentlemen are not recording artists but managers and producers, it will focus on their pop music view. Mostly gay, when being gay was illegal in England up until 1967, these figures articulate and sold generations music that was essential and sometimes bad. Here, bad is a sign of genius. All above are strong visionaries in how they sold a product - usually good-looking males, with occasionally questionable music talents, and artists of great importance and brilliance.
Due to the laws and the straight world, LGBT professionals had to work publicly and secretively. Managers like Larry Parents and Brian Epstein came from Jewish working-class families who had retail shops. Both tried to enter the show biz world as entertainers or actors but realized that they could go into showbiz through promoter and manager. For Parnes, his ‘yes’ moment was seeing the teenage Tommy Steele in a Solo coffee house and Epstein visiting the Liverpool Cavern to see the future Fab Four. Both saw the future, and especially Parnes invented homegrown British orientated rock n’ roll. The Beatles, of course, became a planet to themselves.
The book covers many grounds, but the focus is on Parnes, Epstein, Meek, Stigwood, and songwriter Lionel Bart. Each figure has other personalities circling them, and eventually, they mixed with the others. There are other managers/visionaries such as Andrew Loog Oldham and Simon Napier-Bell. Still, they will get their own book, or there will be a sequel to this perfect volume. I love pop music because it must be part of a more extensive culture or society. The Gay world so secretive, even with their own language at times, Polari, which is traced back to the 19th-century, and possibly to the 16th. It is a form of can’t slang that only insiders can understand. Here the Managers/Promoters made marketing decisions to create a product that appeals to the Gay’s sensibility and the screaming female fan market. Parnes is not a music person, but he realized that Rock n’ Roll needed its own platform in England and not shared with clowns, jugglers, and comedians. The roots of music hall culture will not disappear but transform into British rock n’ roll packaged tours. At times even great American artists such as Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Buddy Holly would be part of the big show. This cross-continental programming fueled the imagination and desires of British youth. Many of the musicians from the British Invasion have seen Buddy, Eddie, and Gene.
At the beginning of his career, who would have thought Robert Stigwood would end up being the king of showbiz. Managing Cream and Bee Gees, or the talented Lionel Bart, would lose all his dough. Parnes rarely made financial mistakes, and at times Epstein was overwhelmed with problems of narcotics, a hard love life, and finances that went totally out of his control. The 1960s was in consistent motion. I think this was the force that led these gentlemen to use their desires to make money (always the concern) and forge a new liberating culture.
Darryl W. Bullock’s “The Velvet Mafia” is a well-documented look at that decade. With the skill of a historian/journalist, he captures these figures in motion and all the byproducts of that landscape. Here you get the Kray Twins and the voices of the young British artists as their lives being changed by these business and social visionaries. Joe Meek’s sad narration is told here as well. It’s a fantastic story of a man struggling with his place in society and being a genius in his field of record production. Kimley and I discuss and interview Bullock on his book on our podcast Book Musik. It will be up on March 15, 2021.
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