Flashback: Issue no. 4, Winter 2013

As mentioned in another post, I'm absolutely fascinated with the magazine "Flashback," which is edited by Richard Morton Jack, with good music journalists, especially Richie Unterberger.  The focus of the publication is Underground rock music from the late 1960s to the 1970s.   Reading "Flashback" is very much like being in a dark room with one light bulb, and no awareness of what's happening outside that room on a regular basis.  Life stopped around 1975 or so, and your only reference is obscure recordings by even more obscure artists.   For instance, the front cover is the band Trees, which I'm sure most of you never heard of them.  Nor have I, they're a British folk-orientated group that recorded for British Columbia Records, and made two albums in 1970.   33 pages, with no ads, but plenty of photos, documents, images of contracts, and various flyers for gigs, but insightful journalism on the band by David Biasotti.

In this day and age of Twitter and online publications, it's fascinating that there is a magazine like "Flashback" that is beautifully printed and designed, and obsessed with bands that fell through the cracks of fame and attention.  Each article on a band runs from 20 to 30 pages, and all are clearly written to be the last word on the subject.  Researched to a maximum level, only a music geek can appreciate.  For those who only have a passing interest in pop music history should move on to the current Rolling Stone or some other mass-market publication, because "Flashback" is a beautiful and endlessly informative love feast on music and artists that are important, but never got their fame or sales in the marketplace.

Issue number 4, besides the interesting piece on Trees, also has a long article on the band Mandrake Memorial, which of this date, I actually located their debut album (which is on its way).    From Philadelphia and they were very much part of the psychedelic scene in that city.  Also is a memoir by Beverly Martyn, a singer who worked with, and married John Martyn.  A harrowing account of her life with the horrifying John which is depressing, but good to hear she's still about making music (as of 2013, my issue here is old).

There's a great piece on exploitation albums from the late 1960s and early 70s that were a knock-off of major hits of the time, including music from the underground scene.  Anonymous musicians who recorded such albums as "Blow Your Mind," "Hair The 31 Flavors," "Light My Fire" by the Firebirds and so forth.   And to top it off there's an excellent and lengthy article on various obscure mono and stereo recordings and which ones are better.  And if you can even purchase such records from the psychedelic era without being pushed into the poor house.  The reviews are plentiful, and very in depth with a focus on CD Boxsets as well as on artists like Harry Nilsson (who is probably the most known figure in this magazine to a general audience).

Each issue, so far, has a feature on a British music publication, and here we "Go."  I never heard or seen this magazine before, but as a publisher, and a fan of music publications, I find it obsessively fascinating on all accounts.   "Flashback" are moments of perfection, and an incredible guide to music I would never be aware of, or ever being in their presence.  I got my issues from Forced Exposure.

Forced Exposure website:  https://www.forcedexposure.com/Home.aspx

June 15, 2014

June 15, 2014

Time is just like a dream.  Loving you is a world that is strange.  Who knows if it is real, or both dreaming of.  Seemed to be a new day now, but it can be a beginning of a love.   The oddness of my feelings, as it is now, is like a wisp of a dream I had last night.  I can’t recall all of it, but I believe I woke up with a feeling of bitterness.  When I go to an image of you on Facebook, it is always a fleeting feeling.  Perhaps due that you only have images of flowers and pets on your page, but once in a while someone posts an image of you.  I should have captured it, because you eventually took it off your page.  Loving you made my whole life change.  Loving you, I could not grow old.  On the other hand, my memory of you exists, and therefore maybe you never existed.

I lived my life in countless comic strips.  Thomas the Engine took me to places that I could only dream about, but alas, even then I realized it was just an illusion.  As I got older, I went on adventures with "Corto Maltese," and eventually ended up in Siberia and the Salt Sea.  When Maltese realized he had no fate line on the palm of his hand, he carved his own with his father’s razor, determining that his fate was his to choose. A pirate’s wit is a young boy’s fantasy of a better world, yet, if I remember correctly, you were devoted to “Teena.” I had to get a book at The Secret Headquarters in Silver Lake, to keep it as a memory of our disagreements.  “Teena” was perhaps the first teenager in the comic strips, and yet, we were much older than that, and yet we bonded with fictional characters, that occasionally we forgot that they didn’t exist.  In our world, it was a precious one, where we had to balance our desires equally, yet owing to our temperament, we fought for our heroes quite dramatically.

You often treated me like I was a Harry Langdon character, a man who you felt was childlike, even an innocent who is wondering into a dark forest by himself.  Yet, I was devoted to Johnny Hallyday and Harry Nilsson, both artists that were easy to be misunderstood.   I often think of the Nilsson line “Well, in 1941, the happy father had a son And in 1944, the father walked right out the door.” Well, that’s the way it was.  You had an obsession with Waylon Jennings, due to him being handsome, yet, I think the only recording of his that I like is “MacArthur Park.” I remember how shocked I was, that you never heard his recording of that song.  At this time, I realize the distance between us.  Spring was never there waiting for us.  It seemed it was just the fall and winter.  I have a clear memory of your yellow cotton dress on the ground around your knees.  That’s my lasting memory of you.

Sometimes the memory is too painful.  I remembered when I was in elementary school, and we had a festival on the premise.  They built booths and brought a ferris wheel on the school grounds.  I didn’t think I could take it.  It’s the only memory I have of that you were you were not part of.  Lash LaRue, a cowboy star of my youth made an appearance, and with two quarters you could buy his 8x11” black and white photo with his name stamped on the image.   At the time, I was so excited. It was almost if he took his whip out and did a presentation of some sort.  A friend of mine who was there, told me that this didn’t happen.  He was truly there, but all he had with him were a dark suit and a black cowboy hat.  Even that, my images of my past life are fading into a world of my own making.

"Nilsson: The Life of a Siinger-Songwriter" by Alyn Shipton

Harry Nilsson is a fascinating music artist. For me, he was someone that was around, but never the focus on any scene. On one hand he had direct contact with The Beatles (who admired Harry's work greatly as well as a friend) and on the other he was very much in tuned with the pop music market. In one way he can be seen as the bridge between music underground and music 'overground. He was very much the professional music songwriter and yet on his solo recordings took great chances. And I think now because he did took those chances, he is much and greatly admired. 

Born in Bushwick Brooklyn (one would think there should be a stature of him at the Bushwick station) from a troubled family came a songwriter who wrote incredibly moving songs about the bonding of friendship and parent & child. "Me And My Arrow" is without a doubt one of the great songs about a human and his dog. And as they about the milkman whistling a tune, I do the same for this song whenever I take a walk around the neighborhood. That song works on so many levels. Alyn Shipton's biography captures the essense of this talented man, who it seems was loved by his friends and family, but had .... a hard life of sorts. With respect to drinking, that seems to me close to the glory years of Errol Flynn and WC Fields.  Him, Ringo, Keith Moon, and others... being in the same room with them doesn't sound like it was good for one's health, but nevertheless a lot of fun. The fact that one meets Harry for lunch usually means they get back home about two days later, is all part of his incredible personality and sense of fun and wonder. 

It is unusual for Oxford to do a biography on a contemporary music figure, but this is a superb book. A must for all Nilsson fans of course, but also for the causal curious music geek who wants to know what it was like to be in the center of the pop world during the late 1960's and '70's. The later years are kind of sad, but without a doubt he was a remarkable figure in American music as well as iconic in his stance as the ultimate party boy. But in the end one is left with the albums, and that is a great journey to go on. Make sure you have this book as you take that trip...