The latest release from the freak-folkstress is an eerie Germanic art song cycle (Brahms, Schubert), with Foster
Category: Kim Cooper/ LITG
the original Lost in the Grooves blog
The Telescopes – “Taste” CD (Rev-ola)
The deceptively lush and jangly intro to this late eighties British reish leads swiftly into shrieking and maniacal druggy chaos, a dense psych-punk sound packed with swirling guitars, shrieking vocals and a mood of ever-ratcheting mechanical anxiety. Includes four bonus live cuts.
The Fox – For” Fox Sake” CD (RPM)
Modish UK psych-pop ala the Small Faces or Procol Harum, with fine acidic guitar and washes of vocal harmony. The songwriting is undistinguished, but the energetic arrangements and maudlin lyrical themes make for a pleasant background listen.
The Four King Cousins – “Introducing” CD (El)
Reissue of a 1969 harmony-pop disk on Capitol, produced by David Axelrod under the not-quite-anagramic Lex de Azevedo. The cousins King were music industry pros with a family TV show and the connections to get their nascent quartet a regular slot on John Davidson’s Kraft Summer Music Hall. Blonde, slick and resoundingly old-fashioned despite the matching mini-dresses on the cover, in the studio they brought their frosty, elevator-ready pipes to arrangements of Beatles, Boyce & Hart, Hamlisch, Bacharach-David and Nichols-Asher that veer from the tasteful to the mildly twangy and tuff. The best track is “God Only Knows,” where their ethereal ice princess sexiness really suits the material. Like an estrogenic Carpenters without the angst, these four twenty-somethings made music for people the sum of their combined ages.
Steely Dan are miffed
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker ask Luke Wilson the somewhat loaded question: "do you want to go down as the brother of the Zal Yanovsky of the 21st Century?"
Editrix Kim with Nathan Marsak on KXLU Friday
In the early 1990s, 1947project bloggers Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak collaborated on a demented college radio program in Santa Barbara called The Manny Chavez Show. Nathan played Manny, a washed-up Catskills comic with a soft spot for bizarre thrift store records, while Kim manned the boards and giggled at Manny’s unfunny gags in the character of daffy twins Mandy and Candy Dubois. A lowlight of their broadcast career was the night Nathan got arrested on his way to the studio, and the County Sheriff agreed to let him phone the show if he’d deliver an anti-drunk driving message.
These days, their collaboration is somewhat more scholarly, though still demented: they blog historic Los Angeles crimes of 1947 and 1907 at the 1947project website, and lead Crime Bus Tours to scenes of forgotten mayhem.
This Friday night, July 14 (and into the morning of the 15th), from midnight to three, Kim and Nathan return to the airwaves as special guests of Stella, whose KXLU (88.9 FM) program Stray Pop has been providing an eclectic disarray of music with in studio guests since 1980.
They’ll be sharing favorite local true crime cases from their upcoming Pasadena Confidential Crime Bus Tour, spinning incredibly odd thrift store vinyl, plus talking about Kim’s projects like the Bubblegum Achievement Awards, Lost in the Grooves, the long-lived journal of unpopular culture Scram and her recent 33 1/3 book on Neutral Milk Hotel and the Elephant 6 collective. Listen for a special visit from Manny Chavez and his moldy joke book, and call in with questions or comments.
What: Manny Chavez Show Reunion
When: Friday July 14/Saturday July 15 from midnight-3am
Where: KXLU 88.9 FM in L.A., streaming at https://www.kxlu.com
Request line: (310) 338-KXLU
More info:
1947project
Scram Magazine
Bubblegum Achievement Awards
Lost in the Grooves
Stray Pop
Radios Appear on Wilshire Boulevard
Tickets are on sale now for the debut U.S. date for Radio Birdman, August 30. I never dared expect that my favorite band, and subject of the first music feature I ever wrote, would be kicking off their American tour at the art deco Wiltern in my home town of L.A., but it’s true. Tix are $25, and the BellRays open. See you there?
John Cale, Hackamore Brick… and the LITG reissues keep on coming
Just pulling your sleeve to a couple of Lost in the Grooves-featured albums newly available on shiny silver disk.
Most prominently, John Cale’s eleganza classic Paris 1919 gets the expando reissue treatment with alternate arrangements and one outtake.
And a bootleg of the late-Velvetsy Hackamore Brick album is floating around, available from most of the usual specialty mail order sources.
Dig the Sex Clark 5’s “Great Sheikhs” Cartoon!
Scott Bateman is making a short animated film every day for a year. On day 277, he tastefully featured our own Sex Clark 5 revamping the classic ’60s jingle for instant Great Shakes milkshakes. Maybe you’ve heard the versions of this incredibly catchy tune by the Who or the Yardbirds… but did you know that the song was written by another LITG artist, the incomparable Brute Force?
We like it when the universe converges in so nifty a fashion. So click on this link and get "Great Sheikhs."
Record Review: The Pop Project – TGIF
The Pop Project TGIF CD-EP (popproject.com) With this release, blogger/drummer Adam Kempa and his pals gather to praise obscure singer-songwriter Jesse Frederick. But their reverence is not directed at his sole 1971 Bearsville LP, nor the pair of unreleased follow-ups, but at Frederick’s more widely-heard contributions to the world of eighties sitcom themes. It’s a intriguing instance of reclaiming the craft (or art, if you will) from a place of intentional invisibility, and from the included “making-of” featurelette you can tell the band had a blast making it happen. I confess I’ve never watched an episode of Family Matters, Full House or Step By Step (Perfect Strangers I think I saw once), and none of these under-two-minute theme song covers are familiar, but the commercial craftsmanship of the songwriting is apparent and nicely realized in these short, sweet and very upbeat performances. Check the website for more about the Pop Project, Jesse Frederick and the difficulties of getting a mechanical license to cover these tunes. You probably need to have watched these shows a lot at an early age to react viscerally to hearing them remade, but either way it’s an endearing concept.