The Stark Reality - "The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop" (1970)

This shit right here like that there.

This shit is the shit.

It took me four, maybe five years to find this .zip file on another blog. It's albums such as "The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop" is part and parcel of why I took it upon myself to create my own music blog to bring you the hairiest stuff ever recorded. 

Thank you ever so much, Mr. Weird and Wacky! (Apologies, but you have to click a thing to enter his site to let the bloggy overlords know that you are a grown-ass adult... he shows a lot of vintage porny record covers of these girls and their jugs... of beer.)

The Stark Reality, a band so named for their vibesman Monty Stark, were a Boston quartet of jazz heads, groomed at The Berklee College of Music. All four men were exceptional, but most notable among them was their guitarist John Abercrombie, who would begin his brilliant solo career in 1974 on Mannfred Eicher's label, ECM Records. That album was titled appropriately enough as "Timeless", and the roster included Jack DeJohnette on drums and organist, Jan Hammer.

All that's fine, but we're talking about The Stark Reality, and their 1970 album, which was their improvised reading of a 1958 children's album by the songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, who would showcase the music on his 1969 PBS show, "Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop."

All that necessary history aside, "The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop" insinuates what the Peanuts cartoons would be like if Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band joined forces with Tim Buckley and his group from 1968 to 1971, along with Vince Guaraldi... which would have been really fucking awesome.

However, it was The Stark Reality who cobbled this record together and gave it to us... and really, no one else apart from Hoagy Carmichael could have done any of this better.

Thank you, dudes.

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Portsmouth Sinfonia - "Plays the Popular Classics" (1974)

Imagine if Hans Fenger and the Langley School kids did nothing but classical instrumentals. The reality was that Portsmouth Sinfonia was co-founded by English composer Gavin Bryars at The Portsmouth School of Art. None other than Brian Eno played clarinet with this ragtag ensemble of art and music students who selected instruments they had never before played or thought they were elaborate doorstops or odd furnishings for nesting newlyweds. Eno also produced this, their 1974 recording, "Plays the Popular Classics".

Track number five, "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" inexplicably has a momentary splicing of what sounds like Chuck Berry's "Good Golly, Miss Molly"... this is the copy I'm providing, and it's the one I have until I get a sound copy. I found it on another blog. Somehow, the glitch adds character. Listen and judge on your own.

The resulting album is brash, clumsy, and gorgeous. Enjoy!

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Isabel Baker - "I Like God's Style" (1965)

Damn. Just... damn.

This super rare record has been gaining a most rabid cult following in recent years, this slice of lo-fi gospel rock art brut. "I Like God's Style" by Isabel Baker is nothing short of phenomenal. I love this haunting, disturbing, often funny record, and you will hear moments where she is laughing to herself in a song.

The year this was recorded, 1965, by all appearances if your vision is slightly blurry, Isabel Baker was a girl of sixteen years. Now, listen to her singing in that deep voice breaking like that of a pubescent boy... then take note of her Adam's apple... and those large hands with articulated veins... understanding that there were some very different goings on in Garden Grove, California at the time... and all over the USA, for that matter... and most folks couldn't speak of such things, to their parents, to their friends, or even to themselves. How fucking scared would you be?

Also be thankful that our collective mindset toward gender preference has advanced considerably fifty-two years later... what's unfortunate is that Ms. Baker's story hasn't fleshed itself out beyond the music and sleeve notes. I hope she's still with us and having the best life.

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The Raunch Hands - "Learn to Whap-A-Dang with The Raunch Hands" (1986)

"What's our word? THUNDERBIRD!!! What's our joy? NATURE BOY!!!"

Punk-a-billy, bitches. Demented shit. The best kind.

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Bill Cosby - "Bill Cosby Talks to Kids About Drugs" (1971)

Yep.

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