This month sees Cherry Red releasing the first expanded edition re-issue of Marc Almond’s The Stars We Are since the album’s original release in 1988. The Stars We Are is Marc Almond at his most commercial, but that is in a no way a slight. Marking the singer’s final collaboration with his musical partner Annie Hogan, the lush balladry of The Stars We Are—Almond’s 4th solo album proper (if you don’t count his Marc and the Mambas side project)—is also one of his very best, an all-killer, no-filler affair that spawned five singles, two of them international hits.

There are three amazing duets on the album that I want to call your attention to. First is “Your Kisses Burn,” an astonishing number performed with Nico, in her final studio recording. Being a big Nico fan and a big Marc Almond fan, I was awestruck by the infernal power of this song when I first heard it. It’s scary! I can vividly recall playing it over and over again at top volume the day I brought the CD home. It cannot be said that Nico didn’t go out on a high note, but according to Almond, interviewed by The Quietus, she had difficulty singing that day:

“Nico was a mysterious figure, enigmatic with that great musical and artistic connection to The Velvet Underground and Warhol, which were things I was obsessed about at school. And of course that wonderful intriguing voice, icy and remote yet warm at the same time. She made a sound I’d never heard before - maybe some sort of a gothic punk Marlene Dietrich. The first time i heard her music was with The Velvet Underground, but I bought Desertshore, The Marble Index and The End and liked them more. There was also her musical association with Brian Eno, which made her more intriguing.

“When I became a musician, she was always at the top of my wish list for a duet of some sort. I was so nervous to contact her and EMI were not really for it at all, as you can imagine. I wanted to make sure that she was treated like the legend and the star I felt she was. EMI balked at her demands, but I was insistent. It turned out she was lovely if fragile, and we played pool and drank tea and talked for ages. The song was a problem, it turned out to be a bit too complicated, too orchestral for her and she began to deteriorate as the day went on and the methadone took effect. She still managed to deliver that wonderful Nico voice. We left on warm terms with plans for a better track more suited to her.

I think this one is fucking incredible. You be the judge. PLAY IT LOUD:
 

 
And then there is the album’s BIG HIT, “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart,” Almond’s duet with Gene Pitney on a remake of Pitney’s own top five song of 1967. The Stars We Are was originally released in late 1988 with a solo Marc rendition of the number, but the duet—with the same backing track—went to number one on the UK pop charts and stayed there for an entire month. Marc really gives it his all here, while Pitney’s vocal takes the song to a new height. There were TV appearances galore—the pair were even invited to be on Wogan—and this charming music video shot in Las Vegas.
 

 
There’s more after the jump…

Lemmy and his trusty Rickenbacker bass and his pal Wendy O. Williams with her chainsaw. These marionettes were made by Canadian artist, Darren Moreash of Darrionettes.
 
If there is one thing I have learned as a contributor to Dangerous Minds for the last seven years is this—you can always count on the members of this collective to bring things to your attention that you perhaps did not know existed. I’ve done this many times myself here, including when I wrote about the fact an anatomically correct GG Allin marionette exists, poop stains, and all dubbing him the “Masturbator of Puppets.” I still get a kick out of that wordplay because I am, as far as you know, a fifteen-year-old boy. Also, my DM colleague, the always intriguing Paul Gallagher posted about these gorgeous marionettes fashioned after rock and roll royalty last summer, and boy, did you all dig that (as you should).

Anyway, as people do, I recently spent too much time scrolling through my social media feeds and looking at old photos of Alice Cooper from the early 70s and BOOM. Suddenly there was a photo of Alice holding an Alice Cooper puppet by its little paddle control that pulls its strings, and the search to find out more began.

This brings us to Canadian artist (and stand-up metal fan, I might add) Darren Moreash—the self-dubbed “Geppeto” of Harrietsfield, Nova Scotia. And Moreash’s efforts have brought him good fortune. Apparently, when he was still dating his soon-to-be wife, he gifted her with an Alice Cooper marionette. In 2012, Cheap Trick used puppets Moreash made in their images for their video “I Want You For Christmas.” Of the countless marionettes Moreash has produced during his lifetime, he has been able to gift them to many of his childhood heroes like Lemmy Kilmister and Stan Lee.

Now, I have to say that my kid went through a phase when he was a little kiddo, during which he became quite enamored with marionettes. And I gotta say, they were a lot of fun to play with once you got the hang of making them move the way you wanted. If I had known about Moreash during that time period, I would absolutely be the proud owner of a David Bowie marionette that I would lie to people about, telling them it’s really for my kid. In the past, Moreash’s marionettes have been auctioned off for charity fetching as much as $500. Anyway, as it’s the photos you came here for so, I’ll stop jawing so you can keep scrolling and see some of Moreash’s marionettes. If you are curious, yes, it does appear that you can get in touch with Moreash and have one of his wooden creations for your very own, such as his latest, a marionette in honor of the Bernie Sanders mitten meme. More info on that, here.
 

Feel the BERN!
 

Booji Boy!
 

Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO wearing his red energy dome.
 

Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman.
 

 

Peter Gabriel.
 
Many more of Moreash’s marionettes after the jump…

 
While it’s true that nearly 100% of the articles and blog posts that you read—like this here very blog post—about Cathal Coughlan compare his voice to that of Scott Walker’s, would everyone say THAT if it wasn’t true? High praise indeed, but hey, if the shoe fits, wear it.

I was a big fan of Microdisney, the band Coughlan fronted in the 80s—and I did come at them as a Scott Walker fan wanting more of ‘that.’ One of the very, very best bands that Ireland has ever produced, the lush music of Microdisney sounded instantly classic to my ears—like Burt Bacharach’s stuff does—when I first heard it. Songs like “Loftholdingswood,” “Birthday Girl,” “Singer’s Hampstead Home” (allegedly about Boy George), “Are You Happy?” and my favorite by them, “Mrs. Simpson,” have that big, epic, cinemascope thing going on that the voice has no choice but to live up to. Coughlan’s trenchant lyrics were fascinating and emotionally evocative, but still open to interpretation enough that I could make them all about whatever woman I happened to be in love with or whatever was going on in my life at the time.

Admittedly I lost track of his post-Microdisney output until I became obsessed with a song of his called “Witches in the Water” that was part of The North Sea Scrolls, a whimsical alternate history lecture/musical made in collaboration with Luke Haines and Australian journalist/rock critic Andrew Mueller. (I won’t go off on a tangent about this album, but trust me, it’s a minor masterpiece and you really need to hear it. On Spotify and YouTube.)

Have a listen to “Witches in the Water,” and then get back to me. I’ll wait.
 

 
That song has everything, doesn’t it? Separates the boys from the men. I immediately made up for lost time with Fatima Mansions and Coughlan’s solo work, and I am happy to report that for the first time in a decade there will be a new Cathal Coughlan solo album coming out later this year, heralded by the release of this new video—which gets around COVID-19 lockdown music video cliches in a quite creative manner I thought—for the title track, “Song of Co-Aklan.”
 

 
It is extremely difficult to republish a long out of print book. I know this because I have actually done it myself. First off, a pre-computer era book was typeset by hand, so the text will not often exist as a digital file. This presents the option of either rekeying in an entire book, or else scanning in each page individually. Doing it with some sort of image-to-text OCR program only makes for introducing new problems. It’s a time consuming process and a pain in the ass. Anything beyond text such as illustrations and photographs need to be handled differently.

Which is why this exquisite recreation of the 1901 Theosophist publication Thought Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation is so noteworthy. This isn’t an example of merely putting out a new version of a book, but the complete recreation of the original object as it was 116 years ago. It’s beautiful. Although long out of print in its original form, and nearly forgotten, Thought Forms can be seen as an influential but overlooked link between esoteric thought and modern art. Certainly there’s been no other book like it, before or since.

The volume explored the ideas of the occult society as they related to art, specifically the notion that certain people—clairvoyants—could sense and see energy and emotions in the auras of human beings. A person of high character would have a “clear” aura, whereas a selfish, insensitive brute’s aura would be cloudy and so on. Theosophist leaders Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater dictated their clairvoyant “thought-forms” to a group of followers who created the beautiful and unusual 58 illustrations seen in the book.

Published by Sacred Bones Books, an imprint associated with the Sacred Bones record label, the principals involved originally set the project up on Kickstarter which was a resounding success:

We learned of Thought Forms a few years ago and it completely took us by surprise. This one book totally challenged the classic art history narrative that had been taught to in school. Not like we fundamentally believed that story, abstraction is found in all cultures—not just in western 20th century painting, but the genesis story of a few male painters “inventing” abstraction does have its truths.

In this narrative of Modernism, Wassily Kandinsky is widely viewed as one of the most important founders of abstraction, and his manifesto “On the Spiritual in Art” is mandatory reading in art school.

What was never mentioned to us in school however, was that Kandinsky was a member of the Theosophical Society, and had acquired a copy of their book Thought Forms a few years before he abandoned conventional ways of painting. Learning that Kandinsky didn’t just come upon these ideas on his own as previously thought, totally changed our understanding of his work. It’s worth mentioning that Piet Mondrian was also deeply influenced by Theosophy and later on, Jackson Pollock was as well.

Last year the Guggenheim held the first US retrospective of Hilma af Klint’s paintings. She was a member of the Theosophical Society and was undoubtedly influenced by the spiritualistic currents of the time. Theosophy was the first occult group to open its doors to women, and it deeply questioned gender roles, many of these ideas are also in Af Klint’s paintings. This show was one of the first times the all-male origin story of abstraction was challenged within the ivory tower. Af Klint, made these paintings before Kandinsky, and she was a woman. Thought Forms came out before Af Klint began her abstract paintings and it is certain that she must have come across this book.

We’re republishing this beautiful, overlooked book, so that it may be widely accessible and no longer omitted from the past. Thought Forms offers a reminder that the history of modernist abstraction and women’s contribution to it is still being written.

Theosophy’s motto seems as appropriate today as it did in 1880, “there is no religion higher than truth.”

The new publication of Thought Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation was edited by Lucy Lord Campana, with introductory essays from renowned spiritualism expert Mitch Horowitz, art historian Dr. Victoria Ferentinou of the University of Ioannina and Troy Conrad Therrien of the Guggenheim Museum and Columbia University. A few of the book’s illustrations follow.
 

 

 

 

 

 
From the Dangerous Minds archives, here’s a sizzling hot cult film to help keep you warm. Highly recommended!

I first heard about Armando Bo’s lusty 1969 Argentinian sexploitation movie Fuego (“Fire”) due to John Waters championing of the film. I’m always interested in seeing something—like Boom!—that John Waters is enthusiastic about and I reckon that quite a few of you feel the same way. If so, then you NEED to watch Fuego and you need to watch it now.

Trust me, it DOES. NOT. DISAPPOINT.

Fuego stars the outrageously hot, extremely well-endowed Isabel Sarli, who has the sort of “brick shithouse” build that Russ Meyer was so very fond of. Fuego and Meyer’s Vixen would actually make a great “ants in her pants” nymphomania double bill, but a more appropriate match-up might be Female Trouble and Fuego, which was obviously a big influence not only on John Waters, but also on Divine. Much of Dawn Davenport—the character’s fashion sense, walk and even her bouffant hairdo—would appear to be closely modeled on Isabel Sarli. Sarli was also an outrageously hammy actress and Divine just took her already over-the-top “undulating” acting style and turned the volume up to 11. If you are not at least curious to see the woman who inspired the divine Divine, why are you even reading this blog???

In Fuego, Sarli plays the sexually insatiable, irresistible Laura and in this role, lemme tell ya, she is perfectly cast. Laura is a completely uninhibited—if not completely unhinged—and naturally this gives Sarli plenty of excuses to doff her duds, which she does constantly and we see her engaged in trysts with both men (any man seems to do, her catchphrase—normally screamed—is “I NEED MEN!!!”) and with her older, lizard-like lesbian maid. A wealthy businessman named Carlos (director Armando Bo, who also wrote the script and the insanely incessant music) sees some girl-on-much-older-girl action on the beach and later attends a party at Laura’s boyfriend’s house. Soon Carlos is seeing Laura, but he has no idea what he’s gotten himself into. She roams the streets flashing her tits and he is constantly catching her in bed with other dudes. This happens a lot.
 

 
The first part of Fuego is where most of the naked flesh is shown, whereas the latter half is talkier, more melodramatic and way more NUTS. Laura realizes that her uncontrollable urges are causing her husband grief when he nearly kills an electrician he catches her bonking. They go to a sex expert to discuss what can be done about her “condition” but during the gynecological exam, Laura has a thundering orgasm. The pair travel all the way to New York where Carlos is told by a doctor there that the only thing that can save Laura is… his unwavering love. Well all right then!

I won’t tell you how it ends—hint: FUCKING CRAZY—but when you know in advance that Armando Bo and Isabel Sarli made 27 films together—with her rolling around naked in every single one of them—and that they were famously lovers for years (although he never left his wife for her), you can start to project all sorts of unhealthy psychological things onto Fuego. First off, Bo wrote the script and so he therefore wrote the cuckold role for himself. There’s also the voyeuristic aspect of Bo arranging to see his woman getting her tits out for so many other guys.

There’s a certain “cucky” subtext to Fuego, let’s just say and leave it at that.

Waters calls Fuego: “A hetero film for gay people to marvel at” and truly, it’s a movie that covers all the bases. I’d recommend watching it in a group. It’s enjoyable no matter what, but like most “so bad that it’s good” movies, experiencing it for the first time with a bunch of other people is the way to go. If you just saw Fuego cold, with no background information about it, it might take a while to figure out how you are supposed to react to it.

Armando Bo died in 1981 and Sarli stopped making films. She became a cult figure with a devoted following. Sarli was feted at Lincoln Center in 2010 and profiled in TIME magazine. In April 2018, John Waters presented Fuego in Argentina and got to meet Sarli. She died in 2019 at the age of 89.
 

 

 
In the clip below from his John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You show, the Fellini of Baltimore waxes poetic about one of his favorite films, and candidly admits that he “stole” a lot of stuff from Fuego:
 

 
If you’re an Iggy and the Stooges fan, you’ve surely heard their infamous live album, Metallic KO (1976). But did you know that, due to a technical error, the record was issued at the wrong speed and was off pitch? It would be decades before anyone noticed and the blunder was righted, but the tapes of the two shows that were edited down for the LP didn’t receive the same treatment. That’s all changed, and for the first time the full recordings of both gigs, including the Stooges’ tumultuous final show, can be heard in all their speed-corrected glory.

In the spring of 1973, Columbia Records released Raw Power after a long delay. The album justly received critical acclaim, but failed to sell. Also during this period, Iggy and the Stooges were dropped by their management company, Main Man, so things were not looking good. In July, needing money to survive, the guys hit the road, touring heavily, leading to what turned out to be their final show in February. By then, the Stooges’ contract with Columbia had been terminated.
 

Getting near the end: Opening for Slade in Cleveland on January 18th, 1974.

During the February 9th, 1974 gig at the Michigan Palace in Detroit, the crowd threw all sorts of objects at the Stooges, including ice cubes, lit cigarettes, coins, beer bottles, light bulbs, and eggs, all the while egged on by a defiant Iggy. Pop, incidentally, was dressed in a leotard and wearing a shawl fashioned as a skirt. They closed with an X-rated version of “Louie Louie,” leaving the stage as projectiles continued to fly towards them.

A burnt-out Iggy would soon leave the group and the Stooges were no more.

Metallic KO contains two shows that took place at the Michigan Palace. Side A has three songs from an October 6th concert at the venue, with the remaining three on Side B from the riotous February 9th gig. Both were taped on a four-track cassette recorder by Michael Tipton, a fan and friend of bassist Ron Asheton. Ron had a copy of the last show, which guitarist James Williamson borrowed and got to British rock journalist Nick Kent, who in turn put in the hands of Marc Zermati of Skydog Records, a French label. Scott Thurston, who played piano for the Stooges in their waning days, was the source for the October 6th tape. Metallic KO was released by Skydog in September 1976, with Iggy’s nihilistic, taunting banter and the Stooges’ savage songs influencing the burgeoning British punk movement. Lester Bangs famously wrote, “Metallic KO is the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings.”

Continues after the jump…

A shot of David Bowie on the set of ‘Bing Crosby’s Merrie Old Christmas,’ 1977.
 
Well, it’s about time 2020 actually gave us some good news. Though it’s not actually from Mars (BOO!), a David Bowie Monopoly-themed game does exist, and yes, you can have one.

The Thin White Duke’s version of Monopoly came out earlier this year, first via an exclusive distribution with UK site Booghe. Sometime around the end of the summer, it found its way across the pond and can be easily found on all kinds of U.S. e-commerce sites. Now that you know you can actually have one, here’s the scoop on the gameplay for this Ziggy-centric edition of Monopoly.

First, speaking as a collector of Monopoly board games, one of the things geeks like me look forward to are the game pieces, and wham-bam, thank you ma’am, the ones created for Bowie Monopoly do not disappoint. There is Major Tom, an astronaut helmet, a rolled-up tie for Bowie’s 1993 album Black Tie White Noise, and a replica of the hat Bowie wore as Pierrot in the video for “Ashes to Ashes” and on the cover of Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), designed by Natasha Korniloff. Of course, there is a lightning bolt in honor of Aladdin Sane, a star to signify Bowie’s musical swan song, Black Star, and a skull, which of course, was often a Hamlet-esque Bowie stage prop. SOLD? Right? Not yet because as the saying goes “But wait! There’s MORE!” is in full effect here as Bowie Monopoly bends Monopoly’s classic gameplay just like many other versions of Monopoly have done over time.

In the case of Bowie-Opoly, instead of buying property, the squares on the board represent albums from Bowie’s vast musical catalog. Once you own one of his albums, you can then build stages (instead of houses) and then stadiums (instead of hotels) to increase the “rent” paid when other players land on your square. Other play includes hitting up Bowie on tour and hiring your crew and other musicians to increase your star power and bank account. There are also Sound and Vision cards (like the Chance and Community Chest cards), which bring both good and bad fortune to players drawing from the deck.

It’s hard to conceive there might be a Bowie fan out there who also digs board games that would not want a Bowie-themed Monopoly game. I should know; I am one of those people currently waiting for their very own Bowie-Opoly to arrive. Images of the Queen Bitch of Monopoly games follow.
 

 

 

 

‘Oh You Pretty Things!’
 

 

David Bowie’s performance of ‘Heroes’ as shown on ‘Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas’ in 1977.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man!’: Axl Rose’s knuckle-brawl with David Bowie over a girl, 1989
‘She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind’: Goodbye David Bowie from Dangerous Minds
A night spent hanging out with David Bowie and Iggy Pop: Ivan Kral tells us what it was like
Beautiful images from David Bowie’s least favorite film role, 1978’s ‘Just a Gigolo’
Burn baby, burn: Did David Bowie REALLY torch his 360-ton ‘Glass Spider’ stage prop in 1987?
David Bowie, Dennis Hopper and/or Dean Stockwell bring blow to Iggy Pop in a psych ward, 1975

’Baba Yaga’ (Italy/France, 1973) 
 
Every year around this time, Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge extraordinaire Christian McLaughlin drastically cuts prices for his annual Black Xmas 50% Off Sale.

Anyway, my pal McLaughlin, a novelist and TV/movie writer and producer based in Los Angeles, is the maven of mavens when it comes to this sort of thing. You couldn’t even begin to stock a store like his if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for in the first place, and if you want a quick (not to mention rather visceral) idea of his level of deep expertise—and what a great eye he’s got—then take a gander at his world-beating selection of Italian giallo posters. Christian is what I call a “sophisticate.”

He’s got a carefully curated cult poster collection on offer that is second to none. His home is a shrine to lurid giallo, 70s XXX and any and every midnight movie classic you can shake a stick at. But why would you want to shake a stick at a bunch of movie posters to begin with? That would be pointless. And stupid.

The Westgate Gallery’s Black Christmas 50% off sale sees every item in stock at—you guessed it—50% off the (already reasonable) normal price. All you have to do is enter the discount code “BlackXmas2020” at checkout and your tab will be magically cut in half.

The selection below is only a very tiny sliver of what’s for sale at Westgategallery.com.
 

’Cinderella 2000’ (USA, 1977)
 

’Dead Alive’ (New Zealand, 1992)
 

’Exhausted’ (USA, 1981)
 

’Femmes de Sade’ (USA, 1976)
 

’Man Who Fell To Earth’ (USA/UK, 1976)
 
More after the jump…

 
I’ve posted here before about Luke Haines’ excellent Righteous in the Afternoon show broadcast every Tuesday on Boogaloo Radio. It’s a fun time for rock snobs and I highly recommend it. Anyway, tomorrow he’s got something special planned, not the usual record spinning he does, but an original radio play.

From the press release:

“A man can only see clearly when he has been blind drunk for 30 years.” – Lord Reith.

This is not the story of a man at the top of his game. This is the story of a man at the end of his game. Let’s call him Endgame Man. Endgame Man is aged somewhere in his 50s. Success has dabbled with him and has long been dabbling elsewhere. The last chance saloon closed on Sunday night and it’s now a nothing Tuesday afternoon. The action begins on a bench in a scrubby enclosure in front of an estate in North London. Endgame Man’s’ daily trip to the Costcutter makes Captain Willards journey down the Nung River look like a gentle punt down The Cam.

‘Test Driving The New Prius’ is a 35 minute radio play (with sound effects) written and performed by Jim Fry (Earl Brutus, Pre New) and Luke Haines. (The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof ) Just as that other modernist masterpiece Ulysses depicted a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, Test Driving The New Prius follows the life in a daze of Endgame Man. In this tale of derring-do our hero acts out a perilous adventure in the 400 yards between his home, his local pub and the off-licence. With nervous system reduced to a series of involuntary twitches and reality reduced to a background hum of decades of half absorbed mindless daytime TV wittering. Can Endgame Man get home and make it through to Wednesday with only his spirit familiars – an endless trail of 75cl bottles of Glen’s vodka to guide him? Tune in to Boogaloo Radio at 2pm (9am EST) on the 8th December to find out.

Cast:

Jim Fry
Luke Haines
Scott King

With cameos from* Jayne MacDonald, Brian Eno, Martin Degville and the cast of Blankety Blank (1980).

*Sort of.

Broadcast on Boogaloo Radio at 2pm and 3pm (9am and 10am EST) on December 8th, then afterwards available to buy on cassette tape via Industrial Coast.

“Smash the System” from 2016

 
In April 2017, we told you the incredible story of the talented singer/songwriter Richard Goldman and the LPs of his material that were put out without his knowledge. Both records were released as part of tax shelter deals in 1977. The albums are testaments to his knack for writing and performing clever, catchy songs, but in addition to not being asked if his works could be used on those records, Richard received no financial compensation. Forty-plus years later, these injustices are finally being righted with Numero Group’s issuing of Sweethearts Deluxe, the first authorized collection of Richard’s recordings that were included on tax shelter albums.
 

 
To celebrate the release, which is out today, we’re reposting part one of our 2017 article on Richard Goldman and the shady world of “tax scam records.”

*****

“Tax scam records” is a phrase that was coined by collectors to identify albums that are believed to have been manufactured for the sole purpose of—get this—losing money. From around 1976 until 1984, a number of record labels were established as tax shelters, with investors putting their money into albums. A financier would invest, say, $20,000 in an LP, and if it tanked, the backer could claim a loss on their taxes, based on the assessed value of the master recording. Technically, the practice was legal, but to maximize the write-off, the appraisal was often grossly inflated—as high as seven figures.

The I.R.S would come to question the legitimacy of some of these labels, and accuse those promoting shelters that focused on tax benefits—rather than the music being bankrolled—of perpetuating fraud.

Anything was seemingly fair game for a tax shelter album, including LPs previously issued as private press records, demo tapes by aspiring artists, and studio outtakes by name acts. Some labels were so brazen, they released albums using material by groups as big as Led Zeppelin and the Beatles.
 

Album of Beatles Christmas messages, 1981

Another issue that caught the attention of the I.R.S., was how little to no money was put into marketing these releases. Over time, collectors came to realize that relatively few copies of individual tax shelter albums had made it into stores. It’s believed that most of the LPs went directly to a warehouse or were simply destroyed. Many of these records are so scarce that only a handful of copies are known to exist.

Sometimes the artists knew about the release and were compensated, but more often than not, they had no idea. The singer-songwriter Richard Goldman is an artist in which the latter applies. Though getting ripped off isn’t unusual in the music business, his story is a fantastic one—even in the strange universe of “tax scam records.”

In late 1970, with dreams of making it in the music business, a 20-year-old Richard Goldman moved from his hometown of New Rochelle, New York to Los Angeles. “I wanted to be Jimmy Webb,” Richard told me recently (other inspirations include witty songsmith, Harry Nilsson; alt-country pioneer, Gram Parsons; and pop titans, the Beatles). His goal was to be a behind the scenes figure, thinking he would have a longer career as songwriter, rather than as a performer, as they tended to have shorter lifespans. But he wasn’t averse to playing his songs in public.
 

 
Richard became a fixture of the weekly open mic night at the Troubadour, then the hottest venue for singer-songwriters. After one such a set at the club, he was approached by an impressed member of the audience, Sam Weatherly, who became Richard’s manager and producer. Weatherly paid for demo sessions, which enabled Richard to record studio-quality versions of the songs he had been writing. For a session that took place at Sunset Sound, Weatherly brought in a musician by the name of George Clinton to play piano on a few tracks. Yep, the George Clinton.
 

 
Weatherly, who was older, “wasn’t just my manager,” Richard says today. “He was like a parent.” Richard would head over to Weatherly’s house often to have dinner, watch football, or play the board game Risk. Weatherly and his wife were like Richard’s west coast family.

In 1975, Richard recorded at the famed Sound City Studios. He’d actually recorded there a couple of years prior, and was invited back by one of the owners, Joe Gottfried. The engineer for the sessions, Fred Ampel, had taken on the managerial role in Richard’s career. By this time, Weatherly and Richard had drifted apart, though the circumstances are now unclear. Richard was thrilled to be recording again at Sunset Sound. “You knew you were in a very cool place.” Fleetwood Mac were right across the hall, and Lindsay Buckingham caught a playback of one of Richard’s songs, “Sinatra’s Car.” Buckingham expressed his admiration for the tune, noting that the bridge sounded Beatlesesque. He even lent a hand, overdubbing a bit of bass for a particularly tricky section of the track. “It was a thrill to watch,” remembers Richard. “He was ripped on pot but absolutely flawless on bass.”
 
Continues after the jump…