The Masked Marauders More or Less Hudson s Bay Again
The history of rock'n'curl is littered with great scams and practical jokes that took on a life of their own; I give you Klaatu (they're actually The Beatles!) and the cracking 1969 bout of America past The Zombies (two separate bands toured the States at the aforementioned time, and neither was the existent Zombies, who had broken up). And of course at that place are Self Portrait and Metallic Machine Music, both of which stand as nifty applied jokes regardless of their makers' truthful intentions.
But the grandaddy of all rock'n'coil swindles is the 1969 "homemade" The Masked Marauders, which supposedly documents a tiptop-secret supersession involving John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and other notables held at a height-secret location near Hudson Bay, Canada, which was supposedly produced by (it only figures) Mr. Supersessions himself, Al Kooper.
The whole affair started innocently plenty with a practical joke of a record review concocted by Rolling Stone scribe Greil Marcus, merely before long took on the dimensions of a conspiracy straight out of the mind of Thomas Pynchon. Writing under the pseudonym of T.M. Christian (swiped from Terry Southern'due south The Magic Christian), Marcus penned a review of the nonexistent homemade in which he extolled its myriad virtues, which included Dylan "displaying his new deep bass voice" on a embrace of "Knuckles of Earl" and an eighteen-infinitesimal version of "Flavor of the Witch" on which Bobby "does a superb imitation of early Donovan." The same song, gushed Marcus, "is highlighted past an astonishing jam between bass and piano, both played past Paul McCartney."
The sham might accept ended there, but fate had other plans. An excited public wanted to know where it could find The Masked Marauders, and an emboldened Marcus (along with Rolling Rock editor Langdon Winner) went the next mile by sending San Francisco's Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band into the studio to record a few singles from the imaginary album including the same "Duke of Earl," the Stones parody "I Tin't Become No Nookie," and the Nashville Skyline parody "Cow Pie."
These songs actually got airplay in San Francisco and Los Angeles, stone fans grew fifty-fifty more frantic to get their hands on the real thing, and the practical joke took a third and perchance inevitable turn when a bidding war erupted amongst clued-in labels eager to produce an actual LP. Warners won, the fantastical became real, and The Masked Marauders was snatched up by eager listeners (over 100,000 in number!) left to rue T.Grand. Christian'due south merry pranksterish words in the album'south liner notes: "In a world of sham, The Masked Marauders, bless their center, are the genuine article."
I say rue because it wasn't until Subsequently they bought the album that buyers were alerted to the fact that they'd been had; the liner notes (and the LP itself) fabricated clear the whole thing was nothing just an elaborate hoodwink. Heir-apparent response was probably summed up best by the guy on the LP's concluding rail "Saturday Night at the Moo-cow Palace" who grumbles, "I paid 5 dollars and fourscore-six cents for a tape that has Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and an umbilical chord. Plus Mick Jagger. And what do I get? This piece of shit!"
And the poor guy isn't far off the marking, considering fifty-fifty equally parody records go The Masked Marauders own't all that. Bated from the truly astounding "I Can't Get No Nookie" (best Stones vocal always!), the goofy "Knuckles of Earl" (which has more than heart and soul than anything Dylan himself plopped down on Cocky Portrait), and the could-almost-be-a-Basement-Tapes song "More or Less Hudson's Bay Again" none of these joke songs stand out, although the country Dylan trifle "Cow Pie" affords some small pleasance if simply because it's so on the mark.
The album'due south besetting shortcoming is its lack of adept impersonations. The guy who does Mick is pretty good, the guy who does Bob is passable at best, and as for Beatles John, George, and Paul they're basically missing in action. As a result, the covers of "The Book of Love" and the Cellos' novelty striking "I Am the Japanese Sandman" have no context; if I can't hear anybody fifty-fifty attempting to sound like some famous somebody on vocals, why are they on the record?
The 10-minute "Season of the Witch" is a parody of "supersessions" song bloat, and both "Bob" and "Mick" do their best to liven things up. If Bob sounds tired rather than inspired, Mick gets some practiced lines off; he introduces himself past saying, "Uh, cheers very much ladies and gentlemen!" and tosses off the hilarious line, "I expect in the mirror in the morning and I…/I wonder who lives inside my face." Meanwhile the band noodles, the guitarist serves up what Robert Christgau has proclaimed the "world's worst guitar solo," and we're left with a quandary. The vocal, meant to be a send-up of the artistic excesses of the extended jam, becomes but another overlong case of the extended jam, and it would accept taken a whole lot of slap-up one-liners to brand "Season of the Witch" a memorable piece of satire.
"More or Less Hudson's Bay Again" splits the deviation between Blonde on Blonde and The Basement Tapes; the group vocals and country-style guitar are happy-making enough, and the lyrics are a hoot. "I been hiding in the basement/Trying to figure out a way/To get the doctor off my case/He'due south trying to accept me put away" sing the boys, before calculation the tip-off line "Not overlooking Hudson's Bay."
Which leaves us with the album's simply existent contribution to the rock'n'roll canon, "I Can't Get No Nookie." The Stones impersonation is dead on, and the vocal is cracking; from the slide guitar to the pianoforte to the maracas the boys accept the Stones' loosy-goosey sexual frustration sound down common cold. And Mick is in tiptop grade; he plays some fine harmonica, throws in a trademark scream, and bequeathes us the immortal Jaggerism, "I went into a room/And she was lying on the bed, yeah yep/And I said hey baby/Will you give me a little head?"
In the end concept exceeds grasp, but I'm not sure anybody could have delivered the goods promised past Marcus in his review. And in its own way the album is just as is it should be, considering the point Marcus was making (I think) was that none of the "supersessions" and then in faddy at the time could have lived upwardly to their hype; the results of such jams were bound to exist less than the sum of their brand proper name participants. I recollect seeing a Brian Auger Meets Jimi Hendrix LP in the $1.99 cutting-out bin at Woolworths when I was a mere sprog, and I also clearly recollect thinking even then that it was a rip-off.
The whole concept of the supergroup was evolving; everybody figured that if you could simply cram plenty famous people into 1 studio and allow them do what comes naturally the results would accident your head off. When the truth is that the unsatisfied buyer to be heard muttering virtually existence ripped off on "Saturday Night at the Cow Palace" would almost certainly have been just as unhappy with the Real McCoy.
GRADED ON A Bend:
B
(Is for Artificial)
Source: https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/2018/04/graded-on-a-curve-the-masked-marauders-the-masked-marauders/
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