Daddy-O Smooth & Horsefly

[Bill Floyd]

Vision of a time before he was born: His father (or some other kid like his father) up past his bedtime, cross-legged on a narrow bed, radio turned down low, or maybe with one of those flesh-colored mono earpieces jacked into his cauliflower ear beneath a buzz cut.  His grandparents disapproving of his father listening to what they referred to as the "colored" station.

DJs in a dim studio spinning 45s and talking jive, the air thick with cigarette smoke, impenetrable as patois, riding the airwaves out into that fabled sultry American night, boppin' hep cats throwing dozens, gibberish interpretable only to those in the know.

Bobby socks & roller skates & furtive backseat grapplings at the drive-in, water cannons & tapped phones & shakedowns & copious amounts of Valium, a great disruption just over the horizon, napalm & LSD & a failed uprising that would set the stage for preppies & Reagan & misbegotten nostalgia for a fey innocence we were dying to lose.

But for tonight lean in close to your radio, snap your fingers and try to memorize Horsefly's mush-mouth shoutin'.  Take heart in the knowledge that there will never come a time when this doesn't sound just like rock 'n' roll.       

http://youtu.be/AyqWV42woE4 

[Mike Handley]

Mission accomplished: I got there from here. THANKS for the link, bro. 

[Brad Rose]

Wow this is terrific.  It recalls my memories of my own experience, although slightly later in the hsitoric period.  I grew up in LA and the guys who would later become the Firesign Theater did a radio show that felt like it was broadcast from another planet.  It let me know that experimental rock and low down blues were out there somewhere in the universe, and that the counterculture was real.  Like a little religion, it offered this teenager a utopian hope that there could be another cultural world--one that loomed larger and was more portentous than the one offered by early 60s suburban whitebread culture. 

[Gita]

I was wondering why patios would be impenetrable. Then I decided you must have meant patois!

Love the Macy jive talk. Damn I miss real live DJs. Now all we get is canned Clear Channel. Except radio station WRFG in Atlanta. They still have the real thing.

[Bill Floyd]

First heard this on a friend's box set.  The artist is listed as Macy Skipper, a white dude who played surf & rockabilly, but I swear the vocals must be some free-styling DJs in the Wolfman Jack mode.  The internet is atypically silent on the subject of Mssrs. Smooth & Fly, so if anyone out there knows anything more about them, fill me in, 'cause this shit's awesome.