Tandyn Almer ?

[rn57]

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4088949186754&set=p.4088949186754&type=1&theater

reproduces an old clipping from KRLA Beat, in 1966, which has a photo of young, seemingly cheerful Tandyn...and the complete lyrics of "Sunset Strip Soliloquy," one of the tracks on his upcoming Sundazed CD of demos. (Nobody ever recorded a commercial release.) I noticed the lyrics pretty much have the same metrical pattern as Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."  The line "someone's spiked the sugar down at Ben Frank's" is bound to draw a nostalgic sigh from certain of our SS'ers.

Tomorrow, Tandyn's memorial service happens at a funeral home a few miles from his place. And from that point the search for his saga will likely begin. The Washington Post is apparently going to do either a regular obit or one of their longer features on a deceased local of note, which generally run a month to six week's after the person's passing. I have the strong feeling that right now across the pond the editors at Mojo and Shindig magazines are being pestered by a few bright young ink or cyberink stained wretches looking to get their teeth in this story.

To finish up, Uncle Ray singing "Sail On Sailor."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dWzSPf0Y30

[KittyKat]

Tandyn must have been living a tough life at the end. Out of curiosity, I looked up his Facebook page, and one of his public posts was about being bitten by a bedbug and winding up in hospital care for a month for it, then leaving the hospital against doctor's advice. That was posted in November. He must have been in very compromised health to have had to stay in hospital care that long for a bedbug bite, and still not have been well. Perhaps leaving the hospital wasn't wise. He also mentioned not only having bedbugs in his apartment, but roaches as well. That isn't a good environment for someone with respiratory issues. It made me really sad to read that. He was a talented man and it's too bad he didn't have a better life or more money to afford better living conditions and better health care for himself.

[Michael Edwards Love]

Found this write-up (not sure of historical accuracy, but it's a nice tribute) on patheos:  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/feastofeden/2013/01/the-psychodramas-and-the-traumas-gone-the-songs-are-left-unsung-tandyn-almer-1942-2013/

[rn57]

I was at Tandyn's service yesterday - and despite being pretty under the weather, ended up addressing the two dozen people there for a few minutes.

 (With the exception of me, Dawn Eden, a guy who deejays at DC's Black Cat club,  and Tandyn's sister-in-law, they consisted entirely of people who came to know him after he moved East in '77.)

Some answers to this puzzle started to come. Too many strands to start tying together here - but yes, SS'ers, the story of how he came to be the way he was - and this he has in common with Syd Barrett - started long before he dropped some acid and wrote "Along Comes Mary."

But unlike Syd, he never let his axes gather dust.  He was at it to the very end. Even when uncontrollable hand tremors damaged his keyboard prowess (which must have been considerable - it was said he could play the most complex Joplin and Lamb rags as offhandedly as if he were doing the Minute Waltz), he had his computer programmed to keep composing.

I was told that in the trunk of a car in the parking lot of the funeral home, there sat a half-dozen cardboard boxes - each filled to the brim with tapes, mainly recorded on a four-track cassette setup, but apparently a few reel to reels too.  I keep my cassettes in these type of boxes and my estimate is that there could have been up to a thousand tapes in that trunk. That's about a month and ten days of nonstop music there. A young Virginian musician who was a sort of protege of Tandyn's will be digitizing them.

I was told that Tandyn, all the time he was in the DC area, had some kind of home-studio setup going...and had the machine rolling more often than not when he was at the keyboard. And he told people he'd had the same thing going in LA. 

OK, let's get to the subject heading. Today at 4 pm Pacific (7 pm Eastern) at luxuriamusic.com, Andrew Sandoval will be devoting the second half of his show to Tandyn. Plenty of obscurities - including stuff that ain't on Youtube - and of course Marcella and SOS.

Andrew just put a photo which I've linked to below - Tandyn in the desert around the time he was working with Brian. It was mentioned at the service that although he didn't often discuss it, he was 1/32 Menimonee Indian and intensely proud of that fact.  You can kind of see that heritage in this pic.

[Lowbacca]

Thank you for the report, rn57.

These are the times when I simply love this board.

[Don Malcolm]

Thanks to all who provided their insights and those great links (the lovely tribute essay and particularly RPR's You Tube links--it had been years since I'd heard The Action's cover of "Shadows and Reflections"--just a killer version of a great song).

Never a dull moment around the old house on Bellagio, that's fo' sho'!  

RIP Mr. Almer--let's hope that much of what the young Virginia musician will be legatizing can make its way to us, so that we'll get a fuller picture of your always intriguing work.

[rn57]

All right, the Luxuria Music tribute to Tandyn is podcast at these links:

http://www.luxuriamusic.com/podcasts/come-to-the-sunshine/1-14-2013

http://www.luxuriamusic.com/podcasts/come-to-the-sunshine/1-14-2013-0

Andrew Sandoval gets the tribute underway at about 49 minutes into the first link. It goes on until about 25 minutes into the second link. The only BBs track played was Marcella.

 (As I was saying on the Luxuria chat board....I wonder if any of our intrepid chroniclers can ever track down the REAL Marcella now because, after what was said about Tandyn at the service, I'm very curious about what the hell he'd be up to in an East Hollywood "massage" parlor. I know what Brian would be doing.)

Some quite rare tracks were played. "Anything You Want" by the Sure Cure - an extremely scarce record made by a band led by a guy who's nowadays a pretty respected upstate NY bluesman - shows off Tandyn's Left Banke-y side.

Also played was the original demo of "Victims Of Chance," later covered on the Crazy People and (naturally) Victims Of Chance LPs emanating from the J. Kitchen madhouse.  I thought those versions were weird, but Tandyn's demo tops them. It really sounds like he, or whoever was in charge of the session from his publisher, thought that this was material that would interest Al Martino or Jerry Vale or, um, Frank Sinatra - Junior.  That kind of arrangement, tempo, backing vocals. It's one of the tracks that will be on the Sundazed CD.

Plus a lot of the stuff posted here already - Peter & The Wolves's "Little Girl Lost & Found," "Poor Old Organ Grinder," both sides of the Paper Fortress, "Shadows & Reflections."