MARCO ROSSI – The Sincerest Form Of Flattery (2023, CD/8” Lathe Cut Fruits de Mer Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Fruits de Mer Records

Format: 8”, Lathe Cut, Limited Edition, Black Vinyl

Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition

Release Date: 29 May 2023

Fruits de Mer Records presents Marco Rossi! Marco Rossi is…  One man alone in a bedroom… Marco Rossi takes time out from his reviewing duties at Shindig! magazine to lock himself away in his son’s bedroom and recreate a dozen slices of 60s Psychedelia, armed only with his home recording gear, a 13-tog duvet, and a love for the music. “The Sincerest Form Of Flattery” contains 12 cover versions. The first 4 are released into a super limited lathe cut 8-inch vinyl single, while all 12 of them are on the normal standard CD Album… Firstly let’s have a look at all the interesting info that Keith (FdM Records) shared with us:

After a cold, wet, windy, and generally pretty miserable winter, what better way to welcome the summer than with an album’s-worth of positive vibes from the summer of love – and a year or two either side of that – perfect for driving long country roads with the windows wound down, drowning out the sounds of grime coming from within the BMW coming in the other direction.
I happened upon a couple of tracks, posted by Marco just for fun on Facebook, and within a day or so a CD and lathe-cut were born!
Over to Marco to explain the album…“The cover versions on ‘The Sincerest Form Of Flattery’ came about almost by accident. I’ve been recording an album of original material in my eldest son’s old bedroom, and I’ve been enjoying the process so much that I’ve been inventing excuses to do as much recording as time and circumstance will allow. On the one hand, this has helped me to familiarize myself with various processes and procedures, although I’ll cheerfully admit that my numb nuts approach would probably give any serious sound engineer palpitations. I’m only using one mic for everything, a well-gigged and almost terminally-fucked SM58, but I like the way it sounds. It’s a limitation in one sense, but also one less thing to think about when my mind is already brimming with other stuff.
I didn’t deviate from the originals to any great degree, for the most part. These songs emphatically weren’t broke, so there was no need to fix them; and nor would I have the temerity to think I could do so. ‘Get Together’ is almost certainly the best-known song here, but I felt compelled to have a go at it because it exemplifies the mindset that underscores everything I did. Compassion and togetherness are more than hippy platitudes. ‘What this song needs is a big old Tom Verlaine-style guitar solo’, I reasoned. It really doesn’t, but I tacked one on regardless”…

Here’s the tracklist:

8″EP
1. Ivy Ivy (originally by The Left Banke)
2. My Friend (Spirit)
3. LA (Orange Bicycle)
4. Forget All About It (The Nazz)

CD album:
1. Ivy Ivy (originally by The Left Banke)
2. My Friend (Spirit)
3. LA (Orange Bicycle)
4. Forget All About It (The Nazz)
5. Trust (The Peppermint Trolley Company)
6. Let’s Get Together (The Youngbloods)
7. Here’s Where You Belong (PF Sloan)
8. Someday Man (Paul Williams)
9. Pretty Song from ‘Psych-Out’ (Strawberry Alarm Clock)
10. That’s Alright (NRBQ)
11. Come To Me (The Association)
12. In The Past (We The People)

So, “The Sincerest Form Of Flattery” is a super cool album and if I had to choose up to 3 personal favorites then I’ll have to go with “LA” (originally by Orange Bicycle), a groovylicious and pretty close to the original version, full of energy and excitement! The 2^nd one would be the cool n’ dynamic reinterpretation of “In The Past” (originally by We The People) and the 3^rd one would be the version of “Let’s Get Together” (originally by The Youngbloods), a full-on-effects, quite hippie-delic, and cool as f@ck version! A reinterpretation that can surely make it to the TOP10 UK Singles chart, giving new breath to this amazing all-time-great Hippie track!

In conclusion, the 3 facts that impressed me the most are; This is a One-man-alone-in-the-bedroom thing, and to be honest, that is not obvious, not at all! It’s very hard to believe that everything is played by a single person, and that’s the biggest achievement of this release! Maybe a few tracks needed a better “mastering” (or whatever) but for “bedroom music” this is astonishingly good! Lastly, I have to mention the choice of the cover songs. Bands like The Association, The Nazz, Spirit, or The Youngbloods are “obvious” or “common” but Orange Bicycle, Paul Williams, Peppermint Trolley, or NRBQ are bands/artists not so well-known and Marco deserves a big “thank you” and “respect”… Anyway, “The Sincerest Form Of Flattery” is a gem and a rather Eclectic release! TimeLord Michalis