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It should’ve happened… multiple hits, a massive career, world recognition and all the rest.

 

Tommy Flanders

It should’ve happened… multiple hits, a massive

career, world recognition and all the rest. Little

is known about Tommy Flanders… he may still

be alive, but what’s the dope?

In 1969 Verve/Forecast issued his lone work of

audio art, the Moonstone. As one sound observant

described it, Flanders’ Moonstone was a work

of bizarre, ominous, spooky, droning, minor key folky-isms. Did you get a fix on that? For sliver be it of

existential angst, give a listen…some of the footprints from this rare collection–that may never have

even been “officially” released—exist in the manner of promotion copies…and on youtube.

What little we do know of Flanders is that for a flash he was involved in the East Coast answer to the

Grateful Dead, the Blues Project; featuring members, Danny Kalb, Steve Katz (students of Dave Von

Ronk, “the Mayor of MacDougal Street,” the basis of flakey flick Inside Liewyn Davis). Flanders made

a fleeting appearance on a few tracks on the Projects’ initial album, Live at the Café Au-Go-Go. Before

his voyage into public darkness his voice graced the Blues Projects’ collectible “Violets of Dawn” 45.

Give a listen…while in the void try his lone single, “Reputation,” reportedly arranged/conducted by

Frank

Zappa.