Mark Volman, a.k.a. The Phlorescent Leech, or “Flo” for short, has gone west. He was 78.
You may remember Volman from The Turtles. Or p’raps from Flo & Eddie, his two-man band with fellow ex-Turtle Howard Kaylan, a change of identity required in 1970 when they got sideways with their label and were contractually forbidden to perform as either The Turtles or even under their own names.
As a teenage weirdo in the magical Seventies I recall a mentor at the Colorado Springs Sun, Bill McBean, turning me on to Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention — specifically, their “Fillmore East — June 1971” album, which includes, as the wrapup to an insane musical tale of Seattle’s Edgewater Inn, a mud shark, and the Vanilla Fudge, a stellar performance of The Turtles’ No. 1 hit from 1967, “Happy Together.”
“Wow,” sez I, or something very much like that (it was the Seventies, after all). “That’s an excellent take on that old Turtles tune.”
“No shit,” replies Bill. “That’s Flo & Eddie you’re hearing.”
Further explanation was required — thank Dog for mentors — but I eventually came to understand that former Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan were now Flo & Eddie and rockin’ with The Mothers.
Talk about happy together. It still rocks, a half-century down the road.
Peace to Flo, his family, friends, and fans.
Mad Blog Media 
Damn. The next big Woodstock event will be up in the sky.
Tom “One Toke Over the Line” Shipley shoved off too.
Speaking of music, check out “The King’s Blues Club” on YouTube. The “creator” says these are their ideas that create the music. They didn’t create shit. All of it is AI generated. Total bullshit that these posers are getting paid for this shit. It shows you where the billionaire club that dines in the concrete rose garden is taking us. They want it ALL.
The billionaires will split the take with the lawyers as actual artists sue over the theft of their work by these digital buccaneers. See Flo & Eddie v. De La Soul. F&E sued (and settled) over the hip-hop group’s sampling of Turtles music.
“Information wants to be free,” etc. Rent, groceries, and health care do not.
In my lifetime we’ve seen technology make a wide variety of arts and crafts possible for people who might have had the imagination but lacked the necessary skills to make their dreams reality. Journalism, book publishing, graphic/fine arts, music, movies, TV, what have you.
Shoot, I wouldn’t have gone back to fiddling with photography, audio, and video if the hardware and software hadn’t improved so quickly and dramatically that pretty much any ol’ Irish knucklehead could look competent at the touch of a button or the flipping of a switch.
Now we’ve reached a point where the tech will do it all for you while you slouch on the throne and watch. Every man a king. “You may amuse us. …”
By “throne” do you mean the Thundermug we mostly visit in the morning? Many moons ago we rented a house that had the bathroom in the basement. When you walked in, you’d see the Thundermug and bathtub were both raised up a full 18 inches off the floor so “things” had a fighting chance of going downward and staying down. Of course we decorated the toilet with proper trappings of a Royal Throne.
Our rental was the lowest place in the neighborhood sewer system and one day the power went down, the line pumps too, the “check valve” failed and I’ll leave the rest to you in case you are eating a meal as you read.
Flush twice, it’s a long way to Leavenworth.
Rikers more better.
At this point parking his fat ass in any place with bars and bad hombres would suit me just fine.
I’d be happy if he was exiled to any golf resort of his choice as long as he stays away from politics, the media spotlight, large business dealings and future sex exploitation. If the stars aligned and a powerful deity stepped in to insure it’s implementation, perhaps we could throw in Putin as his caddy.
Check this out by Mike Ferrentino at NSMB: https://nsmb.com/articles/100/
My man MF brings the Wisdom. He’s one of the few people still worth reading in This Thing of Ours.
He may be a tad off the mark about photographers. They have to lug a ton of gear around everywhere, shoot a brazilian images (how many is a “brazilian,” anyway?) to sell one, and then have to wait 30 days to get paid not very much while some tool on the money side crops the shit out of their horizontal images to make them look better on a phone.
An old pal, a pro shooter since way back, recently called it quits and the only thing he really misses about the work is the travel. He was also an invaluable source of news tips, because he genuinely enjoyed bike racing and the people involved, and he paid attention to what was going on around him while collecting his excellent images.
But yeah, writing: Best love it or find something else you do love, or at least something that will put food on the table. Most people can’t write or read, and it’s only gonna get worse. Just check out the evil tidings from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, “long regarded as the nation’s most reliable, gold-standard exam.” So not only will you be writing for very little money, you will be writing for people who can’t read.
Like Mike, I love writing, and I wish I hadn’t taken that long detour into copy editing, because there were long years, many, many of them, when I didn’t write a single, solitary word under my own byline. I finally got back into writing in the Eighties, and by the time I retired I was down to two gigs — writing for Adventure Cyclist and cartooning for Bicycle Retailer, my two favorite things to do for money other than finding it in the sofa cushions.
A few years later I’m down to writing, period, which suits me just fine. Turns out I love it even more than cartooning. Who knew? I’m up to 3,785 posts in this iteration of WordPress, all of them unpaid. That’s how much I love writing — I’ll even do it for free.
“How much is brazilian anyway?” It’s roughly equivalent to a metric shit ton, except it has a 50% tariff on it.
It’s a typo in the “good old days” that AI didn’t catch! 🙂
A good editor would have, while missing the true meaning of the piece! 🙂
I always get a bang out of reading Señor Ferrentino. We used to see each other now and then, usually during Interbike. What a gent, and what a writer.
Slinging word count for a bike mag Back in the Day® was like serving in a pirate fleet. We didn’t always get our fair share of the treasure, but we sure got to swing the ol’ cutlasses around. Aharr. …
Tariffs and deals, deals and tariffs. This administration makes a North Vegas rub-and-tug parlor look like a Southern Baptist church.