Songs Of The Day 6/18/2013: Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports - "Can't Get My Motor To Start" + "I'm A Mineralist"

Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports has to be one of the most misleading band names of all time. For one thing all sports are non-fictional, except for Rollerball, professional wrestling and, of course, curling. Yes, Pink Floyd's Nick Mason is indeed the drummer for Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports, but aside from being "assistant engineer" and playing some auxiliary instruments, that's pretty much all he does for the group. NMFS was actually a front for avant-jazz composer Carla Bley, who wrote all the songs, and the rest of the unit is in effect a supergroup of a bunch of left-of-center music people - vocalist Robert Wyatt, guitarist Chris Spedding, NRBQ keyboardist Terry Adams, bizarro winds player Gary Windo, and a whole bunch of horn players and vocalists. They're Monsters Of Strange. They apparently named themselves after Nick Mason to take advantage of the Pink Floyd association for marketing reasons. Which was kind of a stretch, because almost nobody outside of progressive rock circles would free-associate Pink Floyd with Nick Mason before Roger Waters or David Gilmour. Hell, Syd Barrett might've even gotten more votes at that time.

But that didn't make Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports a bad album, quite the contrary: It's one of the most fun things Bley ever did and an enjoyable Pink Floyd-related curio. I couldn't decide if I preferred the goofy "Can't Get My Motor To Start" or the somewhat disquieting "I'm A Mineralist" (complete with a musical joke about Philip Glass), so you get a two-for-Tuesday deal today.

For the Paul Pearson blog, I'm Kurt Loder. Well -- okay, I'm actually Paul, but Loder's got the name recognition. Everyone wants a chunk of the Loder Mystique.