Finding Comfort

Originally posted January 4, 2010

Sometime during the holiday weekend, I stopped at It’s Psych, a music board that generally focuses on the music of the 1960s and 1970s. One of my fellow music fans had posted an interesting question:

“You’ve just had one of those days. You know . . .  On such occasions what album or group of songs do you turn to for comfort or just escape?”

It’s an interesting question. And there were some interesting answers posted before I got there. Among the albums suggested were Beatles For Sale; Tin Tin’s 1970 work, Astral Taxi; Emitt Rhodes’ self-titled album from 1970, and Nick Lowe’s Pure Pop For Now People.

Some singles were mentioned, too. A few of them were “The Letter” by the Box Tops, “Friday On My Mind” by  the Easybeats, “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Harper’s Bizarre, “Everything Is Sunshine” by the Hollies, “Spirit In The Sky” by Norman Greenbaum, “Downtown” by Petula Clark, “Jam Up Jelly Tight” by Tommy Roe, “Hooked On A Feeling” by Blue Swede and “Sit Down I Think I Love You” by the Buffalo Springfield.

A couple of readers suggested, without naming albums or individual tracks, music from the Jam, the English Beat, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, and Aerosmith.

And one poster said, “And then there is the one song that has almost never failed to cheer me up: “Here Comes The Sun” by the Beatles. I have heard it 100’s of times and it rarely fails. In fact the whole Abbey Road album is something of a comfort . . .  Not sure why.”

I felt compelled, of course, to add my nickel’s worth of comment to the thread. I began: “If I’m really in sad shape, I head for my small classical library. I don’t want anything with lyrics on really bad days.”

And that’s true. Among the classical pieces I turn to are Antonín Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 in E Minor “From The New World” as well as Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances; Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor; Johann Sebastian Bach’s series of Brandenburg Concerti; Bedrich Smetana’s “Vltava” (also called “The Moldau”); Johannes Brahms’ Hungarian Dances and that marvelous warhorse of the classical repertoire, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”

There are plenty of other classical pieces and composers whose work I enjoy, but those listed are the ones I turn to for comfort on those days when . . . well, when words bring no solace.

But, I added in my post, “If I’m just a little blue, well, these are some of the old friends” I turn to:

The Band by The Band
Second Contribution by Shawn Phillips
Trouble No More by Darden Smith
Bare Trees by Fleetwood Mac
Tango in the Night by Fleetwood Mac
Tunnel of Love by Bruce Springsteen
Hard Again by Muddy Waters
The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions
All Things Must Pass by George Harrison (“Apple Jam” excluded)
East of Midnight by Gordon Lightfoot
Shadows by Gordon Lightfoot
Naturally by J.J. Cale
and
pretty much anything by Richie Havens

None of those will be a surprise to anyone who’s spent much time reading this blog over the past few years. (Well, maybe Tango in the Night, which kind of surprised me when it popped into my head as I compiled the list.) There certainly are other albums that would serve the same purpose. But these are the ones that I thought of as I was making the list, and that kind of immediate recall says something to me about these albums’ importance to me.

Most of the specific albums listed there are easily available on CD. Three seem to be out of print: Darden Smith’s Trouble No More and the two Gordon Lightfoot albums. I shared Trouble No More and East of Midnight some time ago (and the time might come for a re-up of those), so today, it’s time to look at Shadows.

Released in 1982, it’s a moody album, right from the blurry and – appropriately – shadowed portrait of Lightfoot on the cover. That portrait sets a tone, and it’s a tone that carries on through the album. Of the eleven songs on the album, nine are invested with sorrow or at least a tinge of melancholy. The only songs that seems anything close to cheerful are the sailing tune “Triangle” and possibly “Blackberry Wine.”

But – and this is the album’s puzzle – the sorrow that pervades the album isn’t filled with grief. Rather, the sense I get from Lightfoot’s lyrics and his performance is a stoic acceptance that sorrow is his rightful companion.

In “Baby Step Back,” he tell us:

Now it looks to me like the same old place
In the sky it looks like rain
The same old town with the same old streets
My address has not changed
You can find me there
With the door shut tight
And the one wish that remains
Baby step back, baby step back
Either step up or step back

And in “I’ll Do Anything,” he sings:

Down in the warm dark part of my heart you stay
I’ve been on my own so long as I stand here today
I’d never leave you
I’d do anything you say
I’ve been around some, walking down on the street
Feeling as low as the shoes on the soles of my feet
Taking dead aim on fortune and fame, you might say
Playing guitar doesn’t make you a star anyway.

Even the love songs on Shadows are subdued. The title track begins:

Let me reach out love and touch you
Let me hold you for a while
I’ve been all around the world
Oh, how I long to see you smile
There’s a shadow on the moon
And the waters here below do not shine the way they should
And I love you, just in case you didn’t know.
Let it go
Let it happen like it happened once before
It’s a wicked wind, and it chills me to the bone
And if you do not believe me, come and gaze upon the shadow at your door.

And my favorite, “Thank You For The Promises,” tells us:

Thank you for the promises we make
I know I can’t complain
I think I did all right
No failures are in sight
Only now and then
I like to reminisce
Do you remember when?
Even if we’re angels we can’t ask
To wander through the past
The future is our goal
The night is black as coal
If I could pay the price
I’d like to love you once
I’d love to love you twice.

Maybe I’m reading too much into some slightly vague lyrics. But the musical mood of the album is somber as well, with lots of minor chords, some atmospheric production touches from Lightfoot and co-producer Ken Friesen, and Lightfoot’s frequently plaintive voice.

So how is it that this is an album that brings me comfort? I’m not sure, what with the sense of sorrow that, to my ears, blankets most of the album. Perhaps that sense, along with the stoicism I mentioned earlier, brought me some time ago to a conclusion I’m only now putting into words: Sorrow is the residue that remains after full grief has gone.

Otherwise, all I can say is that we take our comfort where we find it.

Shadows by Gordon Lightfoot [1982]

Tracks:

14 Karat Gold
In My Fashion
Shadows
Blackberry Wine
Heaven Help The Devil
Thank You For The Promises
Baby Step Back
All I’m After
Triangle
I’ll Do Anything
She’s Not The Same

‘Your Loving Arms . . .’

Originally posted October 5, 2009

When I was in my early teens and was even more bewildered by girls and women than I am now – as much as I cherish the Texas Gal and think I understand her, there still are times when I prove myself close to being utterly clueless – all I knew about having a girlfriend was that you had to have a song.

(After looking over my shoulder for a moment, the Texas Gal just walked away, muttering “All boys are clueless. We like being a mystery.”)

I had no idea what a boyfriend and girlfriend talked about when they spent time together, no idea how it felt to have another person be that interested in you. I had a little bit of an idea about – but absolutely no experience with – what went on when the record player was on and the lights were a little bit low. But I did know, from comments and whispers around me and from the ebb and flow of pop culture, that you had to have a song to share.

Oh, as time wandered on, there were plenty of songs – even in the years before I really listened to pop music – that spoke to the state of my romantic life. I’ve mentioned some over the past few years: “Turn Around, Look At Me” by the Vogues and “Cherish” by the Association are the two with the strongest associations from those years. But those were songs for me, not songs for the “us” that I might make with some sweet hypothetical girl. And I figured that if and when I ever got to the point of selecting “our song” with that sweet hypothetical girl, life would be pretty damned good.

Oddly enough, there were no special songs with any of my early college girlfriends, all of whom were in my life for brief times anyway. But I found myself sharing “our song” with some of those who came later. Those pairings didn’t last, but the songs – when they pop up – remain sweet reminders of good times before.

Of course, those reminders likely wouldn’t be so sweet were if things were not so sweet for me these days. And my Texas Gal, being nearly as interested in music as I am (if not quite so obsessive), made sure from the start that we had songs to celebrate with. One of the best came from our mutual exploration of Darden Smith. I’d come across his Little Victories CD about three weeks before I met the Texas Gal in early 2000, and I’d absorbed enough of it to know I loved it, so I suggested she find a copy of it in suburban Dallas. A few days later, she did, and when she listened, one of the songs spoke loudly to her.

When we talked on the phone one of the next few evenings, she suggested I listen to it. I did:

Half of this morning and most of last night
I’ve been taking tally on the last years of my life
I’ve been pretty righteous but God only knows
A couple of calls were not even close
At least my indiscretions were sweeter than most

Oh, those loving arms
Those sweet, sweet loving arms

Count the bad, count the good
And all I wouldn’t change even if I could
I used to stumble back when I was young
And I’m still stumbling, but now it’s a lot more fun
And I’m falling, I’m falling, I flew too close to the sun
To get to your . . .

Loving arms, your loving arms, your loving arms
Your sweet, sweet loving arms
To get to your loving arms, your loving arms, your loving arms
Your sweet, sweet loving arms
To get to your . . .

Loving arms, your loving arms, your loving arms
Your sweet, sweet loving arms
To get to your loving arms, your loving arms, your loving arms
Your sweet, sweet loving arms

And the world could be perfect
Even if we are not
If everything is forgiven
Even if not forgot

And when the morning comes a-breaking
And I call out your name
My heart will be running, oh running to get to your
Loving arms, your loving arms, your loving arms
Your sweet, sweet loving arms
To get to your loving arms, your loving arms, your loving arms
Your sweet, sweet loving arms . . .

(© 1993 Crooked Fingers Music/AGF Music Ltd.)

We don’t hear it often, given the massive amounts of music both of us listen to and given the busyness that life often brings. But when its strains come from my study, I’m likely to hear a voice come from the next room: “I know that song.” And when I hear “Loving Arms” coming from the loft, I tell her the same.

“Loving Arms” is one reason, then, why Little Victories is my favorite Darden Smith CD. Other reasons? I think it’s his best collection of songs, with “Place in the Sun,” “Love Left Town,” “Hole in the River” and “Precious Time” joining “Loving Arms” as gems of songcraft. (The Texas Gal loves “Levee Song,” which has its own rootsy charms.)

One of the attractions of Little Victories is the presence of Boo Hewerdine, with whom Smith recorded Evidence in 1989. Hewerdine co-wrote “Place in the Sun,” “Love Left Town” and “Precious Time” and contributes vocals on “Loving Arms,” “Little Victories,” “Love Left Town” and “Levee Song.” A couple of other names of note show up in the credits: Rosanne Cash adds vocals to “Precious Time” and Richard Gotttehrer – a member of the 1960s group the Strangeloves (“I Want Candy” and “Night-Time”) – produced the CD and joins in with percussion on “Loving Arms” and “Precious Time” and on vocals on “Little Victories.”

Here’s the tracklist:

Place in the Sun
Loving Arms
Little Victories
Love Left Town
Hole in the River
Dream Intro/Dream’s a Dream
Precious Time
Days on End
Levee Song
Only One Dream

Little Victories by Darden Smith [1993]

Another From Darden Smith

Originally posted September 10, 2009.

As I wrote in February 2007 (for Saturday Single No. 2!):

[T]o be honest, Darden Smith these days is not strictly country. That’s where he started some twenty years ago, but he’s evolved to where his music occupies a place somewhere near the intersection of country, folk, pop and rock.

That’s an interesting place to live, musically, but it’s an awful place for the marketing and promotion folks to figure out. So they don’t try. That’s the only reason I can figure out to explain the public’s failure to elevate Smith to the level he deserves.

That was all true then, when I was writing about “Levee Song” from Smith’s Little Victories CD, a 1993 release, and it remains true as I try to figure out what to say about Deep Fantastic Blue, a CD Smith released in 1996.

Well, it’s got plainspoken songs, with a few nifty metaphors – “Somebody’s pride and joy turned out to be the broken branch on the family tree” for one – and some fairly muscular musical backing (not muscular in a rock sense, with lots of loud, but in a country-folk sense; I think you’ll hear what I mean when you listen).

Here’s what All-Music Guide had to say about Deep Fantastic Blue (and about Smith’s career, ca. 1996):

“When CBS (now Sony) signed Darden Smith in 1987, they may have hoped they were getting another country-pop singer-songwriter like Rodney Crowell. By the time a couple of albums had suffered undeserved anonymity, however, they may have been hoping for a critics’ favorite with a modest commercial breakthrough like John Hiatt. But major labels do not wait forever for even the most promising artist to start exceeding his advances, and with this, his fifth album, Smith is now recording for his manager’s indie label. It turns out this is all for the better, artistically, anyway. Darden’s well-written songs are sufficiently straightforward enough to answer to any one of several production ideas. A good country producer could take them in a Garth-like direction, and a good rock producer could find another Tom Petty. Instead, Stewart Lerman has assembled a stellar backup unit of relative unknowns — anchored by bassist Graham Maby from the old Joe Jackson Band, and guitarist Richard Kennedy and drummer Stanley John Mitchell from the late, lamented Drongos — for a restrained folk-rock treatment that emphasizes the songs. Smith’s lyrics cover familiar ground, touching on restlessness, hopelessness, hope, despair, freedom, aging, and, oh, yeah, lust. But he often has unusual ways of putting things, and he sings with conviction. There may not be a place for him on a major anymore, but he continues to grow as a songwriter and performer, and perhaps an audience will find him yet.”

Okay, so who are the musical referents in that review? Rodney Crowell, John Hiatt, Garth Brooks, Joe Jackson and the Drongos, (who were – and I had to look this up – a pop-rock band that released two albums during the mid-1980s). That’s a wide swath of influences and reflections. No wonder it seems hard to figure out what kind of performer Darden Smith is.

It’s easy for a listener, actually, once you get hold of one of his CDs. Put the sucker in the player and let it run, Track 1 through 10. Wash, rinse, repeat. Listen to it the way people used to listen to music, as an entire piece of work. And during a quiet time on the next Wednesday evening or something like that, you’ll have a melody running through your head, and you’ll realize it’s “First Day of the Sun,” or it’s “Drowning Man,” or maybe it’s “Hunger.” Whatever it is, it’s one of Smith’s songs from Deep Fantastic Blue that’s worked its way inside you, the way the best music does.

(That’s always a risk, of course. If a listener’s life is in turmoil or worse, the music may attach itself to that time of his or her life and how it felt to be there. I came across Darden Smith during a difficult portion of my life, and some of the songs on the first CDs of his I bought pull me back to my apartment on Bossen Terrace in Minneapolis and to a time that, well, wasn’t very pleasant. Somehow, though, Darden’s music only lightly recalls that time; even though his CDs were never far from the stereo then, they are, thankfully, not reminders of grief. On the other hand, Natalie Merchant’s Ophelia, which I loved and put into the player about as frequently, is these days still nearly unlistenable for the sonic reminders it brings.)

In any event, Deep Fantastic Blue is a worthwhile listen. I checked at Amazon this morning, and it’s available – one copy through standard means, others through other dealers. There’s also an import version available. (Those listings seem to change from day-to-day.) And most of Smith’s other work is available there as well, with all of it save Little Victories still in print.

If you like what you hear, explore the rest of Smith’s catalog. I’ve posted most of what he recorded up to 1996. (I don’t recall if I’ve ever posted Little Victories, but next week might be a good time for that.) He’s continued to write and record, though it’s been three years since his last release, Field of Crows.

Deep Fantastic Blue by Darden Smith [1996]

Tracks
First Day of the Sun
Broken Branches
Running Kind
Skin
Silver & Gold
Drowning Man
Different Train
Chariots
Stop Talking
Hunger

Deep Fantastic Blue by Darden Smith [1996]

Afternote:
I got an email the other day from the operator of the fine blog The Vinyl District, asking me if I’d tell last week’s tale of Echoes In The Wind for a feature he calls “TVD Pop Over.” I did so gladly, ripping five favorite tunes from vinyl to accompany my words; the post went online today. My thanks to Jon. And some advice for regular readers here: If you don’t already do so, you should make TVD one of your regular stops in blogworld.

Hick-Pop From Good Homes

Originally posted August 24, 2009

Not quite a year ago, I wrote about finding a CD called From Good Homes on a bookstore’s clearance shelves during the year or so the Texas Gal and I lived in the Minneapolis suburb of Plymouth. Intrigued by the rootsy, sometimes bluesy, pop of the band, also called From Good Homes, I looked closely at the clearance shelves the next time I was in the store, and found another CD by the group, Hick-Pop Comin’ At Ya! If anything, I liked it better.

I’ve never dug deeply into the catalog of the Dave Matthews Band for some reason, but what I have heard – generally on radio – I’ve liked. And I’ve found the music of From Good Homes reminding me a little – sometimes more, sometimes less – of what I’ve heard of the Dave Matthews Band. (The DMB has long been on a list of groups and artists that I want to explore further; given the length of that list, I’m not sure when that exploration will begin.)

It turns out that Hick-Pop Comin’ At Ya! was From Good Homes’ first album, released in 1993 on the GRRrrrr label. The band then got a deal with RCA and released two CDs: Open up the Sky in 1995 and From Good Homes in 1998 before calling it quits in 1999. (A CD of highlights of the band’s last performance in 1999 was released in 2002 as Take Enough Home.)

I’ve found myself listening to From Good Homes quite a bit lately. A month or so ago, the Texas Gal and I moved some stuff around and wound up putting a CD player in a room where there hadn’t been one previously. I spend a fair amount of time there, so I’ve begun listening to full CDs more than I had in a while, and I’ve dug through the CD collection to find stuff I want to know better. The two CDs by From Good Homes ended up on that list, as did The Living Daylights, which I offered here recently.

And the more I listen to Hick-Pop, the more I like it. It’s maybe a little less polished than From Good Homes, and in this case, that’s not a bad thing at all. A few rough edges on the rootsy sound of the band makes the music better, I think. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Here’s part of what JT Griffith of All-Music Guide said about Hick-Pop Comin’ At Ya!

“The ten tracks here are the loosest and most inspired of the band’s albums . . .  ‘Drivin’ and Cryin’” is a fast and furious song that any fan of Allgood and Rusted Root will find instantly familiar (and easy to dance to). Critics get apoplectic when Dave Matthews reigns in his jamming sensibilities and records a tight, song-oriented album. From Good Homes did the same thing with this underappreciated album of great pop songs that lent themselves to awesome live jams – in 1993! . . . The real shame is that Hick-Pop Comin’ at Ya! is an out of print, self-released CD from 1993 by a band few know about.”

The highlights for me? “Drivin’ and Cryin’” is a great opener, seeming to shift gears several times as it rolls along. “Suzanna Walker” is a good story song (and one that the band likely could jam with when it played live). But my favorites are “Here Comes the Rain” with its saxophone riff, its celebratory sound and its enigmatic, slightly disturbing lyrics; and the melancholy “Scudder’s Lane,” with its harmonica and its sad tale:

Scudder’s Lane

me and lisa used to run thru the night
thru the fields off scudder’s lane
we’d lay down and look up at the sky
and feel the breeze, thru the trees
and I’d often wonder
how long would it take
to ride or fly to the dipper in the sky

as I drove back into hainesville
I was thinking of the days
when my dreams went on forever
as I ran thru the fields off scudder’s lane

I stayed with my love lisa
thru the darkness of her days
she walked into the face of horror
and I followed in her wake
and I often wonder
how much does it take
’til you’ve given all the love
That’s in your heart
and there’s nothing in its place

as I drove back into hainesville
I was thinking of the days
when my dreams went on forever
as I ran thru the fields off scudder’s lane

i’m afraid of the momentum
that can take you to the edge of a cliff
where you look out and see nothing
and you ask
it that all there is

still I drove back out of hainesville
and I asked myself again will there ever come a day
when you drive back home to stay
could you ever settle down and be a happy man
in one of the houses that they’re building thru the fields
off scudder’s lane

Tracks
Drivin’ and Cryin’
Here Comes the Rain
Suzanna Walker
I’m Your Man
Way Down Inside
The Old Man and the Land
Comin On Home
Black Elk Speaks
Scudder’s Lane
Maybe We Will

Note: From Good Homes has a website, The Fruitful Acre, with a link to an archival site; the current site seems not to have been updated for some time. Hick-Pop Comin’ At Ya! and From Good Homes seem to be out of print, as are Open Up The Sky from 1995 and Take Enough Home from 2002. The latter two albums, however, are available as downloads through iTunes, and CDs of Take Enough Home and Hick-Pop Comin’ At Ya! can be ordered at the From Good Homes website. If you like what you hear, go buy the CD!

Was It 1964 Or 1965?

Originally posted August 14, 2009

Memory is a slippery creature. I read or heard somewhere about recent research into memory, and the theory was – and this is necessarily a paraphrase – that when we remember an event, our brain overlays the original memory with our new memory of that event, so the next time we recall that specific moment, we’re processing a second-generation memory and creating a third-generation memory. (Without any irony, I have to say that I cannot at all remember where I read or heard that bit of information.)

That seems to make some sense, even though it means our memories eventually become thinner and possibly distorted, like a favorite recording that’s seven generations removed from the original tape.

I got to thinking about this after Wednesday’s Vinyl Record Day post about the development of my LP database. Art D., a reader in Michigan, emailed me that afternoon and asked if I had the right date for Beatles’ ’65, after I said my sister and I received it for Christmas in 1965. He said the record had been released in December 1964. I nodded to myself, having verified that date at All-Music Guide that morning. I emailed back.

I said, in part, about Beatles ’65, that my sister and I got the record in 1965, about a year after it came out. I added:

“That’s what the red ink on it says, and that inscription dates from the day I began marking my LPs in 1970, and I suppose I could have erred then, and we actually got the album in 1964. At this point, we’ll never know for sure. I think, though, that I would have remembered – given the way I recall odd details – the paradox of getting a record titled Beatles ’65 when it was still 1964.”

And writing those words – “I think, though, that I would have remembered . . . the paradox of getting a record titled Beatles ’65 when it was still 1964” – triggered another memory, a recollection of a very young whiteray looking at the record jacket that December night and wondering about that very paradox. It’s not the kind of memory that jumps up and says, “Here I am and here you were!” It’s more like it’s dancing on the edge of clarity, so I’m not sure about trusting it.

Earlier this week, when recalling the day I began marking my LPs, I wrote “I knew for certain that Beatles ’65 came to my sister and me for Christmas 1965.” Well, we all, at one time or another, know things for certain that just ain’t so. This could be one of mine. I imagine that on that summer day in 1970, I looked at the title of the album and just assumed it came out in 1965 and thus showed up in our house that December. I might have been wrong; the record might have been there a year earlier.

But I’m going to be gentle with the kid I was back then. I examined the record and its jacket this morning, and there’s no copyright date on either, no hint of the year of issue. Beyond that, I would have had no idea in 1970 where to go to find out when Beatles ’65 was released. As I think of it today, I probably could have gone out to Musicland at the mall or to the library at St. Cloud State and learned something in either one of those places. Knowing the correct release date might have changed my mind about when we got the record. But at sixteen, I didn’t think of that. I did the best I could.

There is one thing I do know for certain about that December night when we found Beatles ’65 next to the stereo. I’ve seen the photographic evidence: Somewhere among all the slides in Mom’s storage unit is a slide showing me sitting in Dad’s chair, wearing my Beatle wig, holding Beatles ’65 in my lap and quite possibly putting my fingers in my ears as a jest.

I wrote to Art D. that “we’ll never know for sure.” But we might. If I ever find that one slide among the thousands in the storage unit, and if Dad wrote the date on the cardboard, we’ll know. I do have a hunch that, if I ever find that picture of me and it has a date on it, I’ll be changing the acquisition year in my database to 1964. But that’s just a hunch, so I’ll leave it for now.

Note from 2022: We do know now. The photograph – a print, not a slide – turned up in a package of things I got from my sister a few years ago, and the date on the back of the picture – in my dad’s hand – clearly says “Christmas 1964.” Here it is:

Given my preoccupation for the past few days with Beatles ’65, it was easy to decide what to post today. The album was, of course, one of those created by Capitol Records here in the U.S., in this case by taking portions of two Beatles albums released in the United Kingdom and adding two sides of a UK single not released on an album there. So it’s an aberration, although it was a popular one; it was the No. 1 album for nine weeks in the U.S. during early 1965.

It was also the first Beatles LP I owned, and the sequence of songs on it lingers inside me. When I play Beatles for Sale on the CD player, I start out hearing Beatles ’65 because the first six tracks are the same on both. But I’m always startled after “Mr. Moonlight,” when Side One should be over, because here comes “Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!” And Side Two of Beatles ’65 – cobbled together as it was with two tracks from Beatles for Sale, the lovely “I’ll Be Back” from A Hard Day’s Night and the single mentioned above – exists in modern form only on a CD that’s included as part of the 2004 box set The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1.

So I decided this morning to drop my mono copy of the LP (stereo cost more in the mid-1960s, and Dad was a thrifty man) on the turntable and offer Beatles ’65 as two mp3s, Side One and Side Two. There are a few pops and snaps, but hey, it’s forty-five-year-old vinyl.

Tracks, Side One
No Reply
I’m a Loser
Baby’s in Black
Rock and Roll Music
I’ll Follow the Sun
Mr. Moonlight

Tracks, Side Two
Honey Don’t
I’ll Be Back
She’s a Woman
I Feel Fine
Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby

‘Every Heart Is On Parade . . .’

Originally posted August 7, 2009

Welcome to the Ocean. Welcome to the Sea of Meant to Be.
Ferris Wheels. French Brocade. Every Heart is on Parade.
All These Things We Dream. All These Things We Dream.

Those are some of the first lines from “All These Things We Dream,” a song by the Living Daylights that I posted two days ago. Since then, the song’s been downloaded only thirteen times. That’s what happens, generally, when I post something that’s not ever been very popular. And the Living Daylights was not a popular band.

The band was, to be honest, utterly obscure. So obscure that there are very few references to the band on the ’Net. (I searched using the name of the band coupled with the name of each band member. The search was complicated by the existence of the James Bond film of the same name: The Living Daylights.)

There is an entry for a band called the Living Daylights at All-Music Guide, with a different album listed for a different year, and the description of the band and its work is entirely at odds with how the CD I have sounds. It’s not the same band.

A search under “Song” at All-Music Guide for “All These Things We Dream” comes up empty. The Living Daylights is a band that seems to have made almost no impact on modern life, and that’s happened during an era when one can hardly avoid coming to the attention of Google even by accident.

So why am I writing about the Living Daylights and what seems to be the band’s only CD? Because even though it’s always a joy to hear songs and write about songs that I’ve heard for forty years – that’s seventy-one percent of my lifetime – it’s also a distinct and rare pleasure to find something new, something I’d not heard when it came out, and be able to enjoy it to the same degree as I do the music I’ve carried around in my head for years.

And that’s what happened when I came across The Living Daylights on the discount shelf of a bookstore in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, almost eight years ago. All one can judge by in those circumstances is the cover and the song titles. None of that was familiar, but the impulse to buy the CD and bring it home is something that I’m sure every music lover has faced: This CD wants me to buy it, and I don’t know why.

I’m certain that the CD cost me no more than two dollars, a minor investment. And when I got home and heard the first strains of “All These Things We Dream,” I was hooked and the hook set in as the rest of the CD played on.

What’s the frame of reference? Who does the Living Daylights sound like? I called the Texas Gal into the study this morning and played her snippets of four or five tracks. Her overall judgment was that “it sounds a little like Darden Smith,” and of course, over the last two-plus years, I’ve made well-known my affection for Mr. Smith’s work. But her first reaction, her first thought on hearing the Living Daylights was “It sounds like America.” (I asked her later if the meant the band – the “Horse With No Name” boys – or the country, and she said she meant both: “It sounds a little like the band, but it also sounds like life in America.”) Looking for guidance, I checked Darden Smith’s entry at AMG, and the first style listed is “Americana.”

And maybe Americana is as good a tag to slap onto the Living Daylights as any. Years ago, I might have called it folk-rock, balancing the intersection of the acoustic guitars with the rock rhythm section. But that’s a crowded intersection at which to stand, and it’s too easy a label. Maybe it is Americana. Whatever it is, from the opening moments of “All These Things We Dream” through the end of “Anna,” The Living Daylights is one of those CDs that – without being self-consciously and artificially hushed – provides me with a gentle place from which to view the world.

Ten of the eleven songs on the CD were written by the group, with acoustic guitarist and singer Rick Barron being the chief writer, having been credited on all of them. The only cover is a version of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sunshine.” (It’s a decent version of a song that I’ve never particularly liked.) The highlights? Beyond the opener, “All These Things We Dream,” I like “I’ll Be Good To You” with its organ foundation and fills; I also find the wordy “Life Is,” the spare “Medicine Lake” and the melancholy closer, “Anna,” worth attention.

Members of the Living Daylights were: Rick Barron, vocals and acoustic guitar; Paul Peterson, vocals, upright and electric bass, keyboards and percussion programming; Joe Finger, vocals and drums; Troy Norton, vocals and electric and acoustic guitar; Wayne Cullinan, vocals and percussion; and Don LaMarca, acoustic piano, Hammond organ and keyboards. [Note from 2022: Both websites are now gone. Note added May 13, 2022.]

Tracks
All These Things We Dream
I Am Here
We All Shine On
I’ll Be Good To You
Sunshine
All These Tears
Strong Man
Somebody’s Gonna Love You
Life Is
Medicine Lake
Anna

The Living Daylights by the Living Daylights [1996]

Afternote

I should mention the two sites I’ve found that mention the Living Daylights. One is the website of Paul Peterson, also known as St. Paul Peterson, a former Prince protégé. A page on his site about his album Blue Cadillac notes that Rick Barron of the Living Daylights helped on his album. (Thanks for reminding me, Steve!) The other is a site called Professional Drum Tracks, which lists the Living Daylights and shows the CD cover.

The Moody Blues’ ‘The Present’

A couple of months ago, I wrote here:

One of the more confounding moments of my musical life took place in a used record shop in Columbia, Missouri, during the late winter of 1989.

It was the last day of a brief visit with some friends there, and I was doing some record digging while I waited to meet one of those friends for lunch. And as I dug through the shop’s recent arrivals, I came across an album I’d neither seen nor heard about before:

The Present? By the Moody Blues? When did that come out? In 1983, the jacket told me. But why didn’t I know about it? I didn’t have the answer to that question, but I tucked the record under my arm with a few others I’d found and headed to the counter.

About a week later, I got home to Minot, and sometime during the next week, I dropped the album on the turntable, still wondering how it had escaped my attention when it was released six years earlier. Now, a little more than three decades later, I can dig into my reference books and conclude that The Present escaped most people’s attention when it came out in early September 1983.

The album hit the Billboard 200 the week it came out and hung around for twenty-two weeks, peaking at No. 26. At the time, that was the lowest peak ever for a Moody Blues album. Two years earlier, Los Distance Voyager had spent three weeks at No. 1; two-and-a-half years later, The Other Side Of Life would reach No. 9. So, the Moodys weren’t spent as a cultural force. The album just didn’t sell.

Nor did singles from the album do well. “Sitting At The Wheel” was released in September 1983 and got to No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100; the second, “Blue World,” came out about two months later and peaked at No. 62. A third single, “Running Water,” failed to reach the charts.

The first two singles did better on the mainstream rock chart compiled by Billboard, with “Sitting At The Wheel: reaching No. 3 and “Blue World” getting to No. 32, and I suppose I might have heard one or both of them that autumn, as I looked for a radio station in Columbia; my tastes had evolved in the past few years to the adult contemporary format, though, and none of the singles from The Present made that format’s top forty.

So, the album was a flop, sandwiched between two pretty good and successful albums, Long Distance Voyager from 1981 and The Other Side Of Life, which came out in 1986 (and which we’ll consider in a week or two). Is it very good? Well, no. Is it awful? No, again.

It sounds like the Moody Blues, and some of the songs are pretty good, perhaps not as memorable or as focused as the work of previous years.

In talking about previous years, we run into one of the problems with assessing the Moody Blues. As I compare The Present to previous work, do I limit my comparisons with just the two previous albums – 1978’s Octave and Long Distance Voyager from 1981 – or do I dig deeper into the storied psychedelic past, before the band took a six-year hiatus? After pondering that question for a while, I decided it didn’t matter, as The Present, despite a couple of good tracks, was inferior to both Octave (to which I gave an Incomplete) and Long Distance Voyager (which earned a B-).

The singles that got airplay – the mid-tempo “Blue World” and the harder-rocking “Sitting At The Wheel” – are actually decent, though the lyrics are a bit pedestrian (a flaw that seems to have showed up in the Moody’s stuff when they left behind cosmic concerns for those more day-to-day). I prefer “Blue World,” as the music lends it a shade of mystery.

And I think that the best track on the album was ignored. “It’s Cold Outside Of Your Heart” should have been at least the third single from The Present, if not the first. (And I wonder why – as far as I can tell – no country artist has pulled “It’s Cold Outside Of Your Heart” away from pop.)

Beyond that, the album tracks are mediocre at best. Ultimately, it’s a pretty poor album, with nothing like “The Voice” from the preceding Long Distance Voyager or “Your Wildest Dreams” from the following The Other Side Of Life to lift it to any heights. The completist in me is glad to have it in the stacks; the critical listener in me shrugs. Give it a grade of D+.

Here – to my ears – is the best track on the album, “It’s Cold Outside Of Your Heart.”

‘Cahoots’ Gets A Re-Make

“Life Is A Carnival,” sang The Band on the group’s 1971 album Cahoots, an album that also contained the group’s take on Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a duet with Van Morrison titled “4% Pantomime,” and the elegiac “River Hymn.”

I heard some of those on the radio, maybe – “Life Is A Carnival” was the first single pulled from the album, and it went only to No. 72 on the Billboard Hot 100, leaving me wondering on which station I heard it (KVSC-FM at St. Cloud State is my guess this morning) – and I heard some at friends’ homes and at other places in St. Cloud during my college years.

I wasn’t impressed. Even though I had the group’s self-titled 1969 album – an album I loved – at home, the bits and pieces of Cahoots that I heard left me cold. So I forgot about the album until the late 1980s, when a lady friend of mine began to explore the music of The Band for the first time, and I came along, adding Cahoots in early 1988. And I added the CD to the collection in 2018.

It still didn’t impress me. It sounded flat, unfinished somehow. I might have pulled it out of the stacks once or twice to put “When I Paint My Masterpiece” on a mixtape or a CD for a friend, but that would have been about it. Unlike Music From Big Pink, The Band, or even Stage Fright, it wasn’t an album I sought out for casual listening.

And I began to understand my decades-long reaction yesterday when a delivery truck dropped off the two-CD fiftieth anniversary edition of the album. The notes in the accompanying booklet tell how the album came to be created in the first place: With the group recording whatever the five musicians had at hand while helping Albert Grossman figure out how to finish off his Bearsville studio in Woodstock, New York.

The notes, by Rob Bowman, explain that The Band – especially Robbie Robertson – had always felt Cahoots to be unfinished because of the lack of facilities at Bearsville at the time. And that meant that preparing the fiftieth anniversary version offered an opportunity to mix and master the album the way the group would have liked in 1971.

Robertson and engineer Bob Clearmountain have both been involved in three previous fiftieth anniversary reissues of albums by The Band: Music From Big Pink, The Band, and Stage Fright. Those projects, both men say in comments in the new edition’s notes, involved enhancing the sound of the three albums, making them sound better while keeping the albums’ characters and general sound the same. Their work with Cahoots, the two say, was to make the album sound like it should have sounded.

Much of the commentary supporting that approach comes from Bowman’s interviews with Robertson. Although there are general quotes from the other members of The Band about the making of Cahoots that come from previously published material, it’s probably good to remember that Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Levon Helm are gone and unavailable for current comment. A few comments from Garth Hudson make their way into Bowman’s notes, but it’s basically Robertson’s views that prevail.

So, does it work? I have yet to absorb the whole album in its new state. And I think I’ll be going back and forth between the new version and the old one at odd times for a while, trying to internalize the changes. (That’s true, too, of the live bootleg of a 1971 performance by the group in Paris that’s included on the second CD of the package.  And both CDs have bonus tracks of outtakes and alternate takes from the Cahoots sessions.)

As “Life Is A Carnival” started to come out of the speakers here yesterday, I reminded myself that different isn’t always better. But, at least for that track, it is. The track, enhanced even more now by Allen Toussaint’s horn arrangement, has a kick it’s never had. As I wander through the rest of the new album, comparing it to the old one, I hope I continue to be pleased.

Here’s the new version of “Life Is A Carnival.”

The Moody Blues: 1981

Here, we resume a long-dormant project: An assessment of the massive oeuvre of the Moody Blues, looking today at the 1981 album Long Distance Voyager.

It hasn’t quite been forty years – the conversation I recalled this morning happed in the autumn of 1981 – but it’s close enough. I was out for lunch with the new photographer for the Monticello Times – our previous, long-time guy had left for grad school in Missouri during the summer – and we were still in the stage of getting to know each other.

I mentioned that over the previous weekend I’d picked up Long Distance Voyager, the most recent release by the Moody Blues. It had come out the previous spring and had been on my want list for a bit, especially since I’d heard “Gemini Dream,” the album’s first single, during the summer, and had been hearing “The Voice,” the second single from the album, on the radio in recent weeks.

(At the time of the conversation I’m remembering, in fact, it’s quite likely that “The Voice” was nearing its peak position of No 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. And the album itself spent three weeks at No. 1 during the summer of 1981.)

“I do really like ‘The Voice’,” I likely would have told Andris, “and there are a couple of other tracks that I think are really good, but I want to hear them a few times.”

“Hmpph!” Andris looked at me over his menu. “I don’t like the Moody Blues at all. I don’t like the Wall of Sound.”

We found other things to talk about.

Forty years later, I still like Long Distance Voyager. Despite some flaws, it remains for me one of the most listenable albums in the Moody’s lengthy discography, from the opener, “The Voice,” right up to the end of “Nervous.” Then come the last three tracks, “Painted Smile/Reflective Smile” and “Veteran Cosmic Rocker,” all written by Ray Thomas.

The first of those tries to hard to be cute, with circus music and simplistic lyrics that – had I written them in 1981 – would have made me cringe. Then, with “Reflective Smile,” Thomas lapses into one of those bits of bombastic narration that mar the Moodys’ releases from the late 1960s. And in “Veteran Cosmic Rocker,” Thomas tries so hard that the track verges on parody.

Up until then, however, Long Distance Voyager offers plenty that I do like: “The Voice,” once we get past the Moody’s usual quasi-dramatic introduction, propels us into the album with lyrics that are both mystical and a call to action (I think). I also like the other two tracks that came out as singles: “Gemini Dream” got to No. 12; “Talking Out Of Turn” came out after the title track and stumbled, reaching only No. 65.

The best thing on the album, however, is John Lodge’s “Nervous,” which could have used a better title (as my blogging colleague jb noted in his perceptive assessment of Long Distance Voyager two years ago). Intense, compelling, and propulsive, the song, with its refrain of “Bring it on home/let’s bring it on home (your love)” would have been a perfect place to end the album instead of Thomas’ strange and sophomoric trilogy.

In fact, I think that the first time I listened to the album, I expected it to end after “Nervous,” and I thought to myself “That’s a really short album, isn’t it?”

So, forty years down the road, what grade do I give to Long Distance Voyager? Thinking of it that way, I’m reminded of a long-ago student of mine who turned in superior work for eight weeks of the quarter and then faltered. I knew life was throwing some challenges his way, and he ended up with an A after a good final exam.

But there is no final exam for the Moody Blues here. The first eighty percent of the record was A or A-minus quality, but the ending was full of nonsense that – because it comes at what should be a climactic moment – saddles the album with inescapable flaws. The record gets a grade of B-minus (and is lucky to get that).

Here’s “Nervous.”

All At One Time

Sometime way back (likely about ten years ago, but I’m not going to go dig), I wrote that one of the benefits of the digital age was getting away from the album format and being able to structure a playlist of separate tracks.

Back in the LP days, if there was a horrendous track right in the middle of Side One of a generally great album (friends of mine in those days might have nominated “Octopus’ Garden” on Abbey Road), one had to either endure the track or go to the turntable and actually lift the tone arm to set it down at the start of the next track.

As I explored that idea back then, I wrote something (maybe) about being freed from vinyl tyranny.

About six months ago, as I puttered here in my corner of our downstairs room. I thought, “Y’know, it might be nice to listen to Abbey Road all in order.” (Or it might have been Blood On The Tracks or maybe A Question Of Balance.) I had two ways to do that. There’s a large CD player on the other side of my desk, but I’d have to pull the CD from its spot in the stacks and walk around the desk and the keyboard.

Or I could have the search function in the RealPlayer find the tracks that made up the album and place them in running order and then listen.

And then I wondered: Does my new CD ripper allows me to rip an entire CD into one mp3? For years, I’d used a freeware program that allowed me to do that. I’d not done entire albums but I’d done large mp3s of suites, like the medleys on Side Two of (again) Abbey Road. And maybe five years ago, when I got a new computer, that freeware program and Windows 10 didn’t like each other. So for a few years, I used RealPlayer to rip mp3s, and as much as I like most of what that program does, its ripping function is clunky and slow.

But about eighteen months ago – six months before this inner conversation took place – I’d invested in a new suite of mp3 management tools, including an mp3 ripper. I’d not dug into it very much, as I was still trying to catch up on replacing the single mp3 rips lost in my external drive crash the autumn before we moved. Maybe it had a function to rip whole CDs as one mp3.

Well, as readers might expect (or there would be no point to telling the story), it does, and at odd times over the last six months, I’ve been doing just that.

There are currently eighty-seven tracks tagged “Full Album” on the digital shelves. The selection is heavy with the Moody Blues (part of the long-delayed project here reviewing all of their albums), Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. None of that is a surprise, I’m certain. Those are my mainstays, along with the Beatles, who will soon have many more albums in the section than they do now.

What I find more interesting are some of the other artists whose works have come to mind and wound up in the “Full Albums” section: Three Counting Crows albums from the 1990s; two from 1969 and 1970 by Brewer & Shipley; Jim Croce’s three major label releases from the early 1970s; three by Dan Fogelberg from the 1970s (one of those with flautist Tim Weisberg); two from the 1970s British folkie Shelagh McDonald; Dusty Springfield’s Dusty In Memphis; Steve Winwood’s Arc Of A Diver; and David Gray’s 200 album Babylon, just to mention a few.

I let the albums play on random as I read news or putter or play tabletop baseball. I don’t always listen purposefully, but I hear the music roll by (just like it used to in the rec room back home on Kilian Boulevard), and I’m learning some things: I don’t really like Roxy Music’s Avalon beyond “More Than This” and the title track. The Fogelbergs wear thin after a few listens. August And Everything After by Counting Crows is a far better album than I recall. So, too, is The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby & The Range. And Steely Dan’s Aja remains a sonic masterpiece.

It’s a long-range project, adding three or four a week. Where will it end? I dunno. Right now, I still have more than two terabytes free on the external hard drive. Will I get rid of the CDs and LPs if I get them all ripped as albums? Hell, no.

Here’s a full album from 1989 I posted at YouTube almost three years ago that will soon be in the “Full Album” folder on the digital shelves: Evidence by Boo Hewerdine and Darden Smith, one of my favorite obscurities.