Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The 5th Dimension
The Magic Garden
(Soul City, 1967)
Sunshine pop romantic ambivalence from balloonist-harmonisers. Nick Drake liked it!
Jimmy Webb was on a roll in 1968, with no less than eight Grammies won for songs he'd written. Six of them were for the high-flying Up, Up And Away, whose hit version was sung by Los Angeles vocal quintet The 5th Dimension. The previous year songwriter and group had made an orchestrated, harmony-rich album that, next to *Astral Weeks and *Forever Changes, was a favourite of Nick Drake's. Like the two aforementioned, *The Magic Garden was out of step with certain arguably naïve summer of love conventions, and presents a series of bittersweet, interlinking songs that depict a love affair screwed up by both parties - boy lets himself be walked over, girl regrets it, girl gets married to some rich sap and after attending the wedding boy goes off to get smashed on skid row. Along the way there's romance, regret and heartbreak galore, with poppy R&B of superior lyrics and melody iced with strings and the singers' creamy harmonies. There's also an appealing kind of squareness and show tune vividity to songs like the Burt-and-Hal-style The Girl's Song, the psych-lite Dreams/Pax/Nepethe and the Macarthur Park-esque Requiem: 820 Latham. And the story goes that The Association turned down the chance to record the album - bad move!
Ian Harrison
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 08/07/2009
Further Listening
The 5th Dimension – Up, Up And Away (Soul City, 1967)
The Association – Insight Out (Warners, 1967)
The Free Design – Kites Are Fun (Project 3, 1967)
Previous Disc of the day
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Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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