Apr 212008
Is it really time I revisit Love’s Forever Changes, that damn bullfighting music, again? Phawker is running a stream of some alternate mix of the one album that’s never made a lick of sense to me. Give me “Little Red Book” and throw out just about everything else in that band’s catalog. That said, I’m nothing if not open minded and relentless in my pursuit of knowledge and good taste. You tell me. Maybe you’ll want to listen along with me. Stay tuned…
You’re not going to change your mind, I would say, Mr. Mod. But I for one would certainly like to hear about your prejudice in detail, should you go down that lonesome road.
Thanks for your interest, Mwall. I’m listening to it now. “Alone Again Or”, the first of the bullfighting tunes, is wrapping up. It has some good hooks, but why don’t I listen to Herb Alpert or a “deep cut” on a Fifth Dimension album instead?
Now I’m listening to the freakout ending of “A House Is not a Motel”. As freakout endings go, this one’s pretty good, but the song itself? It’s got a Broadway-hippie sound to it. I’ve never cared for Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. Why shouldn’t I listen to Three Dog Night instead?
Now a song called “Andmoreagain” is playing. First of all, I’m put off by three consecutive cutesy song titles. What are they hiding from? As soon as I see such song titles, I’m turned off. When is someone in this band willing to state a desire or any sort? Then there’s this song itself. Christ, I might as well be listening to some Graham Nash solo album. What demographic are these guys aiming for with this song, the medieval maiden market? I know there aren’t many medieval maiden types logging into the Halls of Rock. What are you dudes getting out of this song?
This song “The Daily Planet” sounds like a real song, like something I’d dig from The Who Sell Out. I wish they had more songs like this to offer rather than the dispassionately sung Broadway-hippie-bullfighting stuff that makes up much of this album. The fact that this song can’t gain speed, like something the early Bee Gees would have done, is excusable relative to the first three songs.
I’ll keep listening, but those are some initial thoughts. Maybe I’ve never given this album a chance past the first three songs. This fourth one is pretty good.
Uh oh, track 5, “Old Man”, is right back to medieval maiden territory. What’s up, Townspeople, I thought you guys were cool!
Meanwhile, how much do the following factors play into the underground rock appreciation of Love, especially this album?
1. A ’60s psych-pop band led by a black man wearing Roger McGuinn-worthy specs and cool, Hendrix-worthy embroidered shirts.
2. Arthur Lee’s keerrraaaaazzziness!
3. The band’s lack of popularity and possibly overlooked status relative to fellow LA psych-pop stars, the possibly overrated The Doors.
As I continue to listen to this stuff, here are a couple of questions for you lovers of this album:
1. Do you listen to other albums like this for pleasure – you know, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Jose Feliciano, other popular variety show artists your parents might have dug when you were a kid?
2. Are there any newer bands that have successfully mined the territory of adult contemporary bullfighting psychedelia that Love established with this album?
Alexmagic, you’re a man of wealth and taste. Surely you, in particular, can shed some light on this subject.
Oh, and Sammy, Mwall, and anyone else out there who’s become familiar with the contrasting shades of the LA scene, is this album so intimately related to its locale that, as Berlyant once said about the movie Garden State, to paraphrase, “You had to have lived in that zip code to understand what the movie’s really about.”
“You Set the Scene” has some cool parts. If any one of a number of these songs was the only song of its type on another ’60s artist’s album, I could enjoy that particular song for what it is. But a whole album of deep cuts? I don’t know. This one song, however, is pretty damn cool.
Here’s another question that comes to mind whenever I listen to this album – and the answer is not necessarily an indictment of the album, maybe just a function of the kind of album it is: If you were to choose one song from this album to put on a mix CD for a friend, which one would it be? The only answer I will not accept is “It depends.”
This is music by, for, and about hippies. But not peace and love hippies, despite the name of the band. Hard drugs and death obsessed hippies.
As far as newer bands, Calexico also uses the mariachi horns.
As they so often are, Mod, your comments are quite revealing.
Love’s first album was raw, driving garage rock. By Forever Changes, they went for something more adventurous:
introspective folk that was conceptually discussing the end of 60s idealism.
It is very much a singer songwriter record with (as you so rightly said) deep cuts that question, mess with, and react against a typical rock song in form and structure. These are all things I like, but am not sure that you do.
Husker Du were very much influenced by Love, probably one reason why you don’t like them either.
That’s what is says in all the write-ups on this album, BigSteve, but wasn’t the hard drugs- and death-obsessed hippie demographic a lot bigger when this album came out, or in the years that immediately followed its release? What accounts for all the rock nerds today who don’t even do soft drugs who love this album?
Wow, Husker Du were influenced by Love??? You mean their music in some way was influenced by them, or they also dug the albums and got psyched up listening to them, the way I might love the Joy Division song I’m currently listening to without it having any discernable influence on the MUSIC I produce? Seriously, Dr. John, I’m shocked to learn that Husker Du is influenced by them. I’d be more shocked to think that I never liked Husker Du because of the Love influence, but who knows!
I will say that my most recent biannual listen to Forever Changes went down easier than usual. I just wish something in those songs would step to the foreground. I get nothing from the lyrics, the vocals, the melodies, the bass playing, etc. I don’t quite get your singer-songwriter comparison, Dr. John, to me it sounds more like cool arrangements in search of a singer-songwriter. I know: it sounds like something Beck might do, if he hasn’t done it already.
Oh, and Dr. John, to be fair to another good point you made, what I don’t hear may be a case of Love messing with pop song form and structure, and perhaps they’re doing it well. If that’s the case, can you provide some examples of particularly well-done parts that might help me to better understand their aesthetic approach?
For instance, going back to our days as English literature students, the first time I had to read To the Lighthouse in high school, I found it incredibly boring. I learned enough to get an A on the test on it, but it meant nothing to me. Then, a couple of years later, I read it in a postmodern lit class in college, and the teacher first “unlocked” the aesthetics of Woolf, as he and other critics saw them. Maybe my high school teacher tried to do that as well, but I didn’t grasp it as well. In this college class, however, I finally had a clear idea of how she was messing with form and structure, and from that point forward I loved the book and went on to read most of her novels. She’s been my favorite novelist, thanks completely to getting a professor’s perspective on her approach and how it informed her works.
For Love all I ever get is this “dark vision of the collapse of the hippie ideal” thing, but trying to hear Love’s music in that light pales in comparison to seeing 50 middle-class-bred drug addicts who moved to San Francisco begging for quarters whenever I’m walking around San Francisco for a day. The music of Forever Changes sounds more perverse than dark or angry, like something a late-19th century French writer would cook up.
Not much time today, but Mod, what’s your take on the rhythm section of this album? I always find it remarkably driving, despite the presence of one or two overly slow numbers.
And I’m with Dr. John on the intrigue of the lyrics; not sure why the Mod has so much trouble with them. Race, decay, the history of the west, and the loss of intimate connections to other people are some of the main issues that come up. Some of the best lyrics of the 60s are there; certainly they’re a thousand times better than most of what the Beatles were doing lyrically at the time.
I like the drummer. The rhythm section reminds me a bit of Moby Grape’s first album crossed with Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain. The arrangements, in general, are interesting and conceptually valid.
The fact that death is always with us, and numbing oneself to deal with this basic fact of life is pervasive, even if you don’t inject your drug of choice.
I love that photo of the band looking burnt out with one of the members (is it Lee?) holding a broken vase full of dead flowers. That’s heavy.
The sessions for the album were begun in the summer of 67, the famous Summer of Love, so no the demographic was not really there yet. The band was ahead of its time.
And the reason the drummer sounds so good is that for at least some of the sessions they used Hal Blaine.
I know that this is beside the point, but once again I feel like I have to clarify this point. At the time that I saw Garden State, I had a roommate who grew up in the same area that the movie was supposed to be set in (not coincidentally, the same town Zach Braff grew up in) and her comments that a lot of the characters’ behavior is emblematic of those she knew grewing up would influence my opinion of that movie and give it a slightly different perspective than I would’ve gotten otherwise.
With all that said, I like Forever Changes a lot, but don’t have the time right now to go into much more detail. I’m also surprised to learn that Husker Du were influenced by Love. I don’t hear it at all. I’d love to hear this elaborated upon.
If you remove the layers of guitar distortion from Husker Du, what you have sounds very much like Love: tripped out lyrics, introspective poses, and free-form song structures.
An even better example of a band influenced by Love is Yo La Tengo. They even use horns.
Yo La Tengo??? What album have I missed? I own a few of their albums and have heard a few others. I’ve never heard Love in their sound either.
Is anyone else hearing what the Good Doctor is hearing from these albums?
I’m looking for answers, any kind of answers short of my man HVB jumping in to support my suspicions. I’d appreciate that kind of support, of course, but I’m more interested in hearing this band in a new light. I appreciate the help Townspeople Dr. John, BigSteve, and Mwall have provided to date.
I don’t know nuthin’ ‘about no Love.
I find something very Love-like in the band featured in this scene — a kind of L.A. nihilism that sets my teeth on edge. Sure, Max Frost and the Troopers actually have something on their minds beyond scoring their next bowl, but that Los Angeles whatever-it-is is palpable in both acts.
For the record, over my adult life, my feelings about “Forever Changes” have shifted from outright hostility to “yeah, there are a couple of good songs on it.” Maybe this is the ultimate “sleeper” album — one that I’ll finally understand and love when I’m sitting in a pool of my own filth at age 108.
Then it’s time you learn something about Love. Click on the link to this post. It will carry you over to Phawker, where you can launch Phawker radio and hear this highly regarded, once-forgotten album in streaming audio. One of the best things I can say about the album is that it’s short!
Whoops — meant to add:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m08-lMz0AXc&feature=related
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m08-lMz0AXc&feature=related
That last part was well said, HVB.
Hrrundi, in coding your links, I think I unfortunately made the second one the same as the first. I assume you intended two separate links. Feel free to re-post the second one.
Why is Shelly Winters having an orgasm from watching that guy (her son?) singing? I’d forgotten that Richard Pryor was in ‘The Troopers.’ I remember going to see that movie with my brother on our way home from school when it was playing in one of the downtown theaters, but that was like 40 years ago.
Anyone want to weigh in on whether this ‘alternate mix’ of Forever Changes might be worth paying for if one already owns the album?
I find it very frustrating trying to explain in words why I like certain music. Music exists because words alone can’t tell the story. Caveat aside, I don’t think it is fair to lump Alone Again Or in with a deep cut from the Fifth Dimension or Herb Alpert simply because there are some sonic similarities.
Alone Again Or is just a cool sounding song. It’s cinematic. I’ve not heard any HA or 5D with the same attitude.
Bottom line, there’s Bull Fighting music and then there’s good Bull Fighting music. I say Forever Changes is in the later camp. I would rather enter the ring to Alone Again Or than Spanish Flea. And a little Bull Fighting music can spice up an otherwise dull collection.
While not adult contemporary, one bad out there today I like quite a lot who seem to have stumbled on (for me, anyway) the right alchemical mix of pseudo-psychedelia and the bullfighting music aesthetic is The Starlight Mints. I guess they go under the “indie pop” label and aren’t psychedelic and don’t sound all that Love-like, but they do break out honest-to-god mariachi horns at least once on their second album, and had a song called “Matador” on the first before they had anybody playing horns for them.
Mod, in the spirit of Hear Factor: Season 2 and because it seems several of us have sensed some lingering emotional issues that may need to be worked through via your anxiety in this post and its responses, I may have a bullfighting-related offer for you if you have the time and I can figure out the technology.
After an endless work day, I’d like to make several points, some new, some to reinforce others that have been made.
Mood of the album. Could this be one of the things that turns the Mod off? Defiantly not Winner Rock, Forever Changes has a druggy decadence to it that makes me see why Bakshi would carp about “LA nihilism.” The album is weirdo decadent visionary music for sure. Its Rimbaud fetish would inform the work of people like Patti Smith.
I have no clue why Mr. Mod makes such a fuss about the Spanish-inflected instrumental passages in Alone Again Or. It’s not like every song on the album has them. Further, those passages are vividly detailed and memorable and really fly out of the speakers. Instead of being a mistake, those portions genuinely kick ass, and in a unique way.
In regards to L.A., maybe that’s it a bit, but just a bit. Interesting to compare Love to Spirit. Until Dr. Sardonicus, Spirit too was dark and echoey. I don’t think of Fprever Changes as psychic oblivion though, because its focus is much more social, making a pointed critique of the western U.S. and private property in Live and Let Live, for instance. Most of these songs concentrate on dynamics between groups and individuals, not just personal mopeyness. I’ve got no clue why the Mod, great reader of Virginia Woolf, finds anything incomprehensible about these lyrics.
Whenever I play this album again, I’m always surprised that it rocks more than I remember; except in one or two cuts, the visionary decadence never sacrifices drive, which was true also, for instance, of Joy Division, although they have a completely different sound.
It’s still, for me, one of the most unique albums in the history of rock. Whoever it later influenced, nothing much ever sounded like it. Combine that with its low key at times but definite intensity, and you’ve got great music.
Although many Townspeople chose not to respond to the questions I posted, to those of you who did, I commend you. Although many of even those of you who did, at least partially, meet my questions head on, professed being “busy” or lacking the ability to express what it is you like about what you like, some themes emerged. I’ll try to keep these in mind 2 years from now, when I revisit this highly regarded, once-forgotten album.
I’ll have to pull up some lyrics sometime to see if any of them make an impression on me. From what some of you have told me, they’re super heavy and relevant to the social changes that were swirling when I was but a mere lad of 4 years old.
Alexmagic, I truly fear your threatened bullfighting mix.
My biggest regret may be no one answering which track they’d pull off the album for a mix CD.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean not to respond to your questions:
1) Not at all.
2) Not at all.
3) Not at all.
No. 2 No. 1) There’s no significant connection between the bands you mention and Love.
No. 2 No. 2) Your assumption about their “territory” is way off.
Fora mix CD: Either A House Is Not A Motel or Maybe the People Would be The Times.
If I have missed a question, please let me know.
I like those Deluxe Editions. The one for Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac is fantastic. Enough to make me think about buying some others in the series, but they ain’t cheap. I’ll probably stick with my Rhino release of Forever Changes, though.
I always liked this album, at least after I finally bought it and listened to the whole thing back in 2001. I always figured it was one of those albums you’re supposed to buy so you can at least say why you didn’t like it, but I just really like the way this album sounds. It’s a fantastic recording and it’s nothing like I’d have expected.
I think I’d put You Set the Scene on a comp. I’m surprised you don’t like this one, Mr. Mod. I think if more prog rock bands that followed after Love had listened to what made this work, some of the bloat that makes the worst prog rock unbearable might not have happened. I like this album because it’s got a lot of layers, but it always sounds like it has exactly enough instrumentation and it never sounds plodding or dull.
1. Wait, wasn’t this Hendrix fellow black as well? So is that the only reason folks like Hendrix too? You’re starting to sound like Bill Clinton sputtering about how no one could possibly really prefer that uppity Obama over himself…he means, his wife.
2. Lee wasn’t “keerrraaaaazzzyyy,” he was bipolar and addicted to drugs. His mental problems were sad, not titillating.
3. Probably, yeah. So?
1. Yes, and unironically. Not Feliciano, who I don’t hear here (he sounded more like Richie Havens), but I certainly own many albums released by A&M Records during this period, as well as the more baroque Warner Brothers artists (Harpers Bizarre, Association, Henske and Yester, Van Dyke Parks, early Randy Newman, Neon Philharmonic, etc.) who were certainly doing musically similar stuff during this era. Hell, I just bought a CD of orchestrated psych rarities at Twisted Village on Saturday! Love the hell out of that stuff! And what’s wrong with the Fifth Dimension, anyway? (Oh, wait, I just remembered that I only like them because they’re black, too. Oops.)
2. Calexico, Devotchka, Half Cousin, etc. The Negro Problem were certainly directly influenced by Love — that comes from the man himself.
Mixtape staples: “Alone Again Or,” “Maybe the People Will Be The Times” and “You Set the Scene” often showed up on my mixtapes.
The Great 48, stop being so sensitive because I merely attempt to confront racial issues in rock. You sound like one of those candy-asses who complain about Obama’s occasional forays into straight talk on racial ambiguities. More importantly, thanks for your answers.
By the way, I think the Fifth Dimension did some great stuff. When I’m poking at Love lovers regarding those sort of bands you list it’s not because I don’t appreciate them but because a lot of people who would scoff at the Fifth Dimension – because they wore cheesy outfits and were considered AM pop-soul – dig Love. Mwall, for instance, probably wouldn’t give the Fifth Dimension the time of day, but he’ll stroke his beard listening to Forever Changes. There’s a lot to be said about a lot of factors we’d rather not contemplate when it comes to race, rock vs pop vs soul vs whatever categorizations, etc. And this is not meant as an attack on Mwall; he’s just an example of a guy who’s not that open to ’60s AM pop-soul, if memory serves.
I wouldn’t say my rejection of pop-soul is categorical. I’m a big fan of the Box Tops, for instance, if they count. I doubt that I’ve rejected The Fifth Dimension since basically I’m not sure I’ve ever heard them. But I can say that I need some soul in my pop-soul and hopefully a minimum of candy coating. And while I don’t mind Motown, it’s never hugely seized me either.
By the way, this mention of race leads me into an issue I’m not sure I have the facts on: when do soul and rock bands first turn to conscious discussions of race in their music? Obviously it’s popular by 69/70/71, but who, in the rock or soul context, really turns there first? There’s the Yardbirds “You’re A Better Man Than I” with a mention, as there are mentions on Forever Changes. But where’s it begin?
I assume you’re disqualifying protest-era Dylan.
Sly & the Family Stone?
For anyone who reads The Big Takeover fanzine, Paul Revere & the Raiders have already had their critical upgrade. Jack Rabid loves them and has published interviews with Mark Lindsay.
It’s the 5th Dimension that deserves a critical upgrade. Lots of good stuff there, slick yes, but still soulful.
Yeah, Big Steve, folk, blues, and jazz etc obviously have a different relation to the question. So I’m asking more about when rock/pop/soul first opens up to the issues involved.
Nice try attempting to distract us with your encomium to Paul Revere and the Raiders, what I call AMC Gremlin rock.
But “Bummer in the Summer” far outclasses their efforts. Definitely the song I’d put on a mixtape.
And, Mod, so Love may sound a bid like the Fifth Dimension? There was a lot of musical cross-pollination going on at the time. If Love grabbed some of their ideas and ran with them. Big Deal. It’s almost as if you’re saying that non-rock influences disqualify Love from being a rock band. That shows a certain amount of prejudice, does it not?
Regarding your second question, Mr. Mod, don’t you think Beulah, a band you liked, utilized a similar brand of trumpet arrangements?
I’m gonna retype the last paragraph for reasons of clarity:
…So, Love may sound a bit like the Fifth Dimension. There was a lot of musical cross-pollination going on at the time. If Love grabbed some of their ideas and ran with them–big deal. You’re not saying that non-rock influences disqualify Love from being a rock band, are you? Cause if you are, that shows a certain amount of prejudice, does it not?
I had nothing to do with the Paul Revere & the Raiders post except to welcome it. HVB’s the man behind that one.
Why is it so hard for people to understand why I pulled the 5D into this discussion?
Does anyone understand why they come into play for me, that it’s not to say I don’t like the 5D, that it’s not to somehow criticize Love for sounding a bit like them at times and, maybe, “ripping them off!”? Does anybody really know what time it is? Seriously, YOU tell ME why the 5D factor into this discussion and I’ll go the RTH Non-Prize one better: I’ll send you an actual prize. Commence…
Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come is from 1964.
Mod, you brought the Fifth Dimension up. Asking somebody else to tell you why is lame. I look forward to your Critical Upgrade post–with tracks to prove there is wisdom to your views–when you have time.
Mwall, I recently tried to clarify why I brought them up, and people still aren’t getting it. It’s on the public record, but just retyping what I wrote won’t win you the RTH Prize.
The 5th Dimension were black, and they were adept at a style (California AM pop) not generally associated with black artists. Arthur Lee was black (as was at least one other member of Love?), and Love were adept at styles — first garage rock, then orchestrated psychedelic folk — not generally associated with black artists.
What’s my prize?
True, BigSteve, but still not the winning answer I’m seeking.
The Wrecking Crew sessions musicians supposedly played on Forever Changes, and they also played on the 5th Dimension recordings.
Love got famous by recording a song by famous songwriter Burt Bacharach, and the 5th Dimension got famous recording a song (and subsequently many songs) by famous songwriter Jimmy Webb.
More truths, BigSteve, but still not the point. You may have to win the patented RTH Non-Prize for your efforts!