I woke up this Saturday morning and went down to the living room to get coffee, to find my girlfriend watching a film with Brad Pitt on TV. Now I know she's not a fan of the star, so I asked her how come she's watching a movie so early, and she answered it's a film about baseball. Normally that would do it. I can't for the life of me understand this sport: A player throws a ball, and another tries to hit it on the air with a stick (It's called a bat, I know that much). When he finally does, the rest of the players start running around, seemingly aimlessly. Until that time, all these other guys are just standing doing nothing. As you can probably tell, I'm not an American. I'm Greek. We don't have a baseball league in my country - we had one for a brief period, as well as a women's softball league. My girlfriend being one of the 50 people who understand this game in Greece, she played competitive softball, but that was before we met so I've never been to a baseball or softball game. Anyway, what I meant to say is that, at the end of the movie, we learn that the Boston Red Sox won the championship for the first time after 80-something years thanks to the system invented by Brad Pitt's character.
Something familiar, at last! I was like "sure, I know the Red Sox. In the late 60's, Boston band Earth Opera had a hit with a song called 'The Red Sox Are Winning'. I have it somewhere here"... and out came this CD for the first time in more than a decade. It's a compilation entitled Bosstown Sound - 1968: The Music & The Time. First of all, why the music and the time? Because this music is of its time, and can't be viewed separately from the drugs, psychedelic and otherwise, the Vietnam War, and the rise of a youthful counterculture. The liner notes (probably the biggest advantage CD's have to offer over both vinyl and streaming) try to put that into perspective. As for the title of Bosstown (a.k.a. Boston) Sound? At the time it was a slogan used for a promotional campaign trying to create a buzz about a bunch of bands from the Boston area, mostly psychedelic pop produced by Alan Lorber at MGM studios. Lorber hoped to establish Boston as a music scene to rival San Francisco. After all Boston was home to many interesting bands, music clubs, and -above all- a huge student population. The campaign got picked up by nation-wide media, but quickly lost steam as critics disparaged it as an obvious commercialization attempt, as opposed to the "authentic" psychedelic sound coming from California. The review on allmusic is a good example: it lazily buys into received wisdom, describing the music here as "dreary, second-rate psychedelia, heavy on pretentious wordplay". In fact, this compilation includes a variety of different styles, and some excellent compositions and musical performances - as well as some forgettable ones. I mean, if opener "(Ballad of) The Hip Death Goddess" is "second-rate" psychedelia, I don't know what qualifies as first-rate.
Ultimate Spinach are represented here with 6 songs, more than any other, and rightly so. Their first two albums are classics of the period, reminiscent of West Coast psychedelia (Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & The Fish) but somewhat more experimental/progressive. Ian Bruce-Douglas is the main singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist. Barbara Hudson's enchanting vocals can be heard here on "Hip Death Goddess" (lead) and "Fragmentary March Of Green" (harmonies), while "Baroque #1" is essentially an instrumental. For some reason, we get no less than three tracks from the band's 3rd and least interesting album, recorded after Bruce-Douglas's departure: "Eddie's Rush" is a good blues instrumental, while the other two are more conventional pop-psych songs. Lost only made 3 singles, but provided the alma matter for other bands, including Bagatelle and Chamaeleon Church; we get four songs from them: folk-rocker "Everybody Knows", the Dylan/Barry McGuire-sounding "Maybe More Than You", and two gentle ballads. Singer Willie 'Loco' Alexander went on to form Bagatelle, who can be heard here in a more orchestrated, slightly inferior, version of "Everybody Knows". He'd later join a latter-day version of Velvet Underground, and have a long solo career.
Orpheus are also represented with 4 songs. They were one of the major Boston groups, but to me they exemplify the worst trait of the scene: too pop-oriented, with melodic harmonies and heavy orchestrations more appropriate for the likes of Sinatra than for a rock band. Nevertheless, "Can't Find The Time To Tell You" is a great radio-friendly pop single, and "Walk Away Renee" an excellent but pointless Left Banke cover. The last band on disc 1 are Chamaeleon Church. Their music is also orchestrated psych-pop, with some Indian touches on "Off With the Old". Good songs, but probably the most interesting fact about them is that their drummer was future comedian/Saturday Night Live star Chevy Chase. Disc 2 opens with two songs by The Apple Pie Motherhood Band: Cream cover "Born Under a Bad Sign" and psychedelic ballad "Gypsy", the latter featuring violin and bluesy guitar. Next up are two tracks by Eden's Children: gentle ballad "Goodbye Girl" and instrumental "Just Let Go"; both benefit from laid-back and jazzy electric guitar.
The Beacon Street Union were one of the biggest bands in the scene; while they're missing from here, we get 3 tracks from their descendants, Eagle: "Come In It's All For Free" (hard rock), "Kickin' It Back" (soul) and "Separated" (pop) are quite decent but ultimately forgettable. The Rockin' Ramrods were one of the best garage/folk-rock bands in the region. We get 2 tracks from 1966, garagey "Bright Lit Blue Skies" and the folkier "Can't You See". By 1968, they were going by the name Puff. Of the 3 Puff tracks here, "Go With You" sticks out, with its garage/soul organ and nice harmonies. Front Page Review are a heavier proposition; with their anti-war and mystical themes, imposing organ, and psychedelic effects, they show similarities to West Coast groups like The Doors. They recorded an album in 1968, which remained unrelased at the time this CD was compiled. Of the three songs included here,"Valley of Eyes" is the best and most upbeat. Ill Wind are represented by both sides of their single "In My Dark World/ High Flyin' Bird" - a masterpiece of acid folk. Side A is a brooding piece with gorgeous female vocals, while side B is also a terrific performance whose only downside is that it sounds too similar to the Jefferson Airplane version. The last band here are Earth Opera. From their 2nd album we get their 10-minute opus "The American Eagle Tragedy". A complex composition with alternating loud and quiet passages, it culminates in urgent drumming, noisy fuzz guitar, and desperate cries "Stop The War". The closing "The Red Sox Are Winning", a title from Earth Opera's debut, is subtler: instead of dystopic imagery, we get flashes of everyday routine; normal life going on while the war is raging far away. All people seem to care about is that "the Red Sox are winning" - apparently the season of 1967/68 really was an exceptionally good one for the Boston team, eclipsing any worries about the war in the mind of "squares".
The fact that the CD closes with bunch of dark and pessimistic songs is indicative of the clouds gathering ahead by the end of '68: the summer of love was over, and war and racial violence were looming in a year that saw further escalation of the Vietnam War and the assasinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. This music here takes us back to that time. It contains a number of great songs as well as some that are simply typical of the era. The compilation provides us with a good snapshot of the Bosstown scene, but falters in two counts: firstly, it's too long. Some rather pedestrian bands are represented with multiple songs when one would be enough. I guess the compilers wanted to include some previously un-reissued tracks for the sake of collectors. Secondly, many bands are missing e.g. The Art of Lovin', Beacon Street Union, Flat Earth Society, Fort Mudge Memorial Dump, The Tangerine Zoo etc. I have records (well, mostly CD's actually) from all these bands, and will present them separately in this blog some time.
**** for [Ballad of] The Hip Death Goddess (Ultimate Spinach), Fragmentary March of Green (Ultimate Spinach), Can't Find the Time to Tell You (Orpheus), Everybody Knows (The Lost), Off With the Old (Chamaeleon Church), Gypsy (The Apple Pie Motherhood Band), Goodbye Girl (Eden's Children), Just Let Go (Eden's Children), Bright Lit Blue Skies (The Rockin' Ramrods), Prophecies / Morning Blue (Front Page Review), Valley of Eyes (Front Page Review), In My Dark World (Ill Wind), High Flyin' Bird (Ill Wind), The American Eagle Tragedy (Earth Opera), The Red Sox Are Winning (Earth Opera)
*** for Baroque #1 (Ultimate Spinach), Walk Away Renee (Orpheus), Tomorrow Man (Orpheus), Maybe More Than You (The Lost), Mystic [Seven Starry Skies] (The Lost), Violet Gown (The Lost), Everybody Knows (Bagatelle), In a Kindly Way (Chamaeleon Church), The World Has Just Begun (Ultimate Spinach), Happiness Child (Ultimate Spinach), Eddie's Rush (Ultimate Spinach), Born Under a Bad Sign (The Apple Pie Motherhood Band), Come In It's All For Free (Eagle), Kickin' It Back (Eagle), Go With You (Puff), Can't You See (The Rockin' Ramrods), Silver Children (Front Page Review),
** for Brown Arms to Houston (Orpheus), Back on the Farm (Bagatelle), Separated (Eagle), Vacuum (Puff), Looking in My Window (Puff)
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