Music and more with claudecat17 (aka Chris Davlin)!

It’s 1971. The Beatles are fighting in song and in court, their finances a complicated mess that will take years to make sense of . The Stones are at their peak of debauched slovenliness, musically and otherwise. “Rock” music has become firmly entrenched in the American psyche with help from free-form FM radio, which has yet to devolve into the diabolically exclusive (racially and otherwise) “classic rock” format. Side note: my father was an early pioneer of this free form thing at WGSU from 1967 to 1972.

It was the year of Who’s Next, Sticky Fingers (with its controversial real zipper cover!), Led Zeppelin IV, L.A. Woman, and What’s Going On, among dozens of other soon-to-be-classics. What was “cool” in music was pretty obvious by then, and record companies were still coming to grips with it all in sometimes hilarious ways, signing anyone with hippie credentials. Soon they’d have it figured out, the beginning of the end for whatever musical progress had occurred over the past decade. This all led to Foreigner and Meat Loaf, Judas Priest and the fucking Ramones, who every rock critic is STILL required by law to hype and salivate over. Then the goddamn 80s happened and it was all over, Prince and a few other highlights notwithstanding. The vast majority of it was fashion oriented garbage in my opinion – all image, very little in terms of musical skills. The Bowie songs of this era are especially annoying. Sacrilege I know, but I really believe this. As always the weasels had ruined it. It’s what they do!

The Beach Boys? They were busy pioneering becoming an oldies act and releasing the very confusing Surf’s Up LP. To say they were out of step with the times musically would not be inaccurate, though Surf’s Up was their best selling album in years, even getting some airplay on the few still-programmed-by-stoners FM stations. But the standout tune, the title track, was a leftover from the Smile sessions, and was decidedly out of place amidst a sea of boogie, glam, and progressive sludge on the radio. It’s a great tune (hard to beat a lyric like “columnated ruins do-mi-no”?), but not my favorite on the album.

No, that would be the wistfully nostalgic “Disney Girls (1957)”, a tune so unashamedly wimpy that it turns the corner into something resembling greatness. It’s the sound of the burned out 60’s refugee pining for the simplicity and lemonade of a bygone era, one glimpsed through the chemically enhanced lens of refracted time. A look back at Leave It to Beaver innocence by a wannabe-reformed acidhead. And because it’s done by a band with a real talent for the whitebreadedness AND some drug familiarity, it works amazingly well.

Not that there aren’t significant obstacles to negotiate for the modern listener with limited tolerance for, say, the Barry Manilows or Breads of the 70s musical world. The lead vocal alone on this tune is enough to induce diabetic coma. It’s sickly sweet, with insidious modulations seemingly crafted for maximum annoyance to those about to rock and those saluting. I’d have to guess that at least a few proto-metalheads and even garden variety hippies ran screaming from the room upon first (and last) exposure to this song.

The production doesn’t mitigate that one bit either. It’s professional, tightly arranged, with deft studio precision and an overall feel of introspective melancholy. Other bands were using the wah-wah pedal in funky anger; the Boys were taming it for pretty suburban domesticity. There are no strings, but damned if it doesn’t sound like there should have been. It’s only upon careful re-listening that I realized this…

No, it’s just wispy clouds of angelic pseudo-choir boy background vocals, with the perfect level of studio trickeration to make ‘em drip like an ice cold can of Pepsi on a hot summer’s day. And what about that whistling part near the end, huh? Under any other circumstance that would be hurl-inducing, but somehow, again, we’re round the bend right into Ozzie and Harriet’s front parlor, and it sounds just perfect, thanks mom.

If you need to blame somebody for all this, it’s Bruce Johnston, the guy that was brought in when Brian Wilson went nuts on the plane and couldn’t tour anymore. Johnston would go on to write “I Write the Songs” for one Barry Manilow, who people forget was a mega-star for a few years. A fun fact that seems apropos to this piece is that Bruce had a lifelong relationship (nothing sexual to my knowledge) with Doris Day, who in 2011, at age 89, did a cover version of today’s featured song. Full elderly whitebread circle! Aren’t they a cute couple? I wonder what they ordered for lunch? Nothing spicy more than likely.

Hey there’s an idea! A spinoff of that hot wings show but with only the elderly. The thought of 89 year old Doris Day drinking that “Da Bomb” sauce like it was buttermilk makes me chortle, which is one below guffaw. I wonder if Bruce is still above ground? He could host! Looks like a guy with wing experience for sure!

I know, I know. I’ll likely be on an island with this one, as I so often am. But maybe you’ll hear what I hear, feel what I feel. Maybe you’re of sufficient seasoning to be the ideal target audience like me. Someone old enough to recall Father Knows Best’s warped depiction of America yet also personally aware of the dashed hope of the 60’s, the confused crawl back to the new reality of the 70’s and beyond.

Give it a try! If you can get through the first verse or so, you’re home free. Have a frosty milkshake!

So here it is! You’ll have a reaction, I promise you that. You’ll love it or hate it, but you’ll feel something. It could be intense, so maybe hide the scissors, ask the kids to go outside and “play”. Recovery time might be necessary…

I’d love to see some comments, on this or any other post . Frankly I’m a little surprised at the nearly total lack of interest in this blog so far. Most pages have just a couple views, at least one of those being me, and nobody’s liking or commenting on shit. Maybe that’s why, as I analyze that sentence…

So if you’re one of the few, the proud, the claudecat17 blog fan base, please return often, and comment liberally! Even conservatively, within factual limits. I’ll be moderate in my moderation, so there. All three sides accounted for.

If it wasn’t clear in the above blather, I really really like this tune despite musical instincts boiling in my brain as this caresses the baser pleasure centers, kicking intellect in the groin as it strolls amiably by. Yeah, I was an English major… AP courses and all, and a great teacher that made me read James Joyce and let me bring in my guitar and play fingerpicked Beatle tunes to my classmates. That happened! Thank you Ms Nelson! I bet she had some stories… I remember seeing her in the “crowd” at an open mic night early in my “journey”. We didn’t talk. Likely a coincidence but I like to think she was checking up on me… I’m much better now!