The Beat Goes On, Part XVI.

050. Love “She Comes in Colors”
(Arthur Lee)
1967
Available on Da Capo

I’m tired of hearing how Forever Changes is their overlooked masterpiece; for my money, Da Capo is where it’s really at. Partly that’s because I’m a chamber-pop junkie, and the fact that a flute is the primary instrument on this song, plus we get a harpsichord break, really revs my engine. And partly it’s because the record is a lot less boring than Changes, even with Side 2 being one long song. Sure, it’s more or less Hendrix without the fire or bravado, mixed with some cod-English whimsy, but . . . well, if that doesn’t sound like a recommendation to you, you’re hopeless.



049. The Move “Flowers in the Rain”
(Roy Wood)
1967
Available on The Move

Roy Wood is one of the forgotten maverick geniuses of pop music, a man who contributed equally to psychedelia with the Move, pomp-rock with the Electric Light Orchestra, and glam with Wizzard, and then went off the deep and and started to do some really interesting stuff, raiding musical styles of decades past. This was their third single, a rollicking march with a primitive syntheziser line, and some lyrics about, well, sitting and watching the flowers in the rain. Of course, sitting is the proper way to do it; you could get a tan from standing in the English rain. (The reference is apt.) Heard with headphones, a world of sonic subtleties opens up, and suddenly you’re all “Beatles who?”



048. David Bowie “The London Boys”
(David Bowie)
1966
Available on The Deram Anthology

You know, I’m not sure why David Bowie had to go and invent glam rock in 1971 (or move to Berlin and change the face of rock music in 1977), because he had already perfected a decadent, ominously-sheened art-pop here. Of course this wasn’t any kind of hit, sinking without a trace on release and leaving the former D. Jones still a complete unknown, but that’s how it goes when you’re ahead of your time. The story (it would be appropriated, with a ham-fisted touch, by Taupin/John for “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”) of a boy from the country who falls in with a homosexual gang and ends up on the streets isn’t exactly what you’d expect to hear in 1966; but it sounds like glam rock to me.



047. The Beach Boys “Surfer Girl”
(Brian Wilson)
1963
Available on Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of the Beach Boys

Ah, yes, the seed from which the magnificent flowering tree that is “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” grew. That’s only partly tongue-in-cheek, too: the Beach Boys are a little too cod-Hawaiian here, Brian’s gorgeous falsetto imitating a steel guitar in its gentle sway, for true timelessness. (Of course, timelessness isn’t everything either. Pop music don’t need no fucking posterity.) Is there a better song for a Californian night with the top down, preferably with an armful of something soft and feminine? Well, I mean, I’m guessing.



046. The Count Five “Psychotic Reaction”
(Craig Atkinson/Sean Byrne/Roy Chaney/Kenn Ellner/John Michalski)
1966
Available on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era

One of the horrorshow Marilyn Manson-type acts of the decade (others were Screaming Lord Sutch, Arthur Brown, and what was left over of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins after the Fifties died), Count Five used to take the stage dressed in voluminous Dracula costumes. Which made them way cooler than Paul Revere & the Raiders or Jay & the Americans, no doubt. But the song itself is a garage-rock classic, one of the few that manages to be both pyschedelic (in its disorienting instrumental breakdown) and punk (in the sheer velocity and thrash of said disorienting instrumental breakdown). “And it feels like this!”



045. Dusty Springfield “No Easy Way Down”
(Gerry Goffin/Carole King)
1969
Available on Dusty in Memphis

For some reason I want to call this a Stonewall anthem, even though I have no idea if anyone in the gay community ever listened to Dusty. Really, it works as a song about almost anything — the moment when you turn away from something beautiful and thrilling, and realize that the shitty messed-up world is still there waiting for you. It’s about the end of the 60s, the end of an affair, the end of a spiritual experience, the end of civil rights, the end of all euphoria and happiness and shared joy. And no one could sell it with as much dignified pain as Dusty. Mostly I connect it to her own struggle as a lesbian; but like I said, it could be anything.



044. Laura Nyro “Eli’s Coming”
(Laura Nyro)
1968
Available on Eli and the Thirteenth Confession

I’ve still never heard the Three Dog Night version of the song which was the hit. I don’t think I ever will, at least on purpose. I don’t need to. This is perfection itself. A multi-suite secular country-gospel song with minimal, improvised-sounding lyrics, thousands of Laura Nyros whispering, crying, shouting, swooping, keening, harmonizing, sliding off-key then jumping unexpectedly back on like something in a Buster Keaton movie. All at the service of what might be the most enigmatic set of lyrics in the 60s: “Eli’s coming, better hide your heart girl.” What does it mean? Hell, what doesn’t it mean?



043. Henry Mancini & His Orchestra “The Pink Panther Theme”
(Henry Mancini)
1964
Available on the Pink Panther soundtrack

No, seriously. No, seriously. Okay, stop laughing, guys, seriously. It takes a while, and I can’t say I’ve fully succeeded yet, but you can eventually break the automatic mental habit that associates this cool, only just slightly unnerving theme with crappy Saturday-morning cartoons. Unless you were lucky enough to only know the decent original cartoons; or better yet, only the Peter Sellers movies. But listen to the theme some time on its own. It’s slinky, spooky, and plays like real jazz for a couple of bars before making you jump with a sudden full-band WHAM. I don’t want to say it’s necessarily an immortal composition, except, well, it kind of is.



042. The Band “I Shall Be Released”
(Bob Dylan)
1968
Available on Music from Big Pink

Hold on. Just listen to those first opening piano notes again. An entire world of lonesome grace is in them, reverberating across the decades. This is only amplified by Richard Manuel’s unlearthly lead falsetto, and trebled by Richard Danko’s keening harmonies on the chorus. It was the first track on their first album, and they would still have been one of the greatest bands ever if they’d never recorded anything else. Dylan’s post-accident lyrics strip away all the surreal imagery and Western Literature references to give us an eternal, ice-true myth. Surely any funeral where this was played would be attended by hosts of angels.



041. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band “My Human Gets Me Blues”
(Don Van Vliet)
1969
Available on Trout Mask Replica

And then sometimes you’re left with nothing to say, just bopping your head in bewildered jive rhythm. What would happen, this song asks, if you took equal portions Howlin’ Wolf, Ornette Coleman, Sly & the Family Stone, and Hoyt Ming’s Skillet Lickers and smushed them together into a single song? Why, you’d get Tom Waits in the 1980s. Or, rather, you’d get the deeply idiosyncratic, raffishly incognito manic maniac who inspired, oh, say 65% of Tom Waits. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but by sheer force of personality he makes me believe that she was under her dress too.



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