Saturday, November 10, 2018

Pretension Overload!



It comes as no surprise that the basic scam of the song-poem company would draw into it's net some people whose writing was a bit, say, prone towards pretentiousness. And there are more than enough examples to fill three months of posts here - "The Human Breakdown of Absurdity", "Life and Myself" and "Virgin Child of the Universe" come to mind. 

I have no doubt my mouth dropped open in wonder upon hearing each of those three - particularly "Life and Myself", which cracks me up to this day. And like that song, today I have another Gene Marshall masterpiece, which also caused me to nearly burst into laughter, all by myself. It's called "Loneliness", and while the opening lines are more than a bit ponderous, the real sign of trouble is when, barely a third of the way through the record, Gene has to speak the writer's words, for nearly a minute. 

That's no surprise, given the presence of several words which would terrifically difficult to set to music, such as "presently", "correlation" and "wherein". And is it just me, or, in this section does Gene Marshall sound like Rod Serling introducing a Twilight Zone episode? 

Play:

The song on the flip side is called "When Young Eyes Meet". The same song-poet as on "Loneliness" provided this lyric, and he does considerably better with a more direct, at times genuinely affecting set of words. The music is too bland, and the quality of those words too uneven to make this anything special, but the lyrics do give more than a bit of insight into a part of the writer's life, things that may have inspired not only this song, but also "Loneliness". 

Play:  

3 comments:

Timmy said...

These two tracks would be soooooo much better, had it NOT been for the fact that the vinyl record is gotta be way warped out, or perhaps the turntable is running on a half pooped motor. Anyways, it's just too bad. The talking section of the 1st. cut is priceless, but the words could have easily been sung. Have you forgotten the words to "Eve Of Destruction"? If THOSE lyrics can be sung, then any words could be.

Stu Shea said...

Thanks for posting these. I can't get much connection from either side, both because of the fairly standard 70s Preview sound and the nearly impossible (and impassable) lyrics...

reservatory said...

Howdy! As a long-term fan who has of course hardly said a peep about all the treasure he has pilfered, this particular b-side seems to have gone missing. Thanks for everything!