Happy Almost New Year, Everyone. Let's Hope For the Best.
When I recently solicited requests, after honoring one for Christmas song-poems, my pal and fellow blogger
Sammy Reed jumped in and requested more of the female-led, very-late-period Tin Pan Alley house band, New Image.
I dug around, and found that I have just one New Image 45 left, for which I had not previous shared the contents. So even if it was terrible, I'd have shared it, of course, having been asked so nicely. But this is FAR from terrible. In fact, there are things - wildly different things on each side - which make it a delightful record to share.
Let's start with the side officially identified as the b-side, a religious rocker:
This is called "One By One the Savior's Calling", and I gotta say, for all the (completely) mercenary facts behind the making of this lyric into a song and a record, this end result "works" for me as a Christian rock song several thousand percentage points more effectively than almost any serious "Christian Rock" song I've ever heard.
It's ragged at the edges, for sure. The band shows its limitations repeatedly, not least all the places where the bass player hits the wrong notes, and the singer has more far in the areas of energy and emotion than she does in the area of accuracy (she misses far more notes even than the bass player).
But the song is catchy as hell, and the entire arrangement fits it perfectly, at least to my ears. Most four minute song-poems seem like they'll never end, but this one flies by, entertaining from start to finish. I think (unless I'm forgetting some) that this will go to my personal top five of religious song-poems
Play:
The flip side, "A Love Song" is as ridiculous, from start to finish, as the above song is memorable. The lyrics had me laughing out loud a couple of times.
First we are told what the writer would do "if I were to write a love song", which are fun words to start a lyric for a love song. But that's just the appetizer. The following lines have to go into the short list of the most unsingable lyrics ever sent in for song-poem creation:
The goodness of your very soul has no value in the weight of gold
Your compassion for your fellow man overshadows your beauty within
The remaining lyrics are not as clunky as that, although "redundancy of life" comes close, but, as you'll hear, they in no way fit the parameters of what will fit into the beat of a song - or at least not into this song's construction. I give the vocalist a 9.5 for making it through this tongue-twister and anti-rhythmically structured song with her voice intact.
Download: New Image - A Love Song
Play:
2 comments:
Happy new year! This is the time for hope and action.
And if you're a Christian, the a-side ought to be impetus for that. Even if you're not, the lead singer's passion and the energetic backing are big, big winners! Thank you for posting it. The b-side is, as you say, chuckles aplenty.
Thanks VERY MUCH for this! Pretty jammin' song! This is from a time when their sound updated from the garage sound they had earlier. My only pet peeve is - No guitar solo, dangit. 😁
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