Music About Music Part 2 - 60s Cali

Mamas & The Papas sing about the 60s Cali scene although weren't they originally from New York? It's really hard to watch John Philips now since he's become a rotten scoundrel in my mind after finding out about the alleged incest he committed to his daughter. I can get past these sort of things usually with the music but I think it's seeing him and the image he projects ie. a sort of innocent non-threatening lame yet money hungry hippie. Hey the rock world is full of scoundrels (cf The Stones, Led Zep, Gary Glitter etc). The thing with someone like Gary Glitter he seemed so mental it wasn't such a stretch what he got up to. Anyway innocence is very questionable in rock innit? It seems the more you project innocence, the more you are hiding how fucked up you are (cf. The Beach Boys, The Cocteau Twins).

The Beach Boys sing about an earlier version of themselves. How LA is that?

Love/Sex as music or is it the other way around?

How fucking good is Carl Wilson's voice! How much do you wanna punch Mike Love in the face though? Better than The Ronettes version, I reckon. No Brian in the clip. The other dude is Bruce Johnston. He wrote some fine Beach Boys songs like Disney Girls, Tears In The Morning etc. In the 70s he ended up collaborating with Elton John a fair bit. He even sang backing vocals on Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Oh...................how could I forget?

'For the Music is your only friend/Dance on fire as it intends/Until the end'

*What a unit! What A performance! Jim's Swagger! Fucking funny too.

Terry Melcher - Terry Melcher LP

How did I end up here? Well a while ago a friend of mine told me he was gettin into The Byrds. I'd been tellin him for a while he should check out Gene Clark. So then I thought I'd do a post about the best Post-Byrds records. Then as I was thinking up some crap to write I remembered this song I'd heard about 7 years ago on the radio by sometime Beach Boy songwriter and Byrds producer Terry Melcher. It really struck me as quite edgy and unhinged and has stayed with me ever since. I've never been able to find a physical copy of the above LP but I finally tracked down an MP3 of said artifact. Anyway I can't figure out which of the tunes it was because there is quite an intense unhinged quality to a lot of the trax. There is something in his voice that is so real and slighly terrified. This is a man who was friends with Charlie Manson and was supposedly the real target for one of the Manson murders. I'm sure he did his fair share of coke and was quite paranoid. His mum was Doris Day talk about yin and yang! That was LA though wasn't it?!. The sweetest most innocent harmonies coming from some of the most mental people in town ie. The Beach Boys. Anyway did I miss the Mojo where they said this was a forgotten classic or am I one of only a few who think this is pure gold from LA in 1974. Doris even does backing vocals on Terry's version of These Days which makes it brilliantly haunting. When he says he's 'OK and so is LA' in a jaunty tone you don't really believe him particularly when it's a sentiment expressed to his shrink on Dr Horowitz. Particularly affecting is the booze hound lament The Bars Have Made A Prison Out of Me. His sense of desperation for something to believe in is palpable in songs like Beverly Hills, Halls Of Justice and The Old Hand Jive. His spirit though is broken but he keeps on going, just, and thankfully so because this is a fucking great record! Features such luminaries as Sneaky Pete, Hal Blaine and Chris Hillman. Terry's old buddy and sometime Beach Boy Bruce Johnston co-produces.