Label: Hip-O Select (US), B0007827-02
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Garage Rock
Country: Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Time: 56:34
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 381 Mb
Arthur
Lee seems so embedded in the 1960s that it's hard to imagine him
existing outside that decade. Strongly influenced by the baroque
folk-pop of the Byrds, his smart, steely psychedelia conveyed a dark
vision of hippie America-- a distinct contrast to the good vibrations
typically associated with the Summer of Love. That was the same year--
1967, for those of you who don't read Rolling Stone (which I think might
be everybody)-- that Lee and his band Love released its scene-paranoid
masterpiece Forever Changes, on which he painted himself as a true L.A.
outsider, haunting the scrub-brush hills and looking deep into the dark
heart of the city around him. In those songs, he foretells his own doom,
and everyone else's: On "The Red Telephone", he sings, "Sitting on the
hillside/ Watching all the people die/ I'll feel much better on the
other side."
On these two albums (Out Here and False Start), Lee
repeatedly refers to other artists and other songs, which doesn't anchor
him to the mainstream culture but reiterates his underground
detachment. This constant dissociation heightens the lively tension on
the live disc, which was recorded at various stops on the band's 1970
tour of England. Like the studio version that closes Out Here, "Gather
'Round" appropriates the melody from Dylan's "The Times They Are
A'Changin'", not out of laziness but as a pointed commentary on the
death of that generation's idealism. Lee thrives on complication and
contradiction: As either a supremely cynical or a playful gesture, he
turns the song into an impromptu cover of Wilson Pickett's "Funky
Broadway". Similarly, he performs songs from every Love album (including
a particularly caustic "Bummer in the Summer" from Forever Changes) as a
means of acknowledging his past glories as well as his fraught history.
Live, this version of Love sounds like a band mustering the conviction
to take on the world one more time. But they never did: Lee disbanded
the line-up shortly after the tour. Love would barely see the 70s,
except as a series of failed reunions.
(full version: pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10386-the-blue-thumb-recordings/)
01. Good Times (03:50)
02. August (05:17)
03. My Little Red Book (02:52)
04. Nothing (04:38)
05. Orange Skies (03:59)
06. Andmoreagain (04:00)
07. Gather Round (07:00)
08. Bummer In the Summer (03:26)
09. Singing Cowboy (08:14)
10. Signed D.C. (06:43)
11. Love Is More Than Words Or Better Late Than Never (06:31)
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