danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

In the spring of 1971, an English band was on the cusp of stardom.  Their first album, recorded the previous summer, had sold poorly, in spite of the group’s frequent concert appearances.  But their follow-up single, “Bye and Bye”, was receiving generous airplay on BBC 1 and Radio Luxembourg, and everyone was talking about them.

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Unfortunately, a production problem limited the initial pressing to a couple thousand copies.  A near simultaneous postal strike combined to make the record virtually unavailable.  They continued to play shows, and recorded a second LP, but their window had closed, and by the end of the summer of 1972 they were finished.

The band’s name was Heron, and I had not heard of them until last November when my friend Steve, who seems to know exactly what I like in pop music, brought to my attention a song called “Big A”:

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That song is everything I like and nothing I don’t.   Other samples I heard were quite different, but similarly good.  So, after an inexcusable delay, I finally bought a two-CD anthology set called Upon Reflection: the Dawn Anthology, which includes all Heron’s surviving recordings for that label.  It is full of treasures.

In addition to the contents of their first maxi-single, disc one includes their self-titled debut album.  Heron is a folky record, with acoustic arrangements and few drums.  The gimmick was that it was recorded live in an open field.  Indeed, chirping birds and nature sounds are evident.  But the genuine attraction is the good songs.  “Yellow Roses” is a favorite (in spite of a far-too-prominent acoustic guitar).  I particularly like the way the last line of each verse is sung in unison.

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“Smiling Ladies” has a brilliantly subtle lyric.  Listen to the ABCA rhyme scheme in this verse:

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The second disc of Upon Reflection contains Heron’s complete twenty-one-song second album.  It is more folk-rock than folk (to wit: “Big A”), and several of the songs are overtly pop in construction if not arrangement.  Take “Your Love and Mine”, for example:

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With a different arrangement, that song could have been a Motown hit.  And that brings me to this album’s biggest surprise – a cover of a song I have always recognized as a finely-wrought tune, but which is best known in a performance that undermines the genuine tragedy and pathos in its lyrics.  Heron correctly judge the song’s true character:

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“The Devil” would be the perfect musical reply to Michael Nesmith’s “Different Drum”:

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Upon Reflection is, as I say, full of wonderful songs (“Car Crash”, “Take Me Back Home”, and “Minstrel and a King” are favorites), and it leaves one wondering why Heron didn’t make it.  There are several answers, and bad luck is only one of them.

First, to put it nicely, precision of ensemble was not Heron’s strong suit.  Their performance style is certainly casual, and sometimes sloppy.  In vocal lines with two singers, one will invariably be slightly out-of-sync with the rhythm of the other.  In a band with several singers, none had an especially fine voice.

Several of Heron’s most readily suitable hit songs are sadly tardy.  “My Turn to Cry”, for instance, would have been a hit for any band in 1965, but in 1972 it was too late:

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Finally, Heron simply didn’t recognize and promote their strongest, most commercial material.  Hindsight is a luxury, and the band no doubt had its own aesthetic agenda at the time, but how could they suppress “Some Kinda Big Thing”?

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And how could any band not know that “If It’s Love” was a smash hit?

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Motown would have sold a million records with that song.  Even Pilot or Queen would have taken that record to the top.  No other band would have let it go.  It’s almost impossible to believe, but “Some Kinda Big Thing” and “If It’s Love” were not released until Upon Reflection appeared in 2006.

So, sadly, Heron missed their chance, but I am happy I didn’t miss out on hearing them.

Heron: Upon Reflection: The Dawn Anthology – Castle Music 1432

Filed under: Popular Music on June 30th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

In 1997 I moved into a two bedroom apartment in southeast Gainesville with my friend Steve.  It was a decent place, and while it certainly wasn’t the happiest time of my life–I spent the first couple months unemployed, and the next six months too poor to afford meat–I wasn’t alone in my suffering.  My friend Jeff, looking to improve his life a bit, moved to Gainesville about six months after me, and while he was looking for work and a place to live he stayed with Steve and me.

One day in early summer 1998, Jeff came home from being out all day and told us about a song he had heard that day.  “I always immediately turn off a song when I hear ridiculous harmony guitars, but today I decided to listen”.  “What was it”, Steve asked.  “The Boys Are Back in Town”.

“The Boys Are Back in Town” is, strictly speaking, a spring song, since the speaker declares that “it won’t be long till summer comes, now that the boys are here again”.  But whenever I hear it now, because of Jeff, I think back on that early summer of 1998, and the ridiculous harmony guitars make me smile.

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Filed under: Dana Heritage Project, Musings, Popular Music on June 28th, 2010 | No Comments »

I just watched a no-hitter.  Alas, it was against my beloved Rays.  Apparently, 1965 was the last time that a team–the Chicago Cubs, no less–were no hit twice in a season in which one of the no-hitters was a perfect game.

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on June 25th, 2010 | No Comments »

 As a general rule, I am not particularly fond of transcriptions.  First, transcriptions suggest that the composer didn’t get it right himself, and, second, transcriptions are seldom as good as the original.  Exceptions to the rule certainly exist – most famously Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which is far superior in Maurice Ravel’s orchestration.  Listen to this excerpt from the last movement, “The Great Gate at Kiev”, first in Mussorgsky’s original piano version, then in Ravel’s arrangement, and notice how much more colorful and interesting Ravel makes it:

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Maurice Ravel, Leopold Stokowski, Franz Liszt, and a handful of others were accomplished musicians who knew what they were doing.  Too often, however, transcriptions are made by instrumentalists or ensembles looking to perform music that wasn’t written for their respective instruments or combinations thereof.  Thus, you often find clarinet sonatas by Brahms performed by flutists, or any piece by anybody performed by brass quartets.  Guitarists are frequent offenders.

For years now, a compact disc has popped up on the play-lists of one of my colleagues that I have resisted adding to my own.  The disc is of the Amsterdam Guitar Trio playing their own transcriptions of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque and Petite Suite, and Gabriel Fauré’s Dolly.  This is music I love, but couldn’t help but feel the transcriptions gimmicky.  I’ve changed my mind.  After all this time, I have finally come around to liking it.  Those pieces aren’t so serious as to preclude a three-guitar treatment, and hearing it that way is a refreshing diversion.  Listen to this bit from the Petite Suite:

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After years of avoiding this recording, I finally bought my own copy this week.

Debussy: Petite Suite; Suite Bergamasque. Fauré: Dolly, Op. 56. Chopin: Rondo in C Major, Op. 73.  Amsterdam Guitar Trio.  RCA 7800

Filed under: Music, WAYLTL, Work on June 25th, 2010 | No Comments »

Recently, I criticized a newspaper writer who observed that motion picture titles are longer than ever, which struck me as little more than a hasty,  unresearched generalization.  I noted at the time, however, that I, too, am wont to make hasty generalizations of my own, and I am about to make one.

The best songs are summer songs.  I can hardly count the number of great songs that are directly or indirectly about summer.  Many more, certainly, than are about any other season.  Obviously, Christmas has more than its fair share of great songs, and German Lieder are frequently about spring.  But summer has the best songs, the most nostalgic songs, the most evocative songs.  Today is the first day of summer, and beginning today, and proceeding through the summer, I will highlight some of my favorite examples of summer songs.

My first selection, as you might expect, is by Bruce Springsteen, whose catalog of summer-inspired songs is surpassed only by the Beach Boys.  The entire The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, and Born to Run albums, for instance, depict incidents that could occur on one summer day.  “Racing in the Street”, from Darkness on the Edge of Town, is a sad summer song about a woman who has given up on living, and man desperately trying to hold on.  In summer, a man has a chance.

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The clip above is from a recording of the complete concert that I attended last September with my wife and father.  It’s a wonderful, if somewhat distant-sounding memento of an unforgettable day.

Filed under: Musings, Popular Music on June 21st, 2010 | 1 Comment »