Entertainment For Lively Minds
A hex against the winter
Posted by Nick_Setchfield on 10 January 2010 - 12:03pm.
How gorgeous is this? A gem from The 5th Dimension's 1967 album The Magic Garden, a collaboration with the mighty Jimmy Webb. How many other wonderful songs have fallen between the cracks?
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Jimmy Webb!
Every couple of years I get an email from a different person commenting on Wichita Lineman. It's a song which seems to get discovered by people who urgently feel the need to pass on. This is a good thing.
The sky is made of stone
See her how she flies
Golden sails across the sky
Close enough to touch
But careful if you try
Though she looks as warm as gold
The moon's a harsh mistress
The moon can be so cold
Once the sun did shine
Lord, it felt so fine
The moon a phantom rose
Through the mountains and the pines
And then the darkness fell
And the moon's a harsh mistress
It's so hard to love her well
I fell out of her eyes
I fell out of her heart
I fell down on my face
Yes, I did, and I -- I tripped and I missed my star
God, I fell and I fell alone, I fell alone
And the moon's a harsh mistress
And the sky is made of stone
The moon's a harsh mistress
She's hard to call your own.
Suffering from a badly broken heart some years back, listening to this song was both torment and catharsis
Lyrically, Webb is brilliant with a certain tendency towards the self-consiously poetic - but the melodies he writes - "Didn't We", "Up, Up and Away", Wichita Lineman" - are just so affectingly perfect. The version of "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress" by Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden illustrates the point.
For great vocal versions of the song, check out Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt and - perhaps above all - Radka Toneff.
http://open.spotify.com/track/1691WIYf5a7BSWIMXVmlAg
Art Garfunkel...
...didn't do too shabby a job, either.
I've come Over All Nostalgic.
I've been searching out The 5th Dimension, Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jnr vids on YouTube, (God, I loved that woman!) which led me to Niecy. Good songs, great singers.
The 5th Dimension
Britain just didn't seem to get the 5th Dimension – they only had a couple of middling hits. But they did plenty of good stuff, with cracking versions of songs by Bacharach and David...
...Jimmy Webb...
...and, er, Tony Macaulay.
Probably
the best version of One Less Bell to Answer.
Am I wrong?
I got into the 5th Dimension...
.. when "Wedding Bell Blues" was no. 84 in NME's Top 100 Singles of all-time poll in 1987 (blimey, times have changed!) and I checked it out. I actually prefer it to Laura Nyro's original (the sunshine pop arrangement suits it down to the ground) though find their other Nyro covers to be a bit too sugary. I LOVE Marilyn McCoo's voice...
Woops
Wrong thread