I was very sad to hear today of the passing of Chris Dedrick, the main singer and songwriter of the Free Design, one of the classic sunshine pop bands, and one whose music often reached the harmonic heights of the Beach Boys and the Association. Have a look at Chris’s website for more about this special person.
It’s funny how sometimes one piece of music can lead you on to discovering another seemingly unrelated work that has an immediate impact on you. In my desperation to hear the new Prefab Sprout album, I downloaded an audio file of a German radio show that previewed the album. On that show, was a piece of music that I never heard before, Morning Girl by the Neon Philharmonic. Intrigued by this orchestrated pop gem, I tried to find out more about the group, and eventually purchased the double CD Brilliant Colors: The Complete Warner Bros. Recording. The album lives up to its title and is a comprehensive collection of the complete two albums they recorded for Warner Brothers as well as a number of additional singles.
The Neon Philharmonic are certainly a fascinating part of the late 60s Sunshine/Baroque pop song and it is interesting to read the biographies of their singer Don Gant and songwriter Tupper Saussy. The ambition of their first two albums was certainly set very high -to essentially create an album that was essentially a pop opera before this became fashionable. And while there may be an element of over-the-top production and lyrics in titles like Long John The Pirate and F. Scott Fitzgerald & William Shakespeare, the quality of the songs and intricate nature of the arrangements soon wins you over and makes you realise these are works are real quality.
One reference point is probably the works Jimmy Webb did with Richard Harris that share the orchestral ambition and occassional melodrama with the Neon Philharmonic – some may be turned off, but for me, these are all works of real quality. Are You Old Enough To Remember Dresden? may seem like a pretentious title, but this is a work of raw power and an intense brass-driven arrangement and bassline that really reels the listener in.
Morning Girl was the hit, but there are a lot of great songs amongst the 33 on the two CDs (plus some radio spots). This was a great chance discovery on my musical journey and you can come along too; you can buy or download at Amazon here.
Not sure how this one escaped me, but glad I’ve got it now…many of you won’t have heard of Roger Nichols but all of you know We’ve Only Just Begun (the Carpenters wedding staple) and indeed, Mr. Nichols is the co-writer of that song. His one album of classic Sunshine Pop was one of the first reviews of this blog and now, he has got back with his group, The Small Circle Of Friends to record some of his classic songs. This was actually released in Japan last year, but thanks to Steve Stanley of the Now People, it now has a worldwide release and is available on Amazon.
You may well know the classics Let Me Be The One and Out In The Country, which are featured here, but there are beautiful songs throughout, including Look Away and the inspring instrumental, The Winner’s Theme. Also featured are five 60s era demos of songs featured on the album. This is classic sunshine pop, with beauty and depth, and one of the great songwriters. Highly recommended.
1) A Symphony For Susan - The Arbors
2) Most Of All - The Arbors
3) That Lucky Old Sun (Reprise)- Brian Wilson
4) Going Home- Brian Wilson
5) Southern California- Brian Wilson
6) Message Man- Brian Wilson
7) Just Like Me And You- Brian Wilson
8 ) Because We Are In Love (The Wedding Song) -The Carpenters
9) Someday You Will Be Loved - Death Cab for Cutie
10) Don’t Forget The Sun - The Explorer’s Club
11) Lost My Head -The Explorer’s Club
12) If You Go -The Explorer’s Club
13) Safe Distance -The Explorer’s Club
14) Hold Me Tight - The Explorer’s Club
15) Pink Confetti - Freshlyground
16) Malibu - It’s Only Roy
17) I Keep On Talking- Love Generation
18) Sissy & The Silent Kid - The Magic Numbers
19) Always a place -The October Project
20) Ineffable - Paddy McAloon
21) The Ballad Of Bjorn Borg - Pernice Brothers The World Won’t End
22) One Foot in the Grave - Pernice Brothers
23) Reason To Forgive - Swanky Hotel
Believe it or not, I have been listening to other new music other than That Lucky Old Sun! Well, new music in that is something I haven’t heard before, but it’s actually classic sunshine pop from the late 60s! The Arbors have an interesting story (well told at Allmusic) and from a hitmaking perspective, it is a very much a case of “what might have been.”
The only currently available CD of their works is the 2007 anthology Symphonies For Susan which covers a fair bit of their recorded work. It’s an interesting mixture of Four Freshmen harmony styles gradually moving into more rock-oriented sensibilities. There are interesting covers of the Doors Touch Me and Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone, as well as songs that were also covered by the Beach Boys -Graduation Day and The Letter. And by the time we get to Hey Joe, we are combining the Four Freshmen harmonies with some pretty hard rocking!
The approach works best on the romantic harmony tracks, particularly A Symphony For Susan and Most Of All. Overall, it’s not the greatest sunshine pop, but there are moments of harmonic bliss and romantic sophistication that should put smiles on any harmonic pop fans. You can get it on Amazon.
Waterbeds In Trinidad is a pretty off the wall title, and the album cover in the snow adds the oddity, especially as Trinidad is one of the last places you would expect snow. The Association’s eighth album, and only one for Columbia Records, sunk without trace in the early 70s -not surprising, with the height of Sunshine Pop long gone, and even the Beach Boys moving into a more soulful phase with So Tough.
Indeed, Waterbeds In Trinidad has some country rock influences which distinguish from the earlier work of the group, but the harmonies and melodicism are very much there, with some beautiful songs including Rainbows Bent, Midnight Wind and Indian Wells Women. There is an energetic cover of Goffin/King’s Snow Queen, and Little Road And A Stone To Roll is one of those songs that you feel an identity with on first listening.
This will never be a mainstream classic, but it is a record that you can listen through and say “this is quite nice” and want to play over a few times. It is shifting for a few dollars at the moment on Amazon , but I would certainly recommend it, even at that price.
One of my Beach Boys fascinations since I became a “hardcore” fan in the mid-90s has been the 67-71 era, incorporating albums from Wild Honey to Surf’s Up, and covered succinctly on the third disc of the Good Vibrations box set. Peter Carlin’s book (which I am about halfway through) covers this era well and notes that a lot of the material in this era seems to seek a sense of transcendental beauty and escape in the natural world. One can think of songs like Country Air, Let The Wind Blow, Wake The World, I Went To Sleep, Soulful Old Man Sunshine and At My Window as examples of this.Â
One must remember this was also a turbulent era of student riots and other disturbances, and much of the other music of that time seemed to reflecting that discord. Only the Beach Boys seemed to be retreating from that reality, and in the USA at least, that seemed to reflect on their popularity and sales, as well as their critical standing.
Of course, that harsh reality couldn’t be closed out together, and this era also saw the rather scary Never Learn Not To Love, which almost certainly has significant Charles Manson involvement in its creation. But even Dennis, who was possibly at his own songwriting peak at this point, was also creating his own visions of natural harmony such as Little Bird and Be Still from Friends.
One really gets the sense (without having completed the book) that this era is pivotal to Brian’s life. The book hints at a brief visit to a mental hospital for Brian in 1968, and the sense around this era is of a gradual decline, rather than the public perception that Brian was a complete acid casualty by the time SMiLE was pulled. Indeed, Brian was fairly prolific in this era if one also takes into account material that wasn’t released on albums such as Can’t Wait Too Long, Sail Plane Song and Games Two Can Play.
The era seems to culminate in the Surf’s Up album, which co-incided with Jack Rieley trying to make the Beach Boys hip again. The natural world now became a cause that needed to be saved (Don’t Go Near The Water) , but for Brian, it was his own soul that seemed to be crying for salvation and release. The astonishing pair of new Brian songs (A Day In The Life Of A Tree and ‘Til I Die) both take the natural motif, but instead of peace, there is now a desperate call for help, a sense of decline, and of drifting aimlessly.
Looking at the wider musical world, it was also the high point of Sunshine Pop, but again it was the harder edged music that seemed to getting the public attention. Yet Dylan also seemed to be drifting towards a sense of peace and simplicity (Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait) and the Beatles signed off with a mixture of stuff, but including some of their most beautiful ballads (Something, Because, Sun King, Here Comes The Sun, Long And Winding Road…). Scott Walker brought out his five classic solo albums. And Jimmy Webb’s tortured love life was being played out vinyl in the Richard Harris, Fifth Dimension and other albums that he was involved in from that era (and one of these will be reviewed tomorrow….).
Yes, if I had to relive an era of music, I would choose 1967-71. So much of the music then seemed to a sanctuary from the madness taking place around the world. Can we say that for today?
If ever pushed to state my favorite genre music, I would say “Sunshine Pop.” I know it would be something of a cop-out, because I would be able to include much of what I love in that definition- a lot of the Beach Boys music, the Association, some of the early work of Jimmy Webb plus many of the newer discoveries that I have already set out in this page.
As with any genre, “Sunshine Pop” is not an easily defined and categorised entity, just as Bill Haley didn’t walk into the studio and say “today, I am making the first rock-and-roll record.” However, the general properties of the music, as defined in allmusic, include harmonies, an in-depth production sound often including orchestration and a generally sunny (bad pun alert) attitude. I do believe that these are values that I look for in the music that I enjoy.
Another feature of the Sunshine Pop (or more accurately, the music that is generally regarded as Sunshine Pop today) is that there was a reasonable balance between the bands, songwriters and producers. All of them contributed- bands such as The Association and The Fifth Dimension had big hits, songwriters like Jimmy Webb saw their songs interpreted in a way that hit the top of the charts, and producers like Curt Boettcher made records that remain cult favorites to this day.
Of course, the Beach Boys are not generally regarded as a Sunshine Pop group, and their music can be regarded as fitting into a number of genres- Surf Music of the early albums, the Rock and Roll influence, the Baroque Pop of Pet Sounds as well as the straight-ahead rock of some of their works. However, the Sunshine Pop values can be seen in much of the bands work, particularly, in my view, the albums from Today up until Surf’s Up.
Sometimes Sunshine Pop is seen as an early version of bubblegum, and I guess by implication, devoid of emotion. I would contest this- although there may be a pervasive optimistic attitude, there are songs in the genre that express deep, and not always, happy emotions. Roger Nichols I Can See Only You is one example here, while everyone should know Cherish by The Association, which may be a sappy love song but expresses something very deep from the bottom of the singer’s heart and soul.
It is good to see labels like Rev-ola making some of the hidden Sunshine Pop treasures from the 60s available again, and there does seem to be some critical re-appraisal of music in the genre. It is also great to see bands like The Now People make new music in this genre. Of course, it isn’t mainstream now -in fact, some of the nihilistic, unharmonic music out there now seems to be the direct opposite, but they say everything goes in cycles, so one day we may see a new sunshine out there. In the meanwhile, let’s enjoy what is there, and as an aside, I encourage any of you interested in the genre to help me flesh out the Wikipedia entry on the genre, so that the world has a real sense of what this wonderful genre is all about. After all, we can’t live without sunshine……
23 songs currently on my personal rotation
1)IF I COULD REACH YOU(5th Dimension)
2)THE GIRL’S SONG (5th Dimension)
3)(LAST NIGHT)I DIDN’T GET TO SLEEP AT ALL (5th Dimension)
4)LOVE’S LINES, ANGLES AND RHYMES (5th Dimension): 4 great songs from the harmonic quintet
5)RAINBOW BENT (The Association)
6)BAREFOOT GENTLEMAN (The Association)
7)GOODBYE, COLUMBUS (The Association): There are a lot of gems if you look deeper than the hits for the Association- these are three that I really like.
8)ANOTHER TIME (Curt Boettcher)
9)MAGIC TIME (The Ballroom): Two Curt Boettcher opuses that pre-date the Millennium cult favorite, Begin.
10)WHEN THE WORLD TURNS (Eternity’s Children)
11)ALONE AGAIN (Eternity’s Children)
12)SUNSHINE AND FLOWERS (Eternity’s Children): Sunshine Pop wasn’t all California..this group was from the deep south, but these songs are still very beautiful and Sunshine And Flowers catches the whole mood of the movement.
13)KITES ARE FUN (The Free Design)
14)WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG (The Free Design)
15)DON’T TURN AWAY (The Free Design)
16)I FOUND LOVE (The Free Design): A group that I have recently discovered, but am really enjoying. Kites and I Found Love are probably the best known, but the middle two are two of the most beautiful songs I have heard, from their first album.
17)I SAW HER AGAIN (The Mamas And The Papas): Very much part of the movement.
18)SO FAR AWAY IN LOVE (Orpheus)
19)TO TOUCH OUR LOVE AGAIN (Orpheus)
20)THE DREAM (Orpheus): Boss-town pop. The Dream is a fantastic mix of east and west.
21)DON’T TAKE YOUR TIME (Roger Nichols and The Small Circle Of Friends) 22)I CAN SEE ONLY YOU (Roger Nichols and The Small Circle Of Friends)
23)LOVE SO FINE (Roger Nichols and The Small Circle Of Friends): Roger Nichols wrote some of the Carpenters best known songs. Here are some lesser-known but great songs from his pen.Â
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The Association are possibly the archetypal Sunshine Pop group with their harmonies and lyrics about sunshine and flowers. I know some people may find them insubstantial and sappy but I was always a sucker for Cherish, and indeed my first CD was the Association’s greatest hits as I couldn’t get it on any other format and I really wanted that song. So I had this CD for almost two years before I had a CD player (I did dub the song onto the tape thanks to a friendly cousin). Last year, I got the more complete 2 CD collection Just The Right Sound, and am now trying to collect the original CDs.
Birthday was their fourth album, and was released pretty much after the horse had bolted for the Association in terms of big hits and national fame. This 1968 album does contain their last top 10, Everything That Touches You, and appears to be made at a time of some internal turmoil for the band. They also turned down Jimmy Webb’s Macarthur Park at that time, which appears to have been a mistake in hindsight. However, as with many bands in their most turbulent time, the music has a harmonic and joyful quality, reflected in the lyrics which seem to be all about incence, throwing away one’s watches and going barefoot. Indeed, the lyrics almost seem to be a template for love and peace in a turbulent world. Although there is the odd moment where the vocals may have been stonger, I still think is a great album and another gem from the Sunshine Pop era. No, it’s not really my birthday but this is a present you could open every day.