Joyful
Orpheus
MGM SE-4599
1969
I imagine that most record collectors are familiar with the story of the "Bosstown Sound." It was a notorious hype that attempted to position Boston as the successor to the San Francisco Sound in the late 1960s. It was a shameless bit of record industry chicanery that I first learned of reading Lillian Roxon's "Rock Encyclopedia" as a teenager. In recent years there has been some revisionist thinking on this topic and defenses of the groups associated with it. I like some of the groups, most notably the Beacon Street Union, Ultimate Spinach and Earth Opera but I still don't believe the hype. This group just reinforces my opinion. I only acquired the three MGM Orpheus albums last year when I came across them at the record mart at the Pasadena City College Flea Market and was able to get them at a bargain price. I became interested in them from reading reviews of the CD reissues of their original albums. When I initially listened to the albums though I was dismayed. I found the music sappy and boring. With repeated listenings my opinion improved, but I still think the group is pretty minor. This was the band's third album and is the one I like the best. Orpheus played soft rock for the most part, a cross between the commercial pop of a group like the Association and the more ambitious, personal music of a group like Free Design, but ultimately not as satisfying as either. There are some nice arrangements and lovely vocal harmonies but the music itself is often not very memorable. Most of the songs on this album were written by the group's guitarist, Bruce Arnold often in collaboration with the group's bassist Eric Gulliksen. They are mostly lugubrious love songs. "As They All Fall" is the prettiest with a pleasant string arrangement and elaborate vocal harmonies. "May I Look at You" has a jaunty melody and "I Can Make The Sun Rise" features some propulsive acoustic guitar work and a greater sense of urgency than most of the songs on the record. "Lovin' You" is the closest thing to a rock song on the album, it is guitar-driven and relatively fast paced and easily my favorite song on the record. The vocal interplay on "Joyful" is very enjoyable and I like the hooky bass line. It segues into the delicate album closer, the pretentiously titled "Of Enlightenment." "To Touch Our Love Again" is just too sappy for me but it does have an interesting arrangement. There are also three songs that were written by others. "By the Size of My Shoes" by Larry Weiss and Jimmy Wilson is the most successful of the three, it has a nice soulful feel to it which is unusual for this group. It would have been a tasty song for a guy like Jerry Butler. Fans of the Turtles will probably be shocked by the Orpheus version of Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon's "Me About You." The Turtles classic version was cheerful soaring sunshine pop. Orpheus slows down the song and sucks all the life out of it, they might as well be singing about their dead girlfriend it is so gloomy. The other non-original is "Brown Arms in Houston" by Lesley Miller and Joe Henry. It was a flop single for the group. It sounds like something Glen Campbell or even Andy Williams might have sung, middle of the road with a very slight country/soul feel. With repeated spins, I've come to like this album, but very little of it sticks with me when it is done playing. I do appreciate its intelligence and grace, I just wish the music was a little more distinctive. It sounds best late at night, during the day it bores me. Recommended for people who think the Association are too loud.
I've noticed a phenomena that occurs when retro-heads and vinyl collectors come across any of the four Orpheus albums - and your review perfectly illustrates it. The first reaction, especially among the psych and garage dinks, is almost always negative. They are so accustomed to the dated and unsophisticated sunshine pop music of the era that they are puzzled and even angered when they drop a needle on an Orpheus LP. Like an uninformed voter, they have trouble articulating their position and their examinations nearly always contain contradictions. You were initially "dismayed" upon hearing the three MGM albums yet you quickly developed a "favorite" and found a positive thing to say about nearly every track on the LP. I've heard the same type of reaction from listeners who bothered to explore past the point of the initial headache they received as a result of their tiny brains having to work to process more sophisticated compositions. This music was composed for people who, in the late 60's and early 70's, were old enough to appreciate the works of Satie, Debussy and Ravel. According to the CD liner notes, this was the music Orpheus leader Bruce Arnold was listening to when he first starting developing his unique arrangements in The Villagers. The first self-titled Orpheus album for MGM is a classic on par with the best of the decade. It is a near perfect work and that's without including the track "I Can Make The Sunrise", which was originally recorded and intended for the first album. I too became interested in Orpheus after reading online reviews. Only they weren't reviews for the CD compilations but rather two thorough reviews of first two albums on ratemymusic.com. These were composed by a fan of Bernard Purdie, (the unaccredited drummer on much of their material). His thoughtful and fact-filled reviews prepared me for what I was about to hear and fortunately for me, eliminated any headaches or bouts of dismay.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. I appreciate that you took the time to write such an elaborate analysis. Maybe there is more to these guys than I realize, perhaps I haven’t played their records enough to fully appreciate them and I’ll certainly keep your comments in mind when I go to write about the other two Orpheus albums that I have. Still I doubt I’ll change my mind very much. If I have to play a pop album 10 times to realize that it is any good, it probably isn’t all that good. I don’t deny being a psych/garage dink and that those aesthetics may prejudice me against Orpheus, but I also appreciate Satie and Debussy (they are among my favorite classical composers) and I don’t hear them at all when I listen to this stuff. I don’t care if Bruce Arnold was a genius and listening to classical music for inspiration, when I play this record I hear the Sandpipers and the Association (not that there is anything wrong with that.) What does Debussy have to do with rock music anyway? Does anyone think that Ars Nova and the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble were better than Jefferson Airplane or Jimi Hendrix because they were influenced by Bach and Mozart? If I want to hear “sophisticated” compositions in a sixties pop context, I’ll listen to the United States of America, the Mothers of Invention, the Velvet Underground or the Red Krayola, not this fussily arranged soft rock. There are reasons why this group has never been appreciated much and I don’t think it is just because of the “tiny brains” of record collectors. These guys may have been a lot smarter than the Standells or the Chocolate Watchband, but when it comes to playing rock music, they aren’t even worthy enough to hold their beers while they play.
DeleteActually my point is if you need to listen to an album more than three times to start appreciating it, you're probably not much of a music critic. Your follow-up is just more evidence of this. You've already transitioned into the stage of looking for excuses. Just like every other "music enthusiast", you're lost unless you can find a reason why Orpheus was not more popular in their time. It's doesn't take long to find one either as the counter-culture did their best to destroy the band before their debut even hit the stores. We've heard it all before; "Oh yeah, that's one of those Boston Sound bands" or "they're just an Association sound-alike" and so on. It's all very unoriginal and boring - much like the music of The Association, who actually formed after Arnold composed much of the first and second album's material while in The Villagers. Since you're obviously the type that is influenced by others, here are some more reasons to stick with it. Laura Nyro in an interview for Circus stated that she listened to all four Orpheus albums regularly and had sealed copies. Her friend and Orpheus drummer, Bernard Purdie reported that he had invited her to one of the sessions for the fourth album at A&R Studios but she declined as she was "too shy" and didn't want to destroy the imagined "love affair" she had with Arnold's voice. At that same recording session, Paul McCartney was across the hall mixing "Ram" and dropped in to say hello. After hearing the track "Monkey Demon", he asked Lorber for a reel-to-reel of the album's finished mix. Miles Davis' ex-wife stated in an interview that Miles played the first Orpheus album "endlessly" in their New York apartment. Elvis Costello, Donald Fagan, Walter Becker, Jerry Harrison and Brad Delp have all mentioned Orpheus in various interviews. Either Gulliksen or Sandler stated they had period interviews where B.J. Thomas, Jessie Colin Young and Jerry Corbitt mentioned playing with The Villagers and being shocked that Orpheus' debut album had not charted in the top ten. Arnold revealed that actor comedian Chevy Chase was and still is a fan. Chase and his group Chameleon Church were even employed by Lorber to tour Southern Universities posing as Orpheus. Chase also mentioned this in a 1988 article for The Boston Globe. The tracks "As They All Fall" and "The Dream" have recently been featured in national television commercials and "Congress Alley" appeared in the HBO series "How To Make It in America". It seems everyone is either taking a new look at Orpheus or like me, deciding that the old reviews were written by bitter jackasses. If in forming an opinion on Orpheus, you're going to follow in the footsteps of others, you might try the path made by the artists mentioned above and not the one made by these overweight, balding, tie-dye t-shirt wearing, self-proclaimed music "experts".
ReplyDeleteWow! Chevy Chase liked Orpheus? Really? Well I must be wrong then. Best band ever destroyed by the counter-culture conspiracy against excellent music. Thanks for sharing.
DeleteYou need to come to terms with the fact that this music is over your head. Stick with the dated tripe sonny. It's easier to digest.
ReplyDeleteOver my head eh? Okay grandpa I’ll bite. It is called pop music. Pop as in popular. Popular as in being suited for the general public as opposed to enlightened geniuses like yourself. So if some guy writes a silly love song and you have to be a rocket scientist to appreciate it, it probably sucks. I don’t care how many artists you claim like this stuff, I’m not changing my opinion because of them. Paul McCartney liked James Taylor as well, I suppose that makes him a genius too. Elvis Costello made insulting remarks about Ray Charles, I better chuck “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” in the trash. B.J. Thomas? Steely Dan? Half of the Youngbloods? The guy in Boston who wasn’t Tom Scholz? These are your experts? I gave this record all the respect it deserves. I acknowledge that it was an ambitious work of personal expression, not some sausage ground out by the record company music grinder. I like the record, but it is minor - soft rock with pretensions. It is never going to be important. If you really believe that this is some classic worthy to be ranked with the great artistic albums of the late 1960s like “Forever Changes,” “Abbey Road” “Odessey and Oracle” or “The Velvet Underground and Nico” then you are either in the band or are Alan Lorber himself.
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