Van Dyke Parks continues to record and play live in his 71st year. Last night, thanks to some folks at the smileysmile board, a link was posted to a show he performed a few years ago at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Virginia. Like many talented musicians, Van Dyke's abilities as a multi-instrumentalist have brought him steady work through the years. This particular show featured Van Dyke on piano, which is the instrument he has become well known for playing on session work in California. Van Dyke's piano work is active and vigorous. His hands seem to express the ideas he cannot articulate fast enough verbally.
Van Dyke's albums are infrequent, and as someone who bought Song Cycle when it came out, I can tell you that great things were expected of him at Warner Brothers Records. They spared no expense advertising his first album, and it was well received in Crawdaddy and other music magazines of the time. The fact was that it was not immediately accessible to average listeners who were buying records in 20th Century America. I loved the album, and yes, it did sound a little like Charles Ives. In retrospect, there are delightful musical creations on Song Cycle. The length of time it took to record and mix Song Cycle is fairly comparable to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album, and longer than it took to make Pet Sounds.
In 1968, the era of giving birth to baby elephant albums in terms of gestation had arrived. In particular, a number of the San Francisco bands such as The Grateful Dead, Steve Miller Band, and Jefferson Airplane had made creative control of their albums a part of their contract with major labels. In particular, Warner, Reprise, and Elektra Records all had strong reputations as artist centered labels. The problem with Song Cycle was that, while it was brilliantly written and arranged, it did not have the listener accessibility of a Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds.
The critical response to Song Cycle, as quoted in Richard Henderson's fine book on Song Cycle (part of the 33 1/3 series) was generally favorable. It was as if Bruce Johnston's quote about the post Pet Sounds Beach Boy albums also applied to Song Cycle. Bruce said "It is tough to swallow the idea that the public thinks we're Surfing Doris Days, but 5 guys at Crawdaddy Magazine are going to love each album," Presciently, Bruce had nailed the reaction to Song Cycle. Paul Williams at Crawdaddy loved the record and wrote unreservedly about its excellence. The general public and even progressive radio didn't know what to do with it.
The album was produced brilliantly, and had a number of sounds on it that just automatically brought the question "how did they do that" to mind. Van Dyke had gone to some effort to get the exact sounds he wanted on to Song Cycle. There are a couple of examples Van Dyke cites with Richard Henderson, one being the money going into the machine at the beginning of Donovan's Colors, and the quivering violin at he beginning of By The People. These small touches are spread throughout the album, and add color that in the complex presentation of each song can be missed easily. There is a great section of Richard Henderson's book in which he allows Song Cycle mixing engineer Bruce Botnick to recall how Song Cycle was put together.
One of these days, I want to catch Van Dyke live. The odds of it happening are slim, but it is a wish. One thing I learned from Richard Henderson's book was that Van Dyke was responsible for bringing Allen Toussaint to Reprise. This and the revelation that he co-produced Southern Nights by Toussaint helped explain my immediate attraction to that album, which is a part of my all-time 50 best albums list. It has that ethereal Van Dyke Parks touch that is not only irreplaceable, but not capable of being duplicated.
It is not surprising that young independent groups and artists are attracted to Van Dyke. He is a maverick of universal proportions. More importantly, his music has the feel of uniqueness that only a man who marches to his own creative spirit can create. I hope people in the future study his creative efforts the way people do the classical composers today, because his contributions are that significant
Copyright 2013 by Peter Reum-All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment