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WP_151/ 2008
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Paintings 2 | | Medium: | acrylic on paper | | Size (inches): | 11.7 x 8.3 | | Size (mm): | 297 x 210 | | Catalog #: | WP_0151 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
"I have no excuse, sir." - Van Dyke Parks (to Mike Love, during the "Smile" album sessions, when asked to explain obscure lyrics like "Columnated ruins domino")
-www.imdb.com/name/nm0663026/bio
1966
December 6: A session equally as tense as yesterday’s. The Beach Boys record vocals for “Cabin Essence,” particularly the coda section of the song.
Again, Mike Love questions the song lyrics, refusing to sing the line “over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield.” Van Dyke Parks is at the session at Columbia Studios, and is confronted by Mike regarding the meaning of the song.
“It’s great poetry,” says Parks.
“Fine, it’s great poetry,” Love says, “but what does the lyric mean?”
After considering it for a second, Parks responds:
“I could tell you that I have no idea what they mean. But on the other hand, all words have meaning. And in this case, the line you question means this: when a crow cries in a cornfield, all other animals weaker than it clear out, allowing the crow to have its way with the food on the land. And the next line, ‘over and over, the thresher and hover the wheat field,’ simply means that it is harvest time. That, dear sir, is what they mean.”
Brian Wilson is much relieved that Van Dyke has defended his music, and the session continues on, with Mike overdubbing his vocals to the coda of “Cabin Essence.”
After the session ends, Karl Engemann takes Van Dyke Parks aside. He tries to get Parks to turn on Brian in order to get the Beach Boys to record an album more akin to their surf and car hits from 1963-1965. Parks refuses. Engemann keeps pushing the subject, but after constant rebuttals by Parks, finally gives up and heads home. Before leaving, he asks Parks why he is even helping the Beach Boys when he could very well use his lyrics on his own album. “I have no excuse, sir,” Parks replies.
-s11.zetaboards.com/Different_Worlds/topic/313089/?author=81761
Song Cycle (album) -
Song Cycle is a 1968 album by Van Dyke Parks, known for its high ambition, gigantic budget for the era (it is still one of the most expensive albums ever made allowing for inflation[1]), and subsequent low sales. The title is a reference to the genre of the Song Cycle.
The album's material explores unconventional song structures, and reflects a diverse range of Americana influences. The subjects of many songs, on the other hand, are Southern California locales, including Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Vine Street and Palm Desert.
The album was backed by producer Lenny Waronker, who placed Parks' musical freedom over budgetary constraints. The album made early use of eight track recording.
In response to the poor sales of the record after its release (despite some rave critical reviews), Warner Bros. Records ran full page newspaper and magazine advertisements that said they "lost $35,509 on 'the album of the year' (damnit)." The ad said that those who actually purchased the album had likely worn their copies out by playing it over and over, and suggested that listeners send in worn out copies to Warner Bros. in return for two new copies, including one "to educate a friend with."
Many musicians cite the album as an influence, including producer and songwriter Jim O'Rourke.[2]
Track listing:
All tracks composed by Van Dyke Parks; except where indicated
1. "Vine Street" (Randy Newman) – 3:40
2. "Palm Desert" – 3:07
3. "Widow's Walk" – 3:13
4. "Laurel Canyon Blvd" – 0:28
5. "The All Golden" – 3:46
6. "Van Dyke Parks" (Public domain) – 0:57
7. "Public Domain" – 2:34
8. "Donovan's Colours" (Donovan Leitch) – 3:38
9. "The Attic" – 2:56
10. "Laurel Canyon Blvd" – 1:19
11. "By the People" – 5:53
12. "Pot Pourri" – 1:08
A Rykodisc edition added an extra song "The Eagle and Me" to the end of the album. Note: the song "Van Dyke Parks" above (credited as 'Public Domain') is actually an interpretation of Nearer, my God, to Thee, traditionally assumed to have been the last song played by the band on the deck of the Titanic, dubbed over battlefield recordings of Vietnam.
References:
1. ^ * * * Q Mag: 150 Rock Lists * * *
2. ^ Perfect Sound Forever- interviewee's favorite music
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Cycle_(album)
Crawdaddy: Review by Laine Morreau
Song Cycle - Van Dyke Parks (Warner Bros., 1968)
Van Dyke Parks is no slouch. Lyricist and collaborator for the Beach Boys’ (read: Brian Wilson’s) SMiLE album. Author of three children’s books. Arranger for countless musicians, plays, and films. He even had a cameo on the short-lived Twin Peaks series. Even with all these accomplishments, he is best known for his own stable of albums. But many people recognize Parks’ 1972 album Discover America as the true beginning of his solo career, completely overlooking the full-length Song Cycle that came out four years earlier in 1968.
Part musical traditionalism and part avant-pop genius, Song Cycle has been an underappreciated masterpiece-in-the-making for 40 years. Parks, a true pop master with a bent toward classical music and composition, recorded Song Cycle after his collaborations with Brian Wilson on the SMiLE album came to a halt in 1967 as Wilson’s mental health deteriorated. The album lacks the cohesive, finished qualities of Parks’ later works, which is why it falls just short of being a realized masterpiece.
A song cycle in the general sense is a group of songs that are meant to be performed in succession, thereby creating a cohesive, thematically linked unit. While the album is a little too spread out, a little too random, to truly be considered a song cycle, it is apparent what Parks was striving toward. The most blatant thread linking the songs of Song Cycle is that all the songs on the album are based in traditional forms but are realized here in a pop context. The record’s contents span the breadth of historical American music types: Bluegrass, show tunes, ragtime, jazz, folk, hymns, and more, all arranged with a classical edge and performed in a removed, detached style. This is accentuated by Parks’ distorted and otherworldly vocal tracks, which seem to hover in the air, a separate entity layered upon the complex music. It is this wash that truly colors the music with contemporary pop.
Thematically, the record spurns typical 1960s musical tradition. In an era where psychedelia was king and new forms of improvisational rock music (coming more from an intuitive, gestalt bond between musicians than from the logical mind) were widespread, Parks chose instead to structure his songs around traditional styles, leaning away from the overtly psychedelic rock music that permeated American youth culture in 1968. There are no bending guitar solos, no 10-minute drum jams and, thank god, no poorly played sitar parts. There are only finite songs that, in every way, are members of some of the most unpsychedelic genres of American music.
The lyrics, too, hint at a near disdain of 1960s American culture. While many musicians in the 1960s were singing the praises of hippiedom and hippiedom’s epicenter—California—Parks took a different approach. In “Palm Desert” he posits, “Beyond San Fernando on hillside manors on the banks of toxicity / Those below and those above the same.” Thus Parks equates California—or what California had come to symbolize—with poison. Parks vocalizes a similar sentiment in “Laurel Canyon Blvd” when he states, “What is up in Laurel Canyon the seat of the beat to greet and eat / At the heart of their companion way. / That’s up Laurel Canyon. / And what is up the canyon will even eventually come down.” At this time Laurel Canyon was a hotbed of bohemian and countercultural activity; it was also a home to doomed heroes like "Mama" Cass Elliot and Jim Morrison, who didn't make it much past the dawning of the '70s. When Parks predicts that “what is up the canyon will even eventually come down,” he is foreshadowing the death of the empty bliss that the decade’s subculture had become by this point in the late ‘60s. Like all things, decadence can only be piled so high on top of itself before it implodes.
With its odd (by comparison) sound and lack of typical late ‘60s values infused in the music, it is no wonder that sales of the album were slow. But sales were steady enough, and desire for the album was constant enough, that Song Cycle has been in print in one form or another since its release. It became a sort of unheralded classic in the musical underground, finding huge support in contemporary artists like Jim O’Rourke and Thurston Moore. In recent years Song Cycle was remastered and released with a bonus track by Rykodisc. Sundazed Records followed quickly with the release of a deluxe 180-gram vinyl edition, and Warner Japan released a CD version that comes in a replica LP sleeve in early 2008 (along with the rest of Parks’ catalog, which also comes in similar sleeves).
Those who like their pop served up on a platter of Americana will be sure to embrace this first full-length record by Parks. It didn’t quite fit in to 1968 when it was released, and it doesn’t quite fit in now. But the influence it has had on the music world over the last four decades is undeniable. Perhaps the rekindled interest and the slew of reissues will help elevate sales of Song Cycle from the slow and steady pace it has enjoyed for the last 40 years. Let’s not forget, slow and steady wins the race.
-crawdaddy.wolfgangsvault.com/Article.aspx?id=7306
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