The Smiley Smile Message Board

MP3: http://www.archive.org/download/illegal-art/gilbert.mp3

Just thought this song deserved its own post.  Brilliantly sad.

I like this bouncy and hummable quasi suicide-note  set to music, its springy internal rhymes about throwing himself off a tower in an hour if he doesn't feel any less sour, the whole litany of one homely unhappy thing after another. Gilbert's  artlessly candid uncool persona (plus his silly name), and his way with words and singing them.

I really love the bit about :
and how he sings 'pieces', and how he sets it up in the verse as the only emphasized word without two or more rhymes around it so it just stands out as a little gasp of pain!

But sweet sorrow all the same. That must be how it became so phenomenally popular worldwide. I remember that at Saint Mark's Square in Venice the cafe violinists had this as number one tip-loosening heavy rotation sentimental favorite for years, eclipsing former fave Somewhere My Love (Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago).

That's pop immortality!

Whatever happened to Gilbert and what do you think of his other music? I can remember him going from his original odd image as bowl-haircutted cross between a street urchin and a visitor from Brideshead Revisited land to an equally odd 'collegiate' look, a hip to be square guy whatever his wardrobe. The later singles were still ingenious musically and nicely sung, but the cloying and nauseating content of "Clair" got to me, and I only otherwise remember an innocuous 'rock ditty' (in quotes) about being a lover not a fighter that left me cold.   

The most happily depressing song ever written, an essential part of the 70's bubble-canon of songs about death and/or sleazy sex.

What's some more of the canon? I've gotta know. Seasons in the Sun, certainly, and then what???

Death:

Dark Lady (Cher)
Billy, Don't Be A Hero (Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods)
One Tin Soldier (Coven)
The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia (Vicki Lawrence)
Train Of Thought (Cher)
Don't Fear The Reaper (Blue Oyster Cult) (Bubble-Metal)
D.O.A. (Bloodrock) (Bubble-Metal)
Detroit Rock City (KISS) (Bubble-Metal)
etc...

Sleazy Sex:
Chick-A-Boom (Daddy Dewdrop)
Brand New Key (Melanie)
Afternoon Delight (Starland Vocal Band)
Chevy Van (Sammy Johns)
More More More (Andrea True Connection)
December 1963 (The Four Seasons)
Miracles (Jefferson Starship)
Midnight At The Oasis (Maria Muldaur)
etc...

Just Plain Sadness:
Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast (Wayne Newton)
I'm Not In Love (10CC)
All By Myself (Eric Carmen)
Cats In The Cradle (Harry Chapin)
etc...

Apocalyptic Sad/Soul:
Freddie's Dead (Curtis Mayfield)
The World Is A Ghetto (War)
Slippin' Into Darkness (War)
Back Stabbers (O'Jays)
Papa Was A Rollin' Stone (Temptations)
Have You Seen Her (Chi-Lites)
Didn't I (Delfonics)
etc...

You earn your swaggering avatar twelve times over for that contribution. Brilliant.

Soon to be a continuing thread coming to this forum...Let me wrack my brains for more and repost this list as a starter in the morning.

Thanks, my man. The 70's are the period of pop music I am most interested in, and the themes recurring throughout the decade's music are most worthy of serious study. The era was filled with such derangement, sadness, anger, ennui, and hedonistic thrills that it infected even the most banal of art forms, the AM single. While in earlier and later days, the radio was able to blissfully ignore all the societal chaos surrounding it, the 1970's embraced and exposed it in all possible venues. It couldn't hide anything any more, so it just told it like it was and celebrated the decline. A SMiLEY-face sticker on a casket filled with hopes and delusions.  And the only people who really recognised it were Steely Dan and Randy Newman, but that's another kettle o' fish.
Anyways, I always really love your posts, Cabin, you always cut straight to the heart and simultaneously fire off some truly psyche-delic/tropic visions. I'm looking forward to some more of your thoughts on this stuff.

We're on the same page of the manifesto. More following.

Brandy and Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast were also  big hits at the same time as Alone Again Naturally.

I'm glad I was locked up in a government facility that summer, and seldom got to hear any music. ::)

Don't forget "The Night Chicago Died".

Who can forget "Patches"?  Even the crops die.

Boggles the mind sometimes, doesn't he? Ian, you're a genius. Amazing.

Jeez, thanks man!  ;D

The beautiful yet disturbing thing about that list is that my brothers and their significant others would use just about every single one in the recurring Bad Song Wars that break out every now and then.  Everything they name...i like! 

Well, almost.  "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" is a fucking awful song.

No way, Susan. Great song and performance.

No way, Ian.  Syrupy song that sets my blood sugar over the limit, and the performance is over-the-top as well.  Bad, bad, bad song.

I've always thought of "Alone Again (Naturally)" as a great piece of ersatz Paul McCartney. (Has anybody got a long version of the McCartney song "Suicide" that they can post a Yousendit of?)

Since when is over-the-top a bad thing?
Do you feel the same way about Elvis' Don't Cry Daddy?

OTT is a bad thing when the material itself is OTT to begin with.  There's lot of OTT stuff that i don't mind, but this song sets my teeth on edge in the vein of "You're Having My Baby" - the worst song EVER.  This one isn't that bad, but it's close.

Haven't heard that particular Elvis song, so i can't judge.

And just so you don't all think i'm a total loser, i AM a defender of "The Night Chicago Died" and "Billy Don't Be A Hero" and other gems from the '70s!

A strange thing, besides doing "The Night Chicago Died," Paper Lace ALSO put out a version of "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" at the same time Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods did. The two records were competing for a couple of weeks before the Heywoods pulled ahead and snagged the hit. Whoever wrote the damn thing must've been beside himself with having his song show up in the Hot 100 twice every week. When I was 13 I went to buy the record, but didh't know who sang it. I had a fifty fifty chance and wound up picking the wrong version. Had to go back and get the other one, too. :D

Having My Baby is powered by Satan. The only one worse is Sometimes When We Touch. But Undercover Angel and Torn Between Two Lovers are close.

Have you ever been mellow?  ;)

Oh, hell yeah. Olivia's my girl. Love everything she did, up to the Physical era.

Okay, different strokes for different sick folks, I dig ;)

I dig Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch"!  Somewhat...okay, now I sound like a waffler.  Sometimes I hate it, but right now, I like it.

"Me And Mrs. Jones" by Billy Paul is one of the great '70s sleaze/soul songs............

Re: The previously mentioned song whose name I refuse to utter.....


THERE IS NO EAST SIDE OF CHICAGO!!!!!

You have all mentioned some truly loathesome songs.


I will add just one:    Honey.



 

For sleazy sex, I might add 'Lady Marmalade' by Labelle, which was covered recently by, I believe, a trio of sixteen year-old prositutes or something. Had a big hit with it too. I was scandalized to find out that it was co-written by... BOB CREWE!!! That discovery almost hit me as hard as the 'You Light Up My Life' one.

For death, 'Timothy' by The Buoys is my choice. Was that in the 70's? Close enough, and at any rate, a good top 40 song about cannibalism is timeless. Then there's everyone's Beach-Boy-related fave, 'Shannon' by Henry Gross, which is actually part of the dog-snuff subgenre. It could, in a pinch, be joined by Lobo's 'Me And You And A Dog Named Boo' - I was once told that in the end they ate the dog, but I can hardly lend credence to this idea.

When I was young, I thought Alone Again's lyric was, "But as if to knock me down, the allergy came around." It still makes more sense to me that way.

That's 60's baby. The best is Tammy Wynette's cover where she adopts the role of the dead Honey, singing from beyond the grave. "And, honey, I miss you too, and I know you're bein' good".
CREEPOLOGY!

That's what I thought too!

I loved AM radio in the late 60's/early 70's. All you needed was a cheap transistor radio and a 9V battery, and you were in music heaven.

As I think about it, it might be the "over the top" aspect of the songs which is what I like about them...

Jump Gilbert!!!JUMP!!!!

i love his vocal delivery in this song...and i can still hear my pappy sayin'!!!!!!!!!!

One of the most melodically depressing songs ever.  I love the spanish guitar break too.  Lounge before there was lounge. :afro

And does anyone know of a late 90's pop rock song that swiped a line from "AA(N)"?  It shouldn't take long to figure it out.