The Smiley Smile Message Board

I've really been into this song lately. It just might be the best song on the 1985 album. I noticed something about it, and I was just wondering if anybody else hears it. It seems to me that the bass riff during the "uptempo" sections is pretty much the bass line in City Blues. Listen to Brian's demo of City Blues, and then listen to It's Getting Late.

The intro is my favorite part of that song. But best song on '85 for me is Where I Belong.

Good call on the City Blues / IGL connection. I'd assume that song was considered at some point for the album (Oh Lord was recorded, I think), since it was written only a couple of years earlier. Makes sense that Carl might lift a feel from it.

In my opinion, Carl really saved that album, both with his songs and his performance. I agree that "It's Gettin' Late", along with "Maybe I Don't Know" are the two best songs on the album. I am definitely not a big fan of Steve Levine's production. There is no denying that it sounds like a mid-80's album.

I've said it before and I'll say it again....Carl is about the only reason to buy the '85 album. His three originals are very good, and he even makes trash like Passing Friend listenable just with his voice.

I sometimes wonder if people would react as strongly to Where I Belong if they knew what it's about, though.

Please, enlighten us with the story.

"It's Gettin' Late is a great tune.

Even with the 80's production I would take Carl's songs over "Kokomo" any day of the week.

Carl wrote it about his guru in the 1980s, and one he would follow until the day he died.

It was written about John-Roger, the leader of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA). Carl joined them sometime in the 1980s and became a minister. Carl never talked much about the association, but it was known he was one of their celebrity ministers. But if the words to Where I Belong are any indication, Carl felt that John-Roger had saved his life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_of_Spiritual_Inner_Awareness

One of my favourite 80's BB songs.

Man I love the those albums

Man, how freakin' weird the BBoys story is...!  Carl felt he owed his life to a 'guru' who was born a Mormon named Roger Delano Hinkins, but in 1963 Hinkins went into a coma & supposedly had a 'near-death' experience, & then visited 'trance-channelers' & claimed to have met a higher consciousness entity named 'John within himself,' & so Hinkins began referring to himself as 'John-Roger.'
:thud
Murry really did a number on those boys, eh??

I mean, it's great that Carl was able to find something to believe in so strongly; however, yeah, it does seem strange on some level.

Ya think??  From a 1988 PEOPLE magazine article:

Those who complied with J-R's sexual advances were reportedly promoted to positions of authority and praised for their spiritual qualities. Victor Toso, 34, now living in Minneapolis and engaged to be married, says he was not homosexual but that he consented to J-R's requests for sex because he feared being kicked off the MSIA staff. "Whenever we fell out of line, having another sexual encounter with him was sort of required to seal us back in the brotherhood," says Toso.

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20100035,00.html (http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20100035,00.html)

Yeah, but.

If you read the stuff John-Roger's group puts out, it's all pretty innocuous new-agey stuff. Just the kind of Christian-inspired feel-good, the truth-is-inside-us-all spirituality that Carl probably liked (and goodness knows, he was familiar with the notion of gurus).

Yeah, that's f***ed.

Well, Mike practically worshipped the Maharishi...

And Brian had Landy.  Dennis had...  booze, women, & Manson? 

Whatta crew!

I am not sure when Carl got involved in it but if it was in the 1979 time frame maybe he had a point.  Look and compare Carl in 1977/1978 (Landover and australia for example) and then Knebworth in 1980.  It ios like two different people.