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Evening of the Magician by Randy Burns (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Evening of the Magician
  • Artist name: Randy Burns
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: ESP-Disk
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $120.00

Evening of the Magician by Randy Burns

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record before, but it will be the fourth by Randy Burns that I’ve reviewed. The previous three were:

What I expected

Folk rock.

What it was actually like

This was, like his other records, folk rock.

Some of the songs, like Evening Magician, were pretty simple and stripped down, with not a lot of instrumentation.

Others had a more layered and complex sound. Ron’s Song was more upbeat than the rest, and had more of a country rock sound, with a second vocal part, and Rainy Day Children also had a more intricate sound, with harmonica.

Echoes of Mary’s Song used a flute very extensively, but it added very little. My flute test, from my review of Loggins and Messina (1972) goes like this:

I’m maybe slightly more forgiving of flute being used in rock music [than the saxophone], if only because it’s so uncommon, but there’s a simple standard that I would apply: are you Jethro Tull? Are you better than Jethro Tull, or engaged in a serious attempt to do something that Jethro Tull hasn’t done or can’t do? If you answer no to all of those questions, then you probably should leave the flute out of your rock song.

Springtime Song also had the flute, but it was not as distracting[1].

Much of this record was totally fine, but a bit mumbly, and it was not always easy to follow what Burns was singing, so I thought it was apt that he included this on the back of the album:

(ESPERANTO) Mendu tiun diskon ĉe via loka diskvendejo aǔ rekte de ESP. Eksterlanda prezo: $4.98. Pagu per internacia poŝtmandato.

I could totally see him as an Esperanto nerd.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References

References
↑1 Also, I did eventually review Aqualung (1971).

Leftover Wine by Melanie (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Leftover Wine
  • Artist name: Melanie
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Buddah Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: RMP / ΤΕΦ is written on the album sleeve[1]
  • Buy it on Amazon: $39.97

Leftover Wine by Melanie

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this record, but I’ve previously reviewed two others by Melanie:

What I expected

The album cover says, “Recorded live at Margie’s birthday party.” I don’t know who Margie was (or is), but I guess that means it will be Melanie doing folk rock in concert.

What it was actually like

Based on the song Happy Birthday, it seems that Margie’s name is pronounced with a hard G, which is clearly psychopathic. Also, I hope Margie was not upset with this performance, since most of the songs seemed pretty serious for a birthday party: the style was quite spare, with just guitar and voice.

Anyway, Melanie’s voice still reminded me of Joanna Newsom’s, but at other times it really soared, like in The Saddest Thing and the title track Leftover Wine. I also did not know until listening to Leftover Wine that Melanie’s speaking voice had a rather strong Queens accent!

When reviewing Affectionately Melanie I wrote:

Beautiful People is the song that Melanie got famous for performing at Woodstock, and I thought it was fine, but I’m not such a fan of it.

It was still fine, as was Uptown Down, also from that record.

Her line in Animal Crackers about eating the animal crackers so that children would not starve in Europe was so fascinating to me because, when I was growing up, it was the children in Africa who could be protected from starvation only if I finished my meal, and I knew it had been the children in either China or India, or both, at other times (Melanie was born in 1947, so when she was growing up, starvation in Europe was still a very real threat).

Animal Crackers also had a cute Alice’s Restaurant shoutout, and I took note because I had already noted that she and Arlo Guthrie had both performed at Woodstock.

I Don’t Eat Animals was the most obnoxious song. Even 50 years ago (and even 100 years ago), those people had that reputation.

The song Psychotherapy was definitely the weirdest song on the record by far, and one of the weirder songs out of the 306 records that I’ve reviewed to date. It was an ode to Freud, but sung to the melody of Battle Hymn of the Republic (which itself is sung to the melody of John Brown’s Body), some of the creepiest and most disturbing music ever to become popular, and it immediately brought me back to that morning in March 2019 when I visited the largest electronics store in the world, Yodobashi in Akihabara, Tokyo, and realized that
its theme song was sung to the very same melody (in that context, I described it as “both disorienting and highly charming”).

The final song Peace Will Come (According to Plan) was a studio recording with vocal effects, percussion and a bit of organ, and was the most out of place with the whole rest of the record.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References

References
↑1 ΤΕΦ was my father’s college fraternity (his copy of Beggars Banquet is also marked with the ΤΕΦ symbol) and “RMP” means that the album belonged to Richard Pearlstein.

Album 1700 by Peter, Paul and Mary (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Album 1700
  • Group name: Peter, Paul and Mary
  • Year: 1967
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Warner Bros. Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • “Brenner” written on top right of album, indicating that my mother owned it
    • “Brenner” written on record, indicating that my mother owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $3.63

Album 1700 by Peter, Paul and Mary

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this Peter, Paul and Mary record before, but I recognize a few of the songs on it, and I’ve previously reviewed two of their other records:

What I expected

Folk hits from the 1960s.

What it was actually like

I was surprised at how much of the music on this record was boring and uninteresting, and at how little of it that I actually enjoyed, and I’m not sure if that had anything to do Yarrow and Stookey both appearing on the album cover in van dykes, the official facial hair style of Young Republicans. Probably not, though. Right?

At any rate, Whatshername was especially boring, with barely any singing and barely any musical accompaniment to go along with the singing, and a bunch of the other songs were similar. Maybe they had just run out of good ideas for songs by 1967?

When reviewing Peter, Paul and Mary In Concert last summer, I wrote:

… they do a lot of children’s songs, and I’m not a child so I’m much less into those.

I’m in Love with a Big Blue Frog was an example of that from Album 1700, and I would definitely not be interested in hearing that song again.

Weep for Jamie was the most WTF song on the record, which lyrics like: “For the bones that tear at her flesh inside…”

On the other hand, I loved their version of Bob Dylan’s Dream from The Freewheelin’ (1963), a very cool reinterpretation of it that I was pretty sure I had never heard before, and that made me love the original even more.

When reviewing John Denver’s Greatest Hits (1973) last month, I wrote:

I enjoyed Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane, but I think the Peter, Paul and Mary version will remain canonical (for me).

After listening to it again on Album 1700, I still think that.

And when reviewing (Ten) Years Together last spring, I wrote:

… it was great to hear I Dig Rock and Roll Music for maybe the first time in decades.

And it was still great today.

The Song Is Love was also strong and consistent with the style I expected most of the record to be.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Une Selecton “La Fine Fleur” by Jacques Bertin (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Une Selecton “La Fine Fleur”
  • Artist name: Jacques Bertin
  • Year: 1964
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Disques Alvares
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: As with Garlick by Hugues Aufray, this is French, so it must have been owned by my mother, the family’s only Francophone.
  • Buy it on Amazon: £13.00

Une Selecton "La Fine Fleur" by Jacques Bertin

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t know anything about this.

What I expected

Maybe folk.

What it was actually like

This was, in fact, folk. All of the songs consisted of a French guy singing in French while playing an acoustic guitar (which was probably also French). None of the songs struck me as particularly catchy, but folk music isn’t usually about catchiness, and is more about the lyrics, which I couldn’t understand because they were all in French. I again felt like Ghost Dog.

There was not really a best song, but I did think that Un Grand Chale Lilas was the most boring.

Several of these songs also reminded me of Israeli popular folk music from the same era.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Garlick by Hugues Aufray (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Garlick
  • Artist name: Hugues Aufray
  • Year: 1972
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Atlantic Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: This appears to be in French, so I assume my mother owned it, because she is the family’s only Francophone.
  • Buy it on Amazon: $70.99

Garlick by Hugues Aufray

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no idea what this is.

What I expected

As I mentioned, it appears to be a French record and it’s from 1972, which is around when my mother spent a year in France, so I guess some French pop, maybe rock.

What it was actually like

This was mostly soft rock and folk rock, and none of the songs were offensive or bad, but a lot of them had varying levels of Oompa Loompa in them. I think it can be easy for people accustomed to American and British popular music to forget how dominated continental-European music is by the Oompa Loompa sound. 

Two of the most Oompa Loompa songs on the record were Moi je choisis la liberté and On n’est pas heureux, which had an interesting use of flute. Fleur d’oranger (instrumental), which was not technically instrumental since there were a lot of La-la-las in it, was also in that category, and had a variety of harmonica, bongo drums and tambourine, fading out into church bells.

Fais-moi un lit dans ton grenier was a country song with steel guitar that was slightly Oompa Loompa, and A Propos d’un détail had Oompa Loompa guitar, but was only slightly country, and had spoken vocals that were really annoying.

The non-instrumental Fleur d’oranger had passable singing, but great banjo. Who knew that French people could play the banjo? I thought this was the best song on the record, while the worst was Adieu, a totally forgettable piano ballad.

The weirdest song was New Baby, whose lyrics definitely mentioned “new baby” a lot, but everything else was in French, and I felt like Ghost Dog trying to follow it.

O Maria had a very prominent organ, making an interesting and unusual sound that was moody and dark.

Boeuf gros sel (instrumental) started out with atonal piano, then turned into joking laughter, then turned into a blues song with harmonica and tambourine, that I thought was pretty good.

Lila 1ère partie Le bal au bois du Loup and Lila 2ème partie Perdu dans La forêt were ok soft rock songs that sounded like they had an accordion.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me