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Rating: So, let's do some tallying. References?
Brian Wilson considers him "a genius, his arrangements are unique, unmistakable." To the point that the friendship with him, which began in 1965, not only bore fruits—and what fruits...—in that album trifle known as "Pet sounds" but led the following year to the close collaboration of "Smile," the recently rediscovered Holy Grail of pop. The arrangements of Tim Buckley's eponymous debut are his own doing, and it's not hard to believe that the future astral navigator learned from him, besides the passion for certain "stuff" and certain other "aspirations," that couple of tricks on how to make a melody immortal. Sinatra and his daughter Nancy (!) owe him and his brother Carson "Somethin' stupid." He invented Harper's Bizarre, played piano in the Byrds' "Fifth dimension," collaborated with Zappa's Mothers, Buffalo Springfield, Paul Revere & the Raiders, and the very first Ry Cooder. Coming to more recent years, for Jim O'Rourke, he is little less than God, and, last in so much wisdom, the muse Joanna Newsom wanted him to arrange and conduct the strings in her celestial "Ys."
Yet, despite such an enviable curriculum vitae, Van Dyke Parks, born in 1943 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, but soon transplanted to the more luxuriant California of the Sixties, remains to this day one of the best-kept secrets of American Music, a precious gem for insiders or at most for a few refined palates. Reasons? I'll venture two. A production that in more than forty years of career has been extremely sparse, with a decade-long temporal hiatus separating his first three albums—incidentally, his masterpieces—from the last four. Not only that. This champion's musical path turns out to be as disorienting and encyclopedic as you can imagine. A splendid but certainly arduous journey, through an "idiosyncratic path"—to quote the title of one of his beautiful but terribly partial anthologies—that connects musicals, singer-songwriter tunes, orchestral pop, blues, folk, psychedelic pastiche, cajun, calypso, and Caribbean rhythms. New Orleans with Hollywood, Trinidad with Mexico City, White with Black, North America with Central and even South America. Ready? Shall we start? First stop: destination unknown...
"I've idolized Van Dyke Parks for ten years now. "Song Cycle" is my absolute favorite record ever. Nothing like it has been made in this (the last, ed.) century" - Jim O'Rourke, 1998
It isn't my favorite record (to find it!...), dear Mr. O'Rourke, but I fully agree with your second statement. The only comparison for this album, dated 1968, is itself. A crop circle in the fields of popular music across the board, not just the Sixties to which it chronologically belongs. Unless it can be conceived of as plausible a meeting between Bacharach, Frank Zappa, and the United States of America summoned to rewrite the soundtrack for the Wizard of Oz, all with the supervision of Brian Wilson having breakfast dipping donuts in acid.
"Song Cycle" is pop, but of a orchestral and even choral pop. It's psychedelic, but of a free form light-years away from the contemporary West Coast experiments. It's classic, but with a playful, light-hearted, almost mockingly classicism. It's all this and much more, starting with that real pocket-symphony in four movements and barely four minutes, which is the cover (cover? Anyone might recognize it?) of Randy Newman's Vine street, ending—much appreciated in Ryko's CD reissue—with the disenchanted The eagle and me, where it seems as if Danny Kaye had taken Tom Rapp's place in the Holy Modal Rounders. In between, there will be delight in the Golden Age musical—Fred Astaire this time—of Palm Desert. With the classical miniature of Widow's walk. With the Disney cartoon-style march of The all golden, which in turn introduces sixty-one seconds of Van Dyke Parks, an authentic outtake from the sessions of the Beatles' White Album. And again: the voice and harp interlude of Public Domain, culminating in the absolute gem where a bolero-timed music box (!) transforms Donovan's Colours, shifting from jazz to classical and back, without understanding where one ends and the other begins. Ending with the joyously carefree strings of The Attic opposing the mournful blues ones (here it is, the return to the origins of the Man from the South) and the sobbing chorus of By the people. At first listen, understanding nothing, you'll question the sanity of who wrote it and especially of who recommended it to you. And perhaps the second and third times, too. By the fourth, when it has mysteriously gotten under your skin, you won't be able to do without it anymore.
They are just over thirty-five minutes of high-sounding confectionery, a multi-layered wedding cake assembled with artisanal care, chiseled and finished in every single detail. Quite simply, the work of a genius.
Don't let Van Dyke Parks continue to be an idol for musicians and a secret for a few.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Palm Desert (03:10)
By Palm Desert to market to buy. Tenderfoot up to date palms of the real estate. By Palm Desert springs often run dry. I came west unto Hollywood, never-never land. Juxtaposed to B.B.D. and O. Beyond San Fernando on hillside manors on the banks of toxicity those below and those above the same. Dreams are still born in Hollywood I don't understand. Just suppose the youngster knows he's had a good deal of fortune and up through the babble on the fair banks complicity, buy your leave or stay beyond the game. Palm Desert not fade away. Palm Desert I wish I could stay. Palm Desert sages abound. So head your head to the ground round. Meanwhile in the wild west of Hollywood age is losing hold. Inasmuch as you are touched to have withstood by the very old search for the truth within the bounds of toxicity. Left unsung so I have strung the frame.
04 Laurel Canyon Blvd. (00:30)
What's up Laurel canyon, hay.
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.
09 The Attic (02:59)
I was there upon a four poster there. Mind touseled I came to bear some thoughts from the past amid a dash of influenza. And then I came to see in baggage the memories of truncated souvenirs. The war years. High moon I said high moon lighted high moon eye to my moon. Far beyond the blue mist enveloped lawn the blanketed night comes on. The champagne is dead and gone. The forest around sensitive sound forest primeval. Through the panes cloud buttermilk war remains and twisted cross war refrains lunatic so high moon I said high moon lighted high moon eye to my moon. Your age will most probably carry away the letters enveloped in carrion. Vague unpleasantries of the war. May your son's progenitorship of the state haphazardly help him to carry on. God send your son safe home to you. High Moon. You're eye to my moon.
10 Laurel Canyon Blvd. (01:19)
What's up Laurel canyon, hay.
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.
11 By the People (05:53)
Strike up the band brother hand me another bowl of your soul.
Brother has a long way to go
maybe baby should know his cotton mouth is too slow for the song of the forgotten South,
just don't hang us up here.
Step by step by please though proletarian am I.
By chance am you "wine git out de way o'de darkies.
You'd better hustle up a storm to sing this Caucasian lullaby.
Sleep oh my darling now sleep.
Draw freehand over Iron Curtain.
Stalk up on the trim bamboo.
To footridge the bullrushes certain to know law, American express.
No Caucasian flair for flim-flam will do.
Step by please step by.
Weigh the small advance.
There is still a chance.
Let's assume that we form a company men.
No mention should the pass in revue of the show. Just understand that I prefer to be dead than red white or blue as I write sturdy crew.
As you view these few Russians whose true dawn came to view long ago.
So I think that you'd better strike up the band brother hand me another bowl of your soul.
The song of the forgotten South just don't hang us up here.
Here the unknown is at hand and not far from my heel a tarbaby feel for the Czar.
For those who are lonely well the Black sea is callin' Georgia's Stalin has fallen so you all come here.
We now are near to the end.
If you stay with the show say we all had to go to hasten to jar the few nations too far gone to step by.
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