It's the time of the season, for blogging
Oh, don't worry, I'm still neglecting the blog; this is just a post so I can say I posted something in July. So what am I doing in my spare time? Reading? Not as much as I should. I've been into the science fiction a little bit, very unusual for me: the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, to be specific. I'm also reading a collection of Henry Kuttner's work -- I'm actually reading my son's copy of the book (he's already read it). I also went to look up something or other in the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract last week and wound up re-reading the whole thing.
DVDs? I still have more DVDs than I can ever watch, ever. Right now, I'm working my way through The Val Lewton Collection, both the films themselves and the commentary tracks. The kids and I are about to start on Season Five of The Twilight Zone. Definitely the least of the seasons, but there's still some good moments; most of Rod Serling's literary pretensions had fallen by the wayside by that season, with the shows moving mechanically from plot point A to plot point B to set up surprise ending C, but that kind of approach can be more engaging to kids than that of the earlier episodes, which sometimes are too allegorical and ponderous.
Latest musical obsession? The hard-luck Brit Invasion group The Zombies. Summaries of their career here and here.
I've arrived late at the Zombies' admiration party. I had on my iPod their three big hits that everybody knows, "She's Not There," "Tell Her No," and "Time of the Season," but hadn't heard any of their other stuff. I was aware, however, that the entry on the Zombies in my dog-eared copy of Nicholas Schaffner's The British Invasion asserted that they were no ordinary three-hit wonder, and that it further opined that many of their other singles, which had done nothing on the charts at the time, were lost classics, as was their 1968 LP Odessey and Oracle, so when iTunes added Odessey and Oracle recently, I took a chance and bought it, and boy am I glad I did. It's not the exercise in pretentious, hippy-dippy mysticism I had expected from the title and the cover art. As many have noted, it could be considered a British Pet Sounds: melodic, melancholic, 60s pop -- in other words, pure catnip for me, with my fondness for that sound. I'd also compare it to the Kinks at their Something Else stage, or the Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, at their Sgt. Pepper/ Revolver stages, although I'd hasten to add that the album is not overtly imitating any of those comparable works; it's just that someone who likes "God Only Knows," and "Eleanor Rigby" and "Waterloo Sunset" will probably like Odessey as much or better.
I also went on the eBays and bought a CD compilation of The Zombies' 45s, and again I was much impressed -- how they didn't have a ton of hits in the 60s is hard to understand. (The AllMusic article linked above says their jazzy arrangements were too challenging for mid-60s pop audiences.) They were even less respected in their own country than in the States: "Tell Her No" didn't make the Top 40 in the UK.
In addition to the great, flop, singles, the Zombies from 1964-67 put out an EP (also very good), an album that was merely OK (the original songs by The Zombies' resident tunesmiths, keyboardist Rod Argent and bassist Chris White, are good, but, like on many albums of the era, there are also some ill-conceived R&B covers -- in the Zombies' case, Bo Diddley's "Road Runner," and Muddy Waters' "I Got My Mojo Working" in particular, a point made in this irreverent review of the album here; scroll up and down for other comments on their works), and three songs (all of them excellent) for the film Bunny Lake is Missing. None of this truly excellent crop of material matched their early commercial success. By 1967, their first record company dropped them. They were picked up by CBS, at which point they recorded their aforementioned misspelled masterpiece Odessey. When that album tanked, the group broke up.
Then a funny thing happened: session man/ producer Al Kooper bought a copy of Odessey while visiting the UK, was suitably knocked out by it, and pestered CBS to release it in the States. They did, and the album flopped here, too. But then another strange thing happened: DJs started playing the last track on the album,"Time of the Season." It took off, and, fittingly, the Zombies had a posthumous hit (one which gets used ad infinitum in commercials, movies, and TV shows to evoke the era). Also, the reputation of Odessey and Oracle started out low, but then it started to grow: eventually, it was ranked #80 on Rolling Stones' list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (for what that's worth).
A 4-volume box CD set called Zombie Heaven, released in 1997, and containing everything the Zombies ever released, plus more (much as the protagonist in one of Woody Allen's short stories boasted of having "more than total recall"), seems to have drawn further attention and confirmed their by now towering critical reputation. (Fittingly (again), one of their songs declares "this will be our year/ took a long time to come".) The sophisticated musical touches on their records and their introspective, if not self-absorbed, lyrics, fit in with current musical tastes better than the efforts of many of their contemporaries. In fact, based on what I've read on the internets, the Zombies may have already reached a point where so many of the cognoscenti agree that they're underrated that it's hard to find anyone left who actually underrates them.
