Today's free album finds a twentysomething w.p. bluhm working his first day job in Waupaca, Wis., and spending weekends playing in the radio station's recording studio, tracking back and forth between the two big monoraul reel-to-reel machines.
It was also my first experience outside the realm of nylon six-strong guitar plucking, as the newly earned money in my pocket allowed me to buy the 12-string guitar that I still favor today. These tunes were my first experiments with the new, fuller sounding instrument.
I redid three songs from my college years – the love song "Emerald," the faux English ballad "Hi Horse Tweedledum Ladies," and "Priscilla," which began life as one of the segments in my legendary 15-minute opus "Artichoke Pie," which will see the light of day again one of these days. I lead off with "Lonely People," which was popular on the radio at the time. The other seven songs were composed that summer.
"Syd They Never Knew You" is a tribute to the Madcap Mr. Barrett and draws its inspiration from the immortal "Effervescing Elephant." The epic-length "Mandreams" has at least two unique features - a saga about lost innocence, the melody of the first lines echoes the "nyah-na-na-na-na-na" singsong that kids have taunted friends with since the beginning of time; and in the Big Finish, lacking either the chops to do a soaring guitar solo or a library of psychedelic sounds and effects, I picked up the phone and dialed my apartment, knowing the phone would just keep ringing in those days before answering machines or voicemail. As a result the song preserves the sound of a Waupaca telephone call in the summer of 1975.
Without further ado, here is my first homemade album after graduating from college into the real world ... click the cover art or this link to download Purring Like A Lamb.
Side One
1. Lonely People (2:42)
2. Emerald (3:20)
3. Priscilla (3:33)
4. Syd They Never Knew You (2:34)
5. Hard to Get Used To (2:35)
6. As I Get To Know You (2:36)
7. Ballad of Me and Him and She and Her (3:14)
Side Two
8. Maybe You Could Spend the Night (4:26)
9. Hi Horse Tweedledum Ladies (4:33)
10. Letting Go (2:45)
11. Mandreams (8:45)
2 comments:
My goodness, that voice on "Hard to Get Used To" sounds awfully familiar! Could it be a bit of personnel overlap with Leon Trotsky and the Red Russian Revivalists?
Why, yes. Yes it is. But this was post LT&RRR which explains the lack of sparkling keyboards.
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