Critic's Notes & Frames, Part III

The Rolling Stones often had great B-sides on their singles ("Sad Day," "Long Long While," "Who's Driving Your Plane?"). "Child of the Moon," which backed "Jumpin' Jack Flash," is a particular favourite. It was their last bit of psychedelia before heading into the harder rock and country blues of Beggars Banquet. A contemporary band, Radon Daughters, have done the song justice by turning its acid tinged balladry into a tough piece of baroque pop.

Dog Breath Variations (Part One).

                    Conspiracy Theories 101.

Where Travis Bickle meets Otis Redding.

                            




                                          Finnegan's Ache.

It's only logical.

Forget the later Blood Sweat and Tears lead by the highly professional voice of David Clayton Thomas. Their first album, helmed by Al Kooper, is the best work they came up with. The record is as idiosyncratic as their sound, with cryptic songs like "The Modern Adventures of Plato, Diogenes and Freud," the psychedelic jazz of "House in the Country," and the intelligent pop of "I Can't Quit Her," Randy Newman's "Just One Smile" and Harry Nilsson's "Without Her." They even carried over the urban sound of Kooper's Blues Project in "I Love You More Than You Ever Know." With its mixture of parody (Kooper's invoking Joplin in his scream of 'alright') and earnest soul, it should have been a hit. I certainly can't resist a song where the singer, desperate to hold his lover, cries, "I could be President of General Motors, baby." 

– Kevin Courrier is a freelance writer/broadcaster, film critic and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams, 33 1/3 Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of The Beatles Utopian Dream). Courrier teaches part-time film courses to seniors through the LIFE Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto and other venues. His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism.