Tag: Broken Arrow

Overlooked Pop/Rock Masterpieces

I hope I’m wording this right and what I’m trying to get across are songs that are not just regular pop/rock songs. Some of these have sections instead of 3 or 4 chords and it’s over with. Intricate songs to duplicate and fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. I’ll give you an example…Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody or The Beach Boys Good Vibrations. Those are not songs you just run into a studio and record in one take. Many of these songs took days, weeks, or months to get right recording different sections. 

I usually like down-to-earth and rootsy kind of songs but sometimes I do like listening to these great songs. These are overlooked by the masses with people often connecting with a big hit by the band instead. I’ve picked 3 songs to present here. Being a musician…I can sure appreciate what it took to record these. 

Overnight Sensation (Hit Record) – The Raspberries

I posted a Raspberries song this weekend but this one remains my number 1 song even over Go All The Way because it’s so epic. 

Overnight Sensation (Hit Record) is an epic, ambitious, grand, lofty, extravagant, and brilliant song from the Raspberries. They were swinging for the fences when they made this song and they hit it out of the park. It’s on the album Starting Over released in 1974.

Put some headphones on and listen to this completely to the very end… When I hear it, I think this is what it would sound like if The Who, Beach Boys and Beatles made a song together…this would be it. Musically you have a little of everything. Sliding bass lines, tasteful guitar licks, great vocals, a sax solo that gives way to more lyrics as the song morphs into an AM radio sound… and then comes a solo piano.

Stay until the very end because they dupe you into a fake ending and the drums will come in as if the world is going to end. Then… a Beach Boys final huge crescendo wave will wash over you like a warm summer moonlit night. It’s a wall of sound of ecstasy that you wish would go on forever.

Bruce Springsteen: “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record) should go down as one of the great mini-rock-opera masterpieces of all time”

 

Broken Arrow – Buffalo Springfield

The song Broken Arrow is a song that was made in sections and it’s hard to explain it with words… Something is haunting and beautiful about it. I listen to it now and it’s like Buffalo Springfield’s own A Day In The Life. It was produced in 1967 during the psychedelic era. One of my favorite songs of all time…any song with the lyric “He hung up his eyelids and ran down the hall” grabs my attention. Neil Young wrote this beautiful song. Gregg Allman cornered Neil backstage somewhere in the 2000s and pleaded with him to start playing this song again. He did when Buffalo Springfield reformed. 

Care Of Cell 44 – The Zombies

This is one of my favorite pop songs of the 1960s. The vocals are reminiscent of the Beach Boys. It’s a sunny and bright song musically about a guy writing to his girl…in prison. The song doesn’t express or explain why she is in prison just that he will be with her when her stay is over.

The song is arranged beautifully. with the vocal-only arrangements, You can hear Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney’s influence on this recording. Chris White’s (Zombies bass player) bass playing is phenomenal in this song.

It is on the album Odessey and Oracle, one of the best albums of the sixties. The hit song on the album is Time of the Season but it is full of great songs. It charted a year after it was released at #95 in the Billboard 200 album charts in 1969. The song/album would be on my desert island list.

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Remembering Buffalo Springfield

I wrote this before I had any readership so I thought I would post it today. 

I had a friend’s dad who owned their 1969 greatest hits album when I was in sixth grade and we wore it out. Broken Arrow, Mr Soul, and Expecting to Fly were the ones we played over and over, and heard something we missed in the previous play. So when my peers were listening to The Flock of Seagulls (nothing wrong with that!)…I was listening to Buffalo Springfield and I stayed stuck in the 60s for a long time.

Buffalo Springfield is a band that gets lost in the shuffle at times. People know their big hit “For What It’s Worth” but little about the band. They were only active between 1966-68 but had a huge impact on other artists. The band was very talented……with Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Bruce Palmer, Dewey Martin, and Jim Messina who replaced Bruce Palmer. They had some great songs like Mr Soul, Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing, Burned, Expecting to Fly, Bluebird, Rock and Roll Woman, Broken Arrow, and their big hit For What It’s Worth…

I just read Neil Young’s book “Waging Heavy Peace” and he said that the end of Buffalo Springfield started because the bass player Bruce Palmer kept getting busted for drugs and taken away…more than once… By 1968 it was over and what a waste of potential they had…The remaining members reunited in 2011 and played 6 concerts… in 2012 they were going to tour and do 30 concerts. Neil quit and did an album with Crazy Horse. He has a history of leaving projects when they don’t interest him anymore.

If this band would have stayed together originally… There’s little doubt they would have gotten much bigger with the talented members they had in place.

The song Broken Arrow is a song that was made in sections and it’s hard to explain it with words… Something is haunting and beautiful about it. I listen to it now and it’s like Buffalo Springfield’s own A Day In The Life. It was produced in 1967 during the psychedelic era. One of my favorite songs of all time…any song with the lyric “He hung up his eyelids and ran down the hall” grabs my attention. Neil Young wrote this beautiful song. Gregg Allman cornered Neil backstage somewhere in the 2000s and pleaded with him to start playing this song again. He did when Buffalo Springfield reformed. 

Right after the breakup, Stephen Stills helped form Crosby, Stills, and Nash….short time later Young came aboard and would join them occasionally. Furay and Messina helped form Poco and Messina teamed up with Kenny Loggins later on.

They made three albums while together. Buffalo Springfield (1966), Buffalo Springfield Again (1967) and Last Time Around (1968). A greatest hits came out in 1969 called Retrospective The Best of Buffalo Springfield. A box set was released in 2001.

So…what are your thoughts about Buffalo Springfield?

Broken Arrow

The lights turned on and the curtain fell down
And when it was over it felt like a dream 
They stood at the stage door and begged for a scream 
The agents had paid for the black limousine 
That waited outside in the rain 
Did you see them, did you see them? 
Did you see them in the river? 
They were there to wave to you 
Could you tell that the empty quivered 
Brown skinned Indian on the banks 
That were crowded and narrow 
Held a broken arrow? 

Eighteen years of American dream, 
He saw that his brother had sworn on the wall 
He hung up his eyelids and ran down the hall 
His mother had told him a trip was a fall 
And don’t mention babies at all 
Did you see him, did you see him? 
Did you see him in the river? 
He was there to wave to you 
Could you tell that the empty quivered
Brown skinned Indian on the banks 
That were crowded and narrow
Held a broken arrow? 

The streets were lined for the wedding parade 
The Queen wore the white gloves, the county of song 
The black covered caisson her horses had drawn 
Protected her king from the sun rays of dawn 
They married for peace and were gone 
Did you see them, did you see them? 
Did you see them in the river? 
They were there to wave to you 
Could you tell that the empty quivered 
Brown skinned Indian on the banks 
That were crowded and narrow
Held a broken arrow?