Care of Cell 44 – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

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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Zombies – Care of Cell 44

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.

Rod Argent (Zombies keyboard player) talks about recording the album: We didn’t think, “Oh, we have to do something like Pet Sounds,” but I think it did inspire us. There wasn’t any attempt to copy the elements that were in there so much as the creativity of it and the feeling of pushing pop music forward into different spaces than it had been before. I think Pet Sounds was an indirect influence, as it was on Sgt. Pepper. Since then, Paul McCartney’s said the same thing; they felt they had to do something similar.

Rod Argent wrote the song.

From Songfacts

This uptempo pop symphony is about a guy writing to his girlfriend, who is in prison. The group’s main songwriter Rod Argent recalled in Mojo Magazine February 2008: “It just appealed to me. That twist on a common scenario, I just can’t wait for you to come home to me again.”

This was released as the first single from the Odessey And Oracle album in the UK, but it didn’t make the charts, which surprised vocalist, Colin Blunstone. He said in his Songfacts interview, “It’s a wonderfully crafted song. I think it’s got an incredible lyric, wonderful chord sequence and a great melody – it’s just got everything.”

Blunstone was shocked by the song’s lack of popular appeal, as he thought it was a very commercial track. Soon after it stiffed, the band split up and Blunstone took a job in the Burglary Department of a London insurance office. Bassist Chris White admitted: “We tried to promote ‘Care Of Cell 44,’ but there was no positive reaction. It was downhill from then on.” However the band did have a surprise hit in America a year after their breakup when “Time Of The Season” peaked at #3.

Care of Cell 44

Good morning to you, I hope your feeling better baby
Thinkin of me while you are far away
Counting the days until they set you free again
Writing this letter, hoping your okay
Sent to the room you used to stay in every Sunday
The one that is warmed by sunshine every day
And we’ll get to know each other for a second time
Then you can tell me about your prison stay

Feels so good your coming home soon

Its gonna be good to have you back again with me
Watching the laughter play around your eyes
Come up and getcha, saved up for the train fare money
Kiss and make-up and it will be so nice

Feels so good your coming home soon

Walking the way we used to walk
And it could be so nice
Talkin the way we used to talk
And it could be so nice

Its gonna be nice to have you back again with me
Watching the laughter play around your eyes
Come up and getcha, saved up for the train fare money
Kiss and make-up and it will be so nice

Feels so good your coming home soon

(Ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh
Ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh)

Feels so good your coming home soon

The Zombies

Since the first time I heard this band, I loved their sound. I liked their hits but a few years ago I bought their album Odessey and Oracle and was blown away. The Beatles were big fans of them in the sixties.

They formed in 1961 by Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone. The hit big in 1964 with singles She’s Not There that went to #2 in American and the follow up Tell Her No that went to #6 on the charts. After that, they released some more singles but nothing hit.

They went into Abbey Road studio right after The Beatles recorded the Sgt Pepper album. When recording the album they even used The Beatle’s Mellotron they left there. They recorded it in Abbey Road and some in Olympic Studio in London.

By the time the album came out they had already broken up. In 1968 CBS records were not going to release it in America at all but a young A&R man at the time named Al Kooper who worked for CBS told Clive Davis (President of CBS Records) that there were hit singles on the album. The album was released and the single “Time of Season” went to number 1 on the Cash Box Top 100 and number 3 in US Billboard Hot 100…

The album contains much more than that though. Personally, I think “Care of Cell 44” is one of the best pop songs I’ve heard. It’s as if mid-60s Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson had a baby…and Care Of Cell 44 is it.

A Rose for Emily is another good pop song. “This Will Be Our Year” is another one. This album is one of my favorite pop albums of all time. The songs have well-crafted melodies and the sound is wonderful. Time of Season is a classic and has a mood, unlike any other song.

Colin Blunstone has a unique voice all his own. He did have a few solo hits in the UK charts during the 1970s.

Rod Argent went on to form the band Argent… they had a hit with “Hold Your Head Up” and “God Gave Rock and Roll to You” later covered by Petra and KISS with modified lyrics.

The Zombies regrouped in the 90s and are still touring. Get a good pair of headphones and listen to Care of Cell 44.

From the Al Kooper book, Backstage Passes… Talking about Odessey and Oracle

I made an appointment with Clive Davis and put the album on his desk. “I really think we should purchase the master rights to this album for the U.S.,” I aggressively suggested. He took one look at the cover and replied, “We already own this album. I was just about to sign off on our option to release it domestically.”
Now, it got good to me—
“I think that would be a huge mistake Clive. Why there’s at least two hit singles here.” He told me he would sleep on it and thanked me for bringing it to his attention. Two weeks later I got an interoffice memo saying they were gonna put it out, with instructions to rewrite the liner notes and pick a single. Cautiously, Clive released it on a little subsidiary label CBS had called Date Records, in case I turned out to be wrong. But my lucky streak was goin’ strong and that is how the single “Time of the Season” by The Zombies came to be number one. The album Oddesey [sic] and Oracle had been out quite awhile in England. (In fact, the band had already broken up and metamorphosed into a new band called Argent that CBS had signed before “Time” was released.) A buncha Zombies crossed the ocean to take photos and get gold records. No one at CBS thanked me for this; I received no gold record or cash recompense. But The Zombies, who knew what really happened, made sure to come to my office and thank me profusely. That was worth it all to me at that time.