Here's the NYT obituary for Post, who died at the age of 82.
Post and Conn urged us to reach out and get together and be so groovy in the summer of 1968.
And in the interest of getting back to all the things that were groovy, here's another version of the song, from 1970, with Mama Cass and Lulu and Ray Stevens:
Posts
24 comments:
I didn't remember this song from the title.
But when I listened to it I realized how terrible it is.
Thanks, AA.
Not.
: )
Here's the Billboard Hot 100 for the week "Reach Out of the Darkness" peaked at #10 — June 28, 1968.
#1 was Herb Alpert, "This Guy's in Love with You."
#2 was "The Horse" by Cliff Nobles & Company, which I don't believe I've ever heard of. Listening to it on Spotify, it seems to be like "Tighten Up" without words. Was there a dance, "the horse"?
#3 was the magnificent "MacArthur Park," unique in all the world.
#4 was the perfect bubble-gum pop, "Yummy Yummy Yummy." Also representing the bumble-gum sound was #6, "Mony Mony."
#9 was "Here Comes The Judge" by Shorty Long, which was a completely different song from "Here Comes The Judge" by Pigmeat Markham, which some regard as the first rap song.
RIP. A decent song, except for the bleating nature of Post’s voice. God I hate that sound.
I'm shocked that the there is only two years difference between the original and the cover. The 1970 version screams disco: there's trumpets, the drum beat is funky and even Ray Stevens is wearing disco clothes. It's crazy how trends change so quickly.
#3 was the magnificent "MacArthur Park," unique in all the world.
Magnificent? First time I've ever heard that modifier attached to that song. I did know a couple of hippie chicks who thought it was good. But magnificent? Really? I'll accede to unique though.
I have fond memories of seeing him perform multiple times at the Earl of Old Town back in the day, once joined by Steve Goodman. I also saw his Mark Twain and Galena Rose shows. It was always best seeing him live.
God, I must be old.
If you join Andrew Hickey's Patreon account, you can listen to his wonderful extra podcasts, including the recent one on "MacArthur Park."
If you're inclined to mock that song, which is often cited as the "worst" song ever, challenge yourself!
The songwriter Jimmy Webb "had written some hugely ambitious work for the 5th Dimension, and [the producer Bones] Howe wanted something similar for the Association. He told Webb he wanted a song with classical instrumentation, with multiple movements, which would use a full symphony orchestra, which might be up to ten minutes long, and which was unlike anything played on the radio. Webb said later that he pretended to wait a whole twenty seconds before replying that of course he would. Webb rose to the challenge and spent three days straight at his piano, not eating, not sleeping until he collapsed onto the keyboard, at which point he would crawl under the piano, grab a couple of hours' sleep, and then get back to work. What he came up with was a deeply personal song in several movements, about a breakup he had been through, with strange, impressionistic lyrics -- he later said that everything in the song was something he had seen, so for example the line about "all the sweet green icing flowing down/someone left the cake out in the rain" was because he had actually seen a cake left out in the rain.... The group rejected the song outright... The actor Richard Harris had recently appeared in the film version of the stage musical Camelot, which he had enjoyed despite having little conventional singing ability, leading him to speak-sing his way through the songs.... Unlike the Association, Harris saw the potential in "MacArthur Park"...."
@Althouse
So the song was written by a sleep deprived writer who hadn't eaten for several days, rejected outright by the group it was written for, and sung by someone who couldn't sing? I'll stick with unique.
The song feels like propaganda.
We just need more positive vibes, and there's a new nirvana right around the corner.
Jimmy Webb was The Man back then…
My wife and I were re-locating across country, and we drove through Las Vegas. Our casino hotel included a dinner theater, and the head liner was Ray Stevens.
I remember that I thought it was a good show. I do not remember this song as part of the stage show.
Jimmy was described by an A&R (Artist and Repertoire) man at Capitol Records as someone who "puts the f*** in a song" and that the song I was peddling to Capitol at the time didn't "have it".
"Macarthur Park" is my least favorite song of all time, right up there with "Hello Dolly". "Dolly" was the song the teenage DJ me was forced to play OVER AND OVER on the radio because callers-in loved it.
The Horse, along with the collected works of Chicago, kept many a high school marching band in business back in the day. You can still hear The Horse in some shows.
Ann Althouse said...
#2 was "The Horse" by Cliff Nobles & Company, which I don't believe I've ever heard of. Listening to it on Spotify, it seems to be like "Tighten Up" without words. Was there a dance, "the horse"?
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Ann:
“The Horse” was the B-side of the single "Love is All Right" by Cliff Nobles and Company. “The Horse” was just the instrumental version of “Love is All Right”. Interestingly, Cliff Nobles sang on “Love is All Right” but did not appear on “The Horse” even though his name is listed.
I might have heard “Love is All Right” on SiriusXM one time but I can’t say it stood out. But, I love “The Horse” when it comes on. BTW, have any instrumentals made it into the Top 40, let alone the Top 5 lately? I don’t know the answer to that question as I haven’t listed to current music on the radio since 1986 as I didn’t care for the type of music that was passing for Top 40 at that time or since. I now listen to SiriusXM and the music I like, which are 1960’s and earlier.
Scotty
Cass Elliott, lulu and Ray Steven's? Thwt is quite the combination.
I'm a big ray Steven's fan. Started listening to an extended interview with Ralph Emery last week. Gotta get back to finish it.
Did you know he played trumpet on one of Elvis records?
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
Macarthur Park WAS magnificent as well as unique. an epic work of art that uses music to express the complexities and ~poignantcies of life and the exhultation of living when you're in the groove... it was like wow, man.
I agree, Prof, that MacArthur Park was a magnificent song, a genre-disruptor in rock like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album (which in turn inspired the Beatles to come up with Sergeant Pepper).
The Donna Summer disco cover of MP is still cool to listen to, as well.
If I ever heard a marching band play “Grazing in the Grass” by Hugh Masekela I would be much impressed.
Ugh. That Reach Out in the Darkness video may have single-handedly been responsible for the Goths a generation later.
We played this yesterday before our homecoming parade for marching band, but we had it so we kept looping 0:16 to 0:46 over and over with some drum breaks and choruses added in throughout, we got it going for over 20 minutes and it was genuinely one of the most joyful moments of my life, just looping over and over again and blasting my brains out on my tuba.
A comment on The Horse from 2020, at YouTube. I don't remember this at all but MacArthur Park, eh, if I had heard it once it would slipped away and that would be that: unfortunately, I heard it a thousand times and will never willingly listen to it again. The one time I went to a bar for karaoke, it was played over the sound system during the last intermission (or whatever you say when the karaoke program is interrupted for the benefit of the bar, the last one of the breaks). And I had thought that the evening couldn't get worse!
"Reach Out in the Darkness" sounds familiar to me... but I honestly don't know if it's because I've heard it before, or because it sounds exactly like every other "groovy" song from that era. (It's been used on TV at least a couple of times -- on "Mad Men," unsurprisingly, and on "Beverly Hills 90210" for some reason.)
Gee, it really was groovy that people were FINALLY gettin' together, which had never happened before in all human history.
I had the 45. I hated the word "groovy" but for some reason I bought the single.
I preferred MacArthur Park -- both the original and Donna Summer's version.
My high school marching band in Jupiter FL in the early 70s played "The Horse". They also played "Basin Street Blues". I think the former song was the closest they came to being hip. But it was a very small school and the football games and the parties afterwards (many of which I hosted) were loads of fun. Going to our Homecoming Game this Saturday if we don't get rained out.
MarcusB THEOLDMAN
Imagine it's 1970......you just dropped some acid 90 minutes ago and you think....".I wonder what's on TV"?
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