The Band – "Chest Fever" (1968)

“She’s stoned,” said the Swede

And the moon calf agreed

“Chest Fever” is a hot mess – but hot messes are not unwelcome in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.

The track opens with a dramatic organ solo – which is said to have been inspired by Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor – performed by Garth Hudson.  (Unlike the vast majority of rock and jazz organists, Hudson eschewed the Hammond B-3.  He preferred a Lowery organ.) 

Garth Hudson and his Lowery organ

Robbie Robertson gets the songwriting credit for “Chest Fever,” but I’m not sure that it’s really accurate to say that the song’s lyrics were “written.”

Robertson says that the lyrics were improvised in the recording studio because lead singer Richard Manual needed something to sing while the group was rehearsing the song.  He never got around to rewriting the words.

“I’m not sure that I know the words to ‘Chest Fever’,” Robertson later told an interviewer.  “I’m not even so sure there are words to ‘Chest Fever’.”  

Click here to read the lyrics to “Chest Fever.”

Click here to listen to “Chest Fever.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Original Broadway Cast of "Hair" – "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)" (1968)

Listening for the new-told lies

With supreme visions of lonely tunes

[NOTE:  I’ll never forget seeing a touring production of Hair when I was a sophomore in college.  I would have happily dropped out of college and joined the tour if they had had a job for me.  But they didn’t – so I stayed in college and eventually started writing this wildly popular little blog.  I’ve loved Hair since I bought the soundtrack over 50 years ago, and I'm pleased to be bestowing a double honor on it this year.  Last month, the Fifth Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” was inducted into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME, and today I’m inducting the original Broadway cast’s recording of “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)” into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.  What follows is a slightly edited version of the second 2 or 3 lines post about that latter recording, which was published on April 10, 2020.]

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Today’s featured recording popped up on my iPod on Wednesday, while I was on a coronavirus-defying bike ride in Columbia, Maryland.

That ride took place only a few days after the birth of my sixth grandchild but first granddaughter, Eliza – whose desire to depart from her mother’s body was so urgent that there was no time for her parents to drive to the hospital.  She had to be delivered at home by a crew of EMTs from the local fire station.

The only way Eliza could be more beautiful is if she was twins:

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Today – Good Friday – the high temperature where I live was only 48 degrees.  (The low tonight is supposed to get down to 36.)

But two days ago, it was 77 degrees here when I loaded up my bike and headed to Columbia to ride the Lake-to-Lake-to-Lake Trail.  

I started by circling Lake Elkhorn:

Then I rode to Lake Kittamaqundi:

My next destination was Wilde Lake:

After I circumnavigated Wilde Lake, I reversed course and headed back to my starting point.

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Columbia is not a city – it’s a “census-designated place” consisting of ten unincorporated villages.

But it’s the second-most populous community in Maryland (after Baltimore), with just over 100,000 residents.

Sixty years ago, the area that Columbia’s villages occupy today was mostly farmland.  But in 1962, developer James Rouse started quietly buying up land with the intention of building a planned community.  He eventually purchased 140 separate parcels of land covering a total of more than 14,000 acres.

A statue of James Rouse and his partner (and brother) Willard Rouse overlooks Lake Kittamaqundi.  Some wag has put face masks on both statues, which are not six feet apart:

The Rouse brothers

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“The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)” is the final song on the 1968 original cast recording of the Broadway musical Hair. 

I was a high-school junior when I bought the album, and I played it to death – but usually behind closed doors so my parents would not hear the shocking lyrics!

Click here to listen to the original Broadway cast recording of “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In).”  Pay close attention at 1:42 of the track, when Lynn Kellogg and Melba Moore go to town.

Lynn Kellogg

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Rolling Stones – "The Lantern" (1967)

My face, it turns a deathly pale

You’re talking to me through your veil

I hear you wail!

Their Satanic Majesties Request is the Rolling Stones album that rock critics love to hate.  Hell, even Keith Richards and Mick Jagger hated it.  

Richards once said the album as a whole was “a load of crap.”  

“It’s not very good,” Jagger has opined.  “There’s two good songs on it.  The rest of them are nonsense.”

I’m guessing that the two songs Jagger likes are “2000 Light Years from Home” and “She’s a Rainbow,” because those are the only two songs on the album that the Stones have ever performed in concert.  (Richards also liked those songs.)

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I bought Satanic Majesties soon after it was released in December 1967, and I’ve always liked it.  (I admit that there are a couple of weak tracks on it, but I think most of the songs on it are winners.)

Did your copy have the famous
lenticular cover?  (Mine did.)

So when I decided to induct a track from that album into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME, it wasn’t to choose just one.

I thought about going with one of the two identified by Jagger and Richards as their favorites.  But which one?  

I went back and forth between them – both were worthy, and I couldn’t decide which one I thought was better.

2 or 3 lines isn’t afraid to zig where others zag, and that’s what I did when I picked “The Lantern.”  (I almost went with “Gomper,” which is pretty good.  But I couldn’t bear to sully my wildly popular little blog with such an ugly song title.) 

IMHO, the best element of the record is the piano playing of Nicky Hopkins.  He was as integral to the sound of the Rolling Stones in the late sixties and early seventies as Keith or Charlie or anyone else.

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I’m not the only rock music savant who gives two thumbs up to “The Lantern.” 

For example, Matthew Greenwald of Allmusic had this to say about the “underappreciated” track:

“The Lantern” is a psychedelic folk song . . . . Some excellent guitar riffs from Keith Richards on both acoustic and electric foreshadow his layered work on Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, and drive a subtle, but slightly bluesy melody that is one of the album’s best.  Lyrically, the song seems to have literary inspirations, not unlike some of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd songs of the period.  

Greenwald also praised the “very restrained and beautiful horn arrangement,” which he believed exhibited “true craftsmanship.”

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Enough of that blah, blah, blah.  You probably don’t care what some rock critic you’ve never heard of has to say about “The Lantern,” and I don’t either.  

We just care about what 2 or 3 lines has to say . . . right?

I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

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Click here to listen to “The Lantern.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Jimi Hendrix Experience – "Fire" (1967)

I have only one itching desire

Let me stand next to your fire

Verses one and three of “Fire” end with this rhyming couplet:

I have only one burning desire

Let me stand next to your fire

Verse two changes “burning” to “itching.”  You might disagree, but I think “itching” is much hotter than “burning.”

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Each of the five Jimi Hendrix LPs that were released before he died in 1970 were top ten albums.

But “All Along the Watchtower” – which peaked at #20 on the Billboard “Hot 100” – was the closest he came to having a hit single.  None of his other singles made it into the top 50.  (By the way, “All Along the Watchtower” blows!)

“Fire” didn’t even crack the top 100 in the U.S. or the UK, which surprises me.  I hear it on the radio all the time now, and I feel like I heard it a lot when it was new.

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These lines from the bridge of “Fire” may be my favorite rock lyrics of all time:

Move over, Rover

And let Jimi take over!

The story goes that Hendrix was once invited by bassist Noel Redding to spend a frigid New Year’s Eve at his mother’s home in Folkestone, England.  When he came in from the cold, Hendrix wanted to stand close to the fireplace and get warm, but his wish was frustrated because Mrs. Redding's Great Dane was standing in his way.  Maybe that experience inspired those lines.

However, there does exist a recording of Hendrix reciting this naughty nursery rhyme, which I’m guessing was the actual inspiration for the lyric quoted above:

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard

To find her poor dog a bone

But when she bent over, Rover took over

‘Cause Rover had a bone of his own! 

Click here to see Andrew Dice Clay's version of that nursery rhyme.

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Click here to listen to “Fire,” the newest member of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.   (Hendrix is great on “Fire,” but drummer Mitch Mitchell really steals the show on that recording.)

Click here to buy “Fire” from Amazon.

Doors – "The Crystal Ship" (1967)

The crystal ship is being filled
A thousand girls, a thousand thrills
A million ways to spend your time

[NOTE: The 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME includes two Doors records, but this is the first Doors recording to be chosen for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.  I thought so highly of “The Crystal Ship” that I chose it to feature in the 10th 2 or 3 lines post ever.  What follows is a slightly edited version of that December 26, 2009 post.]

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The Doors' debut album (The Doors) was released the first week of 1967 – that's 42 years ago. If I were to really think about that, my whole day would be ruined.

One reason I always liked the Doors was because Jim Morrison had a relatively low voice, and so did I. When I was singing along with the radio, I couldn't reach the high notes in a lot of my favorite songs – but that was never a problem with a Doors song because Morrison and I had similar vocal ranges. (Speaking of my singing along with the radio . . . I remember one long drive when my father suddenly turned the car radio off. When I protested, he said "We can either listen to the radio, or listen to you.  But not both.")

Jim Morrison

"Light My Fire" wasn't the first song released as a single from The Doors – "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" was.  I assume that was because "Light My Fire" was over seven minutes long.

Six months after the album was released, a more radio-friendly 2:52 version of "Light My Fire" was created, and became one of the most unforgettable hit singles of the AM radio era. It is #7 on VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of All Time"and was one of the few rock songs included in NPR's ranking of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century (which included, among other things, "West Side Story" and "Rhapsody in Blue"). When you come across The Godfather Part II on television, you have to watch it, and when you hear "Light My Fire" on the radio, you have to listen to it.  

"Light My Fire" was #1 on the Billboard "Hot 100" for three weeks. Jose Feliciano's cover version reached #3 only a year later, and an astonishing variety of others have covered the song since then – including Patricia Barber, Nancy Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Stevie Wonder, Al Green, B. J. Thomas, Type O Negative, and Massive Attack. (Massive Attack's version samples the "Light My Fire" covers by Jackie Wilson and Young-Holt Unlimited.)

(I need a pair of leather pants just
like those Jim Morrison wore)

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The B-side of "Light My Fire" was another song from The Doors – "The Crystal Ship." 

 I didn't own the album until many years later, and I'm not sure when I first heard "The Crystal Ship." I must have heard the entire album played by friends during college, but I don't remember hearing "The Crystal Ship" until the early 1980's, when I was living in San Francisco and it was played regularly on a local classic rock station.  

It's a classic Jim Morrison song – which can be good news and bad news. Morrison, who considered himself first and foremost a poet, was influenced by William Blake, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Joseph Campbell, and the "Beat Generation" writers. (The name "The Doors" came from a line in the Blake poem, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.") 

Morrison took himself just a tad too seriously, and he wrote a lot of crap. But his lyrics are like no one else's, and the Doors' best songs are unique and really get under your skin. If you're in the right mood – nostalgic, or longing for something that you can't quite get a grip on – a song like "The Crystal Ship" is just what the doctor ordered.

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Some people interpret "The Crystal Ship" as a drug-trip song – of course, that's the default interpretation for any 60's or 70's song that you can't make sense of. (What is a "crystal ship" anyway? I have no clue, but it sounds awfully fragile.) 

The other explanation you'll find is that the song is Morrison's good-bye to a former girlfriend. (I suppose it's a bummer when a rock star dumps you, but having him write a song or two about you before the breakup is pretty cool.)

I don't really care what the song means. It's a gorgeous two and a half minutes of dreamy, loopy music and dreamy, loopy words. The studio recording is perfectly arranged and executed – especially the way Morrison's voice crescendos into the last stanza, peaking on the word "crystal."

Click here to listen to "The Crystal Ship."

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Click here for a video that combines a pretty good live performance of the song with some very interesting photos of Morrison and the other Doors.