Thank the gods for sunshine pop, particularly on a day when world events have me in a resolutely sour mood. (Can November get here any more quickly?) My friend Mike, who sometimes posts in the comments here, turned me on to this phenomenal obscurity last week. Lee Mallory's "That's the Way It's Gonna Be" only made it to #86 on the national charts, but Wikipedia helpfully informs me that it made it to #1 in Amsterdam and #2 in Seattle. (Now that's street-teaming!) The Phil Ochs tune gets an Associations-esque production from their main man Curt Boettcher, who knew his way around a vocal arrangement and went off the jazzy deep end on this one; keeps the backing minimal, as if inspired by Love's grungy garage take on Burt Bacharach's "My Little Red Book"; and gets more insanely wonderful as it goes.It won't make bankrupted funds reappear, nor will it end a war or make politicians tell truths instead of lies, but it's all I've got today, so it'd better do.
1 comment:
So glad you dug this one as much as you did. Credit where credit is due: Gawd bless Sag Harbor NY's WLNG for playing stuff like this -- they've turned me on to more glorious chart obscurities than I can count, and I can only imagine if I were driving a car on eastern Long Island when they played this. I might've hit a tree!
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