THE CITY: NOW THAT EVERYTHING'S BEEN SAID (1968)
1) Snow Queen; 2) I Wasn't
Born To Follow; 3) Now That Everything's Been Said; 4) Paradise Alley; 5) A Man
Without A Dream; 6) Victim Of Circumstance; 7) Why Are You Leaving; 8) Lady; 9)
My Sweet Home; 10) I Don't Believe It; 11) Hi-De-Ho; 12) All My Time.
To round things out with Carole King, it is
more than appropriate to include a mention of this record in her section —
because it is only a pure technical formality, actually, that prevents one from
including this, the first and last ever album of «The City», as the first entry
in her regular discography. Indeed, before
she went completely solo with Writer,
there was this rather curious attempt, perhaps driven on by humility and
shyness, to pass as just a piano-playing and singing member of a rock trio,
with future husband Charles Larkey on bass and Danny Kortchmar on guitar.
(Incidentally, the guest drummer here is Jim Gordon, of future Derek & The
Dominos fame, though he hardly gets to swing and shine as efficiently here as
he would there).
Actually, the only significant difference
between Now That Everything's Been Said
and Writer is that Danny gets to
sing a couple of the songs — other than that, the sound is pretty much identical,
and all the songwriting comes from Carole and her lyrical co-writers: mostly
Goffin, but also Toni Stern and David Palmer, all of whom would contribute
words for Carole's music in the future as well. Importantly, this is where you
will find Carole's first recorded versions of ʽSnow Queenʼ, ʽWasn't Born To
Followʼ (already done by The Byrds), and ʽHi-De-Hoʼ (soon to be appropriated by
Blood, Sweat & Tears); but even more importantly, this is the only place
where you will find a small bunch of quite exquisite King originals that cannot
be found anywhere else, and each of which is worth far more than any complete
post-1982 Carole King album.
One is ʽParadise Alleyʼ, a simple-innocent pop
rocker with an intricate arrangement of vocal overdubs in the chorus — from a
time when heart-tugging moves came to the lady's imagination more naturally
than earthquakes come to the Ring of Fire. Another is ʽWhy Are You Leavingʼ, with
equally poignant vocal work on the chorus (the task is to sing the line
"why are you leaving?" in as many different ways as possible, and it
is accomplished). And still another great vocal move is found on the closing
ʽAll My Timeʼ, where she plays around with her own echo: few people can just
take a single line like "all my time, all my time belongs to you" and
make it sound like an inspiring religious mantra, but this is exactly what is
happening here, with a little help from that echo, of course.
That said, none of these songs is great from
top to bottom: mostly we are dealing with a beautiful idea enclosed in a
merely-okay setting. Although the record was already produced by Lou Adler,
which means that the overall sound is tasteful and pleasant, Carole does act
fairly shy, and there are no tracks where she and her piano would be in primary
focus — most of the time, the «camera» tries to put her in the context of her
musician friends, yet the musician friends, too, try to keep it humble in order
to give the piano lady her due, and so in the end it all comes down to a set of
«after you, sir»'s and «after you, Ma'm»'s that is not highly satisfactory. In
addition, what with Carole's writing style being so personal, it simply made no
sense in the first place to not
behave as a full-fledged solo artist, and I guess the public must have sensed
that, too — «The City» never really managed to get decent publicity or to sell
a significant amount of records. Heck, it even took more than thirty years to
get it released on CD, and good luck trying to find a physical copy these days:
if it weren't for the digital era, Now That's
Everything Been Said would simply be forgotten. As it is, hopefully we will
still remember it as a timid, but important first step in King's
self-realization, and treasure it lightly for its share of proverbially
heart-warming, oh-so-Carole King moments, so a thumbs up all the same.
Wow. I really love this record. If I'm not mistaken, the band conceit leads us to some studied modal-jazz outros. We also get some warbly undercurrents on guitar as Kortchmar stretched himself into the lead guitarist identity.
ReplyDeleteIt's my new favorite record and I didn't even know it existed before I saw this post.