So Little Time To Fly
I got into underground FM radio via Keith Batchelder. He started talking about the songs he heard on WBAI, most specifically Phil Ochs’ "Outside A Small Circle Of Friends". When I went to his house, he presented me with a typed-out page of lyrics, under the heading "Phil Oakes". I remember reading them as I sat on the floor with the radiant heat.
My father loved gadgets. Especially radios. Our house was full of them. Made in Japan, clad in leather. But none of them ever worked that well. I tried dialing in the FM stations on the longitudinal model in the downstairs bathroom, but all I got was static. I needed my own radio.
And I needed my own stereo. My parents had the all-in-one Columbia console, ultimately replaced with an ADC component set, with a Garrard turntable, but I wasn’t supposed to touch "my mother’s stereo", and since the speakers poured their sound out in the living room, it was not a good listening environment, not for Rosko, not for Scott Muni, not for all the deejays who’d left AM for FM. My parents’ called Milt Selkowitz, who’d left ADC and had gone back to CBS, told him I needed a set-up.
It came just before Christmas ’67. It was clad all in one big box. You pulled on the tab, and the turntable came down. The speakers could be detached and separated for stereo effect. And on the right-hand side of the unit was the tuner. I used to pull up WABC FM, which was sans commercials on Saturday night, drag a speaker to the door of the bathroom and lie in the tub as the music played. That’s how I discovered the long version of "Light My Fire".
But the New York stations weren’t the only ones I listened to. My tuner could also pull in Hartford, where I spent time listening to WDRC.
WDRC wasn’t quite underground, but there weren’t many commercials, there was hipper music. And that’s where I heard "Mechanical World".
I know it seems a long time ago, but 1968 was edgy and hip. Flower power was still living in the far away suburbs, but closer to the metropolis the world was turning darker. Spirit’s "Mechanical World" sounded like nothing on AM. It wasn’t an extended opus like the Doors’ "The End", it had the structure of a single. Just not like all the singles I’d heard before.
I whipped out my Norelco cassette recorder, plugged it into the Y-cable hanging off the back of the stereo and recorded the song off the radio. I had bunches of these cassettes, with deejay patter, containing songs that had enraptured me, that I had to own.
There was another great track on Spirit’s debut, "Fresh Garbage", and I heard that on WDRC too, just not as much. As for the album… I couldn’t afford it. Oh, it wasn’t like I wasn’t buying music. But if I was lucky an album every three weeks. That’s all I could afford!
Nor did I purchase the follow-up, "The Family That Plays Together", with the monster hit "I Got A Line On You". A monster hit today, a sixties staple. But back then…the song wasn’t monstrous. And so different from what had come from the band before.
But what made me need to own a Spirit album was the 8-track in Steve Grubiss’ Charger. The band’s greatest hits, with songs from "Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus".
You have the world at your fingertips
No one can make it better than you
You have the world at your fingertips
See what you’ve done to the rain and the sun
So many changes have all just begun,
To reap
I know you’re asleep
WAKE UP!!!!!
I know the Stones are legendary for album openers, but they’ve got NOTHING on "Prelude-Nothin’ To Hide", the opener on "Twelve Dreams Of Doctor Sardonicus". It starts off all acoustic. Like a Pure Prairie League song, long before that band had broken. There’s blending California vocals. And then the track EXPLODES! All FM, but with the immediate hookiness of the AM. The singer is snarling and then Randy California starts to WAIL on the guitar! The whole track isn’t even four minutes long, but it’s a tour-de-force, a multi-movement TREASURE!
Still, it’s "Nature’s Way", the following cut, which is legendary. Sweet, yet intense, it’s nature’s way of illustrating the power of music, right down to the kettle drum. HOW DID THEY COME UP WITH THIS SHIT?
There are other phenomenal tracks on "Twelve Dreams Of Doctor Sardonicus", "Animal Zoo", "Mr. Skin" and my personal favorite, "Morning Will Come". If you loved Steve Miller’s "Living In The U.S.A." you’ll love "Morning Will Come". The understated chorus will rivet you. You’ll be nodding your head, singing along.
"Twelve Dreams Of Doctor Sardonicus" is a masterpiece.
But Spirit is not in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Nothing off "Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus" is played to death on FM radio. If you know it, you ooh and ahh when it’s mentioned. If you’re out of the loop, you just hear the band’s name and shrug.
And this collective shrug caused the band to bifurcate. Into Jo Jo Gunne and a reconstituted Spirit. The two parts were not more than the original whole, way less. The bands faded into obscurity.
Until Jay Ferguson suddenly had a hit in 1978, by distilling all the elements of Spirit’s magic into a pop confection, known as "Thunder Island". But, making the classic mistake of following up his hit with a remake, in this case called "Shakedown Cruise", Mr. Ferguson is remembered as a one hit wonder.
Still, just after getting XM, five years ago, I was listening to the Loft and Mike Marrone spun a song so mellifluous, so magical, I get a smile on my face just thinking of listening on my computer all those years ago. "Real Life Ain’t That Way" isn’t a remake of "Thunder Island". It’s a more credible Pablo Cruise song. It’s the kind of number that you sing along to as you sip margaritas on the deck in the Sierras.
I’d like to believe being a musician is the world’s highest calling. That people live to listen to the radio. That our culture is driven by music. That money is an afterthought. But REAL LIFE AIN’T THAT WAY!
Didn’t used to matter if you were skinny or fat, rich or poor, everybody was welcome at the rock and roll circus, everybody could join the club. You didn’t have to be a hedge funder to sit in the front row, you only had to get up really early in the morning to wait in line. You couldn’t wait to meet the deejay, who not only knew the music, but picked what he played. The record store clerk was your best buddy, not a blue-vested automaton at Best Buy. You went to your friend’s house and if you even bothered to turn on the TV, you turned the sound down. You listened to a record, as you sorted seeds and stems in the gatefold cover. Ultimately smoking and basking in the music.
No, real life hasn’t been that way for a very long time.
One wonders if it was ever that way for Edgar Bronfman, Jr. Certainly not for Tommy Mottola. Michael Rapino was barely out of diapers. It’s hard to keep the flame alive when you didn’t see it burn the first time, after you’ve tasted the poison fruit known as cold hard cash, when if you don’t hear a single you’re not going to get your bonus.
The baby boomers still want to listen to music. They’ve just got no idea what’s good. All they hear is shit that doesn’t move them.
And the young ‘uns, they’re lucky enough to discover the great tracks of their parents’ era.
There’s a vacuum at the top. No one will admit it. They label anybody who speaks of it as an old fart. But it’s true, it’s not the way it used to be, the good old days WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS!
But those mines are not closed. Every nugget has not been excavated. I learned this a couple of weeks back. While driving home from Brentwood listening to XM’s Deep Tracks, a sound started coming out of the speakers that immediately had my body moving, that had me hypnotized. WHAT IS THIS?
The read-out said the song was entitled "So Little Time". By SPIRIT!
I came home and did some research. Turns out the title is longer than that, "So Little Time To Fly". It’s off the band’s third album, "Clear", which contained no hits, which got no airplay. I saw it in the bins at Korvette’s, but I didn’t know a single soul who owned it.
I tried to steal it. Because I wasn’t sure I had the right song.
I finally got it tonight. And when I pushed play, I was instantly stunned, THIS WAS THE SONG! AND IT SOUNDED JUST AS FUCKING GOOD AS IT DID A MONTH AGO!
Take off your radio hat. Don’t play modern A&R guy. Just sit down on the couch and let the music wash over you. Notice the immediate groove, luxuriate in the vocal that’s sensitive, yet still manly. Revel in the distorted guitar sound that Norman Greenbaum ultimately used for his one hit two years later.
There’s so little time to fly. The sand pours out of the hourglass like crazy. It’s not quite winter and then it’s spring, summer! Your life is slipping by. You’re trying to catch up, you always feel behind.
But you didn’t used to. Back when all you did was listen to music.
You can’t speed up the record, it doesn’t sound right. You can’t spin two discs at once, you can’t tolerate the cacophony. You have to go at music’s speed.
Music can solve all your problems, set you free. If you doubt me, just fire up Spirit’s "So Little Time To Fly".
