Goose Creek Symphony - Words of Earnest

Released in '72, Words of Earnest was the band's third album in as many years. It would arguably be their most successful and also their last on Capitol Records. The band would take a couple of years before signing with Columbia who would distribute their last album to be released in the '70s, Do Your Thing But Don't Touch Mine.

It wasn't long after writing about their debut that I found their four albums in really great shape for a pretty skookum price. Words of Earnest was the album I was most excited to hear as it contained "Mercedes Benz" and "Guitars Pickin, Fiddles Playing," the two songs my Aunt Jeanne introduced to me.

I'm glad I started with the debut before listening to this one. I know I skipped ahead by not playing Welcome to Goose Creek, but not everything in life follows a logical order. Whereas the debut was definitely a hodgepodge of eclectic hippy dippy psychedelic country, Words of Earnest settled into a groove early on, and while this was still very much an organic granola fed batch of songs the blending of horns, rock and traditional folk and country gave the band their own sound. The comparisons to The Band that felt overshadowing on the debut were practically gone. Not to say you couldn't hear it, but The Band didn't hold an exclusive license over incorporating rock and folk. If anything the boys were likely listening to The Grateful Dead - particularly Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, both from 1970 (I'm likely blowing smoke out my ass too, but it's possible). Honestly the band I hear is more akin to The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and frankly those guys sound like the Goose Creek Symphony not the other way round.

Country rock was starting to be a thing, these guys were more traditional in their approach than some of their early contemporaries. This isn't to say them boys couldn't strap on and lay it down when they had a mind to. Probably my favourite in this vein is "Speakin' Of" with the rich harmonies, driving guitars and twin fiddles. However, there aren't any songs here that I'd want to skip.

Of course some things should just be enjoyed rather than being picked apart into their component pieces fifty years after the fact. So that's what I'm going to do. I'll go and start the record over and just sit back and enjoy myself.

There's a lot to enjoy and I may as well take it all in.

Earnestly.

Comments

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTO's Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) - so who knows, maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust. It seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight-ahead pop or rock. It was leaning toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog