The Music:
The Buckinghams’ Time and Changes
Back in 1967, before Chicago, before Blood Sweat and Tears, there was The Buckinghams.
Produced by James William Guercio who produced BS&T’s self-titled LP,and won a Grammy for it. as well as 11 of Chicago’s works, (as well as some Firesign Theatre stuff, if I’m not mistaken)… the album is apparently more attributable to its producer, then to the talent being recorded. That’s not to say the Buckinghams were not a formidable musical talent. One gets the feeling and listening to them, however, that they were more interested in creating AM pop than the kind of sound Guercio wanted. He managed to squeeze some interesting sounds out of them anyway, and they managed to score a few hits along the way, too.
I should point out that Guercio was the founder of the Caribou Ranch, which was one of the best studios of the time… Chicago recorded there as did another of his horn sound projects, Girard, and of course, Elton John, Stphen Stills, Waylon Jennings, Supertramp and so on and so on.
Anyway… The saddest part of this album is that while most of the tunes are nice ones, you want to strangle Guercio for imposing that sound on places that didn’t need it; the arrangements at times were downright horrendous. Still, this album gives us a look at one of the best producers in the business in his day, as he finds his feet.
As for the band, musically speaking, we find them being torn between wanting to be pop stars and wanting to be experimental, and having a producer more interested in getting his sound than theirs to the tape… all in a world being overrun with stuff like the Jefferson Airplane and Iron Butterfly and so on… (Take for example the extended psycho trip on “Susan” which never made it to the single version as a prime example), and mix it all up and you have a band, sadly that would not survive the attempt to bridge all that into an album.
In fairness, it should be said that had the Buckinghams come along a few years later, say, 72 or 73, they would ironically have been considered a Chicago sound alike, and not been taken seriously. And they suddenly dropped on the scene in 1969, well, who knows? The point is, that whatever else that whole scene might have been, the Buckinghams were a bit ahead of their time, and suffered for it.
* A nod to Rodney Dill’s Caption Contest. Your Bitmaster took first AND an honorable mention, in this week’s contest. I suppose you could attribute it to a Bit of horse sense.
* Raining in Rochester. Bad light=No truck photos.
* No goal? Who ya kidding, NHL? The whole world saw the puck cross the line. Why didn’t Toronto? All that expensive equipment and all those people on the payroll up and Toronto, and you can’t it right?
And by the way, Lindy, I’m not sure benching Maxim Afinogenov had the desired effect. Certainly a bold move, and a serious one, but it’s unclear it’s what we needed.
* The President has vetoed the supposed Iraq War Spending Bill… which spent on EVERYTHING BUT, and also tried to usurp commend of a war from the Military, and set up a defeat in absentia.
Good. It’s about time. The democrats are going to end up paying a large price for this one at the next election. Assuming, of course, that the republicans are intelligent enough to saddle the Democrats with their own actions. And from what I’m seeing, the Democrats ahve already signaled that they’re ready to pass a straight funding bill, without the surrender timetable added.
So, the obvious question is, what have they gained? Well, for one thing, my sense is that it’s going to be loaded down with as much pork spending as this vetoed version was.
* So, Romey likes “Battlefield Earth”?
“I’m not in favor of his religion by any means,” Mr. Romney, a Mormon, said. “But he wrote a book called ‘Battlefield Earth’ that was a very fun science-fiction book.”
Oh, please. I have entire shelves full of SCI Fi material . Some of that massively popular on the bestseller charts, and some of it not. Every single one of them was better than that piece of trash. The only people reading that nonsense is Hubbard’s followers, whose judgment is already in serious question. I read about a quarter of it once… it was downright terrible. The best description I can give his fifties movie SCI Fi serials, transcribed by somebody on an acid trip. Good thing I only paid 50 cents for it at a garage sale… from someone else who had obviously come to the same conclusion.
The guy is toasted… and so are his presidential chances, fortunately.
* Will someone please be so kind as to explain to me why ANYONE take Kevin Drum seriously? I mean, past that he’s an echo chamber for Move ON, of course.
* An interesting comment on Hume, tonight:
Just as Democratic congressional leaders are confronting President Bush on Iraq as never before, a top editor at the liberal New Republic magazine says they are illiterate on the issue.
Senior editor Lawrence Kaplan cites an article by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman — and presidential candidate — Joe Biden — where the senator asserted that U.S. and Iraqi troops pacified the city of Tal Afar — then left. Kaplan reports that not only have the troops not left the city, their numbers have recently increased.
Also cited was Congressman John Murtha’s suggestion that it would be easy for American forces to redeploy from Iraq to Okinawa — which is 5,000 miles away.
And House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes’s ignorance of whether Sunni or Shia populate the ranks of Al Qaeda.
Kaplan also mentions that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants a “new strategy” limiting U.S. forces to the training of Iraqis and counter-terror operations so as to reduce the “combat footprint” — the very strategy in fact tried and discarded under former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
See, here’s the problem; the left knows their leadership is the largest bunch of screw ups ever assembled. But it’s THEIR group of screw ups. And, if their leadership is a little hazy on the facts, so what?
Tags: BitsBlog, Nightly Ramble