Tales of brave ulysses3/8/2023 You couldn’t take your music with you, you had to wait until you got home to drop the needle, which you did immediately and continued to do as you did your homework, as you fell asleep, I had a timer to turn my stereo off, music was the most important thing. I’d sing them to myself in the halls of high school. I knew all the words, not that I had them down accurately. Tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers It was psychedelic, when people were doing LSD and Day-Glo was permeating the universe but it was all brand new, today we’ve got tech exploration but back then it was all about testing cultural limits, there was a new trend every week, it was hard to keep up, you were either on the bus or you weren’t, you were either hip or you weren’t, there was a schism in society and the dividing line was the music. Rather it was orange cardboard, and although I bought “Wheels Of Fire” early enough to get the shiny silver gatefold cover, what was inside was what truly mattered, the record.Īnd there was no social media, there was no sharing, it was just you and the sound, one you’d never heard before, it was all news to you.Īnd sure, you might talk about records at school, but really it was just you and the band, creating a bond, which is why you went to see them live, which I did twice that year, before most people knew who Eric Clapton was, when people were just starting to say Ginger Baker was a speed freak.Īnd the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids I purchased the LP at Barkers, on the Post Road in Westport, another discount outlet like Topps and Korvette’s with a record department amidst the chozzerai, this was long before the standalone record shop, these were our record stores.Īnd it wasn’t the flimsy, intensely-colored U.K. It all came back, 1968, Farist Road, Andrew Warde High School, going to bed early to go skiing in Vermont, my entire life was laid out in front of me. You thought the Latin winter would bring you down forever…īut really it’s all about the instrumental intro, bombastic and then ethereal, as if me and the band were on a ship in the Aegean, just us, experiencing this intense tale. And that guitar riff in “SWLABR” was a revelation, I liked it more than I did back in ’68.Īnd then I heard “Tales Of Brave Ulysses”… The music is unselfconscious and personal. Like “Dance The Night Away” and “SWLABR.” “Dance The Night Away” is the antithesis of today, it’s not playing to the back row of an arena, it sounds like it barely escaped the studio, at best is playing in a pub. Unlike “Sunshine Of Your Love,” which I’ve heard enough not to need to hear it again.īut then I thought of all the album tracks, that were secondary back then but I know by heart. And “Strange Brew” sounded better than I’d imagined, it was never my favorite track on the LP, but decades later it fit the pocket, it was so satisfying. And I detached one speaker from my new listening apparatus, it was a Columbia unit, that’s right, the record company also made hardware, and dragged it to my mother’s bedroom so she could hear and share what I did.Ĭontemplating Robert Stigwood‘s death I pulled up “Disraeli Gears” on my Sonos system. I finally had a stereo, I’d cashiered my record player, that all-in-one unit with platter and speaker and tonearm sporting a coin to make sure the record didn’t skip. Not that I knew anything about Greek tragedy, it’s just that the record had a sound that spoke to me, that took me out of my bedroom into a vast world that I thought would understand me. I didn’t buy “Fresh,” not at first, my initial Cream purchase was “Disraeli Gears,” way before “Sunshine Of Your Love” got airplay, I experienced it as an album, it revealed itself to me with each play, and the song that hooked me was the second side opener, “Tales Of Brave Ulysses.”
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