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Love, "Story, 1966-1972"
Electra, released: 1995
On the same block of Sunset Strip in '66 could be seen Lou Rawls, The Seeds, The Rising Sons (with a young Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal), The Association, Johnny Rivers, The Mothers of Invention, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, The Buffalo Springfield, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, The 5th Dimension, and countless other groups just to name but a few. But the biggest band of them all managed to synthesize all these disparate styles and sounds into one punk-rock lounge singer fuzzed-out flamenco fingerpicked 12-tone brew and pour it out with amazing speed and clarity of purpose over three remarkable albums; and now no one more than them represents the excess, freedom and genius of the locale and of the time -- Love.
 
Love Story 1966-1972, on Elektra Traditions/Rhino compiles the best of those three albums (included is 1967's masterpiece Forever Changes in its entirety), plus assorted singles, tracks from later work and whatnot. The two-disc set, which starts off with the simple bulldozing punk-rock reading of Bacharach's "My Little Red Book", proceeds to run through just about every pop motif possible, even for those expansive times, without ever sounding forced, dilletantish, or unfocused. Taken as a whole, the sampled canon reveals its singular magic slowly, over repeated listenings, as the songs travel some very strange terrrain in a wild combination of styles that predicts the 90's-era cut-up theory post-modernism by 30-plus years, only without our blatant, boring, opportunistic cynicism - unlike the anger-as-commercial-bait fluff of today's toadying poseurs, this stuff contains real danger.
 
Dig "Signed DC", a stark, mournful warning shot about the emotional cost and landscape of hard drug use cut at the same time everyone else was saying either "Tune in, turn on ..." or blathering on about incense, peppermints and the color of time. Arthur Lee, the song's author and chief architect of the group, was savvy enough to condense the experience of the addict into its emotional core ("no one cares for me"), sidestepping any moralising to make the song timeless. Try ignoring the propulsive psychedelic hook(s) in "She Comes In Colors", with its vaguely disquieting opening lines "expressions tell everything, I see one on you". Try not being moved following each orchestral break of "Alone Again Or". Try keeping your pulse in check during "Seven and Seven Is". Marvel at the musical mastery of so many polar idioms, the ease with which complex rhythmic and tonal changes are written and played, the subtlety and beauty of the orchestral arrangements, and the elocution, emotional range and sheer ballsiness of Arthur Lee's singing.

The music of Love breathes with you in real time, unforced, unposed, and unconcerned with whether you like it. The great beauty and triumph of it is that you do.

Highly, highly recommended. Essential.
[RS 7/28/98]