track 4) Strange Street Affair Under Blue Wonderful tempo changes...starting slow, speeding up to a frenzy, then Tim's "ahhhh" introducing a sudden tempo change: a wonderfully slow tempo bridge, then bam, moving right back up to a speedy climax... and then boom. It's all over in two short minutes. yes, "bam" and "boom" are used by those so well educated as myself ...the learned in music... tech speak... Love it. Really innovative. And as expected, Tim is stunning. Just for you with your open hands Waiting for the touch of man Clutching with your blackened gloves You try to capture all the doves That flee into The forest before you You wish to catch and cage me now I wonder if you remember how Hard it was to say the names Of mirror dreams and cheated games And on the wall You framed your first lover Your form intrigues me with the glow I'll remember you I know Though I forgot to lock the chain Around you with a prayer for rain To bring the call To drive you back into my bed Ahhh... She turns away Telling me to follow for a while Ahhh... She waits You'd be touched if you would touch But you only reach and taunt Will my taste stay grey and blue If I try to turn from you Source: LyricFind Songwriters: Larry Beckett / Tim Buckley
Strange street affair under blue We have a pretty straight 4/4 here, but the interesting thing to me, is this seems to be based rhythmically and musically on a Greek dance.... it seems more closely related to Zorba the Greek, than anything from the regular pop/rock world. We have an almost free time breakdown, that still sits in a 4/4 feel, but the tempo is fluid, even though the beat is consistent. Then we burst back into the racing Greek dance, and it gives the song an invigorating feel. I haven't got time to check out the lyrics, but the musical and vocal presentation is excellent.
Broken image....so I will add another and se how long it lasts! From 1966 debut album photo shoot The Fantastic Voyage Of A Starsailor 1979 article The Tim Buckley Archives
This album debut is somewhat "conservative", openly sentimental..the best is yet to come..but includes some beautiful songs. "Wings"
Tim Buckley on songs and poetry... “Let’s erase poetry to begin with, because there’s never been poetry in music. If you call a song poetry, you have been able to read it. Songs are songs. Calling things poetry….why that’s a whole other thing, that’s literature. I write songs that are almost like letters sometimes. A lot of things don’t rhyme , and they’re all out of metre. It doesn’t make sense as a song or poetry."
“Talking about war is futile. What can you say about war? You want it to end, but you know it won’t. Fear is a limited subject but love isn’t. I ain’t talking about sunsets ’n trees, I’m involved in America... but the people in America, not the politics. All I can see is the injustice." --Tim Buckley
"Buckley is a promising scholar but not a dedicated one. His big thing is music, country and western, and he hangs out in the yard of Buena Vista High School with two guys called Jim Fielder and Larry Beckett. “At school I got drunk a lot and fell asleep in class.” He gets the pocket money working in a Mexican restaurant. Buckley is acquainted with the troubadour’s life when he was twelve and plays behind a lady, Princess Ramona and the Cherokee Riders. They all wear sequined shirts and moccasins but this boy isn’t going to be happy being a backwoods Indian for long so the Princess advises that he study the folk song and listens to the sounds emanating from the East coast, a gathering storm. At home, Buckley grows up with his mother’s taste for the stylists, singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Nat ‘King’ Cole and Lena Horne and white folks in the country idiom, Hank Williams, Flatt and Scruggs, Johnny Cash. As the kid learns, he develops a taste for those musicians who bring a certain defined passion to their playing. Although he never had a music lesson or a voice lesson in his life, Buckley learns to exercise his voice by screaming at buses and imitating trumpet players. He also develops a unique rhythmic guitar style which becomes a natural adjunct to his singing but technically is all wrong; as a kid in school, Buckley had broken his left-hand fingers in a football game. He could never make a barre chord and used to ridicule his withered, lumpy hand. He listens to guitarists and saxophone players alike, checking out the range and considering their melodic invention. Buckley is already rather more interested in the tones of Stan Kenton and John Coltrane than he is in the social observations of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen." The Tim Buckley Archives
Jac Holzman, Elektra & Herb Cohen: Buckley had a small band with regular dates in Hollywood’s It’s Boss club where he sang his and Larry Beckett’s songs. Beckett, according to Buckley, was “a poet – he’s starving in Venice (California) now.” Old friend Jim Fielder played the bass sometimes but often the band was Lee Underwood on lead guitar, Carter CC Collins on percussion and Buckley on 12-string and vocal instrument. Throughout 1966 they played in the right places, the Night Owl or the Troubadour, until one night Jim Black, drummer with The Mothers of Invention, came down and was impressed enough to suggest that Mother’s manager Herb Cohen take a look. Cohen couldn’t figure out what to do with the kid with the counter-tenor and the plaintive love-lorn songbook but he had a demo and took it to Jac Holzman, president of Elektra. “I must have listened to it every day for a week,” Holzman recalled. “Whenever anything was bringing me down I’d run for the Buckley; it was a restorative. We spent a long late afternoon together and I explained to Tim that Elektra was growing in a new creative direction and that he was exactly the kind of artist with whom we wanted to grow, young and in the process of developing, extraordinarily and uniquely talented, and so ‘untyped’ that there existed no formula or pattern to which anyone could be committed.” The qualities which Holzman saw in Buckley were good enough for Cohen, who couldn’t think much beyond career, getting gigs and taking a cut – a manager to the bare bones but one with influence. Apart from Zappa, Cohen had Linda Ronstadt and Wild Man Fischer on the books and was able to showcase his latest find on the same bill as B.B. King on the opening night of the Fillmore East. ............ Buckley’s début album ‘Tim Buckley’ was recorded in three days flat and released in October 1966, graced with an effusively precious liner note that suited the boy’s melancholic countenance. To quote: “Tim Buckley – an incredibly thin wire, just 19 years old, is already a kind of quintessence of nouvelle, the sensitivity apparent in the very fineness of his features. The man is a study in fragile contrasts: yet everything is in key, precise." His songs are exquisitely controlled: quiet, complex mosaics of powerful electric sound, they hold the magic of Japanese water colors. The voice – crisp, full of strength and character - can soar, yet remain tender and delicate.”Buckley’s début album ‘Tim Buckley’ was recorded in three days flat and released in October 1966, graced with an effusively precious liner note that suited the boy’s melancholic countenance. That was what Buckley called his ‘Bambi’ image and in truth, he was only finding his feet. The band, Underwood, Fielder, Billy Mundi on drums and emergent enigma Van Dyke Parks on keyboards, matched Buckley’s romantic aspirations with a decidedly baroque flair – flat out weepy strings and lavish arrangements in the early psychedelic mode, too lush not to have become dated but adventurous enough to merit the listener’s indulgence. Songs like ‘Strange Street Affair Under Blue’, ’Aren’t You The Girl’ and ‘Understand Your Man’ give an indication of the area the singer is going to move into, although the strictly West Coast tripsichord blues doesn’t enhance the direction, only the naivety. Producers Paul Rothschild and Holzman used some of the techniques they’d tested on Arthur Lee and Love’s first album and would perfect on The Doors’ debut, but they didn’t suit Tim so well. The Tim Buckley Archives
Love this quote from Holzman on Buckley's demo tape ...so true for me too when the mood strikes, there is no one like Buckley to ease my soul. “I must have listened to it every day for a week,” Holzman recalled. “Whenever anything was bringing me down I’d run for the Buckley; it was a restorative. We spent a long late afternoon together and I explained to Tim that Elektra was growing in a new creative direction and that he was exactly the kind of artist with whom we wanted to grow, young and in the process of developing, extraordinarily and uniquely talented, and so ‘untyped’ that there existed no formula or pattern to which anyone could be committed.”
"Conservative" for Buckley maybe...whose music grew and grew, ... but who knew at the time. The debut in its nascent innocence was still something very new to our ears, and impossible to categorize. "Who is this guy with those golden vocal chords?!"
Almost exactly my viewpoint. I do though probably listen to it a lot more than it's sequel though. Tim had a strange career trajectory. First album is tentative but listenable, second a bit of a full stop and, frankly, a mess.....THEN he hits the motherlode.
Lemonade Kid- Thanks for starting this song by song thread and adding all the photos and quotes. Looking forward to it all, and hope you can maintain the enthusiasm right through to the end of Look at the Fool.
Thanks! We will maintain...and discover much to love right up and thru his last album. Tim's voice prevails no matter what he does.
track 5) Valentine Melody A lovely guitar intro with Tim's unique twelve string approach. This is an all time favorite. Quite lovely, with some stunning major to minor key passages, and beautiful lyrics. The strings give me chills and joy. Questions for Larry: Wondering in retrospect what Mr. Beckett remembers about this lovely track? The Christmas imagery? And coming back to life in Easter season...Valentine's. (It is so often asked by friends, "Was Santa good to you this year...?") Was Tim involved in the strings arrangements as Arthur Lee was on Forever Changes? Was Beckett there for the recording sessions? Did Larry ever play for any of the recording sessions? Anything stand out on this three day recording marathon (three days to record it all? Wow!)? I hope Larry can join us here to read about our love for his lyrics and Tim's songs... You came to me with fire inside Your movements and your pride And asking to be rescued from The pain you had become I tore apart the prison and I hid you in my hand In the blue light of Christmas-time, Santa Claus was kind I wonder if you'll ever grow Oh far enough to throw Away the lies of no and yes And love my quietness Or will you only freeze and frown and lose what you have found? In the white light of Easter seas'n will you live again? Today the coin is in the air And we are here and there And where and when have caught us in The web of violence I pray to all the world as one that day will bring the sun In the scarlet light of Valentine's our paper hearts are blind Source: LyricFind Songwriters: Larry Beckett / Tim Buckley
Two-fer today--bonus Saturday!...couldn't resist as the next track queued up...such a classic and beautiful song. An all time fave. Stunning vocals! Tim soars... Just listen...words fail me. Buckley penned lyrics and tune. track 6) Aren't You The Girl (Buckley) Aren't you the girl who used to call me names? Aren't you the girl who used to play at games? Weren't you the one who said she'd never fall? Now you're the one who's cryin' not so tall. Oh, I know what it's like It's happened many times to me Oh, do you ache inside Do your eyes want a cry? Do you want me back again? Yes you're the one. Shall I throw you a crumb? Shall I come and pass you by? Would that make you want to try? Shall I come and kiss your lips? Would that make your rain slip? Shall I come and dry your eyes? Will that make you realize? Oh, I know what it's like It's happened many times to me Oh, do you ache inside Do your eyes want a cry? Do you want me back again? Aren't you the girl who used to call me names? Aren't you the girl who used to play at games? Weren't you the one who used to run and hide? Now you're the one who's cryin' way inside. Oh, I know what it's like It's happened many times to me Oh, do you ache inside Do your eyes want a cry? Do you want me back again? Source: Musixmatch Songwriters: Tim Buckley
I have files full of cuttings from music papers on my favourite artists - TB being one...and I still have that article. I was just getting into his music which started when a friend at college lent me Happy Sad and then bought Goodbye and Hello. In those days some of his albums were very hard to find especially Starsailor and Blue Afternoon. Great idea for a thread!
Nice post. I was lucky to find a minty Straight vinyl pressing of Blue Afternoon a couple decades ago-- the Zappa family was still keeping it from us with all the silly Zappa Estate feuding. That would make a wonderful RSD vinyl release!
The 2CD Rhino Handmade edition (from 2011) of Tim's 1st also featured a mono mix which I think I prefer. His only other album to feature a released mono version was Goodbye & Hello- though I haven't heard that one.
Thank you for starting this thread. Not heard the first album, never seen it on vinyl. Reading the posts here I'd probably buy it if I did, I always had the impression he didn't really get going until Goodbye and Hello....... clearly I was wrong!
track 7) Song Slowly Song One of those classic Buckley/Beckett tracks that create an etherial and innovative moment that embodies everything Buckley. Very mature for 1966 by a 19 year old Buckley. Could be easily placed on any Buckley LP from the debut through "Starsailor". Stylistically anything from romantic Chamber pop to psych to hints at freeform jazz elements that completely entrance. Underwood's magical lovely lilting guitar notes and those crescendos on the cymbal throughout makes it even more mysterious. With your beautiful hair And your sixteen years You kissed me as I lay still If I can see you never, Then I'll sleep forever All my lonely love to kill. Source: LyricFind Songwriters: Larry Beckett / Tim Buckley
I'd be interested to read comments on this audio. I've always thought the first album plays too fast. Here's a track slowed down. i can't see u - Clyp
This album also had a mono release. I fluked out and found a copy before covid and before my collection went into storage. Any idea about any differences. Just curious, not even sure if its dedicated?
