CLICK TO START SONG, THEN
SCROLL DOWN TO READ LYRICS:
"Regions Of May"
- Pearls Before Swine
(Tom Rapp)
The past (the past)
Is broken
Like an hourglass
And the scattered sand
Of circumstance
Was blinding
Me to you
The rain (the rain)
Is a whisperin'
To my window pane
And drawing
Crazy patterns
On the blind
Your face (your face)
Is invading
The portals of my eyes
And drawing
Crazy patterns
On my mind
Who created mist
Created your smile
And who created rainbows
Created you
(30 second instrumental interlude)
My mind (my mind)
Is all entwined
In fragrant fields of flowers
And the scent
Puts me outside my mind
The past (the past)
The rain (the rain)
Your face, mist and rainbows
Flowers (flowers)
And the rain
Are you
CLICK TO START SONG, THEN
SCROLL DOWN TO READ LYRICS:
"Ballad To An Amber Lady"
- Pearls Before Swine
(Tom Rapp/Roger Crissinger)
The amber lady
Seated at her harpsichord in velvet
Room of eastern wonder
Gazing through the verdant window
Wrapped in arms of silk and sorrow.
Rebecca sighs and perishes
Beneath the harp
Leila, Leila, she loves anon
On high fields of cinder sun.
I see you drifting
Draped in heavy lace
Where is this place
Where you stand radiant?
Your hand hides the moon
And you move with crystal grace.
Rebecca sighs and perishes
Beneath the harp
Leila, Leila, she loves anon
On high fields of cinder sun.
(50 second instrumental interlude)
Stain-glass showering
Diamond morning
Soft smiling
In the shining hours
Boughs of henna in your hair
Roses in your silent garden.
Rebecca sighs and perishes
Beneath the harp
Leila, Leila, she loves anon
On high fields of cinder sun.
There's a brand new morning
Rising clear and sweet and free
There's a new day dawning
That belongs to you and me
Yes a new world's coming
The one we've had visions of
Coming in peace, coming in joy
Coming in love
"New World Coming"
- Mama Cass Elliot
(Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil)
There's a new world coming in 2023.
Allie Pressman
Don't miss the debut of
Society's Child
exclusively at Shady's Place.
Good morning Shady! This post was certainly different than I was expecting from you! First, the songs were lovely and soothing and the paintings were very new age my friend! Oh dear Momma Cass, how I would have loved to see you continue on your talented journey because the world needed your voice and we all need the hope and optimism that the love and peace of the 60's will invade this world of 2022 and I'll look forward to '23 with this young lady you have spotlighted at the end today. So have a lovely weekend Shady! Peace out!
ReplyDeleteHi, YaYa!
DeleteI'm delighted to see you here as the Early Bird this time, dear friend! Thanks for dropping in for this sneak peek at Society's Child, a new series starting next year at Shady's Place.
My goodness, YaYa, what a wonderful comment you wrote! It's as if I wrote it myself. You took the words right out of my fingers. You are correct. This series I am teasing today was inspired by a short-lived TV series I watched and, of course, by those wonder years of our Boomer youth. The music in this series will cover the period from the mid 60s thru early 70s when tremendous change was taking place, and when the younger generation found its voice and tried hard to make a difference. It was a turbulent era, and yet there was hope and optimism and spirit that today are in short supply.
I'm very happy to know that you appreciated the beauty of the songs, their poetic lyrics and the art images I posted to create these "poor man's music videos."
I hope all is well on your side of the screen. Thank you again for your kind visit and splendid comment, dear friend YaYa, and have a safe and happy weekend at The Pines!
What wonderful images you have in this post, Shady! I always think of my sister when I see fairies because she loved them. :)
ReplyDeleteI never knew Pearls Before Swine in my youth (I love the modern day comic of the same name!) and I think I would have enjoyed having this album. For the Hieronymus Bosch artwork on the cover as much as the music!
-Kelly (and Pat)
Hi, Kelly & Pat!
DeleteThank you very much for coming over early, dear friend, and for going through the hassle of commenting as "Anonymous."
I'm overjoyed to know that the images I picked to illustrate the poetic songs of Tom Rapp brought back memories of your sister. You hit the nail on the head, Kelly. The story of how I came to own this album is one that I have shared several times in my blogging career, because it teaches an inspiring lesson. I discovered this LP during my freshman year of college. At the time, I was still very much a "Dell Rat," steeped in soul and pop rock. I had little knowledge of or interest in music other than the kind I listened to at the Dell and on top 40 radio stations. In other words, I had not yet gone 'FM." I walked into the campus record store one day and, for the first time, found myself yearning for new musical experiences. I started looking through the bins of rock albums and came upon that Bosch artwork gracing the cover of Pearls Before Swine's One Nation Underground. I had never heard of the band but, using "nothing ventured, nothing gained" logic, decided to take a chance and buy the album on the basis of the unique artwork alone. It turned out to be a pivotal moment and one of the most important purchases of my life. The songs on the album opened me up, expanded my musical horizon and gave me an appreciation of a style that was foreign to my ears. PBS - ONU quickly became one of my all time favorite albums. I have carried Tom Rapp's gentle melodies and poetic lyrics with me all my life. They inspire me. They calm me. They give me hope.
Thank you again for being here for this special sneak preview of Society's Child, a series that will showcase more songs like these, anthems that meant a great deal to us in our youth and today are cherished more than ever. Have a wonderful weekend, dear friend Kelly!
First...I love the images because that speaks to my soul. I love fairies and angels and butterflies. I love the rich colours which inspire me yo create some cards. The one gas some beautiful emerald greens.
ReplyDeleteI must try and find this album because i love the music. It reminds me a bit of Moody Blues.
Don't you love that album cover? That is by H. Bosch. I just say H because I don't know how to spell his first name he created these art works in the 1400s! He was actually known to be quite religious believe it or not but they don't know much about this artist. There is so much imagery in this and the face on the egg, the art people believe it to be a self portrait. I love his work
Hi, Birgit!
DeleteThank you very much for being a day one Dilly, dear friend! I am very happy to have you over to experience this preview of my series Society's Child, coming to Shady's Place in 2023.
I'm thrilled knowing that you found soul sustenance in the images I found to go along with the musical poetry of Tom Rapp. No longer with us, Rapp was one of the great yet underrated voices of our generation. Yessum, I suspected that, with your artistic eye, you would appreciate the fairies, angels, rainbows, butterflies and other magical, mystical symbols in this artwork. I agree that images like these would lend themselves nicely to your beautiful BB Creations.
Yessum, when you are no longer in the mood to dance, put this Pearls Before Swine album on and listen to the songs. Every one of them is a gem. Tom Rapp's intimate vocals get inside you head and take your mind on a wondrous journey to another dimension, different world, a higher plane. Most of the songs are gentle ballads extolling peace and love. One song. "Miss Morse," is a fun, humorous ditty, while another, "Uncle John," makes a passionate anti-war statement. I found a link for you to the entire album on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc0yr9vLNoQ
Yessum, the Bosch artwork used on the cover of this 1967 album, the "Hell" panel from the The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych oil painting, is what compelled me to buy the album in the first place. I had no idea what kind of music I would find on the album, but it completely won me over and changed me. Purchasing One Nation Underground that day was one of the most important choices I ever made, because it took me in a new direction, a different trajectory. I took a chance on an unknown, and it paid dividends the rest of my life.
Thank you again for coming early, dear friend BB. Have a safe, restful and happy weekend up there in Niagara!
Hi Buddy - Popping in before Bill and I go to dinner. I love, love, love the fairy pictures. The music not so much, but then you can't please everyone, right? Pearls Before Swine is a comic strip in our newspaper that we do find pretty hilarious though.
ReplyDeleteMama Cass had such a pretty voice. Another one we lost too soon. I don't remember this song of hers. Again, have a spectacular weekend!
Hi, Janet!
DeleteThanks so much for coming over on your anniversary, dear friend! I didn't expect to see you, but I'm very happy that you made some time for a visit.
I'm happy to know that you liked the artwork I chose for this sneak preview of my new series Society's Child. I'm surprised you don't remember Mama Cass's 1970 single "New World Coming" which reached the top 5 on the Easy Listening chart, made the top 30 on Cash Box and approached the top 20 in Canada. Cass introduced the song on the ABC-TV series The Music Scene on December 1, 1969, a month before the single was released. That might be the performance you are seeing in this post.
I hope you and Bill enjoy a wonderful dinner and a delightful evening reminiscing about your 38 years as a married couple. Once again, congratulations on finding a relationship success formula and putting it into practice day after day, month after month, year after year. Your happiness is mine. Have a safe and celebratory weekend, dear friend Janet!
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
ReplyDelete--Matthew 7:6, King James Version
I think I may have a bit too much dog or swine in me to fully appreciate the first two pearls you cast at me, but I'm always there for Mama Cass.
Hi, Kirk!
DeleteThanks for being on hand for this special sneak preview of Society's Child, premiering in 2023 exclusively here at Shady's Place Music & Memories. I'm sorry it doesn't excite you quite as much as a new musical opening soon on Broadway. :)
I am also sorry that the words and music of Tom Rapp do not evoke the same response in you as in me. When I listened to this album for the first time after buying it at the State College record store in late 1967 or '68, I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual awakening. This music changed me, started me down a different path. I can't get through either of these songs dry-eyed because they touch my soul deeply and give it a good stir. It occurs to me that the songs on this album do not bring back happy memories as do other favorites. Indeed, I have no memories linked to them. Instead, these songs elicit emotion, evoke feelings and transport me to a world apart, another level of consciousness. These songs are part of me. I've been coming from them ever since the late 60s. So, to reiterate, I sincerely regret that you cannot experience what I do when you listen. Perhaps it is because you are younger. You came of age during the era of Disco instead of the glory years of the singer/songwriter, and you are too young to have been part of the youth movement of the 60s. Knowing your taste as I think I do by now, perhaps it is because you prefer the type of music that came out of Tin Pan Alley, pop and jazz standards, showtunes and simple, rhyming moon - spoon - June love songs.
One Nation Underground offers a mix of sounds produced by musical instruments that were seldom heard in rock music at the time it was recorded in 1967. These include Autoharp, Banjo, Mandolin, Vibraphone, Audio Oscillator, English Horn, Swinehorn, Sarangi, Celeste, Finger Cymbals, Harpsichord and Clavioline.
I was almost embarrassed to include the song by "Mama Cass" because it is not in the same league with the other two, but I did so for friends like you who prefer straightforward pop and do not care as much for unfathomable psychedelic folk and art rock.
Since you made no mention of the artwork displayed in the post, I must conclude that they were not your bag either. While I can appreciate comic book illustration, which seems to be your favorite genre, I also have a keen interest in other types of art. These mystical, surrealist images seemed to fit perfectly with the "Rapp songs." They too inspire me and take me to the garden where I hope to someday dwell.
Thanks again for your visit and comment, good buddy Kirk, and have a wonderful week!
The music of Pearl Before Swine has a folksy, dreamy like quality or at least in the two song features you shared in this post. Although, I've heard of them I'm not at all familiar with the groups music. Mama Cass had a wonderful voice. I always liked listening to her songs. New World Coming is an introduction but works perfectly in this tease post of things to come on SPMM with the new hostess' spot in 2023. Like you, my mind often shifts forward around mid-year and we're just about there already. My how quickly 2022 is going by! I kind of think it'll begin to drag with the return of hotter days. It always feels like the days of summer are prolonged with the heat and humidity. Things have gotten pretty hot in our neck of the woods this week and I can only imagine how uncomfortable it's further south with you. Stay indoors and keep cool. Have a good week, my friend!
ReplyDeleteHi, Cathy!
DeleteThanks for coming over on your Sunday, dear friend! I appreciate you making time for a visit as I give you a sneak peek at my new series, Society's Child, premiering next year, and starring Allie Pressman.
I'm pleased that you noted the folksy, dreamy quality of these two songs by Pearls Before Swine, a psychedelic folk band that formed in 1965 in Eau Gallie, Florida, a town on the west coast near Melbourne. My grandparents lived in Melbourne, and whenever we visited them, I noticed that they received The Eau Gallie Dispatch newspaper. That's how I first learned about the community.
The PBS band set to music the new age poetry of gifted songwriter Tom Rapp, a man who played an important role in my life. His songs, his words, got inside my head, my heart and my soul. They expanded my mind, taught me the importance of meditation, turned me around, inspired me to become a better person, a kinder and gentler person than I had been prior to discovering the band and their 1967 album One Nation Underground.
Yessum, the Mama Cass hit is ideal to use as one of the theme songs of Allie's upcoming series. I'm happy to know you are looking forward to it and acknowledged that the year 2022 is indeed fleeting by.
It is 85 degrees here in Central Florida at the moment. Keep in mind that our temps start rising very early in the season, but reach a plateau that is rarely exceeded during the hot summer months. In other words, there might be many days this summer when our temperature is equal to or lower than yours, because we are on a peninsula surrounded by the ocean and Gulf waters.
Thank you again for dropping by on your weekend, dear friend Cathy, and have a super week ahead!
Well, you definitely found a bunch of pictures that I like. That first one is so pretty!. I had fairy light plates on all my light switches and outlets before maintenance came in and put new outlets on all the walls.
ReplyDeleteI don't know any of the songs though, all new to me. Not really my genre though.
Hi, Mary!
DeleteThanks for coming by on your Sunday, dear friend!
Thanks also for sharing that you like the artwork on display in this sneak preview, and that you have a fondness for fairies. Other friends have told me that in their comments. If you didn't particularly care for the artsy, psychedelic folk music and sunshine pop in this post, you will be happy to know that the series I am promoting, Society's Child, will also offer dashes of heavier music by Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf, The Doors and other bands of the period including a few that time forgot. I hope you will find something to like when Society's Child launches next year.
Thanks again for dropping in, dear friend Mary. I wish you and my buddy Falcor a wonderful week ahead!
Hi Shady, When I was listening to the first song, I thought it was a recent release. There are so many kinds of music out there now that I find through Apple Music. When I saw the name of the band though, I thought I had heard of it many years ago. Lol. I thought I would like this music playing in the background as I read a book or cleaned the house. It is very soothing, quite lovely.
ReplyDeleteI also am a fan of fairy art. As a little girl I so much wanted to believe fairies were real, living in a different, beautiful world of magic. They wear the kind of clothes that I would like to wear.
Mama Cass' voice is just so gorgeous to me. It has a soulful feel to it and I just love her. I'm also sorry she died at such a young age. Thanks for sharing these songs.
Hi, Belle!
DeleteI'm thrilled to see you, dear friend! Thanks for coming down to the lower forty-eight to drink in the sights and sounds of this special sneak preview promoting Society's Child, a new series coming to Shady's Place and SPMM radio next year.
Yessum, the first two songs in the post, written and performed by songwriter, poet and visionary Tom Rapp, are taken from One Nation Underground, the 1967 album by Rapp's Florida-based psychedelic folk and art rock band Pearls Before Swine. The songs and the poems they contain drift through time and still seem fresh today 55 years after the album was released. You might recall that The Beatles released their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album on May 26 that same year. Various critics described Sgt. Pepper's as the album that "revolutionized rock and roll" a "masterpiece of British psychedelia" that represents the "epitome of the transformation of the recording studio into a compositional tool," and that it marked the moment when "popular music entered the era of phonographic composition." Surely Tom Rapp and his band were influenced by the studio experimentation of The Beatles, because PBS/ONU features the sounds of esoteric musical instruments rarely heard on pop and rock recordings of the period. These include Autoharp, Banjo, Mandolin, Vibraphone, Audio Oscillator, English Horn, Swinehorn, Sarangi, Celeste, Finger Cymbals, Harpsichord and Clavioline. Rapp and his bandmates were also influenced by The Fugs, a folk and psychedelic rock band in New York City founded by a pair of social activist counterculture poets.
Yessum, the music on this PBS album is for quiet meditation and listening, not for dancing and partying. Actually, I'd like to correct myself by noting that the songs invite the right side of your brain to dance, because they paint beautiful images of things like "your face, mist and rainbows, flowers, and the rain"
Your face (your face)
Is invading
The portals of my eyes
And drawing
Crazy patterns
On my mind
I see you drifting
Draped in heavy lace
Where is this place
Where you stand radiant?
Your hand hides the moon
And you move with crystal grace.
Stain-glass showering
Diamond morning
Soft smiling
In the shining hours
Boughs of henna in your hair
Roses in your silent garden.
This music can keep you company and give you inspiration while you are performing household chores or having a cup of tea at the end of the day. As I played this album countless times in my youth, I learned every song in sequence and sang along. The words have stayed with me and still touch my soul deeply after all these years.
I am also pleased that you acknowledged the fairy art used to illustrate this "poor man's music video" I assembled. The poems, the music and the artwork combine to transport you to a garden that exists only in another dimension, another world, a new world of "peace, joy and love," themes echoed in the Mama Cass song. It is indeed sad that Cass died so young, at age 32. She reportedly died happy, because she had just finished performing a string of solo concerts in London and had received standing ovations. For years, the only cause of death that I was aware of was the urban legend that she had choked on a ham sandwich. That turned out to be absolutely false. Cass died in her sleep of heart failure. No food was found in her windpipe.
Thank you again for your kind visit and comment, dear friend Belle. I hope your week is off to a great start. This Thursday, I am paying tribute to a Shady Dell VIP and I hope you can once again join me. Thank you and have a safe and happy week, dear friend Belle!