Van Dyke Parks "Song Cycle" 1968
"Van Dyke Parks has always been one of the great charlatans of US music history!"
Former child actor Van Dyke Parks had reinvented himself as a songwriter, arranger, raconteur, and budding conceptualist when Warner Bros. bankrolled this brave, baroque 1968 debut, which has achieved true notoriety in the annals of '60s California pop.
More heard-of than heard, Song Cycle sailed against the tide of guitar-driven, blues-drenched rock to bet on the orchestral ambitions of Sgt. Pepper, weaving a conceptual tapestry from folk, Tin Pan Alley, and classical strands. In place of generational anthems or confessional love songs, Parks's coy, modest tenor offered intricate, impressionistic wordplay ripe with puns, multiple-entendres, and geopolitical allusions far beyond the pale of countercultural rock. On songs such as "The All Golden," "Palm Desert," and "Laurel Canyon Blvd.," you'll hear poetic links to Brian Wilson's most convoluted, internalized soundscapes, as well as a wily musical intelligence that will either intoxicate or infuriate you. Not unlike a brattier, Californian cousin to Stephen Sondheim, Parks revels in musical and thematic puzzles, and Song Cycle offers his most seductive and challenging ones. - Sam Sutherland
Former child actor Van Dyke Parks had reinvented himself as a songwriter, arranger, raconteur, and budding conceptualist when Warner Bros. bankrolled this brave, baroque 1968 debut, which has achieved true notoriety in the annals of '60s California pop.More heard-of than heard, Song Cycle sailed against the tide of guitar-driven, blues-drenched rock to bet on the orchestral ambitions of Sgt. Pepper, weaving a conceptual tapestry from folk, Tin Pan Alley, and classical strands. In place of generational anthems or confessional love songs, Parks's coy, modest tenor offered intricate, impressionistic wordplay ripe with puns, multiple-entendres, and geopolitical allusions far beyond the pale of countercultural rock. On songs such as "The All Golden," "Palm Desert," and "Laurel Canyon Blvd.," you'll hear poetic links to Brian Wilson's most convoluted, internalized soundscapes, as well as a wily musical intelligence that will either intoxicate or infuriate you. Not unlike a brattier, Californian cousin to Stephen Sondheim, Parks revels in musical and thematic puzzles, and Song Cycle offers his most seductive and challenging ones. - Sam Sutherland
Producer: Leonard Waronker1 Vine Street (R Newman)
2 Palm Desert (Van Dyke Parks)
3 Widow's Walk (Van Dyke Parks)
4 Laurel Canyon Blvd. (Van Dyke Parks)
5 The All Golden (Van Dyke Parks)
6 Van Dyke Parks (Public Domain) say what now?
7 Public Domain (Van Dyke Parks) come again . . . ? What the heck?
8 Donovan's Colours (Donovan Leitch)
9 The Attic (Van Dyke Parks)
10 Laurel Canyon Blvd. (Van Dyke Parks)
11 By The People (Van Dyke Parks)
12 Pot Pourri (Van Dyke Parks)
CD bonus track 13 The Eagle And Me (Arlen/Naiberg) (originally released as a single on Warner Bros)
Then came 'Discover America' and we all bought the album thanks to my old friend and collegiate pal Steve Roberts I think! . . .
“Still she walking’ about with she face like Jack Palance - Go To FRANCE!”
The All Golden - Van Dyke Parks
The Mighty Sparrow's 'Jack Palance' Discover America
Van Dyke Parks "Discover America" 1972
While I dig "Song Cycle" quite a bit, I prefer "Discover America", Van Dyke's sprawling, tropical fever dream. What does it sound like? I liken it to giving a bunch of Disney characters lost in Trinidad with nothing but a bottle of booze and a bag of coke. I dunno. It's a whole hill of fun and a big kick in the rubber parts. Light the tiki torches, crank it up, and relax. - By Patrick Crain (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma United States)
After reading reviews for other Van Dyke Parks albums, I'm amazed at how easily this one gets overlooked; Mr. Parks certainly has many strong albums which deserve heaping amounts of credit (Song Cycle and Jump! come to mind first), but to me this one is the perfect blend of the artistic sensibilities of "Song Cycle" and the listenability and pop/catchiness of "Clang of the Yankee Reaper" (The albums released just before and after "Discover America").
To my ears, this one has just the right combination of elements from both albums, and has proven to be the one I come back to listen to the most. Some people may gripe that there are a number of covers on this album (as another reviewer mentioned, "Roosevelt in Trinidad" contains a number of the original versions): But this is where Park's talent for instrumentation, arranging and personalizing material shines through. This album swells and swoons in all the right places; it is a funky feverish haze with exquisite instrumentation, arrangements, and just the right mix of artistic pretention and outright feelgood funkiness. A tropical cocktail that'll shake you! - By Josh Z. Bonder "a sound painter" (Toronto)
After reading reviews for other Van Dyke Parks albums, I'm amazed at how easily this one gets overlooked; Mr. Parks certainly has many strong albums which deserve heaping amounts of credit (Song Cycle and Jump! come to mind first), but to me this one is the perfect blend of the artistic sensibilities of "Song Cycle" and the listenability and pop/catchiness of "Clang of the Yankee Reaper" (The albums released just before and after "Discover America").To my ears, this one has just the right combination of elements from both albums, and has proven to be the one I come back to listen to the most. Some people may gripe that there are a number of covers on this album (as another reviewer mentioned, "Roosevelt in Trinidad" contains a number of the original versions): But this is where Park's talent for instrumentation, arranging and personalizing material shines through. This album swells and swoons in all the right places; it is a funky feverish haze with exquisite instrumentation, arrangements, and just the right mix of artistic pretention and outright feelgood funkiness. A tropical cocktail that'll shake you! - By Josh Z. Bonder "a sound painter" (Toronto)
Van Dyke Parks "Clang Of The Yankee Reaper" 1976
Shedding the florid orchestrations of SONG CYCLE and the West Indies explorations of DISCOVER AMERICA, Van Dyke Parks' third album stands as perhaps his most straightforward set of independent songs.
Though CLANG includes none of Parks' original compositions, the set contains the essence of his sound and shines a light on his skills as an orchestrator and as an arranger. The title song is classic Parks, its lyrics evocative of movement, changing times, and Americana. The steel band sound that had empowered DISCOVER AMERICA is again employed to fine effect, most notably as one of the orchestral flavors in "Another Dream." A wonderful parade-band version of Pachebel's "Canon In D"--sounding like football game halftime entertainment commandeered by a group of scholars--closes the album.
Though CLANG includes none of Parks' original compositions, the set contains the essence of his sound and shines a light on his skills as an orchestrator and as an arranger. The title song is classic Parks, its lyrics evocative of movement, changing times, and Americana. The steel band sound that had empowered DISCOVER AMERICA is again employed to fine effect, most notably as one of the orchestral flavors in "Another Dream." A wonderful parade-band version of Pachebel's "Canon In D"--sounding like football game halftime entertainment commandeered by a group of scholars--closes the album.
Van Dyke Parks "Jump!" 1984
An exhilarating song cycle based on the Uncle Remus tales...
...It incorporates the styles of Stephen Foster, ragtime, '30s movie-soundtrack music, you name it, all in the service of playful, touching lyrics that correspond to the source material, without actually aping it. A delight from start to finish. - Review by William Ruhlmann
...It incorporates the styles of Stephen Foster, ragtime, '30s movie-soundtrack music, you name it, all in the service of playful, touching lyrics that correspond to the source material, without actually aping it. A delight from start to finish. - Review by William Ruhlmann
Van Dyke Parks "Tokyo Rose" 1989
Given Van Dyke Parks' well-documented fascination with the various and sundry collision points of American musical culture with the rest of the world, he was as good a candidate as any to make a concept album about the often uneasy relationship between the United States and Japan, and he approached the subject on his fifth album, 1989's Tokyo Rose...
...Tokyo Rose concerns itself with America's mingled condescension, infatuation, and contempt toward Japan, as well as Japan's often skewed perception of America and it's cultural icons -- Uncle Sam woos the Dragon Lady, Japan learns to love baseball, and everyone tries to figure out where the cowboys came from. Parks' songs dip satiric arrows into sweet but poisoned wit; the lyrics are never less than amusing (even when they're too wordy and self-consciously clever, which is often), and the lush and elaborate orchestrations are dotted with both "authentic" Japanese themes and well-turned cliches of both Asian and American musical figures. Tokyo Rose often sounds like the original cast album to some eccentric Broadway musical about footloose and pretentious Ugly Americans vacationing in the Pacific Rim, especially since Parks hands over a few of his lead vocals to other singers (including former Three Dog Night belter Danny Hutton), but even though Parks' slightly precious tenor rarely sounds like the perfect instrument for this stuff, he seems to fit the songs better than anyone else on board. Tokyo Rose occasionally gets lost in its own ambitions, and it's sometimes a bit too smart for its own good, but there are precious few people in the American popular musical scene who could tackle this sort of material and make it work so well; if it's not quite a masterpiece, it's at least an experiment that works. - Review by Mark Deming
...Tokyo Rose concerns itself with America's mingled condescension, infatuation, and contempt toward Japan, as well as Japan's often skewed perception of America and it's cultural icons -- Uncle Sam woos the Dragon Lady, Japan learns to love baseball, and everyone tries to figure out where the cowboys came from. Parks' songs dip satiric arrows into sweet but poisoned wit; the lyrics are never less than amusing (even when they're too wordy and self-consciously clever, which is often), and the lush and elaborate orchestrations are dotted with both "authentic" Japanese themes and well-turned cliches of both Asian and American musical figures. Tokyo Rose often sounds like the original cast album to some eccentric Broadway musical about footloose and pretentious Ugly Americans vacationing in the Pacific Rim, especially since Parks hands over a few of his lead vocals to other singers (including former Three Dog Night belter Danny Hutton), but even though Parks' slightly precious tenor rarely sounds like the perfect instrument for this stuff, he seems to fit the songs better than anyone else on board. Tokyo Rose occasionally gets lost in its own ambitions, and it's sometimes a bit too smart for its own good, but there are precious few people in the American popular musical scene who could tackle this sort of material and make it work so well; if it's not quite a masterpiece, it's at least an experiment that works. - Review by Mark Deming
Van Dyke Parks "Super Chief" - Music For The Silver Screen 2013
In his often witty and deeply evocative liner notes to his album Super Chief, Van Dyke Parks recalls a chance meeting with the great silent screen star Lillian Gish during his days as a child actor, and when the young Parks asked Miss Gish how she reacted to the coming of talking pictures, she replied, "You see, when we heard that movies would have sound...
...all of us acting in them naturally assumed that all that sound would just be music!" One senses that as a composer who occasionally works in movies, Parks wishes that were the case, and for Super Chief, he's created what he's called "an orchestral fantasy" fashioned in part from bits of music he wrote for various film scores. (Parks doesn't tell which selections came from which pictures, saying some of the films were never released or the excerpts here were from scenes that didn't make the final cut; for hardcore film buffs, that could make this album an interesting guessing game.) For Super Chief, Parks has given the music a new context, as they're meant to provide a backdrop for his story of traveling from the East Coast to Hollywood for the first time aboard a luxurious rail car, with romance and glamour on his mind as he made his way through the heartland to the city where dreams came to life. Not surprisingly, Super Chief sounds like film music, smart, well-crafted, full of allusions to America's musical past ("The Water Is Wide," "I Ride an Old Paint," and "Old Joe Clark" are among the familiar tunes he quotes here), and capable of conjuring images all by itself, though the overall tone is less whimsical than many of the orchestral-based pieces Parks has written for his own albums ("Teepee Motel" and "Forgotten Not Gone" both have a spare and somber edge). As a listening experience, Super Chief is full of grace and charm, a scrapbook of musical snapshots that cohere into a satisfying whole, though the absence of recurring themes makes it less of a symphonic work than Parks may have imagined. And as a résumé piece, it demonstrates Parks is a composer who was born to write for the movies, and hopefully this won't be his last sampling of film music from his archives. - Review by Mark Deming
...all of us acting in them naturally assumed that all that sound would just be music!" One senses that as a composer who occasionally works in movies, Parks wishes that were the case, and for Super Chief, he's created what he's called "an orchestral fantasy" fashioned in part from bits of music he wrote for various film scores. (Parks doesn't tell which selections came from which pictures, saying some of the films were never released or the excerpts here were from scenes that didn't make the final cut; for hardcore film buffs, that could make this album an interesting guessing game.) For Super Chief, Parks has given the music a new context, as they're meant to provide a backdrop for his story of traveling from the East Coast to Hollywood for the first time aboard a luxurious rail car, with romance and glamour on his mind as he made his way through the heartland to the city where dreams came to life. Not surprisingly, Super Chief sounds like film music, smart, well-crafted, full of allusions to America's musical past ("The Water Is Wide," "I Ride an Old Paint," and "Old Joe Clark" are among the familiar tunes he quotes here), and capable of conjuring images all by itself, though the overall tone is less whimsical than many of the orchestral-based pieces Parks has written for his own albums ("Teepee Motel" and "Forgotten Not Gone" both have a spare and somber edge). As a listening experience, Super Chief is full of grace and charm, a scrapbook of musical snapshots that cohere into a satisfying whole, though the absence of recurring themes makes it less of a symphonic work than Parks may have imagined. And as a résumé piece, it demonstrates Parks is a composer who was born to write for the movies, and hopefully this won't be his last sampling of film music from his archives. - Review by Mark Demingtrack listing:
01 The Super Chief 02 Go West Young Man 03 The Dining Car 04 The Pleasure Dome 05 Bar Talk 06 Joan Crawford 07 Last Call 08 Into The Gloaming 09 Crack Of Dawn 10 Flats As A Platte 11 Old Joe Clark 12 The Water Is Wide 13 I Ride An Old Paint Horse 14 Iron Horse 15 Teepee Motel 16 By Campground 17 Forgotten Not Gone 18 The Continental Divide 19 Just Yonder 20 Virgin Territory 21 A Spanish Kitchen 22 Bolero Torero 23 The Road Runner And Rattler 24 Bed Of Stones 25 So Long Santa Fe 26 Crossing The Colorado 27 A Date With Valentino 28 A Short Chat With Miss Crawford 29 The Joshua Tree 30 Chateau Marmont
01 The Super Chief 02 Go West Young Man 03 The Dining Car 04 The Pleasure Dome 05 Bar Talk 06 Joan Crawford 07 Last Call 08 Into The Gloaming 09 Crack Of Dawn 10 Flats As A Platte 11 Old Joe Clark 12 The Water Is Wide 13 I Ride An Old Paint Horse 14 Iron Horse 15 Teepee Motel 16 By Campground 17 Forgotten Not Gone 18 The Continental Divide 19 Just Yonder 20 Virgin Territory 21 A Spanish Kitchen 22 Bolero Torero 23 The Road Runner And Rattler 24 Bed Of Stones 25 So Long Santa Fe 26 Crossing The Colorado 27 A Date With Valentino 28 A Short Chat With Miss Crawford 29 The Joshua Tree 30 Chateau Marmont
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