AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

GRAY McFARLAND

Gary McFarland - Skye SK-8 Side A

1st movement - On This Site Shall Be Erected

2nd movement - 80 Miles An Hour

Through Beer-Can Country

3rd movement - Suburbia - Two

Poodles And A Plastic Jesus Side B

1st movement - If I’m Elected 2nd movement - Last Rites For the Promised Land

3rd movement - Due To A Lack of Interest, Tomorrow Has Been Cancelled

Composed and Conducted by Gary McFarland with a personnel much too numerous to list, playing trumpets, trombone, tuba, french horns, reeds, cellos, viola, violins, piano, guitar, drums, and percussion.

I first received this record about two months ago, listened to it a few times, wrote a lukewarm review of it and gave it to Creem. Fortunately, the review got lost somewhere and was never published. I say fortunately because after many listenings I have found some moments of great beauty on this record, moments I wasn’t open to when I first listened to it (so many changes, man, all the time -but that’s the way it’s supposed to be).

Here’s what the original turn-offs were: 1) the discrepancy between the song titles and the actual music 2) the discrepancy between the titles and the liner notes and 3) the abundance of orchestrated music as opposed to a more immediate form of expression.

O.K. Starting with no. 1--seeing the titles listed on the album, I was expecting the music to reflect a hatred, an intensity of feeling at least as viscious as the title of the album. I was hardly expecting the music to be “cute”, which is exactly what it is in places, especially on the first two movements of Side A (though on the first movement of Side B cuteness is effectively used in a satirical way). But there is a valid feeling in this album which I didn’t expect of respond to at first, which is used to elucidate the message of its protest - a feeling of sadness and loss. It is expressed in a hesitant plantive motif that runs throughout the album and is most explicitly stated at the end of the 3rd movement on Side A. If you can get through to it, the sadness will fit any occasion, that’s how perfect it is. Beauty.

Now no. 2. The liner notes are chickenshit written by Norman Schwartz, with some nonsense about the “greatest nation on earth”. He would have us believe that the music embodies a respectful sense ofoutrage concerning litter and conservation. Nothing more. I won’t believe it. I can’t. He is either very frightened or very stupid.

No. 3-McFarland is an arranger/composer. His mode of creating is less immediate than wind through a horn. Quite simply the relationship between the creator and the recipient of the creation is less than personel. Which is why big bands generally seem so cold to me, so far away from the warm/touch that is necessary.

Highly recommended for sadness.

Richard C. Walls