Music Room

Added to 'Soundtrack to Life' www.ipernity.com/group/362993

This is the State Music Room at Stowe House.

If this room were to reflect the best music............EVER
it would be a pretty impossible task but would surely include copies of -
“Pet Sounds” The Beach Boys
“Forever Changes” Love
“White Light” Gene Clark
“Sweethearts of the Rodeo” The Byrds
“Highway 61 Revisited” Bob Dylan
“The Band” The Band
“Elite Hotel” Emmylou Harris
“Late for The Sky” Jackson Browne

And, topping the list for me would be “No Other” by Gene Clark.

It seems to me that it has taken the best part of 40 years for this album, released in 1974, to be recognised as the masterpiece that it is. Tragically Gene is not here to know because he passed away in 1991 at only 46 years old.

From Wikipedia -
"Harold Eugene "Gene" Clark was a founding member of the The Byrds and was The Byrds' dominant songwriter between 1964 and early 1966, penning most of the band's best-known originals from this period, including "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better", "She Don't Care About Time", "Set You Free This Time", and "Eight Miles High". On the basis of the quality of Clark's Byrds contributions, David Geffen signed him to Asylum Records in early 1974. Gene retired to Mendocino to compose the songs that became his masterpiece, “No Other”. Produced by Thomas Jefferson Kaye with a vast array of session musicians and backing singers, the album was an extraordinary amalgam of country rock, folk, gospel, soul and choral music with poetic, mystical lyrics. The album wasn't a conventional pop/rock opus and only seemed to have limited public appeal. Its production costs of $100,000 which yielded only eight tracks prompted Geffen to berate Clark and Kaye. The album was minimally promoted and stalled in the charts. By 1976 Asylum had deleted it from their catalog. Gene never recovered from the failure of the album. Ultimately, “No Other” became a favourite of rock critics, growing in popularity with each passing year. In 2013, popularity arguably reached a fever pitch when it was revealed that members of Beach House, The Walkmen, Grizzly Bear, and Fleet Foxes among others would be performing the album in its entirety."

I am totally gutted that I have just missed a possibility of seeing the “Gene Clark No Other Band” play the album live in the UK!!! But the saving grace is that the whole concert from the Music Hall of Williamsburg is on YouTube and I hope against hope that it stays there forever :-)))

For this upload to 'Soundtrack to Life' I have chosen the title track and it does really need to be played through headphones :-)))

And, I think I might already be in love with Victoria, Cricket and Jenn :-)

Watch/Listen here -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHoZr0cXO68

And, the original version from Gene -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YULwbhga18