and now for the songs — October 13, 2021

203) Los Mac’s — “F.M. Y Cia”

From Chile’s Sgt. Pepper’s. The Rising Storm says that:

[The song] ha[s] what may be strident left-wing political lyrics [but] the vocals are pretty unintelligible, so it’s hard to say whether this is in fact a scathing indictment of United States media control in Chile or just another teenybopper love song.

http://therisingstorm.net/los-macs-kaleidoscope-men/.

204) Vashti Bunyan — “Train Song”

Vashti is now of course famous for being obscure, for “I’d Like to Walk Around in Your Mind” and for the Just Another Diamond Day album. But this ‘66 A-side is equally stunning. And the lyrics were really written by a man Vashti met on a train. Alisdair Clayre was “terribly uncool” as she remembers and would leave her poems inside milk bottles (liner notes to Dream Babes Vol. 5).

“[T]raveling north to find you. Train wheels beating . . . . Don’t even know what I’ll say when I find you. Call out your name, love, don’t be surprised. It’s so many miles and so long since I’ve met you. Don’t even know what I’ll find when I get to you. But suddenly now I know where I belong. . . . It’s many hundred miles and it won’t be long. . . . Nothing at all in my head to say to you. Only the beat of the train I’m on. Nothing I’ve learned all my life on the way to you. One day our love, it’s over and gone.”

205) The Scandal — “Girl, You’re Goin’ Out a My Mind”

‘67 A-side. When compilers as fastidious as the Fading Yellow crew can only say “no info available,” you know this is obscure garage rock!

“I’ve been living in the dumps and moving in the backyard of my mind.  You’ve been calling all the trumps and you won’t quit till you know I stopped trying.”