THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
From Detroit’s Donovan comes two avian classic folk rock stunners with psychedelic touches . . . with a little help from the Funk Brothers and a future Motown producer . . . WTF? Man, it works. Paul Parrish’s (see #791) album The Forest of My Mind “is a unique meeting of baroque, psychedelic pop, English chamber arrangements . . . and light soul” (Nathan Ford, http://active-listener.blogspot.com/2014/10/album-review-paul-parrish-forest-of-my.html), “a wonderful trip through mellow, psychedelic folk . . . . [with p]astoral imagery . . . featured throughout . . , adding to the magical and somewhat haunting quality to Parrish’s voice.” (Phil Cho, https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/album/paul-parrish-the-forest-of-my-mind/)
Paul Parrish explains:
I had a nihilistic friend who saw nothing but doom and gloom everywhere. I was thinking of so many of my contemporaries who were filled with doom and gloom. And I was saying “No, it’s not that way. If you look carefully, the flowers in the park are growing.”
liner notes to the CD reissue of The Forest of My Mind
Alex Koump tells us about Parrish and the album:
On a map of the psychedelic landscape, down a ways from the windmills of your mind and not too far from Strawberry Fields, somewhere between Itchycoo and MacArthur Park, you might find the forest of Paul Parrish’s mind. The Michigan native could be best remembered for a couple of singer-songwriter albums on the Reprise and ABC labels in the 1970s, or as one-half of Parrish and Toppano in the 1980s…or perhaps as the lead vocalist of The Brady Bunch theme during the sitcom’s first season! But before all that, Parrish signed with MGM’s short-lived Music Factory label for a 1968 one-off: The Forest of My Mind. . . . [T]he troubadour delivered psychedelia ripe for the flower-power generation, with images of nature, seasons, animals and the elements recurring on almost every track . . . , [a] soft throwback to a time when everything was beautiful – and a little mysterious, too . . . . [I]t may be one of the least Detroit-esque albums to come out of the Motor City as it by and large steered clear of R&B. So it might come as a surprise to some to find that veterans of Motown house band The Funk Brothers, including drummer Uriel Jones and bassist Bob Babbitt, played the exquisite arrangements here. Those charts came courtesy of the team of guitarist Dennis Coffey (a Funk Brother himself) and Mike Theodore . . . . The luscious production on Forest was handled by Clay McMurray . . . [who] tapped into a Donovan-esque delicacy, dappled with sunshine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53-NDgNenq4
Detroit’s Donovan? John Pruett writes:
Paul Parrish’s debut is a bright, excellently produced LP filled with remarkable sunshine-dipped folk-pop songs along the lines of Donovan. Replete with flute, strings, and slight psychedelic effects, the album gets by on the strength of Parrish’s songs, especially tracks like “English Sparrows” . . . . Each track is ripe with rainbow-colored imagery and the requisite amount of forest/meadow scenarios. You’d want to dismiss it as merely kitsch if Parrish’s vocals weren’t so sweet and persuasive — in the end, you’re singing along and holding hands with whoever might be near. . . . a detached yet pleasant, love-struck, and extremely wide-eyed version of psychedelic sunshine pop.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-forest-of-my-mind-mw0000869167
Patrick Lundborg took a dimmer view:
By ’68, every local music scene had its own Donovan wannabe, and in Michigan this task fell upon Paul Parrish . . . . Of course very few, or more precisely none, of these mustached nehru cats had the talent of Donovan, and usually ended up souding like early 45 B-sides by Al Stewart and Cat Stevens.
(The Acid Archives, 2nd ed.)
Talk about being Cat-ty!
1,113) Paul Parrish — “English Sparrows”
This “[g]roooooooovyyyyyy!!!” (mariegaignon6781, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvJ-nlLrZkc) song “opens the album with a classic slice of huge Fading Yellow popsike”. (https://www.popsike.com/PAUL-PARRISH-Forest-Of-My-Mind-1968-FUZZ-PSYCH-LP-HEAR/380242684554.html). It is “pure un-adulterated Sunshine Pop goodness” (recorddigger, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/paul-parrish/the-forest-of-my-mind/), with “[t]aut guitar lines intertwine with atmospheric, plucked strings and spacey flute . . . on . . . the album’s evocative opening track” (Joe Marchese, https://theseconddisc.com/2014/10/09/now-sounds-celebrates-50th-release-with-paul-parrishs-trippy-forest/), which “grabs you from the get-go with swooping strings and its mellow groove. . . . [and] was the impetus for my obsession with this record.” (David Ma, https://soul-sides.com/2010/01/guest-post-david-ma-on-paul-parrish.html)
Paul Parrish recalls:
Back in Southern Michigan, the English Sparrow was always an active bird, even in the dead of winter. . . . And that’s why that image came to my mind. Someone who writes songs doesn’t really know why they write them, until someone asks, “Hey, why did you write that.”
(liner notes to the CD reissue of The Forest of My Mind)
1,114) Paul Parrish — “The White Birds (Return to Warm Seas)”
This “baroque inspired folk popper[]” is “period pop bliss” (recorddigger, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/paul-parrish/the-forest-of-my-mind/), which “betray[s] an Eastern influence in the arrangements” and has “a particularly spellbinding harpsichord part.” (Joe Marchese, https://theseconddisc.com/2014/10/09/now-sounds-celebrates-50th-release-with-paul-parrishs-trippy-forest/)
Paul Parrish recalls “I was thinking about what happens to us when we die. We all think about that, don’t we. That’s what the song is about.” (liner notes to the CD reissue of The Forest of My Mind)
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