THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,884) Gordon Alexander — “Windy Wednesday”
Ethereal pop psych for gentle people from “an L.A. singer songwriter who once got mentioned in the same breath as Harry Nilsson [see #1,168, 1,298, 1,854] and Randy Newman [see #174] . . . [and] now remembered mainly for the fact that . . . Curt Boettcher produced and sang on a couple cuts on his sole LP”, including today’s song. (liner notes to the CD comp Mystic Males: Soft Sounds for Gentle People Presents Tripped-Out Troubadours from 1965-1970) Sonny Knight [see #487] produced the rest of the LP. (RDTEN1, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/gordon-alexander/gordons-buster/)
As to Gordon Alexander’s LP — Gordon’s Buster — Forced Exposure calls it “a lost classic of West Coast psychedelic pop”(https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/ALEXANDER.GORDON.html) and Monocled Alchemist calls it “a very diverse collection of freak rock, psych tinged folk with jazzy & blues touches”, with the Boettcher-produced songs displaying his “unmistakable soft psych touches” and “really stand[ing] out from the rest of the album, either with some haunting echo throughout or some tasty psych guitar lines.” “You could say all from Boettcher’s isn’t gold, but here it sounds like he really made a difference, even the singing is better somehow.” (https://monocledalchemist.com/2024/12/28/gordon-alexander-one-real-spins-free-columbia-1968/)
RDTEN1 is dubious:
Columbia may have signed Alexander, but judging by this album they were clueless with what to do with him. That left the guy a no-win situation. . . . “Windy Wednesday” seemed intent on selling watered down pop-psych tunes to middle America that wanted to be culturally relevant, but not too relevant. . . . Alexander wrote all eleven tracks . . . . He was certainly a versatile writer, though his lyrics were dense, stream-of-consciousness affairs that haven’t aged all that well (“Autumn is a Bummer” probably sounded ancient in 1970). It made for one of those albums where you can spend a lot of time playing spot-the-influence. His voice was okay, though I always smile when I see the picture of a young man and then hear his gravelly vocals which sound like they were coming from a much older performer. Alexander’s delivery was also odd displaying a penchant for putting a bizarre echo effect on his voice.
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/gordon-alexander/gordons-buster/
Richie Unterberger is dubiouser:
[Gordon’s Buster] mix[es] slightly trippy lyrical sensibilities with more pop-friendly arrangements . . . [and] fairly lush orchestral horns and strings . . . .
Columbia sure put out a lot of albums in the late 1960s that were too strange to stand much of a chance of being big sellers, yet had a little too much pop (and sounded a little too contrived) to get much of a toehold in the freaky underground. Singer/songwriter Gordon Alexander was one such act, offering songs that reflected the beatific side of the hippie experience on Gordon’s Buster, yet in a mild, faintly sunshine pop-influenced style that steered it well clear of the weirdest things coming out of California at the time. There’s a sense of the playful psych-pop of, say, Sagittarius or Chris Lucey/Bobby Jameson [see #219, 1,255, 1,303, 1,380-81], yet Alexander seems earthier and a little more connected to some genuinely stoned whimsy. . . . Alexander’s not too distinctive a singer or crafter of melodies, however. Too, the production often seems a little half-hearted, except when those easy listening strings and horns are piled on — something to be expected, perhaps, considering the arranger was David Angel, the same guy who’s famous for doing the same thing on Love’s classic Forever Changes album. “I like to fly using my middle eye” and “I went looking for the sun in the darkness of my mind” are typical Alexander lyrical musings, but he’s no Arthur Lee when it comes to putting enigmatic imagery to song and voice. Gratuitous washes of echo and distorted guitar come into the mix at times, yet sometimes it sounds like he’s trying to do a psychedelic take on Glen Campbell. In all it’s an eclectic period curiosity with some interesting Baroque touches, but one that lacks the vision, sincerity, or even the good tunes of the best similarly naive psych-pop from the era.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/gordon-alexander-mn0001420282#biography, https://www.allmusic.com/album/gordons-buster-mw0000851706
As to Alexander, RDTEN1 says “[He] was supposedly part of the duet Peanut Butter ‘n’ Jelly and generated a little attention placing the song ‘Strawberry Tea’ on Tiny Tim’s debut album. If you’ve never heard that LP, I’ll tell you that Alexander’s contribution was easily the album’s most psychedelic number.” (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/gordon-alexander/gordons-buster/)
Eye Magazine (Dec. 1968) talked to Alexander:
[Gordon Alexander:] “I remember the first time Derek Taylor heard me, he was standing in the other room and I did this medley I had worked out back then – I did a lot of songs with this transition thing worked in between em – and suddenly he goes CRASH!, drops everything, falls against the wall, and then when I finished he comes over and he says, ‘Well, I , oh – what good are words, anyway? I just wanted to say, I really enjoyed your… music.’ And I’m saying ‘Uh, right,’ and the walls are going ka-choonga, you know? One of those mystical experiences.”
Gordon met Clive Davis, the president of Columbia Records, who said something like ‘yeah’, and signed him, and Gordon finally made his album – something he’d waited for a long time, and while making it someone phoned in a bomb threat. “A bomb threat, can you imagine? But we kept on recording. Studio time is scarce at Columbia.” One of the strange things about Gordon is the way he sings: hard to describe, one of those things you have to hear. He sings echo with himself, sends his voice around the corner, through a filter, brings it back again, sings echo with himself. The music at first hearing may sound foreign, jarring, unapproachable – especially the more electronic space songs. Maybe you can’t see it at first, but then later when you find it has all worked out, it is most accessible. The first album Buster, doesn’t have too many really difficult electric space songs. “We thought we’d keep this one pretty basic,” Gordon says. “But I certainly do try to remind people about life and death and those things.”
https://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2012/11/gordon-alexander-gordons-buster-1968-us.html?m=1
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