Love's Forever Changes made only a minor dent on the charts when it was first released in 1967, but years later it became recognized as one of the finest and most haunting albums to come out of the Summer of Love, which doubtless has as much to do with the disc's themes and tone as the music, beautiful as it is. Sharp electric guitars dominated most of Love's first two albums, and they make occasional appearances here on tunes like "A House Is Not a Motel" and "Live and Let Live," but most of Forever Changes is built around interwoven acoustic guitar textures and subtle orchestrations, with strings and horns both reinforcing and punctuating the melodies. The punky edge of Love's early work gave way to a more gentle, contemplative, and organic sound on Forever Changes, but while Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean wrote some of their most enduring songs for the album, the lovely melodies and inspired arrangements can't disguise an air of malaise that permeates the sessions. A certain amount of this reflects the angst of a group undergoing some severe internal strife, but Forever Changes is also an album that heralds the last days of a golden age and anticipates the growing ugliness that would dominate the counterculture in 1968 and 1969; images of violence and war haunt "A House Is Not a Motel," the street scenes of "Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hillsdale" reflects a jaded mindset that flower power could not ease, the twin specters of race and international strife rise to the surface of "The Red Telephone," romance becomes cynicism in "Bummer in the Summer," the promise of the psychedelic experience decays into hard drug abuse in "Live and Let Live," and even gentle numbers like "Andmoreagain" and "Old Man" sound elegiac, as if the ghosts of Chicago and Altamont were visible over the horizon as Love looked back to brief moments of warmth. Forever Changes is inarguably Love's masterpiece and an album of enduring beauty, but it's also one of the few major works of its era that saw the dark clouds looming on the cultural horizon, and the result was music that was as prescient as it was compelling.
Hey Moggers. I don't know how down you are with it but I've been having fun with Skype lately. My bestest bud in LA uses it for all phone now and I had the most lovely chat with The Boy Flood the other night. If I'm on give me a buzz. My user name is fistula_spume. Of course. Love to talk sometime with anybody who is willing. I'm up for it tonight if anyone is connected. Give me a buzz yo!
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Back in the pre-internet era, I used to ride my pet dinosaur to a job at a high school where I was the youngest person on the staff by a good ten years.One of the older staff members revealed one day, somewhat sheepishly, that he'd been a member of a one-hit psychedelic band back in the 60's. Needless to say, i thought this was unspeakably cool. I looked at the album cover in the store trying ...
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Arthur Lee, legendary singer-songwriter for the influential '60s psychedelic rock band Love, died of leukemia at Methodist Hospital in Memphis this afternoon. He was 61 years old. Several recent benefit concerts, including one at New York City's Beacon Theater featuring Robert Plant, Ian Hunter, Nils Lofgren, Yo La Tengo and Ryan Adams, raised money to help pay Lee's medical expenses. Lee was b...
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A question for the mog-o-verse. When I travel to certain "hotspots" (Japan, NYC, Austin, etc.), I can't help to make....well, "appropriate" soundtracks. For example, while riding the subway in NYC, I would listen to the Walkmen, Interpol, the Ramones, and the like. In Japan, Cornelius, Asobi Seksu (yes, I know that they are from America, but still...), boris.I dunno, it just seems to be that...
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There are few albums from my high school years that I can still tolerate listening to. There are even a smaller number of these albums that I DO listen to. And there are only a handful albums from that era that I still religiously listen to once or twice a month. The three Love albums fall into that latter category. Love is also one of those bands I was into in high school that I never thought ...
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seriously. amazing.if you agree with me, than we belong together....or just friends is cool too.
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 "Forever Changes")
