guilty pleasure monday: 7 and 7 is (love)

how many hit records boast a simulated atomic bomb?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzrXr25Sahk

i’ve been neglecting my blog, and especially my guilty pleasure mondays. i do have a good excuse, of course, one that doesn’t involve dogs eating homework or kids discombobulating; we recently began renovating our home.  the first time we renovated, i was very ill and on percocet.  while i’m not a big advocate of drugs, i think now that being medicated may be the way to go when you watch other people destroying your abode.

anyway, watching my roof explode into shambles started me thinking about bombs hitting buildings… and ultimately, to the wacky world of arthur lee and love.  arthur lee and love probably never received the sort of appreciation they deserved by their contemporaries, which is a pity. two albums, da capo and forever changes, are absolutely classics in rock.  there are jazzy spanish guitar riffs (as in the masterpiece alone again or), there’s childlike psychedelia that probably inspired copycat madonna (like my other favorite she comes in colors, a song that has also made it into guilty pleasure mondays but as a cover by philly band the hooters.)

and then, there’s 7 and 7 is. this song, straight out of the mid-60s, sounds like what happens when you cross a mod with a punk, if the latter had only really been invented at that period. (would that create a pod? a munk?) i read somewhere that the drummer had a hell of a time keeping up with the rapidfire changing tempo of this little ditty, and eventually, arthur lee himself ended up drumming.  the lyrics are inscrutably beautiful and jarring; and the music plus the lyrics push ahead until you hear the bomb. (is it reverb? anyone?)

and then, there’s this odd little oldies melody that’s played, as if to say hell, the world ended but we can still sit here and watch a sailboat and have a beer.

i adore it. and to me, these guys birthed all sorts of acts without ever really having anyone pay homage to them. at times, i hear the jam, i hear the stone roses, i hear so many others.

i wonder how many of them know of love?

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