I Can't Get Back (The End of My Six-Pack).

Woah. Hey. I didn't know anyone else was in here. Seemed a bit... deserted. Let's get dessert, eh?

Many better moons ago I bought an LP from the record store that I worked at. Many records, many moons ago, actually. Though I had bit of a perpetual fire sale going on on eBay for some time, I still have a some 600 or 700 of them left. And you know what? Many moons past, many records sold, life ain't any better. The rent was paid. I don't even remember to which landlord each record was sacrificed. Sadly, I don't even remember the albums for the most part. Sometimes I find myself looking for things that I swear I own but have long since passed on. Don't sell your stuff, guys. It doesn't help anything. Stay in your mother's basement and do something.

Oh, yeah: blog entry.

This is a version of one of the records that I kept. I had always really liked this song, Eve of Destruction, I'd often hear played as lead-in music on my nightly listen to Coast to Coast A.M. The said version was done by one Barry Maguire and it's great, but I had learned that it was written by P.F. Sloan, Grass Roots member/producer and titular character in a song by Jimmy Webb. Later, I had also heard a fascinating story of Brian Wilson's psychologist/one-time "mentor"/psychic controller, Eugene Landy, claiming to be P.F. Sloan, the elusive songwriter extraordinaire and subject of the Webb tune. You really have to look it up.

Anyhow, as I was stickering records to go out on the floor one day, I came across a Rhino LP, Precious Times, compiling a good portion of Phil Sloan's work and, at what I think may have been the cost of a dollar, I couldn't resist.

I fell in love.

A lot of these songs are just bare-bone renditions. They were recorded with the idea that they would be recorded by someone else. And a lot of them were. This guy wrote Secret Agent Man, man. There's something about a lot of these very plain recordings that strikes me as very sincere and astonishing (which I guess is what folk is all about, doy). There's just this kind of garage-y energy that I get from these "folk" songs. You know, like Dylan, maaaan. DYKTILD? (Did You Know That I Love Dylan? )

Until this compilation on Ace came along, I absolutely could NOT find a digital copy of Precious Times. Tonight, I found this. Enjoy and, please, leave emoticons.

Here.