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| City of Gold | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | April 1971 | |||
| Recorded | 1970 | |||
| Genre | Psychedelic folk, folk rock, country rock | |||
| Length | 27:21 | |||
| Label | Reprise RS 6442 | |||
| Producer | Tom Rapp | |||
| Tom Rapp and Pearls Before Swine chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
City of Gold was the fifth album made by American psychedelic folk group Pearls Before Swine, and their third on Reprise Records. It was released in 1971.
Psychedelic folk is a loosely defined form of psychedelia that originated in the 1960s. It retains the largely acoustic instrumentation of folk, but adds musical elements common to psychedelic music.
Pearls Before Swine was an American psychedelic folk band formed by Tom Rapp in 1965 in Eau Gallie, now part of Melbourne, Florida. They released six albums between 1967 and 1971, before Rapp launched a solo career.
Reprise Records is an American record label founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operates through Warner Records, one of its flagship labels.
Contents
The album was the first to be credited to "Thos." (Tom) Rapp and Pearls Before Swine, rather than solely in the group's name. In fact, the group, which had been formed by Rapp and his friends in Florida in the mid-1960s, and which in its original incarnation had never performed live, had effectively ceased to exist by the time of their third album These Things Too , and subsequent albums had been recorded by Rapp with his wife Elisabeth and session musicians.
Thomas Dale Rapp was an American singer and songwriter who led Pearls Before Swine, an influential psychedelic folk rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Described as having "a slight lisp, gentle voice and apocalyptic vision", he also released four albums under his own name. He later practiced as a lawyer.
These Things Too is the third album by American psychedelic folk group Pearls Before Swine, and their first for Reprise Records. It was released in 1969.
City of Gold drew heavily on material left over from the recording of the previous Pearls album, The Use of Ashes , which had been recorded in early 1970 with the cream of Nashville's session musicians. [2] Further recording sessions took place in New York later that year, with Rapp taking on producer duties.
The Use Of Ashes was the fourth album made by American psychedelic folk group Pearls Before Swine, and the second on Reprise Records after their move from ESP-Disk.
The album, while having a broadly country/folk feel, is very mixed in content and, in most critics' estimation, quality. However, it does contain some of Rapp's best lyrics, sparkling arrangements, and some of his most heartfelt vocal performances, such as on the harpsichord-dominated version of Leonard Cohen's "(Seems So Long Ago) Nancy", and his own "Did You Dream Of". It also includes a very atypical up-tempo Rapp song, "The Man", sung vigorously by David Noyes. According to Noyes, a high school student at the time, the song was recorded at A&R Studios in New York City during the summer of 1969; Noyes also sang harmony vocals on other songs, including "Seasons In The Sun". Noyes' friend, Jon Tooker, took his position when the band toured Europe later in the year.
Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, sexuality and romantic relationships. Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize.
"Seasons in the Sun" is an English-language adaptation of the song "Le Moribond" by Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel with lyrics rewritten by American singer-poet Rod McKuen. It became a worldwide hit in 1974 for Canadian singer Terry Jacks and became a Christmas number one in the UK in 1999 for Westlife. Jacks's version is one of the fewer than forty all-time singles to have sold 10 million copies worldwide.
The sleeve design broke with the group's tradition of using classic art rather than photographs of the musicians. The front cover showed a hand-painted photograph of Rapp, taken in the Netherlands where many of the songs had been written. The photograph on the back of the cover shows Rapp, Jon Tooker, Gordon Hayes and Michael Krawitz. This was the version of Pearls Before Swine which toured in 1971, but Tooker, Hayes and Krawitz did not play on the album itself (although they did play on the next album, Beautiful Lies ).
... Beautiful Lies You Could Live In was the sixth album credited to American psychedelic folk group Pearls Before Swine, and their fourth on Reprise Records. It was released in 1971.
City of Gold was issued on CD in 2003 as part of the Jewels Were the Stars compendium of Pearls Before Swine's first four Reprise albums.
