In 1969 Lotti Golden's "Motor-Cycle" Sped By Too Fast—Now’s the Time to Catch Up
an uncategorizable record too grand in ambition for any record store bin gets reissued
Like Song Cycle, Van Dyke Parks' ambitious 1967 debut, Lotti Golden's 1969 debut Motor-Cycle flopped when first released, but over the years both have gained cult followings and now finally Golden's gets a well-deserved reissue courtesy High Moon Records.
The comparison may seem bizarre to anyone familiar with both (the "cycle" in both album titles has nothing to do with it), but as record biz tragi-stories they are surprisingly similar, though Parks went into the studio already a veteran of session work and Golden went charging in green. Parks had producer Lenny Waronker, son of Liberty Records founder Sy Waronker and Golden had Bob Crewe, who by then had amassed a hit maker track record as songwriter/producer with The Four Seasons, The Walker Brothers and many others.
Using modernized versions of "old school" Americana musical forms—ragtime, bluegrass, and studio invented ones hatched from then new multitrack track tape recorders and engineer Bruce Botnick's boundless creativity—including a wild deconstruction of Donovan's "Colors"—Parks's album chronicled, among other things, his Southern roots and the mid to late '60's Los Angeles scene, plus an unforgettable anti-Vietnam war sound effects/gospel pastiche. It was and is an album not fit for any record store bin and a flop that Warner Brothers only released because when Jack Holzman heard it he told hesitant Warner execs, if they passed he'd release it. Jimmy Fink, a rock critic at the time for Rolling Stone declared Song Cycle "the worst rock record ever made", though of course it wasn't a rock record.
If you've not heard this album—and I hadn't heard it or heard of it until it arrived and I put it on my turntable, you won't believe your ears. Golden is a supercharged original soul-singer who by age of 19 had absorbed the vocal and rhythmic essences of everyone from Otis Redding to Aretha Franklin to Martha Reeves, to Carla and Irma Thomas—you'll hear what you hear when you hear— to invent her own sound. And yes, you'll hear Laura Nyro too, but the relationship there is more in the rhythms and song writing than the voice, which is far more brute force.
Lottie Golden's is a New York City story set mainly in the late '60s East Village— a wild time and place filled with hippies, druggies, flower children and lost suburban drop-outs. Brooklyn born, ambitious, multi-talented, and academically gifted, while still in High School she hit the Brill Building to shop her songs and quickly got signed to Bob Crewe's publishing arm as a staff songwriter. Her powerful, funky voice led to demo and background singer work.
By the time she graduated High School in 1967 (with honors) she'd already traveled up and down the East Coast singing with bands and done some acting, all the while and for years earlier writing songs and chronicling her experiences. Post graduation she exited the East Village scene and spent the summer in a rural North Carolina Summer Stock theater. Upon her return to attend Brooklyn College and continue her staff songwriting gig, a chance elevator encounter with Crewe turned her world around. She was singing and he liked what he heard.
Jump cut to this album recorded a year after the elevator encounter. Ertegun and Wexler at Atlantic also liked what they heard listening to partially produced tunes and signed on.
Why and how this album was orphaned and abandoned by Atlantic and why it failed—the whole story—is brilliantly told in great and appropriate detail with photos and printed ephemera in the attractively-produced and well-annotated 32 page booklet with additional essay by Richard Hell and David Toop (perhaps known to some readers as the author of the ambient/techno music book "Ocean of Sound").
Motor-Cycle is a "concept album" but unlike the essentially tune-less Song Cycle, Motor-Cycle is a tune-filled suite saturated with character studies of the people Golden met along her journey from high schooler to young womanhood. It's filled with tales of wild drug parties, death, betrayal, street hustles and varied sexuality in which Golden is more often a chronicler of other people's tsuris than her own, though the album begins with the autobiographical "Motor-Cycle Michael", ("Michael let me ride his motorcycle") which upon first play I confess I thought was a metaphorical sex song, but upon reflection no, it's a motorcycle song (unless I'm being naive).
Crew goes all-out in the wildly varied arrangements primed with horns, guitars, percussion, keyboards and background chics delivering funk, gospel Broadway bravado, Stax-Volt, pre "Go-Go" and Motown among other styles—all appropriate for the varied in depth stories Golden lives you through— like Side Two's opener— a song about her friend Silky's bi-sexual betrayal set in North Carolina brought to New York. The surprises, musical and lyrical, just keep coming. The funk of "Get Together (With Yourself)" accompanied by an inspirational "clean up your act" message will have you uncontrollably moving and grooving as will the "I found faith" gospel finale.
Perhaps you'll come away from first listen thinking "How did I miss this for more than fifty years? And how did this record not become a sensation when first release?" Well, for one thing, it takes a lot of luck and for another, it didn't fit in a Sam Goody or Tower Record slot. The other reasons are found in the outstanding annotation.
Happy to include this "hype sticker":
"This recently-unearthed recording sets the stage for High Moon’s deluxe reissue of her landmark debut album, Motor-Cycle, arriving Friday, March 28 on CD and vinyl LP. Motor-Cycle includes lavish, 32-page LP and 48-page CD books with extensive liner notes detailing the astonishing story of how the teenage Lotti Golden came to make an album as singular and audacious as Motor-Cycle. With exclusive essays by Richard Hell and David Toop, and a wealth of archival photos, including more than 30 never-before-seen photographs by pioneering rock photographer, Baron Wolman. Along with the original album track listing, the Motor-Cycle CD includes the rarely heard Atlantic single “Sock It To Me Baby/It’s Your Thing” b/w “Annabelle With Bells (Home Made Girl).”
You can pre-order the album here
The Sound
After first play I said to myself "This is unlike any late '60s record production I'm familiar with". It sounded dynamically and especially spatially flattened, sanitized, brightened, bass-stifled, certainly admirably clarified, but sterile—harmonic structure diminished. Like a bad modern CD. And this is not because it was cut from a digital file. Many records sourced from analog tape transferred to digital can sound very good.
But I didn't want to report that until I could hear an original so I found and bought one. Here's what the Audacity files look like of "Get Together (With Yourself)"
Original pressing on top, reissue below (as if I had to tell you):
That's what Dan Hersch at d2 Mastering did to it and don't ask me why he did that. It's hack work, amateur hour and inexcusable—he's been at this job for decades. Unless the High Moon Records people requested it. And why would they? But if they did, we need to talk!
The original, though not a "sonic spectacular", has wonderful dynamic contrasts, has on most tracks deep, well-textured bass on a three-dimensional soundstage. You can hear the musicians playing in a studio layered in space. It breathes, it lives. It's got color and warmth but it's not muffled or soft. Maybe Hersch or the producers felt they needed to bring the production into the modern world for modern ears, but I think that's a mistake IMO. Just when you feel like you want to turn it up and party you have to turn it down to avoid ear-bleed. The joy has been drained.
Sorry to have to report that. Still, I believe the music and presentation deserve your $27.00 if just for the fine album jacket reproduction and especially the assembled with great care booklet. You can still enjoy the music until this is re-cut from tape or from a high resolution file that's not had the life and joy squashed from it.
