Thursday, March 10, 2005
The Best Albums You Never Heard
Harry Chapin is one of those artists I still mourn. Like Hendrix, Croce, Holly, and so many others, he left us to wonder just what level of genius he might have reached, had he not ridden that bullet-train into the mystic way too early. In Harry's case, it was actually a VW Beetle on the Long Island Expressway, but you gotta love a good metaphor once in a while.
Harry was the master when it came to musical storytelling. If you are even the slightest fan at all of the folk-rock genre, then the Crime Dog issues this challenge: Scoot on over to Amazon and listen to the samplings from this album. You're going to click that little "add to cart" button when you're finished.
The album starts you off with the feel-good cut "Sunday Morning Sunshine." You'll thank goodness, because then Chapin delves into Charles Whitman's 1966 University of Texas tower rampage with the title cut. It's a chilling, brilliant piece of story telling that will inspire you to conversation as soon as it ends. My favorite cut, however, is "Better Place To Be," a piece of Chapin-esque poignancy in the same vein as "Taxi" and "Cat's In the Cradle."
This is arguably Chapin's best work, but for some reason, it has only relatively recently become available on CD. When I listen to "Sniper and Other Love Songs," I long for a time machine. I want to go back to a dark, quiet coffee house somewhere in New York in 1972, sit in the back, and just watch Harry Chapin - alone on stage, with his guitar, in a pool of light, doing what made him special.
