CITY OF GOLD [AKA: THE NASHVILLE ALBUM]

‘City of Gold’ was an odd little album for Pearls Before Swine founder Tom Rapp. It was the first to be co-credited to him and the band (eventually Rapp would drop the Pearls Before Swine moniker altogether and bill himself as a solo performer). The album’s back cover features a photo of Rapp with three sometimes-members of the band, but to the best of my knowledge none of those people actually appear on the album (none are credited at least). And even for Rapp, who would become known for brief studio albums, this is barely a blip at less than 28 minutes total recorded time. The only two songs more than three minutes long are both cover tunes; the Leonard Cohen ballad “(Seems so Long Ago) Nancy” and a unique version of the oft-covered Jacques Brel tune “Seasons in the Sun”.

But despite these little foibles this is a moderately interesting piece of musical history that isn’t entirely without its own little charms. Rapp apparently formed the basis of the album from castaways and cutouts of Pearls’ previous studio album ‘The Use of Ashes’, which featured many of the same Nashville studio musicians that appear on this one. The musical arrangements are all quite sparse, often featuring little more than a bit of quiet acoustic guitar (or sometimes dobro), piano (or harpsichord) and violin (or cello), with a couple tunes like the closing “Did You Dream of Unicorns” mixing all these.

Rapp is the featured vocalist for most of the album, although his then-wife Elisabeth appears a couple places; namely on the Judy Collins cover “My Father” and in backing roles on most of the ‘side 2’ songs including “The Man” and “Casablanca” (although strangely not where I would have expected, on the harpsichord recital Cohen tune here just titled “Nancy”).

The CD version of the album is a reissue from the original vinyl on Water Records released in 2003 and found in my case at, of all places, a Barnes & Noble bookstore I wandered into while taking a break on a long driving trip across mid-America a while back. I have to admit the only reason I bought the CD was out of curiosity for their version of “Seasons in the Sun”, the song made famous by one-hit-wonder Canadian Terry Jacks in 1974. I was one of the 6,000,000 people who bought Jacks’ song back then, and until I saw this Pearls album had no idea it was not a Jacks original (I apparently need to get out more). Turns out Brel wrote the song (in French) in 1961, and it was first recorded by the Kingston Trio in 1963. This Rapp version is much closer to the original than the Jacks song would prove to be. The protagonist is bidding goodbye to his loved ones at presumably the end of his life, although here there is an ambiguous hint of infidelity and possibly suicide; whereas Jacks made his fortune pawning off the song as the farewell lament from a young cancer patient to his lover. Maybe if Rapp had taken the sympathy angle himself he could have retired in comfort instead of becoming the rather reclusive and obscure artist he ended up being. Who knows.

Anyway, a couple other songs worth mentioning: “Once Upon a Time” opens with a tasty bleat of harmonica and Jew’s harp, along with Rapp serving up his best Dylan imitation to result in a fine example of American East Coast sixties folk. And the title track is probably the most prototypical Rapp song from this era of the band (pretty much 1969 through 1972). The end was near for Pearls Before Swine, who really never were a band to speak of after their 1968 peak and sophomore release ‘Balaklava’.

I wouldn’t go way out of the way to find this album, unless you are a Pearls fan or just a serious student of progressive folk music. By definition I suppose that would make this a two star album (‘for collectors only’); however, I can’t see it being relegated to that simply because for what it is (an early seventies mildly acid folk recording), it is better than average at least, and a little charming for those who don’t mind the occasional hint of nostalgia. So let’s go with three stars, and note that the appeal of this record is likely limited to folk fans and dreamers (which is pretty much the same thing, I suppose).

peace