Miguel Ríos: "A Song of Joy"

July 25, 1970 (2 weeks)

Yes, you're reading that right. "A Song of Joy" hit the number one spot on the RPM hit parade on July 25, 1970. Precisely five months earlier (or, indeed, seven months later) would've made more sense. The Canadian public hadn't really shown much interest in taking a Christian hymn to the top of the pop charts at Christmastime but somehow or other one managed to do so in the middle of the summer.

So, how did Miguel Ríos' "A Song of Joy" become a chart topper, especially at such a random time of the year? Was it helped along by a notable lull in the charts that July? Here is the RPM Top 10 from the week that Ríos reached the summit:

1. Miguel Rios: "A Song of Joy"
2. Three Dog Night: "Mama Told Me Not to Come"
3. Freda Payne: "Band of Gold"
4. The Carpenters: "Close to You"
5. Mountain: "Mississippi Queen"
6. The Temptations: "Ball of Confusion"
7. The Pipkins: "Gimme Dat Ding"
8. Five Stairsteps: "O-o-h Child"
   
9. Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers: "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)"
10. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: "Teach Your Children"

Not terribly impressive competition on the surface. About half the acts present are in effect one-hit wonders. That said, there are some solid singles present. "Band of Gold" is groovy, "Mississippi Queen" rocks and "Mama Told Me Not to Come" just about manages to do both. "Ball of Confusion" is an appropriately confusing mess but it has its charms &mdash and I will always wish we could return to an era in which ambitious songs like this have at least a fighting chance of making the Top 40. Yet, it's "O-o-h Child" that should've been the number one smash that I'm writing about now. (I would've given it a 9) The second worst song present is probably "Gimme Dat Ding", a British novelty hit that had no business crossing the Atlantic. It's first half is moronic fun but there's no reason to even bother sticking with it to the end. On the other hand, that's more than what can be said for "A Song of Joy", a grim, sickly outing that can't quite even make the most of its use of Beethoven's 9th.

Though either way too late or far too early for Christmas, timing was very much on Ríos' side. Spiritual pop was at its peak and this was also the beginning of the apogee of progressive rock. While no one was confusing this for something that The Moody Blues or King Crimson or Procol Harum had worked on, the use of symphonic elements inevitably rubbed off on a few of the lesser lights. But then, it isn't great spiritual music either. While the search for enlightenment and meaning that came out of the ashes of the hippie movement has a great deal to answer for - mostly a load of dangerous cults which, at best, ruined families and wiped out savings accounts - it did result in some strong pop, rock, soul, gospel and even jazz. (Say what you will about Scientology but at least it inspired the works of Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Edgar Winter) Rather than exploring new ideas, Ríos retreats into tired old Christianity. The fact that he's sincere in his piety doesn't help either. The running time of just short of five minutes seems to stretch out like a sermon delivered by a parson who loves the sound of his own voice. "A Song of Joy"? I don't sure don't hear any.

Oh, and I never did attempt to answer the question above: how the hell did "A Song of Joy" go all the way to number one? Well, I think there are two possibilities. The first is that Canadian youths on the whole weren't really paying attention to the music scene that summer. They were on camping trips with their parents or friends, attending summer school or summer camps or maybe they had summer jobs. Perhaps they were just hanging out and enjoying their holidays with little thought to what was popular at the moment. Seven or eight selections from the Top 10 listed above could've been memorable summertime faves &mdash teenage boys rockin' out to "Mississippi Queen", "O-o-h Child" and "Band of Gold" could've been popular on jukeboxes all over Canada and "Close to You" would've been a great anthem for fleeting summer love &mdash but "A Song of Joy" got the faithful out to push it over the top when the secular folk had better things to do. There's also the possibility that people are idiots. They had several good-to-great singles to opt for but they went with the worst one. Well done.

Score: 1

Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers: "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)"

July 11, 1970 (2 weeks)

Over 400,000 people attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August of 1969 but it might as well have been 400,000,000 the way some people describe it today. Not only do a suspiciously large number of individuals claim to have been there (it's as if none of them died over the past fifty-seven years other than many of the artists and most of the organizers) but mythology masking as history wishes we'd all buy into this crap too. The truth is, only a tiny fraction of Baby Boomers managed to make it to Bethel, New York that summer.

It's probably for the best most people weren't there. Many, many more got to enjoy a glimpse of it when they attended the film a year later and they got to experience the great music while being able to avoid the bad weather, the mud, the smell, the hunger, so many drug overdoses and, crucially, a handful of bad or indifferent performances from those not included in the footage. (The Incredible String Band went down badly, Ravi Shankar wasn't to everyone's taste and The Band were a bunch of surely, overrated tools)

Joni Mitchell famously decided to give Woodstock a miss. She had been interested in performing at the festival but her manager persuaded her to go to New York City instead so she could be a guest on The Dick Cavett Show. Her then-boyfriend Graham Nash played at Woodstock with the newly formed Crosby, Stills and Nash and he promptly told her all about it. She then sat down and wrote "Woodstock" in honour of the festival that she wasn't even at. It would go on to become one of her signature numbers, a major hit for both CS&N and, in the UK, Matthews Southern Comfort and a song still associated with late sixties' flower power counterculture. Mitchell's composition is a celebration of the back-to-nature spirit of the age which only manages to emphasize the idealism. You may not necessarily know she wasn't there by the lyrics but it makes sense given new age mysticism and good vibes present. Meanwhile, some of those who did show up wrote Woodstock tributes of their own but they were burdened by accuracy.

Poor old Melanie. She did a well received thirty minute set at one in the morning on the opening day yet she was left out of the movie. Still, not only did her career continue to take off but she had a breakthrough hit with "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)", a far more realistic take on the Woodstock experience. Subsequent generations may have bought into the romance of the hippie era but the general public at the time clearly didn't mind having a much more measured view. There's a particular verse that I would like to highlight. Here are its four lines along with my own brand of analysis:

We were so close, there was no room. Yeah, no shit. It was uncomfortable. Nearly half-a-million people crammed into a farm will do that. Sure, that Max Yasgur guy was a successful dairy farmer or something but his property could've only been so big. Yet, everyone being packed in so tight was in keeping with the times so you all should've just sucked it up, right?

We bled inside each other's wounds. Gross. (On the other hand, I initially misheard Melanie and thought she's used a word other than 'wounds' which would've been even more disgusting) Charitably, she could have been singing about how members of her generation had these wounds that had been caused by the Kennedy assassination and the Bomb and 'Nam and all that shit and that everyone in attendance was giving each other emotional blood transfusions or something along those lines but she could've done with more elegant phrasing had that been her intention.

We all caught the same disease. Yeah, leftism, am I right? I jest but I can imagine a few sad, crew-cut sporting Nixon fans saying something along those lines. It would be interesting to find out if there were any long term health problems that affected attendees as Melanie seems to be suggesting. In any event, I think Mel has hammered the point home sufficiently by now. (There is a longer version of "Lay Down" out there but I'd rather not risk hearing about people sharing each other's backwash or stepping on discarded ban-aids or other stomach-turning activities)

And we sang the songs of peace. Seeing as how crowded and teeming with disease and rain-soaked it was, it's a wonder there weren't riots like at Woodstock '99. A credit to everyone that peace and love was a constant throughout the weekend's festivities — and hopefully it carried over in their everyday lives, even those who were on the way to becoming Yuppies.

Joining Melanie on "Lay Down" are the Edwin Hawkins Singers. While the best thing about this single, their presence seems to take you out of being at Woodstock. Like Joni, the gospel act best known for "Oh Happy Day" weren't there, though they would appear earlier that the summer at the so-called 'Black Woodstock' held in Harlem (and not to be confused with the music festival that was supposed to run concurrently with the famous Muhammad Ali-George Foreman Rumble in the Jungle fight in the former Zaire). A gospel act at the hippie love fest might've been a good idea but having them on this song doesn't right a wrong. It even manages to trivialize the overt realism of Melanie's lyrics a little.

The other thing wrong with Hawkins and his group of female singers is that they do not do Melanie any favours. I must say I'd been expecting her to sound like a prototype of those quirky female folk singers from the Lilith Fair era — a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Girl with an acoustic guitar — but her voice was far too gravelly. She did all right for herself anyway with her Woodstock set being more than respectable. Nevertheless, she's way out of her depth next to a choir full of commanding vocalists. If she had been hoping that they might build her up then I hope she wasn't too disappointed. Last time I credited Rare Earth for being "pioneers in the 'nondescript white band with a Motown fixation' game". As if not to be outdone, Melanie Safka's first of two RPM number ones place her at the forefront in the 'white girl singers who think they can play with the gospel vets' stakes.

"Lay Down" isn't a great song but it remains a fascinating period piece from a time that has been mythologized to death. This first hand account may not feed into the public's dream of peace and love and music but it ought to be an antidote to much of the accompanying bullshit. Perhaps it would be better remembered had Melanie been as talented a songwriter as Joni Mitchell. Alas, we all can't be Joni, can we?

Score: 5