The 5th Dimension: "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In"

April 7, 1969 (3 weeks)

And so begins the Age of Hair. This is the first of three reviews of singles taken from the hit musical. Yes, a far greater appreciation for the phenomenon of the hippie stage show can come from looking at the RPM hit parade than from Billboard's Hot 100. It's curious how such a naughty production resulted in covers by some of the most painfully mainstream acts in the business. One pulled it off more effectively than the other two but it must be said that they all did it better than what ended up on the original cast recordings. So, let's plug in the Walmart lava lamp and get started.

Joe Osborn. No, I'd never heard of him either. But this is a name that ought to be used glowingly whenever "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" is being discussed because he is easily the best thing about it. (If I'm in an especially grumpy mood, I'd even go so far as to say he's the only good thing about it)

When the Wrecking Crew is brought up (and it sure as hell gets brought up an awful lot and with good reason) there are two names that are most frequently dropped: drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Carole Kaye. They were the backbone of the LA session group, playing on The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" as well as dozens of Phil Spector and Bachrach-David recordings. (Even fellow WC alum and country music superstar Glen Campbell isn't mentioned anywhere near as frequently) What's easy to forget — and, indeed, be unaware of entirely — is that Hollywood's hardest working studio band had several individuals at the key positions. In addition to Blaine, they had four other drummers in their employ (all of which are notable, including Jim Keltner and Earl Palmer) as well as half-a-dozen electric bassists other than Kaye. One of them was the great Joe Osborn.

Osborn's playing has already appeared on songs that have been reviewed here, including The Mamas and the Papas' "Monday, Monday", Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park" and The 5th Dimension's previous number one hit "Up, Up and Away". But it is only with the "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" medley from Hair that his skills as a bassist really stick out. The first part of the song is showy and provides a nice spotlight for Marilyn McCoo's clear and pure vocals but is let down by being incredibly bland. Yet the bass is a steady presence in the verses and provides a sweet groove in an otherwise undistinguished chorus. At roughly the halfway mark the pace drops with a crass shift in tone to the "Let the Sunshine In" segment. Even still, Osborn more than earns his appearance fee here with a jazzy part that doesn't let up. (His Wrecking Crew colleagues were similarly up for the challenge of piecing two unrelated and unremarkable compositions together)

Otherwise, there's not much more to say. For sure this is better than "Up, Up and Away" but the bar was low so that's not saying much. I will say that to have chosen the ultra milquetoast 5th Dimension to record this selection from Hair, with its brazen use of drugs and nudity, was an interesting one. While Tom Breihan argues that the quintet managed to squeeze all the countercultural life out of it, I question whether there was all that much of it to begin with. This was a Broadway show after-all. Sure, boobs and bush and blazing up are all well and good but these are still just show tunes that weren't exactly in Sondheim's league. The flower children loved them but I think that says more about these soon-to-be-yuppies than anything else. Whatsmore, The 5th Dimension (and the Wrecking Crew, with yet another shout out to our pal Joe Osborn) managed to improve upon the ghastly Broadway recordings. This was no longer Gershwin and Porter providing Great American Songbook classics to pop stars, this was a faded cultural tradition propping up a music industry that needed better source material.

Score: 4

The 5th Dimension: "Up, Up and Away"

July 22, 1967 (1 week)

As I have said repeatedly in this space, Canadians didn't seem to take to Motown the way their neighbours to the south did. This blog has just passed the midway point of 1967 and we still haven't encountered a non-Supremes' chart topper on the Detroit-based label — and it's not as if Diana Ross' group was racking up the number ones at the same rate in the United States either. By my count, there had been sixteen Motown and/or Tamla number ones on the Hot 100 by the midway point of 1967 while over the same period of time, only there were just four on Canada's CHUM/RPM charts.

Yet, a vocal quintet who had been considered for the Motown label ended up accomplishing what had eluded the likes of The Marvelettes, Mary Wells, The Temptations and The Four Tops. Signed to Johnny Rivers' newly-formed Soul City and with a young Jimmy Webb tasked with providing usable material, the group that had previously been known as The Versatiles were not exactly being groomed in an environment that could be described as the 'sound of young America' but was instead the 'sound of bland America'.

In a poptimistic twenty-first century that has rushed to embrace former guilty pleasures ABBA and the Carpenters, it may seem out of place to crap on The 5th Dimension for being so milquetoast. But that's an easy stance to take when you're defending acts who have masterful pop hits like "Knowning Me, Knowing You" or "We Have Only Just Begun" to back them up; it's a whole other matter entirely when you're dealing with something as cheap and tawdry as "Up, Up and Away".

No doubt it is joyous to many but to these ears "Up, Up and Away" is far more depressing than Morrissey on his worst day (or could it be his best day?). Could it have soundtracked a tacky gameshow or TV commercials for pillows or mattresses (or anything else that gives you a nice, floaty feeling)? Of course and I'm sure it has many times over in the nearly sixty years since it hit the charts. But it is also trite. Armchair critics have the tendency to describe songs like this as 'music for people who hate music' but I hear it more as 'music made by people who have no idea what truly great music sounds like'. Why blame listeners for shitty singles when we can go after the dweebs that made them instead?

With that in mind, I think terms like 'cheap', 'tawdry' and 'trite' don't quite do it justice. It's cringey. It evokes tackiness. It's bland but not in the forgettable sense. Its form of escapism only makes you wish for the harsh realities of life and anti-Vietnam War protests and civil rights rallies. It makes you wish that everyone involved could be doing something better — as indeed they (Johnny Rivers, Jimmy Webb, even the Dimension themselves) all would at some point. It commits all these crimes to recorded music and yet its tune still manages to suck the listener in. "Up, Up and Away" could at the very least do us the service of being boring.

I will likely never fully warm to The 5th Dimension. While I appreciate that the great Laura Nyro made a nice living due in no small part to their trio of covers ("Stoned Soul Picnic", "Sweet Blindness", and "Wedding Bell Blues" respectively), they can't hope to compare with her immaculate originals. I understand that both Nick Drake and Miles Davis were said to have been fans ("He was probably screwing one of the girls or something," the musician David Was once remarked), to which I say "good for them". Music critic Caroline Sullivan makes a good case for them and her affection is sincere but I came away from reading it with a higher opinion of the writer than of the band she loves so much. All that said, they would release far better songs than "Up, Up and Away" (a pair of which I'll be getting to all in good time). In any case, it's not like they could do a whole lot worse.

Score: 2

~~~~~

Can Con

Inspired by Tom Ewing - a gentleman to whom all of us in the number ones from a particular country blog business owe a debt of gratitude — I have a policy not to change scores once a review has been published on here. It is, however, tempting to alter the odd grade here and there. For example, I wish I could give the Young Canada Singers a bonus mark for salvaging their centennial hit "Canada" when The Sugar Shoppe proved unable to do the same. The original has a welcome sixties' optimism that the Toronto foursome couldn't hope to replicate. It scarcely even sounds like the same song which the Shoppe's harmonies dominating the arrangement. A depressingly apt companion to The 5th Dimension only lacking whatever trace amounts of character the Americans had on "Up, Up and Away". Though not quite as big as the YCS original from earlier in the year, it still gave them at a cup of coffee on RPM's Top 40 as well as a week on top of the recent Canadian Content chart. Clearly, Canadian pride over the hundredth birthday and Expo 67 in Montreal hadn't dimmed though this single suggests that maybe it should have. (As an aside, one of the members of The Sugar Shoppe was an eighteen-year-old actor/singer named Victor Garber who has been in thousands of movies and TV shows and is doubtless someone you vaguely recognize as the "guy from that thing")