We, the People

A few years back I was drawn to a reissue called, clunkily enough, of the people/by the people/for the people from – The Common People, the only LP put forth by an otherwise undocumented psych-pop group. The CD's on an Australian label, Ascension Records, though the record originally came from the opposite side of the Pacific Rim: L.A., more specifically, the late-sixties L.A. of Love and the Byrds, a dissolute cocktail of idealism and abuse that drove the old hippie flag down.

Googling The Common People yields defiantly irrelevant results, but perhaps the lack of back story is just as serviceable as the truth. Simply put, The Common People sound wholly imitative of the sounds common to their place and time. Besides the aforementioned bands, there’s the organ-driven languor of the Doors, and singer/guitarist Denny Robinett sounds like a hoarse Roky Erickson. The distinguishing characteristic of the album, then, is the presence of composer/arranger David Axelrod (most notorious for dragging the Electric Prunes to church for Mass in F Minor). Although this was the selling point of the reissue -- it neatly coincided with Axelrod’s own brief resurgence -- it sounds as if he wrote only a few charts on songs that pad out the album’s front-end.

The liner notes are worth quoting in full, as they do full service to the lyrical dippiness going on:

We share wines of a different world
we share minds too far apart
our dreams will never meet in reality
the follies of our past
never will bring the light of death
to the others
of whom we are all brothers
a man has the right to be a man
his soul is only for those who wish to
understand his mind
the beauty of his words makes the
listening something that
comes from his environment
and forever will your world be
in peace.

“I Have Been Alone” is one of the better strings-soaked numbers. “Girl Said – Know” was only a year after “So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” and it shows.