Seeing Jimmy Webb perform at the Birchmere this past Monday has had me returning to the eccentric, matched-pair masterpieces he wrote, arranged and produced for Richard Harris in 1968 and 1969.
A Tramp Shining and the lesser-known, even better The Yard Went On Forever are the grand gestures of a 24-year-old musical genius intent on pushing beyond the mostly small classical ensemble leanings of “She’s Leaving Home,” “Walk Away Renee” and “God Only Knows” in a controversial attempt to forge a symphonic pop that sounded as if Stephen Sondheim had collaborated with Brian Wilson. Witness his proto-Steinman-equse “The Yard Went On Forever.” And yes, that choir really is singing De profundis clamavi ad te Domine / Donae nobis pacem. (Even though you tried hard, John Lennon, the surrealism of Semolina Pilchard doesn’t hold a candle to this for distilled, 100-proof ‘Sixties weirdness . . .)
So wonderfully odd is the follow-up to A Tramp Shining, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that the public might have been been sent sprawling by this sudden juxtaposition of the 130rd Psalm with the assembled housewives of Pompeii and Nagasaki. But as it turns out, they tripped over something far more banal–that damn waterlogged cake in the first album’s “MacArthur Park.” Yes . . . that one:
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down…
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
’cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
For me, the problem of the cake has always been twofold. First is the listening public’s sad inability to register and parse a not very complex metaphor–something wonderful (a loving relationship) in which a lot of time has been invested is destroyed through a combination of carelessness and disaster. Duh! The sort of of literal listeners to whom the “mystery” of the cake remains somehow impenetrable are undoubtedly the same ones who think “Oh, that this too solid flesh would melt” means that Hamlet has a superpower that allows him to liquify at will . . .
But secondly, I’ve always been fascinated with the choice of the metaphor–the sheer, gold-star oddity of a pop-song pastry.
And then I came across a fan comment on the Internet that was made in 2004, and which has patiently waited for me ever since. Enter chimera68, who quietly observed:
“…There is a Disney movie called ‘So Dear To My Heart’ which was kind of a period-piece of the early 1900’s and was about a little boy and his pet, a black lamb who always gets into trouble. In the opening musical montage for this film, animated scenes are shown of old-timey things from that era, and a picnic scene is shown, with no people around, because it has started to rain. The cake that is set out with the picnic food has begun to melt in the rain…”
Well, whoa, whoa, whoa. A Disney film?
So Dear To My Heart was released in 1948, and Jimmy Webb was born in 1946–which means it could conceivably have been one of the first children’s movies he saw. Had the image, seen at such a young age, become a kind of archetype for him? Long story short, I was, of course, compelled to find the film’s credit sequence and, lo, it did feature a chocolate cake melting in the rain–a good time interrupted and ruined:
Well, fuck me hard, as they say in my impolitic circles.
So here’s to you, chimera68–you’re all the proof I’ll ever need about the value of crowd-sourcing. If we ever meet, I’ll gladly buy you a drink and toast your invaluable diagonal thinking.
And yes, I know: Webb transformed that chocolate icing–he made it green. My plan is to leave this wonderment to someone else’s lunch-time post. So have at it . . .
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