Dear Reader: I would never lie to you. I hate Blood, Sweat & Tears. I have always hated Blood, Sweat & Tears. I will always hate Blood, Sweat & Tears. With their big horn sound they always sounded like a Las Vegas lounge act to me, and the truth is they were a Vegas lounge act, back at the turn of the 1970s when such an act bordered on heresy and constituted a crass betrayal of every single tenet of the counterculture. It didn’t help that agreed to go on a State Department-sponsored tour of Eastern Europe, a move that destroyed whatever credibility they had with your average government-hating hippie.
No, I do not like them. And perhaps I should recuse myself from writing about them for that reason. But I refuse. I will have my unreconstructed say, because I believe that the critic’s sole task is not just to praise the music he loves, but also to sound the alarm whenever some truly suck-ass jive comes his way. For this reason I will damn BS&T with faint praise and praise them for providing me with the occasional callow chortle. And I’m not alone. Speaking of the band’s foghorn of a vocalist, the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau wrote, “Just figured out how David Clayton-Thomas learned vocal projection: by belching. That’s why when he gets really excited he sounds as if he’s about to throw up. But it’s only part of the reason he gets me so excited I feel like I’m about to throw up.” I agree totally with Christgau about the throwing up part.
Originally formed by the famed Al Kooper and others as a “brass-rock” band, BS&T released their debut, 1968’s Child Is Father to the Man, after which Kooper quit, and was replaced on lead vocals by Clayton-Thomas. That same year “the Sweat” (no one has ever called them this but me) released their eponymous sophomore LP, and hit pop gold. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die,” “God Bless the Child,” or “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” The LP was not just a jazz-rock monstrosity; it also included three heaping helpings of prog rock, including the interminable “Blues, Pt. 2” (an incredibly awful fusion of brass-rock, prog rock, jazz, and blues that comes complete with a drum solo, a brief detour into Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” and, to its credit, one very decent sax solo) and two brief takes on the work of Erik Satie.
Me, I think the hokey harmonica opening to BS&T’s cover of Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die” tells you everything you need to know about the band, namely that they were a shameless shuck. Clayton-Thomas goes at the song like a Caucasian Sammy Davis Jr., somebody shouts “Yeehah!” and it’s all so awful I just can’t tell you. The same goes for “Spinning Wheel,” which would be okay if the band had stripped away the horns, guitar, drums, and such, and just left the cowbell. Its lyrics are, like, far out, and the horns emit short blasts, and okay, the trumpet solo is decent, but this song has dogged me all my life and the trumpet solo is easily overshadowed by the horrible nursery rhyme flutes at the end.
I find “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” tolerable in a Tom Jones kind of way; the horn arrangement is cool, and Clayton-Thomas actually gets riled up. Why, even Dick Halligan’s frequently annoying organ works, and the ending is bona fide bluesy. “More and More” is also bearable, thanks to its fast pace, Thomas’ strangled cry, and Steve Katz’s frenzied guitar solo. For one brief moment BS&T overcome their worst impulses and actually, and it’s hard to believe I’m saying this, rock.
Unfortunately “Smiling Phases” is pure hippie cornpone redeemed only by Halligan’s jazzy piano and Jim Fielder’s bass, while “Sometimes in Winter” is a flute-dominated piece of schlock, sung by Katz in a voice so waveringly sensitive you’ll want to sock him in the honker. Which leaves us with “God Bless the Child,” an oddball of a tune that opens with some horns reminiscent of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” then segues from the blues to flamenco-flavored jazz. Or should that be salsa? I’ll be damned if I know. What I do know is that the long instrumental break features some jazz that is definitely superior to most of the jazz created by rock musicians. Unfortunately the song’s closing section features Thomas at his most “show biz,” to say nothing of another bad harmonica turn by Katz.
I have always held that Blood, Sweat & Tears were one of the very worst bands to emerge during the rock era. Beyond a few fine moments on their Al Kooper-led debut, they bleated and belched and shucked and jived their way to ignominy, and I don’t care a whit that this album both won a Grammy and made its way into the 2006 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Because believe me, this is one album you most definitely do not need to hear before you die.
If it were up to me, I’d enclose it in a large concrete sarcophagus like the one the Soviet Union erected around reactor 4 in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. Because this LP isn’t just toxic; it could pose a danger to your health. And to deliver the coup de grace, it doesn’t include a single track you can twerk to!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D
