Fenner, Leland & O'Brien-Somewhere, Someday, Somehow (1970)
Artist: Fenner, Leland & O'Brien
Format: LP
Cat:
Year of Release: 1970
Country and Year of Edition: US 2001 edition of 250
Sell Price: $22.02
Sell Date: 1/30/24
Condition: M/M sealed
Discogs Last Sold 1/16/24 NM/NM $32.61 top copy
Low: $22.02
Median: $30.00
Average: $32.71
High: $59.98
Current low price: $27.99
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 9
Have/Want: 53/92
Where Sold: Arlington, TX
Time It Took To Sell: 8 years
Where and When Bought: promo from Gates of Dawn early aughts
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-
Sad To See It Go: No
I had to stream this since it sold sealed, having been given to me around 20 some odd years ago by Michael Piper when Rubric was selling some titles through his record company The Wild Places. This is "Freak Folk" with a Capital F before anyone called it that. Psychedelic guitar and piano over late 60's youthful complaining about societies ills. Somebody saw fit to press up 250 themselves as the original was also an extremely low pressing via the Recording Pressing Company. RPC was a label out of Camden, NJ that utilized RCA's pressing plant to deliver short runs from customers tapes on demand. Fenner, Leland & O'Brien issued 2 albums this way and this was the follow-up to 1969's Peace In Our Time. On the collectors market the original goes for upward of $2,500.00. I regret not getting around to cracking this one open at the time as it is growing on me. This release was sort of a public service before the internet, but now every man, woman and child can hear it with the click of a button for free.
Somewhere, Someday, Somehow does a pretty good job at taking awkward lyrics and turning them into something consistently memorable. "Where's My Life Going" probably does this best reminding me in some ways a counter to Zappa's "What's The Ugliest Part of Your Body." Not in lyrical content, but in cramming words into a meter. He lets us know "in this world there are too many fools" that follow conformist rules. Then asks to be delivered from a host of other societal ills including "racist patterns" with indoctrinated zeal. You can't fault the man for trying.
"Hey Mister" is a railing to "the man" with a melody that sounds right out of the Lou Barlow songbook decades later. "Uncle America" has the moral naïveté that you'd expect from the first psychedelic era, yet there is something about the song that rings true today. Indictment, right or wrong, America he rails is "on uncertain ground." A little different than Country Joe's missive to LBJ in that it isn't stuck to characters of it's time.
"Dirge" takes on the common man's response to death then moves on to a "whore that hates her life" but sticking with a rhyme scheme for once "only want to be some guys wife." Catholic progressivism? He's awful good at at pointing fingers and indicting. Perhaps he can marry a prostitute and tell the world when he finally looks inward.
Look around....if you have eyes!
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