Phish Covers 'Ride Captain Ride'
When is a one hit wonder just a very good blues band that happened to have one hit?
One hit wonders tend to have bad reputations. The rap on one hit wonders is usually that they were BAD bands that made one annoyingly catchy pop hit that sold a gazillion copies. Never had another hit, so couldn't have been any good. Or so the theory goes.
Who are your favorite one hit wonders, anyway? Guilty pleasures....
Flicking through my albums this evening, listening to music while catching up on work, and I come across an album that I have no recollection of ever buying! It is Blues Image's 'Open' and it is GREAT. After side one introduces me to a series of great Latin tinged blues rock tracks, I flip the disk, cue up side two, and there it is: Ride Captain Ride.
Ride Captain Ride is one of those songs that shows up on almost every single compilation of late 1960s rock. Just turn on the TV after 11 pm and if you wait long enough, you'll hear it. It was a HUGE hit in 1969 and on these compilations has an infectious and somewhat cheap kind of quality. When you hear it late at night and in this corny context the song seems to oversimplify and slickly package alot of psychedelic effects for a pop audience.
But that is late at night in the corny context of one of these compilations.
As the first cut on the second side of 'Open,' after a full side of really great blues rock, Ride Captain Ride sounds somewhat more convincing. And the rest of the record is good... Very listenable and enjoyable, played by a number of veteran rockers who played with Steppenwolf, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and many others.
The cover, as you can see above, is terrible. How much did the perceived integrity of a band have to do with the album art. In the age of MP3s and ITunes, does this issue go away? When this record came out, the 'image' of Blues Image was based in part on the cheesy drawing on the cover. Compare to Blues Magoos, Blues Project, and any number of other contemporaneous bands....
But, definitely check out this record some time....if you ever come across it, give it a chance.
It figures prominently in a couple of movies, including 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.' Well, there it is the butt of a joke.
But perhaps most interestingly, it has been covered by the jam band, Phish. If anyone can tell me how this came about, that would be great. In the meantime, here is a six minute YouTube clip of them jamming to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxcSVXFvZkY
Bryan, check out Trey's guitar sweet little guitar solo mid way through the performance....
Paul,
Great blog, and great article on one-hit wonders. Also, thanks for visiting my blog and commenting.
Re. this issue, you bring up an interesting point, re. whether cover art effects a listener's perception, which I think is absolutely true. I think you could take this a few steps further: marketing in general vastly influences how people listen. There are many musicians that no one would care about at all, if sound were the only consideration, but who benefit from excellent marketing. Likewise, I certainly know of many, many musicians who have produced excellent albums that never see the light of day, simply because they either had no marketing skills or had no label behind them.
Back to that cover, it's pretty bad, isn't it? You have to wonder... what was that record company thinking? They probably lost tons of sales because of it, and it already provides a bad set-up for what you're about to hear, no matter how good it is. Perhaps a friend of one of the band members made it? Maybe an ex-girlfriend? It's almost like Mt. Rushmore from rock and roll hell.
Finally, I took a look at your architectural site, and your designs are wonderful. I'll visit that children's museum with my son next time I'm there.
I'll take a look at more of your entries as well as time permits...
Best wishes,
Rob
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