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Gather Me

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Buddah never did forgive Melanie for this and continued to dog her career by releasing old, in-the-can songs right around the time she'd release new songs on Neighborhood. My Favorite album from Melanie's stint with Buddha Records, All great songs, with a lot of complex arrangements. The album also features the singles "Some Day I'll Be a Farmer" and the Top 40 hit "Ring the Living Bell".

The whole album presents a grown up Melanie with a interestingly wide range of material and the same intensity that marked her earlier albums and along with her sincerity was a defining characteristic. To his credit, label head Neil Bogart promoted her relentlessly and also left her style be her own rather than trying to make her a bubblegum princess. It's unfortunate that this should become, for many, her definitive album, because it's really not one of her best. I now see why you my dear ones are here it wasn’t just because you felt sorry for me (someone actually said that) or because I reminded you of something or someone you loved. If Melanie has always been anxious not to be defined by her religious affiliation (which has changed over the years), and in later years has regarded herself as a secular humanist first and foremost, you'd never know it from listening to this!

Allmusic stated that the album "is one of her most accomplished and confident albums, a set that allowed Melanie the room to indulge her lyrical obsessions while Schekeryk created superb musical accompaniment from her simple but forceful melodies. Brand New Key had even been banned by some radio stations because its lyrics could be read as something less innocent than the song sounded when Melanie recorded it in the little girl voice she sometimes used. The album also features the singles “Some Day I’ll Be a Farmer” and the Top 40 hit “Ring the Living Bell”. Ring the Living Bell is arranged in a roots music fashion with an opening that sounds like it could have been recorded by a raw group in the Appalachian Mountains, before it shifts into more of a pop vein.

I'm convinced it's a bit of a mickey-take - a metaphor has to make sense on one or both levels, but this can only be read (with difficulty) as, nothing more and nothing less than, a "hymn" to a night on the town. For this listener, the biggest problem with the album is a more mundane one - there's too much religious content. As for the tracks, they are fun, light and gentle, but underneath, there are some serious messages she is trying to get across. And it was that connection that motivated me to come out after the performance, meet everyone and never do a Melanie has left the building thing.The Southern Appalachian folk-hymn What Wondrous Love is given an appropriately simple treatment with mostly Melanie's voice and guitar. The arrangements are mostly quiet and acoustic and even when strings are added they're not overwhelming. Though she would release six more albums through 1976, this would be her peak on the radio and record charts. She enthused at the time that it was her best album yet (which should always be taken with a pinch of salt), and that it was the first album she was entirely happy with, and one that reflected exactly where her head was at, at the time! When they signed Melanie they were high on Bubblegum Music, having struck gold in 1968 with groups like the Ohio Express and the 1910 Fruitgum Co.

The only negative being the lyrics with Melanie at times, explaining what a great person she is, which can be a little irritating. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Some Day (I Got Devil) has the Spanish guitar intonations and sound as well as the same passion found in her song Tuning My Guitar, from the Melanie LP. Melanie always sounds so sweet, and even her version of protesting usually involves badges and light words rather than the more usual shouts and taunts by bare-chested young men. Some of her classics can be found on this as well, from “Ring the Living Bell” to “Some Say (I Got Devil), to name but 2 of the best of her work.

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