The fake breaking news is that the Playboy album isn't too bad and there was another version of U.F.O..
Jim Sullivan's 1972 Self Titled Playboy Full Album
There's too much of a country flavour to it but at least most of it is bearable. Beggars can't be choosers. I am buying into the idea of Jim Sullivan reaching cult status sooner or later. The country schtick was part and parcel. It is a necessary component to the story whether or not one likes or detests the genre.
Alternative version of U.F.O.
Here is an alternative version to Highways.
He sounded bitter. There is death by internet which we should all avoid and there's no excuses now to not avoid it. One would need to be blind to not realise the internet is garbage and unsalvageable. It kills people all the time. There's also death by ambition. This is what happened to Sully. Jim didn't know how good he had it. Maybe he died from alcoholism. The best thing about weed is that it's not booze. Alcohol kills. It leads to all sorts of problems including violence. Avoid the sauce if possible. It is dangerous like cigarettes, cocaine and opiates.
What was the question? Jim Sullivan ended up on tilt and dead. My conclusion is there was cause and effect but mysterious and impossible to solve. It is a dead end of a rabbit hole. To me it is mostly a cautionary tale. Endgames matter. Was he going hungry? Did he really need to drive alone to Nashville? He couldn't fly? It seems like he planned to walk into the desert as in his mind broke down and he gave up. But that version isn't 100% verified. The word mystery means what it says. How does someone disappear?
The Playboy songs sound commercial and forced. The UFO lyrics seem more legit and from the heart. Jerome represents the great unknown. It is the endgame, yet not so easy to locate. You have to drive slow or it could be overlooked.
McLuhan told us to probe. That's all this is.
Wrecking Crew is the big clue most are missing, imho. It's one thing to be Frank Sinatra with a golden voice and already established. The Monkees and Partridge Family were sitcoms. It was both music and comedy. Beavis and Butthead worked that formula in the cable t.v. era. That was good t.v. and Letterman had skills. The medium was still in control of mass culture. People are missing that the medium as message finally died in 2016. Sullivan's rise and fall is a metaphor for the long goodbye. We are talking early 19th Century to 2016. That was the medium age. This is the beginning of nothingness in that everything is rigged and fake. Everything is rendered as surreal, trite and worthless in regards to whatever the media device. I am driving the bus of nothingness. The zeitgeist as one knew it is cooked. It's over and done. This is a great unknown era starting.
The entertainment world just like politics and military has been a racket.
Sullivan going to Wrecking Crew was his big mistake.
He should have "stayed in his lane." He was no hero for forcing things and then disappearing. There's a good chance that was suicide which cannot be condoned. I have always been anti-violence. I speak out against the Military-Industrial Complex from a position of moral superiority.
Sullivan ultimately let us down. That said, I believe people should figure out if he indeed had music stolen from him. They should try to find any and all recorded audio and video of Jim Sullivan. The Wrecking Crew was described as tight. Jim Sullivan's biography is anything but that. It is murky waters if anything.
I'm not saying the music is bad but it is a cautionary tale. One must decide whether they are an artist or corporate pig. One cannot be both. Sullivan was ultimately trapped between both worlds. Bad decisions based on false ego led to his death.
To be human is to make mistakes, so I do cut him a lot of slack and have no regrets hyping his schtick. Jim Sullivan earned cult status.
Karen Carpenter was also a victim. Apparently the Carpenters were actually really truly the Wrecking Crew. Oh, I have also learned that MoTown was not a spontaneous musical movement but the Black man's version of Wrecking Crew called the Funk Brothers. This may not be breaking news. The truth hurts. If one avoids divide and conquer, it is as plain as one's eyes can see how phony the world is.
2 comments:
Leon Russell, who was one of the more famous of the Wrecking Crew to subsequently attain rock stardom, wrote one of the Carpenters' greatest hits: "Superstar."
You are onto something here...very interesting cultural analysis. Thanks
Thank you. The internet changes everything. One imagines what the readers bring to the table. I saw Glenn Campbell's name.
I saw the Funk Brothers part and that was that for me. It tidied up the story with closure. Probing is basically being sincere and seeing what sticks or leads somewhere relevant. I believe in the mosaic over linear.
Karen Carpenter is dead. Same as Dana Plato. Elvis. Death by internet became the truth. Someone coined it. I might have been the second person to use it. Or maybe there were many more but I never saw them. Many child stars have had unfortunate demises. And Hollywood has also "chewed and spit out" folks. Judy Garland. It's death by Hollywood. Chris Cornell. Phil Hartman. I'm turning it into a game and can't remember. Clara Bow?
True story: As a little kid, I had a crush on Karen Carpenter. She should still be alive, period.
Reality is perhaps not as elusive and mysterious as spun.
I can't tell the lyrics for Plain as your eyes can see. I understood the part where they got to him, am sort of sure what the voices in the crowd were saying. It sounds like he uses the word assh0l3, but lyric pages have it as "ah so."
I have so many questions about Sullivan. How often did radio stations play his music? Did they at all? A lot of his tunes feel like solid hits, but perhaps that is my imagination. The claim is out there he had music stolen.
I get obsessed with topics and find it difficult to move on.
Yes, there is definitely something to it. Bringing in the Funk Brothers escalated the questions, imho. I just got into a mini-debate with a friend. I am calling out the studio musicians and subsequent music as fake and she ain't buying it. I went e.g. Bridge Over Troubled Water.... fake. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds..... fake.
I know it's real. I don't believe in simulations. If I can't call them fake, then I should be able to call it out as cheating. Or I need to at least flesh out wtf I'm on about better.
The new versions of Highways and Plain As Eyes Can See were beyond eccentric. For the former, he had background singers sort of sounded a bit like Roger Waters solo these are the pros and cons of hitchhiking. They are totally different songs. I mean it was a form of schtick. It was deliberate. It was commercial. They sound great and no one knew better. Atom Heart Mother sounds amazing but I think Pink Floyd disowned it. I guess the moral of the story is just because something sounds good on the surface that doesn't mean it should have been created. Boston turned out fake or maybe I overuse the word fake. It was mind blowing to learn that was all pretty much one dude in a studio.
I want some Jim Sullivan audio from a real performance just him, the guitar and a few band mates. Most of the story remains missing, imho. It becomes about Wrecking Crew and closed shops. Sullivan is the elusive variable. Was he in Easy Rider or not? His cult fans seem kind of useless. It's also claimed he was on the Jose Feliciano Show. Claims don't mean much in this modern rigged fake age.
It could have been an accident. He might have gotten drunk and then lost. I've seen that theory mentioned elsewhere. Then it becomes an ordinary what if he'd made it to Nashville. Was he the Len Bias of music or maybe he should have become a music teacher and stuck to regular guy club gigs? I don't get it. He seems to have been a musical genius but the ceiling for cult status is limited by a lack of content. There's not enough stuff to feed a Jim Sullivan non-paid cottage industry. I'll eventually be forced to bounce off of this into something else.
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