You have to understand, right up front, that I’ve always hated this song.
You’ll have to imagine the various unpleasant bodily excretions I substituted for blood, sweat, and tears when I mentioned the name of the originators of Spinning Wheel. It’s a fat slice of 1968 flower power horsehockey in the lyric department. That was stapled onto jazz/rock/fusion sturm and drang that always gave me the hives.
It was plenty popular when it came out, but Henry Mancini kept Spinning Wheel out of the Number One slot on the charts for a while by the supposedly romantic but mostly depressing Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet. Considering the subject, it wasn’t depressing enough to convince people that Romeo and Juliet isn’t a romance, it’s a tragedy, but Henry tried. That was followed by another musical obstruction, the red-hot knitting needle for earwax removal and instant channel changing In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans. So Spinning Wheel never made it to the top, but it hung around on the musical Hillary Step for a good long while.
Egads. Blattering horns. Bellowing vocals. Overwrought organ. Spinning Wheel.
And then Capiozzo and Mecco come into my life and fix the whole megillah for me. Why drop acid when benzedrine and grappa is available?
6 Responses
I am leaving a link to a blog I think you will like, yes, I’m fully aware you would probably rather shoot yourself in the head than investigate A blog that somebody else wants you to look at. I have an Internet friend that I’ve known for years, who is a very unusual person. His name is Mark Betcher. For years, I watched his YouTube channel where, every week, he would do a show talking about how annoyed he was with his neighbors and people in his town as he went to his local thrift stores to find very old record albums that he would talk about on the show. He would also do very bad comedy, which I like, and was an artist and a musician, and an author. But his biggest claim to fame in my opinion is his blog where he has catalogued for years thousands of albums he has found where he posts the liner notes and always a song or even the entire album on every imaginable type of music or performance that would be on a record album between the 1950s and the mid 1970s. Mark has thousands of albums by people you’ve never heard of.
You have to like the guy if only for his dedication to preserving music that was going to completely disappear. https://artworkbymanicmark.blogspot.com/ I also recommend his oddball YouTube channel, but he stopped making content several years ago.
Hi Robert- The internet used to be mostly composed by guys like Mark. Websites full of interesting stuff, compiled by people strictly for the love of it. I miss it.
In re this song on the BS&T album, just about everything else on the album is much better (except Gymnopédies, which I hate for an entirely different reason).
Most of the dislike was from hearing it over and over on the radio, to the point of making rude alternate lyrics. Another piece that got the same treatment a couple of years later was Michael Martin Murphy’s “Wildfire”. I mean, you’ve beat the horse to death, does it have to be dismembered, too?
Hi Ed- Happy Independence Day!
Great stuff. The Spinning Wheel cover by the Menus is pretty awesome too. Check it out sometime!!
Hi Anon- Thanks for reading and commenting.
It’s funny, but I sort of know the Menus. Not know know. Just know. Way back when I had a music job in Cincinnati. Because of the nature of the job, it was one night, but we had to spend a week there, with nothing to do six nights out of seven. So we went out and about. Every place we went, night after night, the Menus were playing. It got to be comical, almost cosmic. We sort of socialized with them some. They did what we called, “Doing the show.” I can’t believe they’re still doing it, because I sure ain’t.