FAMILY.. MUSIC IN A DOLLS HOUSE RARE MONO COPY MINT LP
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Description
REPRISE RLP 6312 MONO 1968 FLIP BACK COVER COVER EXCELLENT CONDITION ..RECORD NEAR MINT ( PLEASE NOTE THE INSERT IS MISSING BUT ITS QUITE EASY TO FIND IN A STEREO COPY)
Music In a Doll's House (1968) ****
Song Selection: The Chase; Mellowing Grey; Never Like This; Me My Friend; Variation on a Theme of "Hey Mr. Policeman"; Winter; Old Songs New Songs; Variation on a Theme of "The Breeze"; Hey Mr. Policeman; See Through Windows; Variation on a Theme of "Me My Friend"; Peace of Mind; Voyage; The Breeze; 3 x Time
The most important artistes in rock history usually have established through their debut albums the identities that would subsequently define them for the rest of their careers. The Beatles clearly established themselves as rock and roll Mozarts with Please Please Me, and Steely Dan's Can't Buy a Thrill effectively set the image of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen as jazz-rock fusionists with a lyrically sarcastic sense of humor. Family were no exception in defining themselves on their first long player. On Music In a Doll's House, they took the opportunity to set a pattern of defying stylistic convention and ignoring traditional pop song form, and they rarely deviated from it in their time as recording artists.
Family's debut album is a curious mix of heavy psychedelia and traditional rhythm and blues, and that's far more plausible than it seems. Here was a band, after all, that was rooted in black American music yet was open to the influences of the late-sixties London rock scene. The result is a melding of tasteful Victorian melodies with sly blues rhythms, and dignified string arrangements and distorted tape loops interwoven with punchy harmonica riffs and heavy drum patterns. Everything on Doll's House fits together seamlessly, thanks in part to the careful direction of Dave Mason, but also because of the band's straightforward style; Roger Chapman's rough voice gave the lyrics a good deal of grit, Rob Townsend's powerful drumming produced a precise beat, and Rick Grech was a steady bassist who knew how to pace a song and kept Family from getting too pretentious.
Music In a Doll's House opens in a most unconventional way. The first song, "The Chase," depicts an affair as a fox hunt with the male participant as the fox; however dignified the music may be, the lyrics - terrifyingly performed by Chapman - spell out impending doom. It cuts directly into "Mellowing Grey," an orchestrated, hauntingly beautiful ballad that displays Chapman's rich vibrato; it's the kind of song one could easily imagine Johnny Mathis singing! Other standouts include "Old Songs New Songs," a funky blues jam with an astonishing saxophone solo from Jim King and some clever guitar from Charlie Whitney, and the lecherous white-soul tune "Hey Mr. Policeman," offering a beefy brass section, in which Chapman growls a request to see his girlfriend one last time before going to jail for an unspecified - but clearly hideous - crime.
Some of Doll's House admittedly sounds dated. "Voyage" has some interesting backwards violin from Grech, for example, but the lyrics and the electronic effects betray the song's age. Mostly, though, Family's first album is a solid debut that allows the group to bring its strange ideas to life and create a whole new kind of rock and roll, and they do so brilliantly. Family also displays a typically British sense of humor with brief instrumental variations of three of its songs, and the closing number, "3 x Time," starts with lyrics of wistful remembrance, continues with a demented jug band rave-up, and concludes with an irreverent sampling of "God Save the Queen," the British national anthem. (The album's sleeve, depicting a Victorian dollhouse with the band's members appearing in different rooms in ridiculous poses, is also a hoot!)
Music In a Doll's House (which got up to number 35 on the U.K. charts) was as important to rock in 1968 as that other debut album from that year conceived in a tiny abode, the Band's Music From Big Pink. Like the Band's freshman effort, Family's first album presented a much more thoughtful and musicianly alternative to the excesses of much of the rock of the late sixties (albeit in a much different direction from that which the Band pursued). With Music In a Doll's House, the members of Family took a first step into a world all their own.
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