Emmit Rhodes

About two years ago my lovely girlfriend brought home a CD from San Francisco for me. She was at the same Popfest that I played at this year and she had heard a recommendation from someone about it, and when she heard it she knew I'd love it. At the time, I was in a very strange period of really wanting to hear obscure soft pop singer-songwriters from the 70s- perhaps spawned by my long-time love of solo John Cale. Specifically, I was fascinated by the work of Tim Moore, a small-time L.A. songwriter whose main claim to fame was penning "Rock N'Roll Love Letter", a hit for the Bay City Rollers. Moore's own version, predictably, is far better -seeing as BCR was little more than a Caledonian sub-Rasberries power-pop act, it's not surprising. But Moore's version was actually kind of magical. I heard the track on WFMU one day and had still been looking for the album when Sarah brought me Emmit Rhodes- and I forgot about Moore right away.

Emmit Rhodes was a shaggy-haired pop multi-instrumenalist and songwriter with a golden, McCartneyesque voice and musical chops to match. From that description, he sounds a little lightweight, I realize, but the difference between solo McCartney and Emmit Rhodes is that Rhodes actually seemed to care about his songs. As much as I am apt to lionize Macca, in particular his totally matchless bass playing and arrangement saavy, in the 70s, one got the sense that he was writing so many songs so quickly that he didn't care if they were made out of cardboard so long as they had catchy vocal melodies. Which, of course, they did. But Rhodes is choosier without sacrificing the indelible melodies, and his songs have an aching, emotionally naked quality that give them a lot more resonance. The definitive Rhodes item to get is probably Daisy Fresh From Hawthorne, California, which collects every track from his 1970 debut album and various tracks from the subsequent two albums. The small bulk of the disc is the first album, which is a good thing, because it's his best- and Emmit Rhodes at his best is well, brilliant. Not only does every song from the first album shine, but Rhodes plays every instrument himself and acts as his own engineer and producer to boot. At the time, one-man-bands were still pretty rare, and Rhodes is a gifted one, turning out amazingly deft and highly nuanced performances on each instrument and easily keeping up with the Stevie Wonders and, well, Paul McCartneys of the world. Strong, simple drums, heavily compressed, direct-injected bass and an ever-present tamborine (or sometimes a maraca) provide the bouncy backing to songs laced with incredibly well-developed vocal melodies, highly personal lyrics, and sometimes uncoventional but never jarring chordal and harmonic movement. Particularily amazing is his guitar playing, not only for its melodic inventiveness, but for the fact that it was the last instrument Rhodes learned and in fact he'd only been playing it a relatively short time when he recorded his debut. But it's really his voice that stuns. He does in fact sound uncannily like McCartney most of the time, but hell, that's not a bad thing, as McCartney in his finest, purest voice has one of the most beautiful voices in pop music- warm, resonant, and inviting. In McCartney's case, those aesthetic qualities often just made his frequently trite and throwaway lyrical preoccupations cloying, but Rhodes's songs are filled with such loss, despair, pessimism, and broken spirituality that the honey-throated vocal delivery of them make him seem more like a monk and less like a used car salesman (see anything from McCartney's post-Beatles career work minus Ram and Band On The Run).

It's only when the songs from the second and third album kick in that things start to disintegrate a little bit, but even then, it's merely a downgrade from "masterpiece" to "exceptionally good", and it's only after 13 songs or so. It's sort of like saying that "Help" has no good songs on it, simply because "Rubber Soul" or "With The Beatles" contain only good songs. Rhodes, who after a storied battle with his record label, vanished into complete obscurity, may never be a legend on the level that he deserves to be, but with Daisy Fresh From Hawthorne, California, at least we've got the essential document of an underappreciated pop genius at our disposal. What's sad is that his story is incredibly common. It makes me wonder how many amazing songs there are out there that most of us will never get the chance to hear. By the way, if anyone has an mp3 or a CD of that Tim Moore album, or at least his "Rock N'Roll Love Letter", I'd appreciate your charity.