Album Reviews # 104 The Four Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

 

Watching The Graduate, In The Heat of the Night and Midnight Cowboy are as good an entre as any into the strange, distorted  world of America at the end of the Sixties. Old Versus Young, Straight Versus Alternative, Rich Versus Poor, Men and Women, Black and White, Straight and Gay. It still a fascinating moment in time, a society in turmoil, at war with itself with everybody it seems struggling to find their place within with the scheme of things.

There are plenty of great albums released at this time that document that process. The Velvet Underground & Nico, Forever Changes, The Doors and Sly & the Family Stone albums. The Monkees ones even. Plenty more at the fringes. The United States of America, The West Coast Pop Art Exprerience. But these are all to a greater or lesser degree hip records. Even The Monkees. Stephen Stills and Charles Manson both auditioned for The Monkees after all. There were plenty of other Pop artists of the time whose time it seemed by '67 was up who were still doing all they could to prove themselves relevant.

Take The Four Seasons. Refugees from the Doo Wop age, singers of harmonised roamntic ballads in impossibly high voices. Once seen as genuine competitors for The Beatles when they first arrived on American shores, by 1969 they seemed all washed up. Certainly as singles artists.

Then, in January of that year came The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette one of the oddest Rock albums ever released and certainly far from the worst. A concept, and a lavishly packaged record with a mocked up newspaper cover, a comic book insert that screamed 'contemporary.' . As for the music, no more love songs, or at least straightforward ones but instead tracks that tackled themes the group had never touched on before, societal struggle, war and politics of all kinds, albeit approached in a satirical and obscure manner.

Directed by band member Bob Gaudio, who co-wrote the songs with Jake Holmes who had worked in comedy previously, and produced in a lavish manner by Gaudio, who had often taken this role for previous Four Seasons records.

It's a record destined for commercial failure and critical acclaim. Too obscure in terms of its themes for radio play, too clever for its own good, though it's full of great pop melodies often tending to the baroque and the tradition of Jimmy Webb. 

It's an album essentially destined for the likes of me. Record collectors in constant search for the last piece of the puzzle.The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette is a must buy for the types who haunt record shops whenever they have a couple of hours free. Not just for its wonderful packaging and its oneupmanship kudos, (a key factor), but for the sheer quality of the record. Its an obscure masterpiece, almost beyond criticism.

File next to Sinatra's Watertown and John Phillips, John The Wolf King of L.A. as documents of how strange straight, white America became towards the end of the Sixties and into the Seventies. The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette like its title. is a host of contradictions, a hall of mirrors, and most importantly a very, very good record that rewards repeat listening. Track it down.