Song of the Day # 579 The Holy Mackerel

After Paul Williams gained some attention as Tiny Tim covered his co-written Fill Your Heart he was approached by record producer Richard Perry and offered the opportunity to record his own record. 1968's The Holy Mackerel resulted. It's a strange and very good record. Doused in the spirit of the time although the actual edge of the counterculture is diluted and sweetened with the aim of having commercial appeal which didn't actual prove to be the case when the record was released. It didn't sell. But it did serve as a calling card for Williams talent as he proceeded towards the seventies, a decade where he found remarkable success as a singer, songwriter, actor and general all-round talent.

Like so much of the music of the time the album replicates an idealised drugs trip for suburbanites and makes the period from 1965 to 1969 in America appear to be one of the greatest imaginable periods in history to have been alive. It doesn't really matter that there barely seems to be an actual group of any substance here, (despite the band numbering former members of Jefferson Airplane and The Turtles), as the record is primarily a vehicle to put Williams quite obvious talents on display. The album is incredibly inventive lyrically, melodically and rhythmically and Williams distinctive voice provides the thread that unites a quite disparate range of tracks, influences and moods.

It's pastiche of course. Not a real record in any sense. It offers escapism. Williams' talent, even at this point was obviously geared for the mainstream and would in time earn him top dollar. He went on to write songs for The Carpenters, Helen Reddy, Barbara Streisand, The Muppets and the themes to The Love Boat and the sountrack to Bugsy Malone as he feathered his nest in the seventies This is something quite different and ultimately he appears to be at a party where he doesn't really belong for very long. But it's all so adeptly done. Williams chucks off one garage-lite nugget after another, each of which might have served a lesser talent sufficiently to base a small career upon.

Wildflowers for example sounds every bit as good as Incense & Peppermints, I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night and all those other idealised, artificially concocted drugs records which capitalised on the seismic shifts taking place across American society at that point in time. But it's not alone. There's a handful of small classics here. Williams obviously had every much as much songwriting talent as John Sebastian, John Phillips and Roger McGuinn. He was just headed in a quite different direction towards a different destination.