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| Time For 100 Infinite Visions |
| band: ArdentJohn |
| Album: When The Time Comes |
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And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
~ From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot (1888-1965)
"When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite."
~ William Blake
The intro will get you seeing Leprechauns in Lamborghinis. ArdentJohn starts with the shoes you are wearing. They are as familiar as a folk singer, the La-Z-Boy you wish you were sitting in, and a commercial. Soup and ice cream safe and friendly. Then things get interesting by inches. Each song takes you gently by the hand and guides you somewhere you've forgotten how to find. The music is little bit Danny Kaye singing folk, and a whole bunch of Pink Floyd covering Woody Guthrie groove to groove. The atmospheric sounds in "Intro" would have the right reverence for the Planetarium if you take the sky to be a turning point.
The warmth of folk in Ardentjohn is genuine. If the Dark Side of the Moon seems a little cold at times, you might want to do a little shoegazing to this album. There's really great stuff in your imagination. French horns are legally forbidden from expanding the mind, but they sound just fine on "Orange Nights," and there's a clarinet in "Dark Highs 54" that will make the room go swimmy. That sound may take you back to the Shtetl but this isn't Klezmer. These familiar doors of perception can be cleansed with the unexpected. Things that get too fast, sounds that take you back, drones that give you a lift into the wooden mother ship outside your township, drums like accelerating steam trains, a dash of echo, and gallon or two of suspension of disbelief. These men from Edinburgh trigger a personal level of enjoyment and self-exploration just might amble toward taking a giant step outside your mind in the safety of your own home.
Blue Cheer was just a blues band. These lads look like Ivy League English majors, but remember! Timothy Leary taught at Harvard. Abbie Hoffman went to Brandeis. I digress. If you are already out of your mind, this record might bore you. Otherwise, you'll be better for the exercise. If you find yourself obsessed with the question, "How can you get your pudding, if you haven't had your meat?" you might want to relax a little. The tour guides for this one are friendly. Remember Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause, it isn't really the sky on the ceiling, it's just a lot of lights. Without imagination, we would dream TV—that all too familiar wasteland.
Mind bending folk is a deep heritage (See, Taj Mahal's "Take a Giant Step"). I believe the fairyland of ardentjohn's choosing was discovered first in "A Day In The Life." That was a song mixed on an 8-track, with nothing much plugged in but the guitar and an Echoplex. The context was familiar with an alarm clock, coffee, and rushing off to work in the bridge. Still and all, "I'd love to turn you on" was the message heard loud and clear. An increasing tension in strings built to the crescendo that lasted well into the 1970's and sustained a generation of dreamscapers through the quagmire of war. Ardentjohn has a dose of Arlo, son of Woody, in its lineage. You can crack these songs like a geode. They are made of stars.
Ardentjohn chooses the canvas of folk to paint a portrait of the intimate infinite.
SONGS:
1. INTRO Remember to keep your set erect, your feet on the floor, and your trays in locked position. Might work best if you forget the album is in the player. It starts so soft you'll wonder if it's on. It's like a train coming from far away. It sounds like a train too. It won't leave the track for a moment or two. Then your airborne. It's like A Day In The Life in reverse. Turn off your mind, relaxÖ you get the drill.
2. SLEEPING SOLDIER will lull you with a familiar finger pic on an electric guitar. Soon you will be riding the steam train to somewhere else. There's a "good and plenty" gourd spilling the beans back and forth, and some brushes on this steel guitar track. There's a chorus singing the tale like the backstory in an Old Western movie or a Greek chorus in a mystery play. History repeats '[a] much too familiar past."
3. HIDE YOUR MIND has an Arlo Guthrie road trip sound for the song of going away before you care to care. All things must pass, so it's okay to love the rose. "Hello, I Must Be Going" was the title of enigmatic Groucho's auto bio. "What would you say if I'm going away / If I'm not here to stay / Would you be mine if I haven't the time / To please your mind?" We are all on our way offstage. Permanence doesn't last. When the music's over, turn out the lights.
4. LEGOLAND TOWNS "To JSM378, the man against whom there was no official complaint. He always paid his union dues, and held the right opinions for the time of year." ~ W.H. Auden. This song reminds me of that elegy to the conformist. "Legoland towns, cotton wool children / Purpose-built plastic system / No room for suggestion / I'm gonna knock them to the ground." Fits right in with my current Bowie catch phrase: "I don't want truth. I want CERTAINTY." Noam Chomsky would sing along with this one. The system is constructed to numb the mind into apathy. Does it work? Who cares. Mr. Normal, tear this wall down!
5. ORANGE NIGHTS takes five chimes and a French Horn to the hammock with the one you love. Good advice: "Don't listen to those who cannot feel love." An aphorism: "Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." My favorite last words: "Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult." A nod to moral relativism: "It's so easy to find the right in the wrong / And the wrong in the right." Mr. Sunshine arrives like a sunny version of Quinn the Eskimo. Good times.
6. DARK HIGHS 54 is a trip to where the inner world connects with outer space. This one works played backward. Not just another psychedelic licorice stick song, this one. The clarinet is a single reed device for breathing under murky psychological waters. Don't touch the brain coral. They are spiky.
7. UNTIL THE END has nothing in the music to indicate this is a mind bender. Maybe it's not. It's a great song. If Taj Mahal can take a giant step with a guitar and his voice, it's good to hear ardentjohn can carry that same torch. According to the poet Richard Howard, "Modern art is the art of negation." This is the song for the light at the end of the tunnel when there's no tunnel, and the light has dimmed. Samuel Beckett pulled the same trick with his best ever beginning, "It was not night. It was not raining." "I could almost see a light ahead of me / I could almost feel some positivity / Some might even say a glow inside of me / Now it's gone / And I'm back where I began." This song has two feet on the ground and a quiet mind. Enlightenment is seeing things as they are. Toss in a smile among the falling brown leaves, and the blues are a thoughtful pleasant feeling. Singer songwriter hasn't sounded this sweet since Workingman's Dead. This is a ballad from the undiscovered country.
8. SYNAPSES marks a return to the hallway of the doors of perception. "Take me where you want to go / On a ferris wheel of thought / Take me where you want to hide." It may be that the mind is a hampster running in the ferris wheel for exercise. A little face dancing, please. Make sure you meet the height requirements and hang on tight. Keep your hands inside the ride at all times. Whoo Whoo!
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