I think this is one of those albums everyone should own. I'm sure these days a lot of people have only heard George Benson's version of This Masquerade, but Leon Russell wrote it, and he released it on this album a few years before George did. If you have read a few of my posts so far, you may be wondering, "What the hell is he talking about This Masquerade for?" and I'd say that's a legitimate question. It doesn't have screaming guitars, an extra bucket of fuzz, and it's certainly not a fun song. That's like the three things I kind of look for and this song has absolutely none of the above.Which I'd like to say shows that I have wide and varied tastes, but I really don't. I just like how how utterly hopeless this song seems to be. I mean, I don't like it, but Leon certainly leaves it all on the table here. It just seems like when he finished singing it he knew the next thing he was doing was going home and ending a relationship that seemed like it was good most of the time. Maybe that's why it takes almost a minute and a half to really get started, but once it does it's just about the saddest song of all the sad songs. Mine is a used copy (I believe it's the second pressing, with yellow labels for you nerds keeping score) and it took awhile to find a cover that looks suitably used for my blog post. My cover is a little nicer, but I wouldn't trade my copy for the world because I like the clicks and pops on this song. They just seem to fit and make the whole thing seem so much more hopeless.
The whole record isn't a total downer. In fact, it starts off with Tightrope, which has always seemed to me to be the kind of song that's kind of a relationship song, but there's more Leon in the song than his partner, so it doesn't seem so serious. Maybe it's the weird, bouncy piano, but nothing seems fatalistic here. It kind of seems like the kind of thing Tom Waits would be able to do well. Keeping things a little lighter is Roller Derby, about the Queen of the Roller Derby. I love Roller Derby. I think it's one of the coolest things ever, and you can't say anything bad about it. Maybe you can say you don't know how they score, but I do, and it's certainly less complicated than baseball. And singing about Roller Derby in 1972, when I was 11, just means that you were tapped into my Saturday morning world, and how could I not "get" this song?
I kind of worried a bit when I put this on last night to listen to it for this article and side one started off with ocean noises, but Leon gets right to the songs and then kind of gets to the weird for the rest of the ride. That's a good description for this album. It's weird. Leon looks weird on the cover, the Rolls Royce pulling the little pull behind trailer on the back is weird and the recurring carnival organs are weird. I like it.
