Tim Buckley: Greetings from L.A.

Lucy walked in during Track 1: "This is groovy! Who is it?"

Me: "Going around dancing like that is exactly the kind of thing that will have your children burying their faces in their hands, beseeching 'Oh, Muuu-um!'"

"No it won't. They'll love it."

I've only spent a little over 36 hours in L.A., but I didn't like it much. I thought by staying in a hotel near LAX I'd be near the public transport infrastructure, but, of course, there isn't any. I went to meet Dick M in Santa Monica, went to the Getty Museum, and on the second morning went to the LA central rail station. Those trips cost me over $120 in taxi fares — almost as much as the two weeks unlimited train travel I had up and down the west coast after that.

I mention that because that's a bit like how I felt on first listen to this album just now — and because I am wont to ramble off-topic. The database shows that this album was, in 2003, the most recent addition to my Tim Buckley collection, but, to be honest, I can't remember ever listening to it before. It was a bit of a shock to begin with. The sensitive, sombre mystic has transformed into a priapic lothario, probably stoked up on booze and pills. I was expecting more in the vein of Dolphins and Song to the Siren. Instead what I got was the kind of music I imagined that the vapid characters in Alan Rudolph's Welcome to L.A. might listen to.

Anyway, I was getting ready to write this off, and with it most of Buckley's '70s output, after one listen. But I realised I'd really enjoyed the last two tracks. So I went back to tracks 4 and 5, realised they weren't bad on second listening, and then ended up listening to the whole thing three or four times, in the wrong order. I might end up liking it quite a lot.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album