Vinyl Tap: Brute Force - I, Brute Force - Confections Of Love

I get a new turntable and dust off some old records. Vinyl Tap #4:

Cabbages, limes, grapes of green,
Everything young and in between:
My brush is my mind,
My paint is my soul,
And I’m a driveling jellyroll blue
Of question marks
Over you.

Food for thought. Extra on the silly, hold the high seriousness, please.

The 25 cents I paid for this absurd and very eccentric 1967 album, I, Brute Force: Confections of Love, was well worth it. After stumbling across it at a library sale — initially attracted by the odd title — it turned out to be a happy accident, an intriguing discovery. And a weird, weird record.

Not that I can exactly describe this head-scratcher. I acknowledge the usual touchstones, but with a little variation: Brute Force, then, is akin to Weird Al, Harry Nilsson, and Jonathon Richman all rolled into an off day. I much prefer to go with my first instinct, however, in which I see the Brute that smacks of Eric Von Zipper singing Jimmy Webb - the MacArthur-Park Jimmy Webb. And I know it’s only a conceit of mine that has the resident leather-jacketed comic-relief leader of the pack in all those 1960s Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello Beach Party movies singing not the sublime songs like “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” or "Galveston," but crooning about such subject matters that melt in the dark with all the sweet, green icing flowing down - and all because “Someone left the cake out in the rain.” Apparently the anguished Webb can’t bear the torment since “it took so long to bake it / And I'll never have that recipe again / Oh, no!”

Oh yes - there you have it: Brute Force, the anti-Richard Harris, if you will (and even if you won’t). Backed up by an orchestra and a girly chorus, the Columbia Records artist captured and sustained on vinyl the moment when Jimmy Webb got liquored up and decided his true genius lay in getting in touch with his inner Nipsey Russell and confounding the public with whack-job songs - many concerned with the digestive tracks of all creatures great and small. How else do you explain “The Tapeworm of Love” that was “eating my heart over you” or “Brute’s Circus Metaphor” wherein, even though the “circus tent is folded now and our love must be too,” you “still won’t bring me the cotton candy of your love.” But moreover, consider Mr. Force’s “To Sit on a Sandwich,” in which the concept of "comfort food" is expanded a bit:

Sandwich, To sit on a sandwich.
Nothing could be finer, nothing could be better.
Nothing could be nicer, nothing could be wiser
In this day and age
Of such advanced civilization
Than to pounce
And sit on a sandwich.

More fun with food. And fun with words, too, because that’s what really distinguishes this odd duck of a disc, in inconsistent fashion alternately striking and cringe-worthy with a high quirk factor. “I had a dream in which I dreamt that you were dreaming / And we awoke and found ourselves awake in dreamland. / We kissed and found that love was stuffed with kisses and stuff…” (“No Olympian Height”).

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, and most recently was purchasing manager for San Diego Technical Books. …

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