Love "Forever Changes" [1967]

Y'know, for a black guy, Love's Arthur Lee sure sounds like he's part elf. The dainty, baroque California 60s acoustic sound is full-bore -- if you can call it that -- here on "Forever Changes," so I'd be tempted to cut Lee some slack if he wasn't also the goddamn producer of this vinyl Renaissance Faire. His singing voice gives one a clear visual of his curly-toed silk shoes; good thing he was insulated in the LA hippie community, as no self-respecting black man would ever be able to survive on the streets of a major city sounding like he does or with such an aggressively un-funky backing band. "Forever Changes" contains the same cloying string arrangements that sunk at least one Nick Drake album; nearly everything here is so pretentiously non-rock I can hear the Moody Blues mocking them behind their back. So why not simply chalk this up to an unfortunate moment in history when a black dude did whatever he could to swing with white chicks? Because the residue of "Forever Changes," even though almost nobody bought it when it came out, permeated as a poisonous influence of acoustic pomp from The Doors to Led Zeppelin to T. Rex, and as such, Lee and his band deserve to be saddled with an extensive amount of the blame for the creation of Hobbit-rock. What a disappointment to have learned this -- I so wanted to blame a British boarding school Tolkeinist asshole instead.