Chapter 5 - The Sandpipers

Chapter 5 - Self-Titled Sophomore? 

The Sandpipers debuted with Guantanamera, and then followed up with The Sandpipers. That's weird. It's like saying 

SP: Check out our debut album, Bottle.

B: Who the hell are you guys?

SP: Oh, sorry. Check out our second album, we're The Sandpipers. 

Or, like "welp, that first album was sort of ok, time to do it for real." It's awkward. Even more awkward, their first album got great reviews, this one not so much. I don't know why, it's lovely. It seems bizarre to apply the standard i invented for this book from a future century, but i never said i wasn't awkward either. Maybe it felt weird back then too. 

Unlike The Doors or Buffalo Nichols however, we have a couple problems with the cover art. Note the similarity between The Doors and The Sandpipers. Disembodied photo-studio superimposed head with band in background. Note the difference though. For The Doors it's Jim Morrison's head, for The Sandpipers it's an unknown lady. Doors 2-4 are participating in this photo shoot by looking at the camera, the Sandpipers themselves are mopily wandering around on the beach in preppy sweaters. The Doors is intriguing, possibly even intimidating, The Sandpipers looks like they all got rejected by the same imaginary pretty lady. 

Here's the interesting bit, we all understand that these covers influence our perception of the music. They give the album a context, but how you react to that message is something unique to you. Other people might have opinions that turn out to be as similar as these two album covers, but they don't have to be. You can sever that connection just as easily as tie their shoelaces together. One doesn't have to be good, or the other bad. I like both. I might not be in the mood for one or the other, but that is fully dependent on my own mood, my own state of mind, not an integral part of the album itself. 

Interpretation is not a quiz or a contest, it's simply a mirror of acculturation. You hold up an album and see not an object itself in its own truth, but a reflection of your own truth, your own acculturation. The stronger your reaction in any direction, the more shackled your synapses to the prison wall of inherited dogma. My pronouncement of "mopiness" onto The Sandpipers is the result of direct comparison to The Doors, not some objective truth embedded in the images. 

We got real philosophical there, huh? That just shows you what frame of mind i'm in; the lack of attempted humor just means there isn't some humorous component tied to the process of interpretation. I'm not looking for a laugh, i'm not wink wink nudge nudging like i just did by saying "wink wink nudge nudge." 

And that brings us to the coincidental unfolding of the albums themselves. The Doors as subject, the literal separation of the man from the music by an interpolated door, and the Sandpipers not as subject, but as signifier of their own psychological context. To watch it unfold with no conscious intention on my part is to watch the creation of meaning itself. It may be much harder for you the reader because you are left to imagine the covers and the sequence of assembly for yourself. I can only describe what i see in my mind as i experience it. We are, after all is said and done, alone in our own minds. Perhaps give it a try for yourself with your own albums or interests. As for me, i shall enjoy the soft-pop croonery of this frat-boy like serenade to the imaginary pretty lady in the sky of our mind's eye, and contemplate what i might say about tomorrow's even weirder boundary probing relisten to a Judy Collins album i half-liked the first time around.

Chapter 6