By Ken Paulson
Has a band with a #17 single ever been treated as well as the-Rose Garden on this new Omnivore Recordings release? It would be hard to imagine.
The Rose Garden climbed into the top 20 in 1967 with “Next Plane to London,” a pleasant pop tune in the vein of We Five. There was never another hit, the album didn’t sell and the band soon broke up. And yet 51 years later we have this new release “A Trip Through the Garden – The Rose Garden Collection.”
Here’s why it’s special:
- The band’s music is very much of a time, but it was a good time. It’s folk-rock that brings to mind pre-Grace Jefferson Airplane and Pre-Flyte Byrds.
- The band idolized the Byrds and recorded two songs pitched to them by former Byrd Gene Clark – “Long Time” and “Till Today.”
- Clark was so engaged with the Rose Garden that he shows up here on a rehearsal tape of “Till Today” recorded in a band member’s bedroom.
- The single and “If My World Falls Through” marked the emergence of Kenny O’Dell as a songwriter. O’Dell went on to write “Behind Closed Doors” for Charlie Rich and hits for many others, and was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His career began as the Rose Garden’s crumbled.
- The album contains non-album tracks, rehearsal takes and ragged live covers of the Byrds, Sonny and Cher and Bo Diddley.
But there’s more. Omnivore has also released “Gene Clark Sings for You,” which features the acetate of Clark performing songs that he gave to the Rose Garden in hopes they would record them. It also includes 8 demos Clark recorded in 1967 trying to drum up some interest from labels and artists. The songs are anything but polished and an overly ambitious drummer intrudes on several, but it’s pretty astonishing to hear music from such a pivotal rock figure for the first time in half a century.