It's New To Me: Save For a Rainy Day by Jan & Dean (1967)

Detail of a hand-colored political etching titled "The French bugabo frightening the royal commanders" by Isaac Cruikshank, 1797

In 1966, Jan & Dean were still riding the wave of hits that had peaked for them in '63 and '64 with "Surf City", "Dead Man's Curve", and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena". In April of that year, though, Jan Berry collided with a parked truck on the way to a meeting in LA and sustained serious brain damage, leaving him bed-ridden and paralyzed. Berry was the production genius and leader in all things Jan & Dean, so this tragedy left Dean Torrence in a weird position. During Berry's slow convalescence, Torrence worked on a Jan & Dean project on his own, despite the protests of Berry's family, who thought control of the group should remain with Jan. Torrence's project, the concept album Save For a Rainy Day, was home-recorded and self-released - until its re-release by Sundazed Records, it was a little-heard oddity. Now anyone can get a copy of Save For a Rainy Day and enjoy an odd and beautiful project that Dean Torrence produced during a difficult time.

Save For a Rainy Day is a concept record about rain - its ten songs are each separated by several seconds of rain falling and thunder crashing. It was recorded to four-track in the garage of Torrence's friend, musician Joe Osborn, with Osborn and Torrence's other neighbors helped record the album's basic instrumental tracks. These tracks were all overdubbed and mixed down to a single track of the four-track recorder, allowing Torrence to use the other three tracks to layer his vocals. This odd recording style and the use of rain effects creates a distinct feel that sets Save For a Rainy Day apart. It has a dense and hazy sound to it, combining sophisticated arrangements and professional vocals with primitive recording techniques. It reminds me a little of the Tokens' Intercourse album in that way.

The songs on Save For a Rainy Day are thematically unified, but they come from a variety of sources. Two of the songs came from sunshine-pop songwriter Gary Zekley, and these are the album's most obvious singles - "Yellow Balloon" and "Like a Summer Rain". Covers of standards like "When Sunny Gets Blue" and "Pocket Full of Rainbows" are thrown in the mix, as well as a decent version of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Rain on the Roof". A few nice songs are attributed to Nat Ormsby - I did a little research on the name, and it looks like it was a pseudonym that Dean Torrence used for songwriting. His songs are a little corny lyrically, but they have a nice baroque pop sound that fits the album nicely.

One thing that made me fall in love with Save For a Rainy Day immediately was that it is an obvious influence on some of my favorite albums, particularly The Albemarle Sound by the Ladybug Transistor. That album borrows the sound palette of Save For a Rainy Day wholesale, even including a cover of "Like a Summer Rain". If you like that album at all, you should track this one down immediately.

My one big issue with Save For a Rainy Day has to do with the Sundazed reissue - they include 13 bonus tracks, which is always nice, but they put some of them at the beginning of the tracklist. The CD starts with four stereo mixes of tracks from the album before presenting the mono album itself - this can be frustrating if you want to hear Save For a Rainy Day, not two versions of "Yellow Balloon" practically back to back. I can understand, though, that it is tempting to put the stereo versions up front - they have a great accessible sound that is quite different from the dreamy vibe of the actual album.

Take this stereo version of Dean's own composition "Taste of Rain" - it has some interesting stereo tricks going on, and, even though it's obvious that Dean doesn't have the signature vocal style of a solo artist, he has a real talent for layering vocals and creating neat arrangements.

"Taste of Rain" by Jan & Dean