Cover Illustration of the science fiction collection No Limits, edited by Joseph W. Ferman, 1964
I didn't really know much about soul-pop group the Fifth Dimension when I picked up Portrait a couple weeks ago. I don't think I even knew that the group's five members were all vocalists, not musicians or songwriters. I guess that makes them a "vocal group", although they apparently had a loyal group of producer/arrangers and studio musicians that they worked with, and they had access to some of the best songwriters around. After their initial spate of hits, including "Aquarius", "Stoned Soul Picnic", and "Wedding Bell Blues", the band switched labels, taking their studio crew with them. 1970's Portrait was the first album they released for their new label, Bell Records.
Portrait is a solid pop album with a gaping hole in the middle of it (which I will discuss in a minute). It had three solid singles - the first was a groovy take on Neil Sedaka's "Puppet Man", followed by Laura Nyro's "Save the Country" and the Bacharach/David song "One Less Bell to Answer". The last song, featuring a crazy-good solo vocal from Marilyn McCoo, was the album's big hit, going to #2 on the US pop charts. The album also includes a cover of Traffic's hit "Feelin' Alright", Jimmy Webb's "This Is Your Life", and a couple songs from the 5th Dimension producers, "A Love Like Ours" and a cool wordless vocal jazz piece calld "Dimension 5ive". The album's centerpiece, though, is a 10-minute medley that was obviously intended by the band as a political statement but pretty much derails the album completely.
The medley begins with "The Declaration", a musical reading of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence taken from the stage play Bread, Beans and Things. It's hilariously bad and goes on and on and on. The lines have no meter or rhyme to them, and they are set to a meandering melody that gets tiresome really fast - imagine a group of talented vocalists trying to make a decent song out of a line like, "Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." When the medley hits its next section, it's a like a breath of fresh air because "The Declaration" is over... until you realize that they are trying to pull off Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come". It doesn't quite work. The medley's last section, a cover of the Rascals' "People Got to Be Free" is the only part that's really decent, almost dragging the medley back into the realm of respectability, but not really.
Apart from that medley, I have nothing but love for Portrait. Much of the album, for me, sits in a made-up genre I call "Godspell pop". Like the Free Design, the Cowsills, or Eternity's Children, it's upbeat pop with a vaguely Christian feel to it. "Save the Country" is a great example of this, with its toothlessly feel-good political lyrics, handclaps, and awesome harmonies. For me, though, the song is almost ruined by the fact that, in the second verse, it sounds like they are singing, "Fury's going to take me to the glory hole!" I think the line is supposed to end with the phrase "glory goal", but I wasn't hearing that the first few times I listened to the song.
"Save the Country" by the Fifth Dimension
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