My favorite song by Mark Gormley. You may remember him as the awkward guy from Pensacola public-access TV whose rather still way of standing was turned into an Internet meme about eight years ago.
How he was ignored by the music community in the '70s and '80s astounds me. His nine-song CD - all demo quality - stands amongst one of the strongest unpublished song catalogs in the world. It's like Attic Demonstration had Kenneth Higney not hired a band at the last possible minute. Songs that take equal influence from "Space Oddity"-era Bowie, Rush, Eagles, golden-age Skynyrd, Dylan, Don McLean, etc.- all wrapped into a prog-inspired folk rock package which, thanks to the low recording quality of the demos (I think they were all on ferric cassettes) and the low-budget public-access music videos, have that right touch of outsider.
But if anything, while Gormley isn't so much in on the joke of his videos, his songs are anything but. They're universal and artsy enough to be considered unrecognized portions of the modern song canon - there's none of the naivete (nor the unfortunate disdain for lefties and LGBT) that comes with your usual outsider artist, i.e. none of the accidental teacher-like quirkiness of BJ Snowden's work, none of the microtonalities of Beefheart and Partch, none of the slapshod arrangements trying to resemble popular music of Higney ('70s country rock) and Wiggin (beat music) and Bhekhirst (new wave and post-disco), none of the "oh my god this is an old person that sings really bad" like all of those novelty records of the '50s and '60s, etc. Gormley sounds like a guy who had all of this talent - this total proficiency at writing these incredible art folk masterpieces - who was shoved aside not because he was too early or too late but because it was inconvenient regarding his own career in the Marines.
I've heard his recent demo - "Together," where he's playing his guitar live in the studio - and he still has that voice. I don't know, but he sounds the same. I'd love to collaborate and write songs with him one day. More people need to check out his work - and not just those two songs everybody knows from the memes (one of which I covered). I mean all of his work. Had this been picked up by Atlantic or Warners back in the day, we would've had a Quentin Tarantino - not in the ultraviolent sense, in the "gleefully postmoderni rearrangements of everything we all know into entirely new works" sense - in the music industry long before Ariel Pink and Daniel Lopatin and AnCo.
Hell, I'd love to produce the record for him.
lyrics
Little wings, can you make the flight
The rain is getting heavy. There's a storm tonight
A summer drive home, the ocean close below
Will you make the morning light? Oh, little wings in flight
The path you weave, most certain to achieve
The everlasting will of little wings in flight
Do you feel weary? Time is marching slowly
Nothing matters more than little wings in flight
Do you think that you'll find your way
Little foolish wings tossed about in the wind of fate
Do you hope? Do you think you stand a chance
The wind is steering colder. The sea is growing bolder, little wings
Do you hear the water on the rock though
I do believe you can make it through
Oh, little wings. The spirit is you
All you need to do is fly away
Hey-ay, little wings, fly away
Little wings, can you feel the bite
The end's a little nearer, everything will be alright
Little wings, can you fly a little stronger
The shore can't be much farther. It won't be much longer, little wings
Little wings. Oh, good bye little wings
Your journey is over. Are you sleeping peacefully
Try, try again. Try again some other time
Everything remains except the sound of your little wings in flight
In flight
In flight
credits
released August 25, 2017
Music and lyrics by Mark Gormley, circa 1977 (it sure seems like it - the cassette quality seems to indicate late '70s to early '80s, which fits his timeframe - the drum machine stuff, "Beginnings" and "Without You," was presumably recorded in 1985 while in Scotland).
Reimagining (sections removed, repeated, entire sections screwed up - the bridge was supposed to be four repetitions, I instead had three - instrumentation added for a fuller sound, something aiming more of a British folky/'70s prog/softer Zeppelin sound) by Lesbian Concentrate.
As for the cover art:
The pastel Gormley is a freeze-frame of his "power stance" from the "Little Wings" music video, which you can find on the Uncharted Zone YouTube thanks to the Eccentric Phil Thomas Katt.
The blurred-out Pteri/bird is a creation of Tomi Zahnsthein. The pose and the fact that Proppity's blurred out comes from the running man from the back cover of Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left.
Cardiacs has finally reached Bandcamp. This is genuinely one of my favorite albums, especially with the varied compositional styles, the mixture of psychedelia and prog rock, and Timmy's lyrics. Clicker Records
Winsome and winning indie pop songs on the latest from The Chairman Dances, where erudite lyrics are cradled by gorgeous arrangements. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 30, 2023
