Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Album Review of the Day: 5th Dimension "Portrait"

The coolest thing I know about this album is that the 5th Dimension played a singing group invovled in a mystery on a TV show called "It Takes a Thief" starring Robert Wagner. It was on that show that the single "Puppet Man" debuted. I imagine that helped it sell like hotcakes as the group was still riding high on the strength of "Aquarius". As for the album itself, the standouts are "Puppet Man", "One Less Bell to Answer", "This is Your Life" and the supremely cheesy (like a frozen pizza), faux-radical nod to the "younger folk" (i.e.: hippies and hippie wannabes) of the "Medley: The Declaration / A Change Is Gonna Come / People Gotta Be Free". Also, you gotta dig the sweet LeRoy Neiman cover painting and inside the gatefold sketches.

This was part of the soundtrack to my "rose coloured glasses" youth a few years before the end of the Vietnam War changed the culture of the US to one that was much less optimistic and more cynical.

I couldn't find a link to "Puppet Man" but this is my other favorite from Portrait from YouTube:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Guy
Merhaba Istanbul'dan.
Maybe you can't find it because the song is "CARPET Man" -- a perpetually irritating figure around these parts BTW.

"You want to buy carpet? I give you good price."

Guy Mondo said...

Ah, but the song I'm looking for IS "Puppet Man". "Carpet Man" is on another album.

"If you want see me do my thing/Pull my string"