This song has a very strange history for me. I heard it once, in 1968 I think, then it was stowed at the back of my brain, filed under "something I heard once but will never hear again." And there it stayed, until a year or two ago.
I was standing in my sister's apartment in Toronto, with the FM radio on as usual. She had gone off to work, and I was alone with this enormous mug of coffee. Then this music came on. It wasn't rock, it wasn't pop, but almost had the mournful flavor of troubadour music. Or was it vaguely Spanish? There was a long sort of riff on guitar, and then without warning the music went orchestral. It was almost medieval-sounding, a sound of antiquity. The orchestrated middle passage led in to a sort of primal wail on electric guitars, an updating of T.S Eliot's howl of grief and longing and impossible hope.
So the piece was a sort of trilogy, three disparate forms which somehow went together. My brain memorized every atom of the piece, for some reason, and then at the end of it the announcer said, "April". And that was that.
No more memories or associations until much, much later, when I began to think about that medieval-sounding piece, whatever it was, wasn't it called April? That was literally all I had to go on. I had no idea what the group's name was or even what year it came out. How could I ever find it now? How! Within six minutes, or maybe it was six seconds, I had it up on YouTube, and for the length of it the hair stood up on my scalp and all over my body.
Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, that was it.
April is an epic, an example of how popular music of the '60s attempted to meld classical with rock. It's really three separate pieces that lead into each other, so I have to listen to them with three sets of ears. But it's good, very good, I might even say awesome if I ever used that word, to be reunited with this unique, quirky mystery, this paean to the month of Aries, this Rite of Spring.
April is a cruel time
Even though the sun may shine
And world looks in the
Still falls the April
I'll cry, say that
Baby once in a while
Of an April
And the springtime's
Ask why, why it should be so
say that
And world looks in the
shade as it
slowly comes away
Still falls the April
rain
And the valley's filled with pain
And you can't tell me
quite why
As I look up to the
gray sky
Where it should be blue
Grey sky
where I should see you
Ask why, why it should be soI'll cry, say that
I don't know
Baby once in a while
I'll forget and
I'll smile
But then
the feeling comes again
of an April without end
lonely as a girl
In the dark of my mind
In the dark of my mind
I can see all too fine
But there is nothing to be done when I just
can't feel the sun
the season of
the night
Grey sky
where it should be
blue
Grey sky
where I should see you
Ask why, why it should be so
say that
I don't know
I don't know
I don't know
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