These Twenty-Three Days in September, David Blue, 1968, :37
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆Never heard of this fellow, who stares at us sullenly like Bob Dylan from the album cover. Apparently he played in Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. His breathy, nearly nasal, drawling, sing-song vocal delivery, while not a Dylan imitation, definitely owes Dylan a thanks for opening the door. (A cut from another of his albums called "If Your Monkey Can't Get It" is, in fact, a Dylan imitation.) The enigmatic and literate lyrics are another similarity. He's not simply a Dylan shadow, though; there's a Caribbean-tinged song on the album, and some of it sounds kind of like if Dylan had been influenced by the Eagles. "The Grand Hotel" struck me as having a Leonard Cohen feel to its lyrics. Blue died too early, sadly, and while he probably didn't deserve to be memorialized with the greatest songwriters of the era, he certainly doesn't deserve the obscurity he languishes in. Favorite tracks: "Ambitious Anna," "The Fifth One."
