Sweet Harmony

Love and peace man!

In 1993, four years after the second summer of love, came a song made to represent those heady, blissed out, ecstasy-fuelled days. At its heart is an ethos which about as hippy trippy as anything to be found in Haight-Asbury in 1967. Swap the flowers in their hair and more down the barrel of an army rifle for a pair of baggy trousers, a yellow smiley face and all night raves. At the core of it all, is the counter-culture question: “Why can’t we all just live together?” At least that’s what Jon Marsh and the Beloved said with this song.  Had John Lennon been around, he would surely have approved. This is Imagine for the E Generation.

It’s a deceptively simple song but one which is sumptuously mellow and seductive. It gently sucks you in, wraps you up so you feel warm and snug – a comfort blanket of a song, a thick duvet in the depths of winter. You feel safe and a little loved up in its warm ambience. I guess that’s perfectly in keeping with a song that wants us to “Be as one”, “Make a better world” and “Try to make the dream”.

Sweet Harmony is a manifesto to  “Make the world / Your priority/ Try to live your life / Ecologically / Play a part / In a greater scheme /Try to live the dream / On a wider scene”. Ironically, there is very little about it which is organic. It’s a smooth blend of bleeps, swooshes and other unnatural noises which really ought to jar but don’t. In this sense it feels slightly futuristic, a little other worldly. Clever really.

I’m not generally a big fan of electronica. To these ears so much of it is, well, sterile. But this is more Vangelis than Kraftwerk, more Pet Shop Boys than Chemical Brothers or Faithless. In part this is because of low and measured vocal. As befits a love and peace vibe it never shows any hint of tension or passion. (As an aside, if there’s one song which I cannot abide and don’t understand it’s Lori Anderson’s Oh Superman – now that is sterile and measured.  Although I have perservered with it the whole way through I don’t think I generally manage to listen to more than a couple of minutes of it and certainly don’t go out of my way to listen to it.  Even though I know it’s brilliantly clever it frustrates the hell out of me. Am I the only one that feels that way?)

Any chance of sterility is countered not only by the low warmth of Jon Marsh’s melifluous vocal but by a  smart sax solo. This is in keeping with the rest of the mellow atmosphere but without going over the top it raises the temperature just enough to add a more human feel to the song. This could have been a utopian statement of principles without an anchor into the day to day, not touching one’s emotion.  But the sax adds that humanity to build on the appeal of the vocal so the song appeals to the heart as well as the head.

“Let’s come together/ Right now/ Oh yeah/ In a sweet harmony” – repeat to fade, as a mantra and an ambition to which we should all aspire. The accompanying video consisted of Jon Marsh and a phalanx of woman – all naked. At the time, the press deliberately (?) picked upon it as sexually motivated rather than a statement of human unity. That said I don’t suppose Mr Marsh minded the video shoot too much. Once again, I’m reminded of Lennon, who was not averse to a bit of public nudity as we know.

Titillation aside, Sweet Harmony has stood the test of time. The ethos behind it is of the time and echoes a summer when pop culture thought it could change the world. Maybe it did a little as attitudes changed but human nature has its other less desirable sides and in many ways the world today is in a worse state than the days of Scott McKenzie, Woodstock et al. But Sweet Harmony works both as an evocation of a social and human ideal and, for the purposes of this blog, a fine listen. There are times when there’s nothing better than wrapping up warm in its duvet.

Just want audio? Listen here: http://grooveshark.com/s/Sweet+Harmony/itiHk?src=5