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The Circle Game

Tom Rush - The Circle Game Audio CD

A fair review of the Tom Rush "The Circle Game" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Tom Rush reviews here, or go back to the Tom Rush tabs.

Band: Tom Rush
Title: The Circle Game
Rating:

Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Tin Angel 2: Something in the Way She Moves 3: Urge for Going 4: Sunshine, Sunshine 5: Glory of Love 6: Shadow Dream Song 7: Circle Game 8: So Long 9: Rockport Sunday 10: No Regrets

Oooops!
I was a disk jockey in those days, and the songs often found their way into my radio show. Like many of the other reviewers here, I first heard (and owned) this album on vinyl in the late 60s. I even interviewed him a couple of times and found him as personable as his music.

The album is quintessential Tom Rush. (Anybody who thinks he's forgotten how should check out his newest -- "What I know". But I digress. ) The songs are moody and evocative, and they carry you along from beginning to end.

And therein lies the album's only flaw. The vinyl version included an "echo" of "Tin Angel" after the last strains of "No Regrets". The style was not uncommon in those days, and it lent a sense of closure to the album as a whole. Unfortunately, as has happened with other CDs drawn from albums that took the same form, that echo was forgotten, and I miss it.

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"Urge for Going" by Tom Rush --
But the most annoying, boring recording of all time is Tom Rush's "Urge for Going". The girls loved him. How anyone can sit through it from beginning to end, without having to take a week or two break, or shooting her- or himself in the head, has always puzzled me.

If you want to yell, put that song on your player, and in no time at all you'll be yelling at Rush, "Then go, goddam*t! Go!"

He keeps singing, "I've got the urge for goin'" -- but he never does get around to leaving.

"Gad, Tom -- there's the door! USE it!"

The girls loved him.
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And the Seasons They Go Round And Round
And that would be a good and appropriate choice. If I were to ask someone, in the year 2008, to name a male folk singer from the 1960's I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be) the voice of the Generation of '68 but in terms of longevity and productivity he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review Tom Rush is one such singer/songwriter.

The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960's and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time. This was period when he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell so it is not clears to me that he had that same Dylan drive by then (1968).

As for the songs themselves. I mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. That is represented here by a very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintery imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canada home. And the timelessness of Circle Game, as the Generation of '68 sees another generational cycle starting, is apparent now if it was not then. The Rockport Sunday (instrumental) combined with the sadly haunting No Regrets used to get much play by this writer after some `relationship' problems didn't get thrashed out satisfactorily in the old days. This is classic Tom Rush. Get It.
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Where it started, where it ends: the record that sums him up
He was the most famous folk singer ever to graduate from Harvard --- the king of a category of one. And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

When Joni Mitchell showed those lyrics to Tom Rush, she was a 23-year-old nobody. But he had a record deal, and she was two years away from one. And so, when it came time for him to go into the studio again, he not only used three of Mitchell's songs, he took "The Circle Game" as the title of that 1968 record.

1968. If you're of a certain age, that year sparks so many memories. But if you're younger, just the opposite --- you're almost surely sick of hearing about "The Sixties". Well, here's a surprise. I'm of a certain age, and I published a book about my generation in 1968 --- Notes from the New Underground, if you must know --- and, believe me, I too am way over that terrible/wonderful year.

Or was, until I started listening to Tom Rush again. "The Circle Game", his first record to get a big label push, was released late in 1968, and it sure fit the mood of my gang. Rush was a baritone, his voice reassuring as oatmeal. He was as unhurried and relaxed as Leonard Cohen. But he was a folkie who was only gently electric; this was no Dylan, rocking your world at every turn. And Rush had an ear for talent. In addition to Joni Mitchell, he more or less discovered the as yet unrecorded James Taylor and Jackson Browne.

But there was something more. Tom Rush was just 27, but he seemed to. . . know stuff. For "The Circle Game" was a song cycle. Not trippy like "Sgt. Pepper" but oddly mature, charting the enthusiasms of youth --- love and energy and what Joni Mitchell calls the "urge for going" --- and then moving on to breaking up with a lover and leaving your parents and being okay about being alone. And maybe, given the title song, even looking down the road a few years. Or decades.

Now the decades have passed, and Tom Rush is still at it. In his 60s, he has a young daughter --- "I thought I'd have my own grandchild and cut out the middle man" --- and gives a sane number of concerts a year. He has impressive restraint. He made ten albums in the first dozen years of his career, but either the stream dried out or he became allergic to recording. No matter. New material is unimportant when we're talking about Tom Rush; the old more than suffices.

You have only to watch the video of "Remember", the novelty song that is a winner when he performs and is closing in on four million viewers on YouTube, to grasp his appeal. The guy who more or less invented the persona of the laid back singer/ songwriter --- the performer who was James Taylor before there was a James Taylor --- is an evergreen. His voice holds up. His guitar is still spare and evocative. He still has the wry wit that would go so well with a mug of coffee and a thin smoke around a campfire.

That Tom Rush still has it has to be reassuring to his aging audience. His confident survival sends the clearest possible message: "You're not getting older, you're getting better. " But the coin has another face. We are, as the song says, "captive on the carousel of time. " And so, when boomers consider who we were when we first heard certain songs and who we are now, we blink and ask ourselves: Why do I need glasses and wear relaxed-fit pants --- where did the years go? So every Rush concert is an irony; his fans are people who first heard his music when they were leaving home and are now the ones being left.

Tom Rush isn't flashy. He never had the hit song everyone can hum. But if you're looking for a Harvard man who knows how you feel and wouldn't mind singing your feelings for you. . . well, here's an overlooked boomer god tipping his hat and inviting you to settle in for a listen.
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Like the Finest Bottle of Burgundy.
Timeless, intimate, subtle, exceptional. It is hard for me to find the perfect adjective to describe this collection. Slightly melancholy but never maudlin, it grows more complex with each passing year. No better example of late 60's "electric folk" is available. Perfect on a coming of winter morning. .

You can see a complete list of all Tom Rush discography, or go back to the Tom Rush tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.