Try Sleeping With The Dancers In Your Room

Hey can you follow,
Now that the trace is fainter
In the sand
Try turning your face to the wall
Can you still read me
Now that the chase is wilder
In your hand
Try losing your place in the sun 

 

All the praises of the dream
Turned to tangles in the trees
All yesterday's fine chariots
Turned to buses in the street 

 

Can you still hear me
Now that the songs are moving
Into night
Try sleeping with the dancers in your room

From Jack Bruce's third solo album Harmony Row.   Like most of Bruce's solo work, he composed the music while the lyrics are by poet Peter Brown (who also wrote the lyrics for many of Cream's songs like Sunshine Of Your Love).  Bruce is on vocals and piano on this track.

The melody is gorgeous while the lyrics are evocative but elusive in their meaning and ending in a musically unresolved fashion.  All in a little over a minute and a half.

There is a live version done decades later, near the end of Bruce's life, which is not on YouTube.  The song is still beautiful but Bruce's voice wears the years.  I found it even more evocative sung by the older man.

Folk Song

A beautiful ballad from Jack Bruce's third solo album, Harmony Row (1971), a wonderful recording and commercial failure. Jack is on bass and piano, as well as vocals.

Weird Of Hermiston

I'm going to a wedding
I'm going to a wedding dressed in black
I'm going to a party
Going to a party, won't be back
And I'm not going with you

From Jack Bruce's post-Cream solo career.  As always with Jack the song combines interesting music with  bizarre lyrics.

Can You Follow?

Jack Bruce, best known for his work with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker in Cream, created some of the most wonderfully weird music of the 1970s when he embarked upon a solo career.  His first three  albums, Songs For A Tailor, Harmony Row and Out Of The Storm, combined gorgeous melodies, soaring vocals and outstanding musicianship with the bizarro lyrics of his co-composer Peter Brown (the pair also wrote some of Cream's best known songs including White Room, Tales Of Brave Ulysses and most of Sunshine Of Your Love; Clapton wrote the chorus).  Some of the song titles from Bruce's solo albums give a glimpse of their sensibilities:

Never Tell Your Mother She's Out Of Tune
Weird Of Hermiston
Pieces Of Mind
The Consul At Sunset
He The Richmond
Boston Ball Game 1967
Escape From the Royal Woods

Though THC was a fan, the albums were not big sellers and Bruce's solo career never recovered.

Can You Follow? captures all of these elements in a mere one minute and thirty eight seconds.  THC will leave you to figure out what on earth this song is about.