I see it in your words and eyes You’ve reached too far out to the skies In trying to catch those clouds That flow too high The wind is dragging you behind The clock is ticking out your time You’re only sitting, waiting for that star to shine Can I do something to help you? Can I get something to help you? When you’re feeling pretty rough And you think you’ve had enough Chorus: You know that you don’t have a thing to hide From me or anyone outside Yesterday has come and gone You’ve got to try to carry on Bringing you up and then bringing you down Into that semi-circle solitude You’ll pace your room like in a cell You know you are but hate to tell The magic clown he holds the key But he don’t wanna tell He likes to take you for a ride But run or crawl or creep or hide Make it quick and don’t look back Try and keep you pride Can I do something to help you? Can I get something to help you? When you’re feeling pretty rough And you think you’ve had enough Chorus – ugly guitar solo and out Jim Pembroke 1968 Artist: Blues Section Line-up: Jim Pembroke, vocal Hasse Walli, guitar Pekka Sarmanto, bass Ronnie Österberg, drums Otto Donner, Hammond organ Release: A-side of BLUES SECTION single, Love Records LRS 1014, 1968 Studio: Finnvox Producer: Otto Donner Engineer: Erkki Hyvönen
General comment: This was Blues Section’s final single. For more general comment see ‘Only Dreaming’.
The Music: Had this song been released before May 1967 we would probably see a completely different court case today surrounding the composing rights for Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. It is, of course, very much the other way around so if nothing else this single A-side shows the hit potential of that song had it not been for the organ theme. Here there is no such thing and consequently very little to write home about. In fact, it is the chorus with its painfully banal descending bass line that lets down the song because the verses and the bridges (serving as a kind of extra, in-between chorus as in several other Pembroke compositions around this time) are considerably more original and inspired. Other things let it down, such as Donner’s rather rudimentary Hammond work (at least Finnvox had purchased some kind of Lesley-clone speaker cabinet at this time) and Hasse Walli at his worst, with a horrible distorted sound and uninspired playing marred by poor timing. No wonder the group split up after this.
The lyric: Somewhere in Helsinki in the late Sixties there was this guy sitting in his apartment on his own wondering about the meaning of life, seemingly brought on by a lost love affair. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t making much headway and Jim Pembroke, hailing from milder and less philosophically inclined shores, felt sorry for him and wanted to lend a helping hand. Or at least that is my thesis on the background for this lyric. Incidentally, I’m not sure about the first line in verse two but this was the best suggestion anyone could come up with, though grammatically dodgy.
-- Claes Johansen (with thanks to Rick Chafen), 2007