| A Tramp Shining | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 46 reviews)
Sales Rank: 18883
Category: Music
Artist: Richard Harris
Publisher: Mca
Studio: Mca
Manufacturer: Mca
Label: Mca
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 10780
UPC: 008811078027
EAN: 0008811078027
ASIN: B000002ONN
Release Date: March 2, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Richard Harris was tops! May he rest in peace. August 11, 2008
My first encounter with Richard Harris performed songs was McArthur Park. His vocal talents are tops. He was an excellent actor too. Jimmy Webb compositions are also tops. He wrote some of the best songs ever.
MACARTHUR PARK--WHAT A SONG! July 30, 2008
Mac Arthur's Park is melting
In the dark
All the sweet green icing
Flowing down
Someone left the cake out
In the rain
And I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe
Again
Maybe the cake metaphor is hated (if in fact it is--the album sales and months of airplay through spring and summer of 1968 don't suggest this) because it's not well understood. The source for this metaphor is detailed in one of the comments on "The Webb Sessions: 1968-1969": THE STORY BEHIND THE WEBB SESSIONS!, May 30, 2002, by yaaah69. In brief, Webb was in love and the love of his life rejected him. His hopes pretty obviously went as far as a wedding. MacArthur Park is a lover's lament about that breakup. He's standing in the park crying, and the "sweet green icing flowing down" represents both how the park looks through his tears and it also represents the end of his hopes for a wedding and a wedding cake.
I think it's a great song.
 An Album That Defies The Logic Of Critics April 9, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am listening to one of the most despised albums in history, still, after forty years, getting as many bad reviews as it got when it first came out, "A Tramp Shining," by Richard Harris.
Written by the usually-credible Jimmy Web, who has written chart-topping songs by too many great pop vocalists to even try to mention, A Tramp Shining, oddly, his biggest hit, was hated by all the critics.
Decades later, the album is still lambasted. In spite of all this mockery, the album still sells, and is still available new.
The album, sung by the most derided vocalist in pop music history, Richard Harris, counter-intuitively, stayed near the top of the pop charts for almost an entire year. The album has several songs that still remain in the pop music lexicon and remain classics for the creepiest of lounge singers. Such "revolting" tunes as "Didn't We," "In The Final Hours," and "Lovers Such As I," can still be brought out at parties for a laugh or romantically sung by ghoulish men into the ears of women who, after that, will surely never call them again.
Interestingly, I still like those songs. (My latest favorite from this collection, which I am rediscovering is The Paper Chase, later covered by Art Garfunkel, etc.) I can picture myself as a teenager, driving along Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles in my car, feeling very emotional about some of the cuts on this album.
I would like to spend a moment recounting my two favorites. The first is "A Tramp Shining." This song still charms me because it is about a total loser who seems to be lost in every way, and who, in the end, seems to be given another chance by a woman who is totally out of his league:
She's called me again
And I've taken all my old forgotten hopes
Out of the closet
To put them on
I have found my crumbling crown
Right where I tossed it
I thought that I had lost it
But here I am
A tramp shining
(The song ends with the fabulous note: " . . . a brand new clown."
As a person of low income, I really like the idea of "A Tramp Shining." The song goes on to recount him "sitting on my threadbare throne." All of this is very unappealing to people of any credibility, so I move on.
The "crowning achievement" of the album is the monster hit that simply played every day on the radio for years and years, "Mac Arthur Park." It is stunning for its bizarre 70s orchestral arrangement style. The song was extremely experimental and fused many genres that could not really work together. However, audiences were not sophisticated enough to dislike the now completely "Vegas" style of composing that one hears on this cut, some of which reminds folks of ineptly produced porno soundtracks from the 80s.
All of the above notwithstanding, Mac Arthur Park still has great emotional appeal to souls prone to profound depression and anxiety. (Did I mention I still love this song and play it on my iTunes?) The song's most hated component is the chorus:
Mac Arthur's Park is melting
In the dark
All the sweet green icing
Flowing down
Someone left the cake out
In the rain
And I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe
Again
Here, the critical mind is a loss, but only because, as is usually the case, critics miss the entire point of something while picking on petty things. The critics, like the media, will watch someone trying to save the world, and instead of noting their cause, will focus, for years on end, only on a badly-chosen pair of shoes the campaigner was wearing, etc.
The cake, is a brilliant metaphor, even though the most hated. The cake, of course, is a love affair itself. And why is a cake a great metaphor? Because it is delicate and really easy to ruin. The loss of the recipe is the loss of the complex chemistry that can never be duplicated.
And lastly, the appeal to anyone from Los Angeles of the explicit mention of Mac Arthur Park, cannot be understated. How many people made out for the first time there in high school, etc.?
And so, after four decades, we see the critics still cannot stop something of value from having a following. I consider it a tribute to humanity that Barry Manilow, just a year ago, had a number one album.
What the critcs hate is sweetness, whether it comes from Manilow or Harris. The words "mawkish," "sentimental," "syrupy," "self-indulgent," and so on, are the most prized tools of their trade. But there is one thing they cannot rationalize away, the fact that people do in fact themselves feel sentimental and self-indulgent, and so they will need music to reflect that. The critics then, are finally asking that a whole slice of the human cake be simply thrown out because their art-school education demands it.
I shall close by introducing a new phrase for the critics, who, paradoxically, have not written anything original in my entire lifetime. (They rather are doing little more than copying the snotty attitude of Dorothy Parker, which was very cute and enjoyable eighty years ago, but by now is quite shopworn.) This new phrase is "brilliantly sentimental," which I follow up with "self-indulgent genius."
Well, needless to say, Richard Harris only had one hit album, although that album has a lot of "deep" album tracks. It seems that he too lost the recipe after this album, and hence, the ironies surrounding this work will whirl forward for another decade yet.
Richard Harris, if you are looking down from the beyond, may you forever be A Tramp Shining.
Mel C. Thompson.
Is there a song missing? December 9, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I owned the original album in 1970 while stationed at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Though I don't have any idea where it is (probably in some pawn shop or it's been sold on Ahtique Roadshow for thousands) I do remember one more song - just can't recall the song's name.
However, this is one of those albums (CD's) that you need to listen to more than once. My kids laugh when I play it, but I know this is a classic. Richard Harris may not have the greatest voice, but Jimmy Webb can write songs, and these are some of his best.
Buy this, listen to it at least twelve times - you'll be hooked!
A Consumate Actor Who Also Could Hold A Pretty Good Tune, August 30, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Mention Richard Harris in a conversation today and the first thing that will pop up is his role as Dumbledore in the first episodes of Harry Potter, before tragically passing away on October 25, 2002. That recollection would be followed, probably, by his role in A Man Called Horse. And in terms of music, Camelot will surely arise, together with, of course, MacArthur Park, his surprising # 2 Billboard Pop Hot 100/# 10 Adult Contemporary (AC) smash hit in summer 1968 for the Dunhill label b/w Didn't We.
The thing is, that wasn't his only hit single. Later in 1968 he was back on the charts with The Yard Went On Forever which, b/w Lucky Me, peaked at # 23 AC/# 64 Hot 100 for Dunhill/ABC, and in 1969 the original flipside of MacArthur Park, Didn't We, charted at # 11 AC/# 63 Hot 100 with a new flipside, the wonderful Paper Chase. All of the foregoing were produced by Jimmy Webb [as are all selections in this CD] and all five sides are on the CD The Webb Sessions, also available at Amazon.
What remains most difficult to find is his last hit single, My Boy, which just missed the pop Top 40 in 1ate 1971, settling for a # 41 ( and a # 13 AC) b/w Why Did You Leave Me - again for Dunhill/ABC.
This MCA offering does not present itself as a "best of" so I cannot be my usual critical self in terms of the missing hits. It's just a wonderful collection of songs by a most talented man who will be sorely missed for many reasons.
However, do not expect any informative liner notes [there are none], although they do show a few more candid shots of Richard, including one on the reverse sitting on a marvelous wooden throne - probably somewhere near Camelot.
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