Let the heavens kiss you with the breeze / Let the sunshine see you through the trees / Don’t give a thought to anything in the world / but you and me
08 September 2024 | James Porteous | Clipper Media Blues
Music: Prelude/ To Claudia on Thursday (Millennium) 1968
Lyrics
Take off your shoes and feel the grass
Lie back and let the hours pass
Don’t give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
Let the heavens kiss you with the breeze
Let the sunshine see you through the trees
Don’t give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
Just take your time and let me get into your smile
Relax and find just what we can feel for a while
Open up your heart and breathe the air
Let the wind and light play in your hair
Don’t give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
Just take a look and see all the love in the sky
And when you do the love will reflect in your eye
Sing me a song without a sound
And I will hear it through the ground
Don’t give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
And everyone
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Joseph Stec / Michael Fennelly
To Claudia on Thursday lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Hey, What’s That Song? “Prelude/To Claudia On Thursday” by The Millennium
Every decade possesses its share of cult classics, albums unheralded by the general public but held in high regard by those in the know, and now you, too, can join the cultists (but not the scary kind…..cheerful cultists).
Welcome to The Millennium!
We’ve met Curt Boettcher before, back here, in 1964. After his folk group The GoldeBriars broke up, Curt formed a collective of like-minded singers and songwriters in Los Angeles who basically lived in the studio, playing together under the name The Ballroom and also contributing to each other’s solo material. In his spare time, Boettcher somehow found the energy to produce The Association’s debut album in 1966, along with the hits “Along Comes Mary” and “Cherish.” This gave him enough currency around town to score a record deal with Columbia, and he brought his friends along with him, this time under the name The Millennium. He would need all of that currency.
Just as they had for the last couple of years, all seven members contributed to the songwriting, instruments, and particularly the lush vocal harmonies which were Boettcher’s trademark as a producer. His co-producer on the project was one Keith Olsen (you may remember him from posts past — five years after The Millennium, he would introduce Fleetwood Mac to Buckingham Nicks and then produce their first album together, and in 1981 he produced Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl”). Due to the excessive number of studio hours and the complexity involved with the brand-new 16-track technology, by the time the group wrapped up their debut, it was the most expensive album ever recorded up to that date. Expectations, as you might expect, ran high.
Released in the summer of 1968, Begin was hailed by critics but failed by the public. Unfortunately, none of the singles released by Columbia caught on with radio stations or record buyers, despite the fact that The Millennium sounded like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Association, and Nilsson all rolled up into one group. The music they made was later dubbed “sunshine pop.” Alas for Curt and Co., they made pop music for adults in a genre that usually catered to the young with songs about sunshine, rainbows, and balloons — caught in the middle, The Millennium proved too mature for the teenyboppers and too soft for the hip.
Later generations judged the music on its merits. Pop wasn’t a dirty word to the cultists — they opened their ears and basked in the sunshine … and it was good.
Begin (The Millennium album)
Begin is the sole studio album released by the American music group the Millennium released in July 1968 on Columbia Records. The group first appeared after members from various Los Angeles pop groups such as the Ballroom, Sagittarius and the Music Machine decided to collaborate on an album.
Along with adapting previously recorded material, the band began recording and writing the music of Begin in early 1968 at Columbia Studios. Begin was the second album to use sixteen-track recording technology following Simon & Garfunkel‘s album Bookends. The group wrote songs in a style later described as sunshine pop, a style noted for its influence of psychedelia with rich harmony vocals and lush orchestrations. Due to the album’s complex recordings and long studio time, it became the most expensive studio album recorded by 1968.[1]
The album received critical acclaim on its release, but did not sell well, failing to chart in the United States and the United Kingdom. The group abandoned a follow-up album for which they had already recorded songs. As pop music of the 1960s was re-evaluated by newer generation of critics, Begin continued to receive positive reviews after the album was re-issued in the 1990s, with AllMusic finding it to be a “bona fide lost classic” and that it was on the same level as “more widely popular albums from the era”, and Pitchfork declaring it “probably the single greatest 60s pop record produced in L.A. outside of The Beach Boys.”
