Sonny Bono - Inner Views (CD)

All Music Guide

Wow, the colors.... Seriously, Inner Views is one of the great unknown documents of psychedelic pop/rock -- if not a discovery on a par with, say, The Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, then very close. And in contrast to a lot of rare albums whose value and mystique lay in their obscurity, Inner Views' appeal doesn't vanish once its content is revealed. The story behind the album is simple -- contrary to popular memory, Sonny Bono was more than the funny half (and the production and musical genius) of the team of Sonny Cher; he did release records of his own and even charted very nicely in 1965 with the single "Laugh at Me," and less so with the folk-rock protest song "The Revolution Kind." For whatever reasons, Inner Views became one of the most obscure albums ever recorded by a major artist, ranking right up there with Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and Frank Sinatra's recordings of instrumental music in the 1940s and 1950s. Inner Views is steeped in a relevance ...that seems unbecoming to the artist most associated with pop anthems like "I Got You Babe" and "The Beat Goes On," but not surprising from the pen of the same author responsible for "You Better Sit Down Kids." The album opens with one of the great pop psychedelic tracks ever recorded, "I Just Sit There," a 12-minute excursion into the sounds of psychedelia, amid a pounding, surging beat. The only track that wasn't pegged for possible single release, it doesn't resemble the rest of the album, which is mostly serious but more modestly proportioned. "I Told My Girl to Go Away" and "I Would Marry You Today" are ballads steeped in very contemporary moral questions, while "My Best Friend's Girl Is Out of Sight" has a distinctly early-'60s feel, freer, funnier, and more light-hearted, that seems more natural for Bono. And then there's "Pammie's on a Bummer," a legendary anti-drug song -- maybe this was the track that, along with the bizarre cover art, helped kill Inner Views' chances for exposure. With a tone matching that of the Dragnet television series of the same period, the song simply wasn't what teenagers wanted to hear in 1967. Still, it's a classic of its kind, and the entire album is nearly as diverting, in its way, as anything by Bob Dylan or the Beatles, with the craftsmanship expected of a pop music genius. - Bruce Eder, All Music Guide Read more Less