Click on record to play:
1968
HAPPY LAND * CARLTON AND HIS SHOES * COXSONE 7065 * UK
An overtly romantic, spiritual cut from Carlton and His Shoes, the song is one in a long line of songs with similar sentiments like: The Wailers recording of Dreamland, cut for Lee Perry, or Bunny Wailer's own Happy Land, and in fact the Abyssinians Satta Massa Gana, which shares the same opening lyrics. Songs like this have the same pleasant yet disturbing effect on me as does a painting by the 18th century British artist Samuel Palmer - a contemporary of William Blake - in fact some of Blake's poetry have this same intellectual and emotional effect on me. It is not just the representation of something of beauty and value that is not attainable - as in Palmer's paintings - the idea of a society as it could be and not as it is, but something more, a feeling, just a hint, maybe nothing more tangible than a memory of oblivion, that seems to reveal the moment.