Los Angeles, California: For almost two years, Cleopatra Records have been exploring the vast corpus of unreleased songs and recordings delivered to them by Woodstock legend Melanie in the months before her passing in January 2024.
The Bubble (photo courtesy Steve Zimmerman)
Some of the material had been circulated on the bootleg underground; some was at least rumored to exist among the fans. But one song caught everybody by surprise, an hitherto unknown, almost 10 minute opus titled “Roots of Stone,” recorded by Melanie and husband/producer Peter Schekeryk around 1973-74.
Melanie was no stranger to long form recordings. Working on her 1972 album Stoneground Words, she fully intended opening the record with a single side-long song, “Together Alone.” That idea, sadly, fell by the wayside before recording began. But a year or so later, she and her band did lay down a marathon 27 minute version of “Hearing The News” (available now on Cleopatra licensee Easy Action’s restoration of her lost Autumn Lady LP). “We obviously weren’t renting the studio by the hour that day,” she joked upon hearing it again in 2023.
“Roots of Stone,” however, was a very different creation, a musical Frankenstein which married a characteristically beautiful Melanie vocal and lyric with a sometimes eerie, oft-times soaring, and evocatively wordless vocal passage.
Spellbinding and breathtaking, the recording also serves as a reminder of the battles that Melanie was forced to fight as her career moved through the 1970s, and she worked to match her musical ambitions with the demands of the record labels and distributors that insisted she forever more remain the hippy chick bicycle song girl of her early 70s renown.
That was why neither “Together Alone” or “Hearing The News” made it out in their intended form; that was why “Roots of Stone” never saw the light of day.
Melanie, 1974 (photo Barry Plummer)
Melanie’s original, largely acoustic, take of the song was finally unveiled earlier this year on Cleopatra’s rarities collection Lay Your Hands Across The Six Strings. But everyone who heard it agreed, it not only deserved a broader palette, it demanded one.
Enter, then, The Bubble, northern Delaware experimental psychedelic space rockers who might just be the closest we’ve come to exploring deepest space since the golden age of 50s b-flicks. And Melanie goes all the way with them.
First conceived by multi-instrumentalist Steve Zimmerman in the early 1990s, The Bubble emerged in 2022 with a debut album, Swimming, built around material written and recorded across the intervening three decades… “a spiraling album,” said It’s Psychedelic Baby magazine, “that pulls from psych landmarks as filtered through Zimmerman’s vision.”
Psychedelic Scene added, “The use of sound samples on this project is vibrant and fresh, and this is exactly when this album is at its strongest—with birds squawking, sirens wailing, jazz horns deconstructing the melody, an orchestra building intensely or falling apart, cherry bombs exploding, and abrasive synthesizers blending themselves together in chaotic haze between two verses.”
HEAR THE BUBBLE HERE: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0q68G6VGLN4aZ23t7FF1hB
All of which comes to bear upon “Roots of Stone,” and Melanie seldom sounded so perfectly at home.
“Getting the opportunity to shape, craft and ultimately finish this beautiful unfinished lost relic was incredible,” says Zimmerman. “The finished product is extremely layered, much like a tapestry, and I hope she would’ve enjoyed it as much as we did!”
If a hard-edged Curved Air met a less than Gentle Giant, it might echo something like this. If the old Vertigo swirl label was miked for sound, it might make you feel like this does. If Pink Floyd and Hawkwind had shared a space suit, this is what it might have looked like. But, most of all, if the furthest pastures of modern prog were bathed in the elixirs of an old time stoned-immaculate freak-out… well, that sums it all up very well.
The Bubble (photo courtesy Steve Zimmerman)
And so does the accompanying video, a psychedelic extravaganza that captures not only the textures and atmosphere with which The Bubble imbibed Melanie’s original demo, but also those that Melanie and Schekeryk visualized during the original sessions.
She was never, after all, the whimsical bubble [pun intended] gum popster that the media portrayed; nor the lachrymose singer-songwriter that the fondue-and-cocktails thought she ought to become. On almost every album, and certainly in the notebooks where she kept her song and lyric ideas, Melanie was constantly pushing musical boundaries, and crashing through lyrical parameters as well.
Maybe “Roots of Stone” was considered a step too far at the time. But today, it also feels like a giant leap in the right direction.
Melanie truly did possess roots of stone.
Musicians
Melanie (guitar, vocals)
with The Bubble
Steve Zimmerman (guitar, synth, vocals, percussion)
Chris Haug (bass)
Rob Perry (rhythm-ish guitar)
Derek Haines (piano, synths)
John Mark Painter (sax)
Mike Edwards (drums)
Kyle Shaff (handclaps)
plus special guest
Monika Bullette (violin, backing vocals)
Produced by Steve Zimmerman; engineered by Daniel Smith at Familyre Studio,
SINGLE: https://promo.theorchard.com/Y7K0H0MIbLQtwEjQiesv
1 comment
Amazing. Thank you for keeping Melanie’s music alive and fresh.