Bob Lind's Message Board

Hey Bob32 etc...

Can you send me a private email, please ?

Kie Miskelly wrote:... thanks to a second-hand junk shop. 1966 was a great year for music - Pet Sounds, pure magic and what was that really catchy song I kept hearing on the radio... that's it, Elusive Butterfly... wow that's gotta make No.1 I thought until Val Doonican popped up with his cover version, darn it!

I feel so smugly superior, being able to tell you that Elusive Butterfly got to Number 1 in Australia (for one week), which it didn't do in either the USA or the UK.

Elusive Butterfly was my favorite song on the day that I found out that I was accepted to medical school back in the 60's. I also bought the album and liked all the songs on it. I have always been a fan of Bob Lind.

I was 15 years old when I first heard "I Just Let It Take Me". Not long prior, my mother had died after a short illness and I was devastated.

Despite the loving support of family, I naturally withdrew into the things which I loved which remained - mainly, the music of the '60's which I was mad about...(I can still remember excitedly, as a 10 year old, telling my best mate how I had heard this NEW group - The Four Seasons! And, as pre-pubescent boys, the vocal range of Frankie Valli, Roy Orbison, Del Shannon and The Beach Boys were (somewhat) in range...for a while...)

So, I subconsciously (I suppose) adopted an "I want to escape this sadness" attitude...and then I hear this song, which seems to say - "Hey, if you don't like it here - there are so many ways/places to enjoy for you - to savour and be happy - get up and go, Danny boy..."

Whilst not leaving physically, I immersed myself into plans and dreams of travel, experience, challenges...the song seemed to say that the darkness would pass, and that there would be exciting times in my life ahead...

...and throughout my life this song has nourished me, soothed me, reminded me, "teased me", appeased me, eased me...

...there - got that off my chest - now, on with the old and "new stuff" of the
bloke who I won't pretend saved my life - but certainly helped me save my life...

It's a great world, people - and I really believe that it's a bloody big fluke that we got here...so I am gonna ENJOY it...!

Thanks Bob...

Hey Vivian, Hey Luddite,
It occurs to me as I re-read this thread that I dont remember welcoming either of you to the board.
Consider me doing just that right now.
Often when I'm on the road, the board gets jammed up and new members slip through those well-known cracks.
So welcome.

Luddite, great story. Thanks.
Vivian, thanks keep my name alive over there in gay paree.


And Jeff and Kie, always good to see you two around here.
Keep posting, the lot o'ya.
yers,
Bob

Thanks very much for your photograph of feeling.
I had the mental wind knocked out of me by Bob's incredible phrases, like ...on the ocean of a smile we floated easy for a while... and ...allow me please to nestle in the summer of your eyes...
Thanks again, Luddite!

West Florida Summer's Child

I used to go to youth group conferences in my mid-teens and this older man I had a crush on (he was 17 and I was 15) took me into an empty room and sang me "elusive butterfly". He then vanished for the rest of the conference, emerging at the end with a blonde older woman of 16 on his arm, but I remained happy, if befuddled, at my luck in having 5 minutes of his time.

Long after the words had left me, the chord progressions stuck with me. It was another friend who had the album I heard about a year later.

I bought the album and played it late at night during blizzards and under northern lights and punctuated by the rustle of falling leaves were lines like 'remember the rain when you think of the sunshine' and 'it's a B movie world and the cast is on vacation' and 'she can live on rice and beans and wash her clothes without machines'.

I wonder if you know how well-loved you were by how many teenage girls in the 60's, Bob? And how many of them were grateful for feeling they had 20 minutes of YOUR time each time they put the album on the stereo.

Thanks for coming out to sing to us again, Bob!

hi my first post here.

just discovered your music this summer thanks to the great "jack nitzsche compilation" that went out on Ace with Cheryl's Going Home.
then i was fortunate to find your first three albums on the net and i got hooked since then.
was lucky to find the vinyl of "dont be concerned" during a trip in new york city in late august (i also bought the 1971 cd on rpm there) and just bought on ebay that verve lp.
i'll say more about why i found your music so inspiring next time.
it's great to see that you're alive and came back to music.

sorry for my poor english!

take care

cheers from paris, france.

Hey Kie,
Thanks for the encouraging words. It's great to have fans in Scotland.
Stay close to the board. Good to have you with us.

... thanks to a second-hand junk shop. 1966 was a great year for music - Pet Sounds, pure magic and what was that really catchy song I kept hearing on the radio... that's it, Elusive Butterfly... wow that's gotta make No.1 I thought until Val Doonican popped up with his cover version, darn it!

Anyway, the song stayed in my head for a couple of years, it's that sort of tune, once heard never forgotten.. and I was wandering the streets of my hometown in the UK in '69, popped into this junk shop for a browse... and there in the bargain bin for around 25cents was the album Don't Be Concerned... I snapped it up straight away and headed home to play it...

And I've been listening to Bob's music ever since... and then along came Since There Were Circles, a truly amazing surprise of an album with loads of my favourite people on.. Carol Kaye, Sneaky Pete, Gene Clark, Bernie Leadon...

Great singer-songwriters never truly disappear from our memories, they may fade from the airwaves but they're always there in the back of our minds... perculating to the surface every now and then...

It's great to have one of them back in the spotlight...