Track Listing

1. Mythical Kings And Iguanas
2. Yada Yada La Scala
3. Lady With The Braid
4. Her Mothers Daughter
5. Angels And Devils The Following Day
6. Mary C. Brown And The Hollywood Sign
7. Lemon Haired Ladies
8. Stone For Bessie Smith
9. Game
10. Going Home (Mythical Kings And Iguanas
11. Doppelganger
12. New Enzyme Detergent Demise of Ali McGraw
13. Talkative Woman And The Two Star General
14. Altruist And The Needy Case
15. Play It Again Sam
16. Earthquake In Los Angeles
17. Final Flight Of The Hindenburg
18. I Dance And Dance And Smile And Smile
19. Air Crash In New Jersey
20. Aftershock

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41195 in Music
• Released on: 1998-01-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Customer Reviews

One great album plus a fascinating bonus.....
Two 1971 albums for the price of one; the first is a truly great record; the second not so great but still worthy of attention. Mythical Kings & Iguanas deserves to be ranked alongside other highly rated singer-songwriter albums of the same period but, sadly, seems largely forgotten. The title track which tops and tails the album (the reprise incorporating the chorus from Lady With The Braid) is more abstract and nebulous than the eight other songs which are vignettes of life as presumably seen by the writer. Lady With The Braid is a tale of loneliness, a woman imploring a man to stay the night not, one surmises, because she likes him all that much but because she does not want to contemplate another night alone. Angels & Devils The Following Day is about sexual hang ups and is one of the few songs which can legitimately claim to use the "f" word in a completely non gratuitous manner (although it still seemed a mite shocking back in 1971). Her Mother's Daughter is a bleak account of how a clinging mother blights her child's adult life and A Stone For Bessie Smith is about the demise of the recently departed Janis Joplin. Not a lot of laughs to be had, you might think, but Mary C. Brown & The Hollywood Sign (a pithy song covering the same ground lyrically as Bacharach & David's Do You Know The Way To San Jose?) is infused with black humour and the writer's biting wit is also in evidence elsewhere. All of the songs hit the spot and, whilst some (for example, Lemon Haired Ladies) may well be intensely personal, self pity and self indulgence are kept at bay by the objectivity of the writing.

Unfortunately, the same cannot really be said of the second album. Reflections In A Mud Puddle probably seemed like a cool idea at the time and the chilling Doppelganger is an impressive and arresting opener. However, some of the songs do not seem quite as focused and the song suite which covered side two of the original LP is perhaps too personal for the listener to fully identify with it. The album does have its moments, however, and comes as a fascinating bonus bearing in mind that Mythical Kings & Iguanas is worth the price of admission alone.

A final point, the compilation In Search Of Mythical Kings (The UA Years) might seem like a viable alternative but, whilst it does have some worthwile tracks not featured here (notably Beware Of Young Girls) surely it is no substitute for the whole of Mythical Kings & Iguanas. (Also, if I remember rightly, the compilation version of Mary C. Brown & The Hollywood Sign is a different and inferior one.

NG

Cameos and psychodramas
The first of these two albums is a great lost gem. I remember hearing it on a BBC2 special as a young teenager and being immediately arrested by the bittersweet lyrics and beguilingly easy rag-and-folk ambience of the music.

On songs like Lady with the braid and Angels and devils, Dory Previn plays out miniature psychodramas, working through her own self-deceptions and contradictory stances to love, life and growing older with a dark wit and surgical precision. On the surface, these are little seventies cameos [all paisley wallpaper and honey in the coffee] but there's a hidden razor-edge in there which takes you deeper with each listening, and cuts to the bone.

You don't hear much about Dory Previn these days: surely, it's time for a public redisvovery?

I agree
I agree with the previous reviewer Dory needs to be re discovered. This album is a gem i was introduced to her by a friend in the 80's and for many years before you could track her down on the internet carried and old c90 around with me to listen to her. Just buy it and spread the word!