The Baffling Music I Listened To In The Days Of My Sappy Youth (Before I Discovered Punk Rock and Everything Changed For The Better) (Part 2)

My 10-year-old ears should have been sentenced to Death by Injection for making me believe I liked Unborn Child, the painfully dreadful 1974 album by Seals & Crofts, an album so abysmally awful it doesn't even have camp value. Who could forget the goofy cover art, which illustrates the visceral thrill of receiving The Gift of Abortion as personified by a blob-shaped Rainbow-Being sporting enlarged disembodied horror movie peepers? I consider it a masterpiece-- the Mona Lisa of fetus extraction portraiture.

The 11 tracks on this album are fairly straight forward, lacking any poetic florishes: Ledges is about ledges. Windflowers is about windflowers. Rachel is about a female (or about a pet which keeps running away) named Rachel. Big Mac is about eating a Big Mac (or about eating a Big Mac which keeps running away). But it was the title track, Unborn Child, which caused a mountain of controversy. This Anti-Choice Kumbaya instantly divided their fan base, dialating and evacuating the stem cell of the audience, suctioning its precious breath, terminating its life before it had a chance to be fruitful and multiply. This chart-topping track generated so much heated argument, it was later left off the band's Greatest Hits album to avoid further furor (you might say it was aborted from the collection). Although I played this album endlessley as a boy, it was some months after its release when someone patiently explained to me what the title song was actually about. That, my friends, was the day I found My Loss Of Innocence, like stumbling upon a box of Girl Scout cookies smothered in KY Jelly.

In conclusion, I should admit I still find myself singing some of their earlier classic tracks in the shower (Summer breeze/Makes me feel fine/Blowing through vaginas in my mi-i-ind..."), but I would be remiss in not mentioning some fans liked Seals & Crofts back when they weren't famous, back when they were two country-blues aficionados, long before their folksy bluegrass leanings were somewhat diluted by the pop machinery of the '70's. Me? I liked Seals & Crofts back when they were still in the womb and there was still a chance they'd be eliminated in a back-alley clothes hanger hoe-down.