70s Saving Graces (fwd)

[Phil Hall]

On Sat, 12 Jul 1997 calbert at pop.tiac.net wrote:

> Please elaborate. Do you have a year? Country of origin?
> cfa
> > How about The Insect Trust? What was it, Song of A New York City Woman or
> > something like that there? 
> > 
> > Phil
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 

Sorry for the delay - had to enter the archives.
I have two albums by a late 60's early '70's hippie jug/retro folk band
called The Insect Trust. Their first, (self-titled, Capitol skao-109,
ca.1968) was interesting enough for me to buy their second (and final?)
release, Hoboken Saturday Night (Atco sd 33-313) released in 1970. The 3rd
cut on the first side is entitled The Eyes of a New York Woman, credited
to Thomas Pynchon and Jeff Ogden. Neither are members of the band's
lineup. It is further stated that these lyrics are from V. Now my copy of
V. is too deeply buried in the archives to retrieve
at the moment, and my turntable is down, so I can't transcribe the lyrics
here, but can report the Hyperarts (Tim Ware) concordence reports this as
"a song of the Great Depression", and can be found on either p141 or 214.
I can recall it to be a kind of slow moving bluesy tune, sung with
sincerity by Nancy Jeffries, the groups contralto lead vocalist. 
The album received a full-page review in Rolling Stone at the time (for
what that's worth) and that's about all I know. The group was strong in
compositional abilities, but evidently weak in the promotional arts. Don't
know if the albums made it to CD.

Phil