My wife and I spent last Thanksgiving in Dixon, Illinois visiting her parents. Our "Black Friday" last year was spent walking through the town. One of the places we checked out was a large antique/junk store. Anytime I find myself in a place like that, my first instinct is to keep my eyes open for stacks of records. Most records found in antique stores are beat up, overpriced, and very common... antique stores are where trashed Andy Williams, Guy Lombardo, and Johnny Mathis records go when they die. Every once in a while, though, you'll find something cool.The payoff in Dixon last year was a copy of Bobby Bare's 1966 album Talk Me Some Sense for $1. On first glance, it wasn't in the greatest shape (though it did clean up and play quite nicely), but I figured it was worth the small gamble. Bare was a guy who had been on my list of guys to check out for a long time, but I had never gotten around to it. From all I had heard, I figured I would probably like him, but I really wasn't prepared for what I was about to hear when I got the record home. It has since become one of my most played records from the country portion of my collection.
The title track is particularly great. It's the best protest song against protest songs that I've heard, at any rate. Given that it's immediately followed on the album by a Dylan cover ("It Ain't Me, Babe") and a fantastic pro-civil rights anthem ("What Color (Is a Man)") - the latter being pretty ballsy for a country singer of the time - leads me to believe that there has to be at least a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek aspect to "Talk Me Some Sense." Even if not, though, I love the song.
Sadly for you, I could not find any youtube videos or other internet streams of the song. Last year, Omni Records reissued Talk Me Some Sense on CD, packaged with Bare's urban sprawl concept album A Bird Named Yesterday. Both albums are great, so it's well worth picking up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bare
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