Faces - “Wicked Messenger”
1969
Down in the Valley, Richfield location. Located on Penn south of 66th Street, exact location not quite remembered. What I do remember is returning from a day trip to Rochester for my corporate job and heading there to buy some CDs and (yes!) a much-desired blue surfer hoodie to wear on cool evenings lakeside up north. Along with the MC5’s Back in the USA, the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, I also scored the Faces’ debut album, First Step.
This was a Japanese pressing, so it was credited to The Faces. Huh? Well, American pressings have always had “Small Faces” on the cover apparently because the Small Faces-to-Faces transition happened so quickly nobody informed the folks at American Warners. (With Rod Stewart at 5-10 and Ron Wood at 5-9 taller than the former Small Faces Kenney Jones, Ronnie Lane, and Ian MacLagan, it was part of the impetus for the name change. Being a modest 5-8 myself, I appreciate Stewart and Wood being looked up to as tall.)
The lyrics were in the CD booklet and they must have been translated by some intern in Tokyo with limited English knowledge as on the great Bob Dylan cover “Wicked Messenger”, this happens:
Actual lyrics:
When questioned who had sent for him
He answered with his thumb
For his tongue it could not speak, but only flatter
CD booklet lyrics:
When questioned who
You said the answer will I come
Boys tongue it could not speak but only patter
Then there’s the Faces’ original “Three Button Hand Me Down”:
Actual lyrics:
Now I had my fair share of these women
But they came between me and my suit
CD booklet lyrics:
Now I had a fair sheriff named Wynn
That came between me and my sweetheart
Hoo-boy. Lost in translation indeed.