"Just Say Thank You Life For Having Been..."

Original released as LP BUDDAH BDS 95000
(US, February 1971)

A1. Good Book (Melanie Safka) 4:04
A2. Babe Rainbow (Melanie Safka) 5:45
A3. Sign in the Window (Bob Dylan) 2:25
A4. Saddest Thing (Melanie Safka) 5:03
A5. Nickel Song (Melanie Safka) 3:45
A6. Isn't it a Pity (Melanie Safka) 0:33
B1. My Father (Judy Collins) 5:04
B2. Chords of Fame (Phil Ochs) 4:59
B3. You Can Go Fishin' (Melanie Safka) 4:14
B4. Birthday of the Rain (Melanie Safka) 5:54
B5. The Prize (Melanie Safka) 4:41
B6. Babe Rainbow - reprise (Melanie Safka) 1:14

Arranged by John Abbott, Ron Frangipane and Lee Holdridge
Photopgraphy: Maddy Miller
Drawnings by Catherine Siracusa
Packaging: Milton Sincoff
Recorded at Allegro Sound Studio, NYC
Engineer: Bruce Staple

Well, now that's over with, I'll go out and say what another delightful album this is. I can understand to a certain extent why Melanie is stripped bare for criticism - maybe it's because of the sentimentality, the pretty song, or the imagery that could easily be conjured up by the eyes of a child. Melanie's songs contain all these things - plus a diary of what is happening to her now. To all extents and purposes they are honest, and at a time like this, it seems stupid to rap honesty. I find "The Good Book" the most soul searching of her collections yet. She becomes a little depressing at times, but it's the sort of depression I can associate with. Then there's things like "Babe Rainbow" - the most beautiful song on the album, and one of her most thoughtful compositions to date. "Birthday Of The Sun" is another warm, cuddly song, and "Nickel Song" is really what it's all about. Melanie may still be a flower child, and maybe a symbol of charismic youth - yet I dig her songs - and what on earth's wrong with sun and flowers anyway?……

Is she complex or just erratic. She contradicts herself all the time, turning from cynic to paranoiac to starry-eyed sentimentalist, each time passionately sincere. And then, once in a while, she says something actually wise, and you wonder whether all this other stuff has been a put-on, which it hasn’t. It doesn’t matter. That there should be someone who sings like that and that there is music for her to sing is all that counts. Lots of people find Melanie’s voice is irritating. They are unlucky. They will never know that so many unlovely elements-the raspy voice of a French chanteuse, a pure Bronx accent, a plunky, elemental, nylon string guitar-could merge into something unique and intriguing. Her singing is broad and dramatic, pure theater. She sings of pain and partings in glides and gasps and wonderful eccentric phrasing. Melanie makes it so real. Could anybody lie to you in that accent? And then the occasional trace of universal tragedy. «The saddest thing under the sun above is to say goodbye to the ones you love.» Sentimentalism or simple, honest truth? Blessed is the listener who doesn’t identify.

Sometimes Melanie is an observer. “Poor little hairy kids,” she writes. «They’ve fallen in love with all humankind / So tell them you love them so they don’t change their mind.» And there, in essence, is our revolution: masses of kids who only want to be loved. It’s all food for thought and songs, as are all Melanie’s experiences with audiences, with the music business, with living. She incorporates them and packages them forcefully into songs which turn into albums.

Having found her stride in the studio on 1970s "Candles in the Rain", Melanie's 1971 release "The Good Book" seemed like a case of two steps forward, one step back. "The Good Book" was recorded while Melanie was at loggerheads with her record label, Buddah Records (Melanie and her husband and studio collaborator Peter Schekeryk would form their own label to release her next LP), and while it doesn't seem to have impacted the craft of the album, the presence of three covers and the frequently dour mood of these songs don't seem to reflect an artist who was entirely at peace with herself. Melanie's cover of Dylan's "Sign on the Window" and her own title track both depict a woman tired of the music business (if not her art) and eager to tend cows and look after kids rather than deal with the trappings of stardom, and if her take on Phil Ochs' "Chords of Fame" and her own composition, "The Nickel Song," lack the agrarian influence of the former tunes, if anything they're even stronger variation on the same theme. However, it's worth noting there's no such thing as a Melanie album without a bit of emotional excess, and she speaks her heart and mind with clarity and gentle force on these numbers, while finding room for the hard-won wisdom of "The Saddest Thing" and Judy Collins' "My Father," and the playful proto-feminism of "Babe Rainbow." If "The Good Book" was a product of a troubled moment in Melanie's career, there's little arguing that she made the very best of a bad situation. (Mark Deming in AllMusic)