{"id":817,"date":"2015-04-21T01:58:09","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T08:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=817"},"modified":"2015-04-21T12:01:09","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T19:01:09","slug":"the-free-design-silky-on-a-sunny-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=817","title":{"rendered":"The Free Design: Silky in a Sunny Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ph3Drc5pElw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In the 1960s popular music went in a number of different directions. One cheerful subgenre of pop that originated in the U.S. was known as &#8220;sunshine pop&#8221; (or sometimes &#8220;flower pop&#8221; or &#8220;twee pop&#8221;) and was characterized by intricate vocal harmonies, sophisticated production (think of the Beach Boys&#8217; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/59457\/15-facts-about-pet-sounds\">Pet Sounds<\/a>&#8221; album) and upbeat warmth. In addition to the Beach Boys, some of the most popular sunshine pop bands were The Turtles (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mRCe5L1imxg\">Happy Together<\/a>&#8220;), The Mamas and the Papas (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h81Ojd3d2rY\">Monday, Monday<\/a>&#8220;), The Fifth Dimension (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5akEgsZSfhg\">Up, Up and Away<\/a>&#8220;), Harpers Bizarre (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FSqVtmfDDFg\">Feelin&#8217; Groovy<\/a>&#8220;), Spanky and our Gang (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yep6gusOqAE\">Lazy Day<\/a>&#8220;), The Seekers (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wsIbfYEizLk\">Georgy Girl<\/a>&#8220;) and the Association (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RsY8l0Jg3lY\">Windy<\/a>&#8220;). A New York-based sunshine pop group of brothers and sisters called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefreedesign.com\/\">The Free Design<\/a> was never as prominent as most of these bands, but they were among my favorite groups as a child, and I spent hundreds of hours listening to their albums. They were popular with professional musicians like my mother and her friends because <a href=\"http:\/\/lightintheattic.net\/artists\/9-the-free-design\">The Free Design<\/a>&#8216;s musicianship was so strong and their compositions were often rigorous and showed evidence of classical training and technique.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past decade, the music of The Free Design has seen a renaissance. One of their songs, &#8220;Love You,&#8221; appears regularly in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HzIrhgUMYyQ\">a wonderful current ad for Delta Airlines<\/a>, and has appeared in international ads for Toyota, in the charming Will Ferrell fantasy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=26FBhM_pjoc\"><em>Stranger Than Fiction<\/em><\/a> and as part of Showtime&#8217;s series <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sho.com\/sho\/weeds\/home\">Weeds<\/a><\/em>. The syrupy sweet, lighter-than-air lyrics of &#8220;Love You&#8221; are as insubstantial as down and just as soft and appealing\u2014here&#8217;s a sample:<\/p>\n<p><em>Dandelion, milkweed, silky in a sunny sky<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Reach out and hitch a ride and float on by<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Balloons down below catching colors of the rainbow<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Red, blue and yellow green, I love you<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Weeds<\/em> also featured the group&#8217;s song &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MCjmbKzxFxA\">I Found Love<\/a>,&#8221; which was played on <em>The Gilmore Girls<\/em> as well. Nearly a half century after they first began recording, the group is delighting a whole new generation as part of a sunshine pop revival.<\/p>\n<p>Some classify The Free Design as a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Baroque_pop\">baroque pop<\/a>&#8221; group since they incorporated intricate vocal harmonies and classical elements in their compositions, and they sang some melancholic ballads along with their uptempo hits such as &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rPaAb3F_d6M\">Kites Are Fun<\/a>.&#8221; Some of their most beautiful songs, such as the heartbreakingly pretty &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vGBiQDMF3Y0\">Don&#8217;t Turn Away<\/a>&#8221; and the elegant but cynical song &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CA2i55zfKFw\">The Proper Ornaments<\/a>,&#8221; have a darker quality to them, and they expand into surprisingly complex vocal harmonies that certainly take them out of the sunshine pop mainstream and put them into the baroque camp. A terrific example of both their upbeat major-key sunshine pop sound and the baroque complexity of their interlacing close vocal harmonies is their song &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hpTcCRhh49o\">Umbrellas<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Their lovely but strange song &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XtXtV-hDPcM\">Daniel Dolphin<\/a>&#8221; is an odd mixture of styles, upbeat seeming at first yet in a minor key, and while it begins as a song about a playful dolphin, it grows serious as Daniel carries away a dying old man. When Daniel returns, he is killed by those who misunderstand the reason for his journey, which turns out to have been to facilitate the old man&#8217;s reincarnation\u2014a surprisingly arcane and dark twist from a group often mistakenly characterized as nothing but sunny.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefreedesign.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/05\/new-interview-sandy-dedrick-shindig-magazine\">The Free Design<\/a> began as a trio of members of the Dedrick family: Chris, who wrote most of their songs, his brother Bruce and their sister <a href=\"http:\/\/psychedelicbaby.blogspot.com\/2012\/05\/free-design-interview-with-sandra.html\">Sandra<\/a>. Their younger sisters Ellen and Stefanie joined the group later, but it is Sandy&#8217;s warm lead vocals that were at the heart of the group. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sandradedrick.com\/\">Sandra Dedrick<\/a> now lives in Ontario, Canada, where she writes poetry, songs and children\u2019s books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the 1960s popular music went in a number of different directions. One cheerful subgenre of pop that originated in the U.S. was known as &#8220;sunshine pop&#8221; (or sometimes &#8220;flower pop&#8221; or &#8220;twee pop&#8221;) and was characterized by intricate vocal harmonies, sophisticated production (think of the Beach Boys&#8217; &#8220;Pet Sounds&#8221; album) and upbeat warmth. In &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=817\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Free Design: Silky in a Sunny Sky<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[138,589,571,575,574,570,578,588,579,318,590,576,585,573,587,581,586,569,583,580,584,582,572,577],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}