Larry Norman's "Baroquen Spirits."

When I was maybe 13 years old or so, I bought a cassette copy of Larry Norman's So Long Ago the Garden. It's a polished album, a prime example of the richness of early 1970s production values, filled with warm strings, thin acoustic guitars, and loads of reverb on the vocals. Since it's his least thematically evangelical album (although he may have suggested otherwise), I've been able to generally enjoy most of the songs even as my faith has faded away.

So Long Ago the Garden is also a discouraging album that has gone through multiple iterations over the years on various releases. Norman and others have speculated and waxed philosophical about why the album seems so disjointed—if you don't believe me, read the liner notes for practically any CD that describes it—but despite some of its perfections, it has some serious flaws. Most importantly, I believe, its biggest flaw is just how Larry never seemed to get it just how he wanted it to be, but kept on releasing weird versions of it. The story of So Long Ago the Garden, as a piece, reflects Norman's own sense of restlessness like none of his other albums do.

But I'd like to write a little about one specific song: "Baroquen Spirits." It was one of my favorite Garden songs on the cassette I bought in my adolescence. It epitomized the loneliness I felt as a teenager. I felt like someone really "got" what it's like to feel true despair and rejection. It also featured a rocking chorus and coda, bordering on 5 minutes of 70s pop awesomeness..

The cassette version was the first version I'd ever heard, so it's the go-to real thing for me; it's the standard I'd go by. Apparently the LP version also was this length, but I've never heard it. When Norman finally released So Long Ago the Garden on Compact Disc, I was pretty excited to get to hear 'Baroquen Spirits" in CD quality.

But I was bitterly disappointed. The So Long Ago the Garden CD featured different mixes of songs than I was used to, and, most importantly, "Baroquen Spirits" had been truncated to a mere 2:55. The last verse of the song, the most despairing one, had been completely cut out, the coda shortened, and the piano-driven instrumental break seemed out of place. The song on the CD didn't feel complete thematically or musically, particularly when compared with my cassette version. It disappointed me.

Disappointed!

And with every iteration, every re-release of So Long Ago the Garden, I watched to see if the full version of "Baroquen Spirits" would show up. But it never did.

Here are the lyrics as they appear on Google, last verse tagged on without even a proper stanza break:

And if you look under the lyrics video on YouTube, you'll see that I'm not the only one who's dissatisfied by how difficult it is to track down versions of the entire song. The only place on the Internet where one can find a full-length version of the song is a live bootleg version that Norman released in the 70s. It's nice to hear the entire song, but it totally misses the gorgeous production values of the original.

The full-length CD version of "Baroquen Spirits" became one of those artifacts of Larry Norman's unique, bewildering album release practices. Once CDs came along, Norman often released four or five CDs a year, often on CD-R format. Many of these CDs were compilation albums that featured the same old songs, perhaps with one unique song thrown in for good measure. He released numerous live albums that didn't feature many unique songs at all, and then also released various bootlegs of poor-mediocre quality, all with essentially the same songs. Before these CD-R practices, I was able to keep up with his releases; once he moved to this collectors-focused business plan, I got priced out of the market. I had to grow more selective of the albums I'd acquire. 

As far as I can tell, the full-length version of "Baroquen Spirits" was only released on one of these CD-R CDs: Siege at Elsinore, and even that's not the mix that appears on the cassette. I thought it might appear on Maximum Garden, but that version, although complete, was an extremely rough demo mix that literally made me wince repeatedly when I first heard it, since I hoped for the real thing. I still can't listen to it. Even the bootleg live version is better than the tightly-mastered rough mix on Maximum Garden​. 

So I always hoped that someone would release it to YouTube. But no one did. It kind-of floored me. Nobody had even posted a vinyl recording of it. I'd probably search for it a couple times a year, hoping for someone to upload it to YouTube, to anywhere. But no one did. On multiple occasions, I've considered taking my cassette and attempting to master it, but that cassette is mixed so quietly that the noise would be overwhelming in a digital context. And I don't have the equipment. So I haven't done it.

But, finally, somebody has done it:

Ahem. | Baroquen Spirits (with missing verse) - Larry Norman - Siege At Elsinore... https://t.co/KRtgo3CAtg via @YouTube

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) November 18, 2017

Now, obviously, since it's taken so long, I'm one of the only people in the world who cares about this. If it was really a big deal to people, somebody would have posted it by now. And even this version isn't the best vocal take. So geez, Larry.

So here, for nobody but myself, is my summary of ways to hear "Baroquen Spirits" in CD quality:

1. SIEGE AT ELSINORE: The only full-length, studio album quality version out there; if possible, it's the only version you ever need to hear.
2. SO LONG AGO THE GARDEN, REGULAR RELEASES: The "single version" which is severely, tediously truncated, but still sounds pretty good.
3. THE ISRAEL TAPES: C.A. 1974: The live version with People. It's not recorded well, but the overall performance is OK.
4. MAXIMUM GARDEN: A painfully rough version where Larry practices different harmonies and arrangement ideas.