by Eugene ChadbourneIt is said that finding someone who has actually listened to this album is harder than locating the rabbit hole that led Alice down into Wonderland. The '60s were indeed a wonderland in musical terms, especially when one got past the middle of the decade, at which point any recording artist with a contract was expected to create a deep, complex, and provocative masterpiece that could be compared to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It is ironic that the entire second side of this late period Chad & Jeremy album would be entitled "The Progress Suite," since for most listeners the music on this album hardly represented any kind of progress. This duo had been known for their beautiful harmonies and romantic, wistful music. Many a teenage couple had held hands to the sound of these British lads crooning the lines "Trees, swaying in the summer breeze." A case could be made that the efforts of Chad & Jeremy were just as important to the ambience of early-'60s radio as Mick Jagger and the lads, but the only kind of hands being held when it comes to Of Cabbages and Kings might be someone preventing someone else from putting it on. Yet it really isn't all that bad. True, it would be a lie of the first order to call it a masterpiece, which is often the temptation when a listener cradles the attractive cover in one's hand or thinks about what nice personalities these two performers seem to have. The biggest problem with the record is not that it aspires falsely toward greatness, but that the music composed by Jeremy Clyde and arranged and scored by Chad Stuart sadly lacks what is sometimes referred to in composition class as attractive melodic kernels. The writing tends to be drab and, worse, sounds like something one has heard thousands of times already. And this is really quite remarkable considering the amount of trouble the artists went to gaudying it up with all manner of orchestral trickery, all professionally done and sounding crystal clear in the mixes. Chad Stuart might write "Big deal" on the liner notes under his credit for playing a variety of string and keyboard instruments, but it is something of a big deal when the performer in question was thought of previously as "just" a cute guy with a good voice and cool glasses. He is talented, and took on much work putting together the arrangements throughout this album. The end result is similar to, for example, the music performed by the high school orchestra at the conclusion of the film Mr. Holland's Opus. Or it may remind some of a performance by their own high school orchestra doing an original composition by everyone's favorite professor. The influence of the Beatles is a bit much, as some of the music is almost directly lifted from "A Day in the Life" and "Eleanor Rigby." One might also want to blame the Indian music influence on the Fab Four as well, but other listeners may find Chad Stuart's use of sitar as a regular part of the orchestra diverting, and perhaps even more relaxed than the Beatles' own blotting up of classical Indian influences. The song material that enters off and on through the long suite has some effective moments, as well as showing the vocal timbre and harmony singing style that made this duo popular in the first place. There is also skilled use made of various sound effects and voices, none of which makes the material any less pretentious. The set of songs on the first side also doesn't slouch when it comes to ambition, mixing in a variety of pop music styles including some heavy guitar. There is excellent bass playing throughout the record, sometimes pushed to the top of the mix. One of the songs is written by James William Guercio, a musically pompous character who went on to great success with the horrible Chicago -- the band, not the city. In summation, the album seems to make a case for tolerance; repeated listening with an open mind will reveal more substance here than might seem the case based on the type of quick dismissals this record often gets. But only an extremely tolerant individual, with lots of time on their hands, is going to bother.