Kleyn, Carol

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. A reissue of the self-released 1976 album from CAROL KLEYN. As Carol headed south from her native Seattle to attend college, the concerns of young people everywhere were undergoing a reevaluation. In 1970, she experienced a part of that evolving revolution first-hand on the U of C campus and nearby Isla Vista, where unrest over Vietnam led to protest marches and violent backlashes from the National Guard, the burning of the local Bank of America branch and impromptu radical gatherings. Carol dropped out of school at the end of 1970 and continued her voyage of discovery, away from the chaos, in the company of a charismatic young musician named BOBBY BROWN. She would become his “sound man” and would help him build his “Universal One Man Orchestra.” On her 21st birthday, he gave her a harp and told her it would change her life forever. And it did... Over the course of the next few years, Carol developed her own style on the harp and began to write her songs as she and Bobby bounced up and down the coast, playing their music at coffee houses, swap meets, flea markets, and street corners, as well as the annual Renaissance Faires in Agoura and Novato. In these wide-open days, filled with an emergence of solo artists, Carol suddenly found herself performing in the presence of Hollywood greats such as John Lennon, Robert Plant, Phil Spector and Graham Nash. Such unexpected occurrences soon led her to an industry-packed house at Doug Westin’s Troubadour, where she opened for Anne Murray, and again, to an across the nation tour, as an opening act, for Gregg Allman. But...when the eventual record deal failed to come...Carol took it upon herself to make her own album and release it wherever she performed. Recorded as the dust was settling on the unrest of the early ‘70s and people were in need of a little peace in their lives, Love Has Made Me Stronger recalls the free-wheeling West Coast world of geodesic domes, housemates named Luna, Star, Silver Bird and Nebula and a place called Perfect Park. The sound of Love Has Made Me Stronger is a sound of joy. Music is clearly meant to express love and happiness, desire and wonder, and Carol lets her voice communicate this as she’d done at countless shows with only a single accompanying instrument underneath—harp in the early going of the record, keyboards on the second half.