These Things Too

The record

At a glance

Artist

Pearls Before Swine

Released

September 1969

Album

Third studio album

Original tracks

Fourteen

Label

Reprise RS 6364

Producers

Richard Alderson and Jim Fairs

Why it matters

The name becomes Rapp's open studio workshop

These Things Too is the point where Pearls Before Swine becomes less a stable four-person band and more an authored recording framework around Tom Rapp. Wayne Harley is the only other founding member credited, while Elisabeth Rapp and Jim Fairs take recurring vocal and instrumental roles. Bass player Bill Salter, drummer Grady Tate and electric violinist Richard Greene add specialist parts without being misrepresented as a new permanent lineup. The move from ESP-Disk to Reprise provides a larger arranged palette, but Rapp retains the short forms, literary borrowings and unsettling humor of the earlier records.

Fourteen tracks include an Auden-linked footnote, a Bob Dylan cover, two Rapp-Elisabeth collaborations and ten sole Rapp compositions. The twenty-one-second Green and Blue and the two Frog in the Window arrangements make scale and repetition part of the album's design. Side one moves toward the city; side two turns through conditional affection, French romance, childhood and the title song's final accumulation. Its value lies in transition made audible: the ensemble is changing, the production is fuller and the writing remains unwilling to become ordinary major-label folk rock.

New York, 1969

From ESP-Disk independence to a major-label room

One Nation Underground and Balaklava had been made for ESP-Disk by Rapp with Harley, Lederer and shifting keyboard players and guests. The original group existed principally in the studio rather than as a regularly touring band. By 1969, Lederer and Roger Crissinger were gone; Harley remained for the third album. Rapp and Elisabeth had married, and her voice and co-writing became part of the new recording identity.

Pearls Before Swine moved to Reprise, gaining a major-label release while continuing to work at Impact Sound in New York. Richard Alderson returned as producer and engineer; Jim Fairs co-produced, arranged, sang and played guitar and celeste. Bill Eaton and the group shared arrangement credits, while additional session musicians supplied bass, drums and electric violin. Reprise released RS 6364 in September 1969, followed by The Use of Ashes in 1970.

A changing Pearls

One remaining founder, a new co-producer and selected session voices

Rapp remains the center, but the album's fourteen short forms require him to change vocal perspective more often than on Balaklava's extended anti-war collage. Harley's banjo and harmonies provide the surviving connection to the debut lineup without implying that the original quartet remained intact. Elisabeth is a performer and co-writer, especially important in the miniature Green and Blue and the French-language Mon Amour. Fairs combines creative and technical authority: guitar and celeste belong inside arrangements he also helped produce.

Salter's bass and Tate's drums give selected pieces a professional studio foundation rather than forming a named new rhythm section. Greene's electric violin adds sustained lines and edge that differ from the antique keyboard and banjo colors around it. Alderson's return links the Reprise sound to the ESP sessions, while Griffiths and Friedman belong to recording and mix stages rather than the band. The arrangement credit is distributed among Eaton, Fairs and Pearls Before Swine, so no single arranger should be assigned every orchestral detail.

Dreamlike chamber folk

Celeste, electric violin and chamber arrangement around brief songs

Footnote opens as a brief literary threshold before Sail Away turns escape into a fuller ensemble invitation. Look Into Her Eyes slows the sequence into extended romantic observation; I Shall Be Released places Dylan's known song inside Rapp's fragile delivery. Frog in the Window (Reprise) appears before the main version, making recollection precede its apparent source. I'm Going to the City adds urban movement, while Man in the Tree closes side one in suspended observation.

If You Don't Want To opens side two with relaxed country inflection and conditional distance. Green and Blue lasts only twenty-one seconds before Mon Amour extends the Rapp-Elisabeth collaboration into a small French-language scene. Wizard of Is and the full Frog in the Window restore eccentric wordplay and theatrical arrangement. When I Was a Child deepens the retrospective mood before the title track gathers escape, memory and acceptance into the close.

Track guide

Fourteen pieces with the reprise arriving before the frog

Leaving and remembering

Release, departure, romance, childhood and things that persist

The album is organized less by plot than by repeated attempts to leave, look back and include what cannot be escaped. Footnote makes the whole record feel appended to a larger historical text. Sail Away, I Shall Be Released and I'm Going to the City approach liberation through three different scales: invitation, inherited song and concrete movement. Look Into Her Eyes, conditional acceptance and Mon Amour test whether relationship can provide another form of release.

The frog pair scrambles time by presenting a reprise before the fuller event. Green and Blue demonstrates that a fragment can carry authored relation without being expanded artificially. When I Was a Child turns memory into the penultimate burden rather than a nostalgic refuge. These Things Too closes inclusively: troubling, comic, romantic and remembered things remain part of the self and the record.

Reprise 6364

Bellini's Christ under Ed Thrasher's art direction

The original American Reprise LP carries catalogue number RS 6364. The front uses a detail from a painting of Christ by Giovanni Bellini. Its devotional historical image creates a quieter visual field than the Bosch hell panel and Bruegel battle scene used on the ESP albums.

Ed Thrasher received the art-direction credit. Seven tracks occupy each side, with Man in the Tree and These Things Too as the respective endings. The album is dedicated to Elisabeth, aligning the package with her new vocal and writing presence.

The major-label move

A Reprise debut advertised beyond the underground

Reprise released These Things Too in September 1969. Trade publications listed and promoted RS 6364 as a new major-label album that autumn. It did not enter the Billboard 200, so advertising presence should not be converted into a fictional chart peak.

The major-label setting increased arrangement resources but did not produce a conventional hit single. Contemporary and later reviews have often ranked it below Balaklava and The Use of Ashes, citing unevenness across the fourteen tracks. Its defenders value precisely the collisions among chamber folk, country ease, literary fragments, romance and surreal comedy.

The third record

An imperfect but revealing transition

These Things Too documents the exact moment the Pearls Before Swine name becomes portable across changing personnel. That flexibility made possible the more carefully orchestrated Nashville sessions for The Use of Ashes. I Shall Be Released places Rapp in dialogue with Dylan while preserving the difference between their voices. The reversed Frog pair remains one of the catalogue's clearest examples of sequence used as surreal editing.

Elisabeth's two co-writing credits begin a collaboration that would matter throughout the Reprise period. Grady Tate, Bill Salter and Richard Greene demonstrate how session musicians could add precision without erasing Rapp's idiosyncratic center. The album's weaker critical standing should not be hidden, but inherited ranking cannot replace attention to its unusual fourteen-part construction. Its legacy is transition without a clean break: old banjo, Alderson's production and Rapp's voice meet a new label, new partner and open ensemble.

Original programme

Keep the seven/seven sequence and both Frog versions

The original album contains fourteen tracks. Seven tracks occupy each side. Man in the Tree closes side one. These Things Too is the original ending.

Frog in the Window (Reprise) deliberately appears first. I Shall Be Released is the only complete outside composition. Green and Blue lasts twenty-one seconds. The Use of Ashes is a separate album.

A listening path

From a Footnote to the title track's accounting

1. Treat Footnote as a deliberate miniature opening.
2. Follow three forms of escape through side one.
3. Remember the Frog reprise before hearing its source.
4. End the first side with the elevated observer.
5. Hear casual country distance give way to two Elisabeth collaborations.
6. Let Wizard and Frog restore the album's odd humor.
7. Move through childhood into the title track's open-ended inclusion.

Research trail

Sources and further reading

• Official fourteen-track digital programme and editorial overview — Apple Music / Warner Records
• Tracks, writers, personnel, production and art direction — AllMusic
• Original Reprise catalogue and September 1969 release listing — Cash Box archive
• Contemporary Billboard catalogue listing — Billboard archive
• Official artist catalogue chronology — Drag City
• Release and writer programme record — Amazon Music / Warner