We Survived the Madness was
Glenn Yarbrough's last album for RCA before moving to Warner Brothers in 1968.
Yarbrough began mixing pop and folk music in the '50s, but by the late '60s his approach was pure pop even though he occasionally leaned on genuine folk artists like
Tom Paxton and
Phil Ochs for material.
Yarbrough's light touch makes
Ochs' indictment of conformity, "One More Parade," sound like nothing more than a cheery song about a parade.
Yarbrough's renditions of
Bobby Darin's "Amy" and
Paul Simon's "Cloudy" -- the latter on loan from pop/rock group
the Cyrkle -- are the best cuts and suggest a more satisfying direction than the glossy semi-folk heard elsewhere on the album. As
Yarbrough struggled to find a commercial middle ground between the folk music he loved and the adult contemporary pop that actually sold records, his music sometimes suffered for being too pop for the folk audience yet too preoccupied with songwriters like
Ochs who did not appeal to the mainstream. ~ Greg Adams