The Machinery of Night

Posted 5:23 PM by Angie Schultz

The Hunter and the Song

This is the post about the wonder and the glory that is the Web.

It had been four days since the word she spoke had gone
And through four lonely nights, his weary mind rolled on
...
He was into trackin' somethin'
And you know his heart was thumpin'
Wildly
...
...swallowed all the air
His senses came alive, he'd never been so aware
At last they came face to face, the hunter and the bear
...
Such a lovely creature
How could you shoot him, my friend?

Those are the lyrics I heard about a half dozen times through the extremely lo-fi radio my sister and I had as a teenager in the late '70s. It was a spooky, sad song, with wind sound effects. I never figured out what it was about.

Every once in a while, something reminds me of a long-forgotten song, and I try to google up the lyrics. I've never been successful with this one. Partly, perhaps, because I'm not sure those are the right lyrics. How many days was it? A monosyllabic number, I'm sure. "Swallowed all the air"---can that really be right? But I'm certain that "face to face the hunter and the bear" ought to hit. Nothin'. Not only that, but I didn't know the name of the song, or the band.

Until the other day, when I was thinking of it, and suddenly, out of nowhere, the name of the band popped into my mind: The Blend.

So I started googling on that, and the other day, I finally got a hit. This is a response to someone asking a very vague question about a song that may be called "The Hunter and the Bear". The song is actually called "The Prize". This page tells me it's off the album Anytime Delight, but they don't have it. This place does, though. Here's a little page devoted to the band. They had two whole albums released, and took "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" to number 91 on the charts in 1978. (That was the year the Blues Brothers version of "Louie Louie" went to 89, and Willie Nelson's "Georgia on My Mind" made it to 84. In other words, not really that good a showing.)

Unfortunately, it's not on CD.