parlando

seventies survival, more cuts

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.

[I am listening to the top 1000 singles of the 1970s (as determined by Billboard) on shuffle play on my mp3 player, and gradually weeding out the songs I don't want to hear anymore.]

The Four Tops, "Still Water (Love)"
Generic soft r&b with a weak hook built on a stock phrase with no twist. I don't believe this would have been a hit if it weren't sung by the Four Tops.

Clarence Carter, "Patches"
I don't think I have anything new to see about this bag of bathos. Except how the (very occasionally observed) demands of scansion turn "his deathbed" into "his dying bed".

John Denver, "I'm Sorry"
Not a bad song, but not really a single -- it was the flip side to "Calypso" -- and not a song that gains much being heard outside the context of other John Denver songs.

Joan Baez, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
Again, better people than me long ago gave this song everything it deserved. I love the original, and the amusement value of Baez's misheard lyrics doesn't do much to compensate for her soulless reading.

Alice Cooper, "How You Gonna See Me Now"
The mature Alice Cooper, in this case ballading like Peter Frampton. It does introduce a key change between the first verse and the chorus, which I guess is kind of interesting. From Cooper's album about his recovery from alcoholism, a subject so personal it required assistance from Bernie Taupin to write most of the songs (including this one).

Lobo, "Don't Expect Me To Be Your Friend"
It's hard to be a mellow musician with something bitter to say. "I love you too much to ever start liking you / So let's just let the story kinda end." Ooooh, snap.

Elvis Presley, "Mama Liked the Roses"
This would fit easily on a song-poem anthology.

Robert John, "Lion Sleeps Tonight"
I can't hear any reason why I'd listen to this instead of the Tokens.

Bob Welch, "Ebony Eyes"
I actually find this song weirdly interesting, but got sick of it because it was inexplicably part of the mix of songs we heard on the overnight crew for two years. Like Steve Miller, Bob Welch sounds awkward to me, his songs sounding amateurish and sometimes plodding yet still somehow commanding attention. The hook of "Ebony Eyes" seems to me to be the brief guitar riff and synth sting that come between the verses. The verses themselves have a lifeless rhythm and stiff melody, and the chorus is just this weird melodic jump up to a repeated exclamation of "Ebony Eyes". It's . . . different.

The Partridge Family, "Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted"
I could believe this was cut from a Badfinger album. It's not awful, not good. Except for the spoken interlude: that's awful.

The Jimmy Castor Bunch, "Troglodyte"
Yes, it's supposed to be stupid. It sure is stupid. Even when it isn't trying to be stupid ("let's go back into time"). The only part of it that interests me is that the music is the same groove all the way through -- which makes it, along with the novelty lyrics and delivery, a proto-King Missile song.

Debby Boone, "You Light Up My Life"
The first song to get cut after more than one play. I wanted to give it a fair chance, but damn it, it came back around again fast. Boone was as good a singer as many empty balladeers who have come since, but her career began and ended here.

Jaggerz, "The Rapper"
Almost has the groove of a Creedence song, but doesn't have the natural feel. I don't hate it, but don't need to hear it again.

Bob Seger, "We've Got Tonight"
Okay, this I hate. Seger is like the anti-Michael McDonald for me. There are a couple songs of his that will make it past one play, but this isn't one.

Olivia Newton-John, "If Not for You"
I have some tolerance for Newton-John, but this is a limp cover of a fine song.

Elton John, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
I love the Beatles, but I've never loved this song -- especially the thump, thump, thump, way it goes into its mediocre chorus -- and I like Elton John, but this is far from one of his better arrangements or performances.

Barbra Streisand, "My Heart Belongs to Me"
Yurgh.

Diana Ross, "The Boss"
I feel like defending disco this week, but this isn't where I'm going to begin.

Kenny Nolan, "Love's Grown Deep"
It's hard not to want to punch the singer right at the beginning after he says "I love you. So much" before launching into the first verse. Nothing in the lyrics or arrangement or vocal redeems it at all, nor does the chorus rhyme of "Love's grown deep, deep into the heart of me / you've become a part of me", nor the ah-ah-ah! coda. It does have one of those dramatic bum, bum, bum-bum-bum drum fills leading into the chorus that always crack me up in mellow songs, like the drummer's been barely holding back his passion and can now let it out. I need to collect those fills. Are there names for different drum fills?

And, finally,
The Righteous Brothers, "Rock and Roll Heaven"
I don't remember this song, and I'm glad. This is another song that would find a friendly home on a song-poem compilation, for its shameless capitalizing on the sentiment people hold for dead musicians, and the ignorance and fatuousness with which it does so. The lyrics are offhand, like they were scribbled in half an hour after the songwriter -- the wretched Alan O'Day, in combination with someone named Johnny Stevenson -- came up with the idea, and they show no evidence of more than passing familiarity with the musicians being "honored", let alone any real feeling:

Jimi gave us rainbows
And Janis took a piece of our hearts
And Otis brought us all to the dock of a bay
Sing a song to light my fire
Remember Jim that way

They also apparently believe that Bobby Darin "brought us" Mack the Knife. But most hilarious by a fair bit is this:

Remember bad bad Leroy Brown
Hey Jimmy touched us with that song

Yeah, and we were all deeply moved by "You Don't Mess Around With Jim".

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