Posted on October 7th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
The Commodores, Three Times a Lady
I can no longer hear this song without hearing Eddie Murphy singing "Fee Times a Mady". There's nothing objectively wrong with this song -- nothing outstandingly mockable, apart from perfectly ordinary cliche-mongering like "the moments I cherish with every beat of my heart" -- and the arrangement is inoffensive, spare, with relatively light use of the mandatory strings, and I like the trembly effect on the -- guitar? I'm not sure -- after "nothing to keep us apart". I just can't stand Lionel Richie's treacly singing -- I'm sorry, Jason -- and the way he puts extra-sincere emphasis on "twice" drives me crazy. Why is "twice" important? What does it mean, damnit? How was she a lady the first time? Does "three times a lady" mean anything at all? Bah.
Fancy, Wild Thing
I despise the neanderthal original, but this leering remake is worse. Features an unconvincing moaning Penthous Pet. One of the low points of the 1970s, unredeemed by, well, anything. Okay, the watery sound of the bass is kinda interesting. Has an electronic keyboard solo and a bridge for no good reason. Fancy were a studio creation, and had one more hit, "Touch Me".
Major Harris, Love Won't Let Me Wait
More female moaning! Well, this is a much better song, at any rate. Awfully hard to take seriously though, as the moaning gets pretty silly -- and this is the five and a half minute extended-moan mix -- while Harris sings a long string of gems like "take my hand / we will take a flight / and spend the night / in a wonderland", and "I need your love so desperately / and only you can set me free / when I make love to you / we will explode in ecstasy". The whole song is a beg for sex, not withstanding that she's already moaning up a storm. Anyway, it's a tasteful, restrained arrangement in the Philly style -- Harris had been a member of the Delfonics -- played by MFSB, and has a non-obvious chord change the first time through the chorus. "Love Won't Let Me Wait" was Harris's only top 40 hit, and he eventually returned to the Delfonics.
Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
This morning I was browsing Helen Reddy's songs on my mp3 player, and suddenly realized that "I Am Woman" was missing. I knew I hadn't deleted it. I looked through the original files on my computer for the 1970s Survival Project -- supposedly the Billboard top 100 for every year in the 1970s. It wasn't there either.
"I Am Woman" was a number-one single. There is no way it wasn't one of the top 100 singles of 1972 by any reasonable calculation. (For example, Charley Pride's "Kiss an Angel Good Morning", which is on the 1972 list, peaked at number 21.) So I figured, crap, the whole 1970s Survival Project is hosed. If a big hit like that was missing, there must be others; there must be rights problems or something, and the compilers just quietly removed songs and renumbered the list.
But after cursory checking, I wasn't able to find any other obvious omissions. Earth Wind & Fire's version of "Got to Get You into My Life", for example, isn't among the mp3s in my 1970s set; it peaked at number 9, and maybe should be among the top 100 of 1978, but I don't have Billboard's lists, so can't be sure.
"I Am Woman", though, obviously should be there. So what I'm wondering is, did Billboard just screw up at the time they made their year-end list? Does anyone reading this have the Billboard year-end charts?
(For the record, I like "I Am Woman" and it would have survived a few plays and possibly made my top 300, definitely not my top 100.)
Posted on September 16th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
Song Project #18
Tuxedomoon were possibly the most straightforwardly pretentious band on the arty but goofy Ralph Records label in the late 1970s, best known for the Residents and also featuring underground expermentalists like Snakefinger, Renaldo and the Loaf, Fred Frith, Yello, and MX-80 Sound. Tuxedomoon were less silly and more moody than most of their labelmates; over time their various members tended toward soundscapes, but early Tuxedomoon records were recognizably songs, albeit pretty odd songs.
"Crash" is an instrumental, the b-side of their great single "What Use?", probably their best known song. "Crash" was not included on either of Tuxedomoon's (excellent) first two albums, Half-Mute and Desire; so far as I can tell, it only ever appeared on two Tuxedomoon records, neither of which was ever issued on cd: the Tuxedomoon compilation A Thousand Lives By Picture, and the Ralph Records compilation Frank Johnson's Favorites. In the time I've had no turntable -- most of the last fifteen years -- I had fruitlessly searched for "Crash", because it's one of my favorite instrumental rock songs ever. I never found it on peer-to-peer networks, though frustratingly I found several copies of another mix of the song, which were very different and lacked the power of the one I knew.
But! a few months ago some wonderful person uploaded an early 1980s album called Night Air by keyboardist / violinist / guitarist Blaine L. Reininger, co-founder of Tuxedomoon. Though I had a few later Reininger records, I'd never seen this one, and it included this copy of "Crash", which -- hurrah! -- is absolutely the version I knew and loved. So at this point I'm unsure whether to list it as Tuxedomoon or Reininger -- but the physical records I had credited it to Tuxedomoon, so I'm going with that for now.
"Crash" is a simple song, alternating between two parts, each of which winds up tension and releases it repeatedly. A guitar howls throughout, a layer of melodic noise behind the lead piano. Drum rolls punctuate the end of every passage. The two piano hooks are a simple ascending and descending line, and a down-up, down-up, UP-down-down-down-down-down one. No bridge, no coda, no intro, really, just a kind of fade-in. What makes it work so intensely for me, I think, is the layer of tension the guitar lays on. While the piano releases its melodic tension every time it winds it up, the guitar just keeps squawling, never letting go. I think my favorite moment of the song is when the second part has been going on for bar after bar after bar -- the first part was relatively short -- and finally explodes back into the first part at 3:08, after the guitar has drifted up to one long high howl. That transition comes back around again at 4:08; if I had any complaint about the song, it would be a wish that they'd go through the changes again one more time. If you listen to "Crash" a second time, check out the restlessness of the drumming, which constantly plays small variations on the beat, never enough to break the rhythm, coloring the song just under the immediately perceived surface. One last thing: I love the way the song sits there and vibrates just a little after the cold stop at the end, humming like a great machine.
Posted on September 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Barbra Streisand, Evergreen
I admit that this is an impressively complex melody, a great tune for a great singer, and it's beautiful. I don't hate it. But it's too schmaltzy for me to enjoy much, especially since the lyrics don't move me. I love the coda, though. It makes me feel it's not a waste to sit through the song.
Keith Carradine, I'm Easy
I like this song, just not enough to keep hearing it. Very nice acoustic guitar playing, and a melody, lyrics, and mood that remind me of good James Taylor songs. I hadn't known that we have Robert Altman to thank for Carradine's brief music career: he heard Carradine's songs, cast him in Nashville, and put several of his songs on the soundtrack. Actors' hit songs are often dire, but this is a decent exception.
Ringo Starr, Oh My My
A pleasant, bouncy song. Wouldn't be out of place on a decent pub-rock album; odd to hear this as an American hit.
Bay City Rollers, Money Honey
True one-hit wonders are rare, notwithstanding VH1's generous definition. Bands we think of as one-hit wonders are usually like this: First, an awesome hit single that everybody remembers. Second, a not-terrible follow-up from the same album, which is a smaller hit because while everybody wants it to be great it's just okay. Third, a song from the second album, which does okay and signals the commercial end of the band's career. This is the second song.
Shaun Cassidy, Da Doo Ron Ron
Listened to all the way through out of duty.
Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots, Disco Duck
Duty aided by a drink. If there's anything worse than a limp cover by a teen idol, it's a trend novelty song. Even by the standard of, say, Ray Stevens, this song is awful. I'd go into detail, but then I'd be a guy writing in depth about "Disco Duck".
Posted on September 3rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Kenny Rogers, She Believes In Me
"I stay out late at night and play my songs / and sometimes other nights can be so long." Poetry. Boy, this is a gloopy song. There's nothing about the melody or arrangement worth mentioning, and the lyrics rival "Beth" for self-involved musician paying lip service to the woman who loves him: "I told her someday if she was my girl I could change the world with my little songs. I was wrong. But she has faith in me, and so I go on trying faithfully; and who knows, maybe on some special night, if my song is right, I will find a way, find a way." Her faith in him, though, is shaky: "While she lays crying, I fumble with a melody or two." She certainly has reason to be jealous: "I stumble to the kitchen for a bite, then I see my old guitar in the night, just waiting for me like a secret friend, and there's no end." It's unclear what there's no end of. Molasses, maybe. She comes back around, though: "She says to wake her up when I am through. God our love is true." Well, hers anyway. Strings: Yes. Portentous drum fills: Yes. Written by a fellow named Steve Gibb, though not the heavy-metal playing son of Barry.
Peaches & Herb, Shake Your Groove Thing
Reasonably funky. I don't think I can spin you like a top while shaking my groove thing, though. The verse is in two parts, and there's an odd little key-change (I think) bridge that descends in steps ("there's nothing more that I like to do"), followed by a horn break and the second part of the verse near the end. It's more musically interesting than a lot of disco, but the only part I like a lot is the bridge.
Five women have played Peaches opposite Herb Fame; this was the third Peaches, Linda Greene. "Shake Your Groove Thing" was written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris. Perren was part of the Corporation, the songwriting team that wrote hits for the Jackson 5. Perren is all over the hits of the late seventies, co-writing "I Will Survive", "If I Can't Have You", "Boogie Fever", "More Than a Woman", "Reunited", "Love Machine", and many other hits.
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Wake Up Everybody (Part 1)
A McFadden & Whitehead song. Not bad, kinda groovy. Cool harp-like keyboard glissandos at he beginning. Nice rhythm section. One of those earnest songs that meander wordily because it needs to fill out lines ("the world has changed so very much from what it used to be"), and reaches for rhymes that bring the sentiment down with a thud ("the only thing we have to do is put it in our minds / surely things will work out, they do it every time"), and awkward rhymes on unstressed syllables ("there is so much hatred, war and pover-tee"). And then there's the exhortation to the doctors: "Make the old people well. They're the ones who suffer and who catch all the hell. They don't have so very long before their judgment day. Won't you make them happy before they pass away?" Under the morbidity, I think the idea here is that if we can't cure old people of being old, maybe we should give them happy drugs. Anyway, one good lyric in a song whose heart is in the right place: "The world won't get no better if we just let it be." (So, uh, forget what I said about things just working out every time if we think good thoughts.)
Tom T. Hall, I Love
Let's get something straight right away: Tom T. Hall is one of the great American songwriters. "Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On", "I Hope It Rains at My Funeral", "I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew", "Salute to a Switchblade", "I Flew Over Our House Last Night", "Hang Them All", not to mention "Harper Valley PTA": that's just a beginning. Tom T. Hall is a treasure. That said, "I Love" is a serious contender for worst song by a great songwriter. It has the depth of a Hallmark card. It cries out for parody ("I, love, mangled baby ducks, rubber hockey pucks, tennis shoes that fit, and grit"). It is thankfully short -- two minutes six seconds, all verse and no chorus, unless "and I love you too" qualifies as a chorus -- and I doubt it took him much longer to write. It is pure sentiment, ungrounded in story or character. Strings: Yes. Key change: Yes. Profound: You be the judge.
New York City, I'm Doin' Fine Now
You could make a reggae song out of this pretty easily with that guitar just hitting the three beat every measure. There's strings and horns all over the place, not just coloring the song but carrying the melody. The arrangement has a lot of attention to detail but nothing arresting; the lyrics are neither good nor bad. It's hard to hear what made this a hit, especially by an unknown band. A Thom Bell production, which certainly helps. Their road band included Rodgers & Edwards pre-Chic.
Tony Orlando, Tie a Yellow Ribbon
Velma and I just last night watched Michael O'Donohue's Saturday Night Live "impression" of Tony Orlando and Dawn with fifteen-inch needles plunged through their eyes. Anyway. It is weird how this song -- the number one song of 1973 -- loaned its metaphor to people welcoming the Iran hostages home, inasmuch as the song is about a guy coming home from prison. If I were a hostage, or a soldier in Iraq, I don't think I'd appreciate the equivalence. It's one of those cheesy songs that it's hard to hear with fresh ears. My enjoyment of the bouncy melody is undercut by the smarminess of Orlando's delivery -- I swear I can hear the glittering suit -- and the uneasy marriage of the chipperness of the melody (and the oompah bassline) with the anxious lyrics. (By the way, could he not receive letters in jail? Was he in solitary for three years?) I like the way the verse modulates (if I am using the word correctly) into the chorus, and the harmonica. I'm a sucker for harmonica. Dawn barely make it into the song, and I don't think it would have been any less popular without them.
Pete Hamill, who'd written a piece called "Going Home" about an ex-convict looking for a yellow handkerchief tied to an oak, sued for infringement even though he admitted he'd heard the story in oral tradition. He lost.
Rhythm Heritage, Theme from S.W.A.T.
Curtis Mayfield lite. Man, I loved this when I was a kid. It's still pretty great as tv themes go: it's got two main riffs, each of which is memorable, and the connecting passages between the riffs are nicely executed, too. It does have a dull (but brief) bridge that briefly sounds like it's going to break into "Brickhouse" and instead just sways in place for about fifteen seconds, apparently as an excuse to work in silly siren and car skidding noises. Both of the main riffs are so simple that they wear out easily, and after a few plays I'm ready to let this one go. Written by Barry de Vorzon, who I had only previously known as the cowriter of "The Young and the Restless" (aka "Nadia's Theme"), but was also the lead singer for the Tamerlanes on their 1963 hit "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight."
Posted on August 25th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
Song Project #17
A few years ago, Australian soap opera star Natalie Imbruglia had a big international hit with a lite dance-pop song called "Torn". I've never cared for it. The sprightly, airy arrangement is at odds with the agony in the lyrics, and it doesn't sound like an artistic choice, like it's supposed to be some kind of ironic counterpoint; it sounds like the words are just there because she has to be singing something. Nothing about Imbruglia's pretty but passionless delivery suggests she feels anything in the words, either. She didn't write them, though of course that shouldn't matter: but as a singer, Imbruglia isn't much of an actress. It's no surprise that she's had no more hits.
She didn't write it, and she was far from the first to record it; but the band that wrote it -- an L.A. band called Ednaswap -- weren't the first to record it, either, and while the song traveled a long way stylistically from the band's multiple versions to Imbruglia's, the original demo recording is apparently very similar to Imbruglia's hit. The original demo was written and recorded in 1991 by Scott Butler, Anne Previn, and ex-Cure member Phil Thornalley. Previn wrote the lyrics. The first released version was by a Danish singer named Lis Sørensen, the song translated as "Brændt" ("Burnt"). I have no idea how the song made it to Denmark before it had been otherwise recorded.
Butler and Previn formed Ednaswap and recorded their own version on their eponymous debut in 1995. Their first version has a pop-rock feel, a bit fast and mechanical on the beat; it's a good take, a highlight of the album, but they hadn't nailed it yet. Meanwhile, in 1996 the Norwegian singer Trine Rein had a big European hit with a dance-pop arrangement of the song (in English), setting the stage for Imbruglia's similarly arranged hit two years later -- with Phil Thornalley on bass.
Two years before Imbruglia's version, Ednaswap had a second go at the song, for their Chicken EP. This, the power ballad version, is the one I'm nuts about. That it was not a hit at the time is an indictment (blah blah blah) of the workings of the record and radio industry, but of course it's just one more indictment among thousands. I don't think everything I love should be a hit, but this song ought to be a classic. It's polished but raw, a perfect arrangement riding guitar noise barely kept in check and channeled into melody, with a deep, impassioned vocal that doesn't yell or howl, just pours feeling into the words, pulling back and squeezing the heart on "this is how I feel". It trims everything extraneous from their original recording -- the bridge and the outro are gone, and the drums now support the song instead of pulling it along. Fully half of the new recording -- the intro, first verse and first chorus -- builds the tension, holding back the flood, then bursting the dam in classic power-ballad fashion at the opening of the second verse. The first recording fades on a long outro, and it's nice, but this one lets the noisy guitar and the agonized vocal come to a cold, ringing stop, the spotlight on the singer with her head bowed.
When the Imbruglia version became a hit and KROQ began playing it, some listeners called and demanded they play the Ednaswap version. KROQ made a contest out of it: they played both versions, and invited their listeners to vote on which one KROQ should keep playing. Ednaswap won.
Posted on August 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Ringo Starr, You're Sixteen
Nice kazoo break. An inoffensive song, though it could probably get Ringo thrown off Livejournal and arrested in several states these days. It's a fine old tune, fun to sing, but it's already come up four or five times in the shuffle, and that's enough. Joe Regan plays this in piano bars, and it disturbs Velma that I always want to rhyme "You're my baby, you're my pet" with "You're Disco Tex and the Sexolettes." I just think "Disco Tex and the Sexolettes" is funny.
Neil Sedaka, Breakin' Up Is Hard to Do
Nothing against Sedaka, but the attempt to transform this bouncy pop song into a sensitive ballad doesn't work for me, mostly because it calls too much attention to the Brill Building lyric quality, a frothy, teenage style that was fine for the material but isn't weighty enough for this kind of treatment. It's true that most modern ballad lyrics aren't any better, but in this case it's hard not to think of the original while the remake is playing.
Glen Campbell, It's Only Make Believe
Campbell, a good songwriter, does a faithful cover of an old Conway Twitty chestnut. Campbell proves himself a serviceable singer, but does nothing with the song to show that it needed a new interpretation. Poor line: "No one will ever know / Just how much I love you so." It's just there for a rhyme, but "so" is "how much I love you". Look, I'm a copy editor, okay?
Stylistics, Betcha By Golly Wow
The title suggests a Little Richard-style raveup, but it's a pretty Philadelphia soul ballad (by Thom Bell and Linda Creed). The title, at the beginning of the chorus, stands out as a prime piece of silliness, and it's hard for me to believe that it didn't make people laugh in 1972. The extra beats between lines in the chorus are a nice touch in an otherwise ordinary song, even though one of those pauses is after the title line and draws additional attention to it.
Kris Kristofferson, Why Me
I already hold "Me and Bobby McGee" against Kristofferson, which is probably not fair since it's Janis Joplin I can't stand. But I'd never heard this song that I can remember, it was a huge hit in 1973, and it's awful. (And I'm sorry to discover that it's been covered by the great Kelly Hogan.) It begins "Why me, Lord?", and it immediately becomes clear that it's a pious inversion of the usual self-pity, Kristofferson instead asking God why Kristofferson should have it so good. It's a good twist of a stock phrase, the kind that's at the heart of many great songs. And some awful ones. As an attitude toward God, it still has the disadvantage of cheekily directing questions at the Lord, albeit in the service of humility; one can't escape the sense that the petitioner is pleased with himself beneath the humility, not just for the cleverness of his approach but for being humble. Lord, witness my humility! And the execution, unfortunately, isn't as clever as the idea. "Tell me Lord, What did I ever do that was worth loving you" -- I imagine the Lord bridling here -- "for the kindness you've shown?" Now, this question makes no sense: "that was worth loving you for" is not any kind of substitute for "to deserve". And "kindness" is a paltry word -- a human word -- to apply to the gifts of God. O Lord, how kind you are! "So help me Jesus, my soul's in your hands" is also funny in a way Kristofferson doesn't intend. "If you think there's a way I can try to repay all I've taken from you". . . Do I need to go on? But what about the music! you ask. Don't worry, you aren't missing anything.
Donny Osmond, The Twelfth of Never
There were more Osmond hits than most people remember, inasmuch as only a couple of them have been played since the first year they came out. This was originally a Johnny Mathis hit, and he can sell just about any piece of tripe; Donny Osmond, without his brothers, just sounds nasal. Not content with building a song on an unreconstructed cliche, songwriters Livingston and Webster found a way to make it stupider; the song ends with one of the great thudding anticlimaxes of pop music history: "Until the twelfth of never, and that's a long, long time." So pleased was everyone with this line, they had Osmond repeat "that's a long, long time", drawing it out, with a little catch in his voice on the first "long". I think people need to hear this: 47 seconds of "The Twelfth of Never"
Posted on August 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, Swearin' to God
Frankie Valli was pretty good at adapting to the musical landscape (Bob Crewe, producer and frequent songwriter for Valli throughout his career, probably deserves some credit for that), and I admire his success, but this piece of funk lite makes me cringe. It's like Curtis Mayfield processed by Vegas. Valli doesn't pull out the falsetto on this one, as he would the next year on the huge hits that briefly made the Four Seasons big again, and the Seasons can barely be detected as backing vocalists on this one.
There's a twelve-inch extended remix. Even the album version is over ten minutes long. That's enough of that.
Murray Head with the Trinidad Singers, Superstar
Jesus Christ! I grew up liberal Catholic and am a fan of the musical; it's easy to mock, but was radical for the time, enough so that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice couldn't get it staged until they recorded the album and it was a hit. ALW was only 21, and at the time his promise must have seemed immense. In retrospect, Rice's lyrics are sometimes clever, occasionally moving, and often dreadful. Doing elevated material in a colloquial voice requires a precise ear, but Rice often has no sense of the moments when deploying modern idiom is a bellyflop into bathos. There's nothing in this song as cringeworthy as "I couldn't cope, just couldn't cope" in "I Don't Know How to Love Him", but there are blurts like "Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication" and "Did you know your Messy death would be a record-breaker" and, well, the whole thing, really. "Could Mahomet move a mountain or was that just P.R.?" is schoolboy writing. "P.R.", we are hip, straightforward, irreverent, okay we get it. "What have you sacrificed?" is just there for the rhyme: the song is written from after Christ's death, implying a modern point of view at several points, and I think we all know what Christ sacrificed. The ear for phrasing in a melodic line is bad, too; for example, "You'd have managed better if you'd had it planned", in which "had" is given two syllables for no good reason, like writing a parody that doesn't scan.
For all that, it's catchy, and there are many better songs on the album. The power of the whole of it obviously worked well at the time.
Barry Manilow, Mandy
It's easy to forgive Manilow for "Mandy" at this point, since he famously didn't want to record it. Still: blaaaargh. I suppose wailing "and nothing is rhyming" and rhyming it with "climbing" is supposed to be a joke? Anyway, the seeds of Manilow's skill at bombastic arrangement, rivaled in modern pop music only by Jim Steinman, are evident here, as "Mandy" builds relentlessly to a huge cheesy climax. (It was a British hit a few years earlier, under its original name of "Brandy", for a songwriter named Scott English, and apparently it was originally a bubblegum pop song.)
Our (my sister's and my) sixth grade singing teacher, Mr Sheffield, mostly taught us popular songs from the pre-rock era -- what he liked, presumably -- and to this day I can sing "Hey Look Me Over" and "K-K-K-Katy" and "Goodnight Irene" and hear Mr Sheffield's ukulele -- I am not kidding -- accompaniment. Of course his students hated singing this stuff. As some kind of cruel sop to the students, he allowed each outgoing song to choose one song to be sung by the next year's class. The bastards in the year before us chose "Mandy".
Posted on August 3rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
I haven't been updating this often enough, so I'm going to try shorter, more frequent entries.
Charlie Rich, Behind Closed Doors
Namechecked by Rob in High Fidelity, though he implies it's about not talking about what goes on behind closed doors, while in fact the song is all about what happens behind closed doors: "She lets her hair hang down, and she makes me glad I'm a man," he allows, telling about as much about what goes on behind closed doors as a country song in 1973 can; he then inexplicably adds "No one knows what goes on behind closed doors." Dude, you just told us! And he praises her for her non-demonstrativeness in public, too, so we can infer that when she lets her hair down she sure makes up for it. Does your prim and proper lady know you're singing about her making you glad you're a man, Charlie? Anyway, nice tune.
New Seekers, I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing
Good melody, sweet harmonies, but impossible to separate in my head from the commercial that spawned it; I hear "it's the real thing, Coke is" whether I want to or not. So off the song goes after one play. Allmusic's writers can't agree whether the New Seekers recorded the original commercial or whether it was the Hillside Singers; the entry for the Hillside Singers makes a more convincing case, though.
Chairmen of the Board, Give Me Just a Little More Time
Clearly imitative of the Motown songwriting style. The lead singer sounds like his throat is being squeezed.
Joe Cocker, The Letter
To begin with, I can't fucking stand Joe Cocker and his vocal histrionics, so this never stood a chance with me. But I also love "The Letter", and Cocker messes with its perfect arrangement as well, so this rose straight to the top of my list of songs Joe Cocker pissed on the worst, to be displaced just a couple nights ago by hearing him vomit up "I Think It's Going To Rain Today", which was a good signal for us to leave the bar.
Vicki Sue Robinson, Turn the Beat Around
One of the many disco songs about disco music. The melody's more memorable than most; it's stuck in my head all these years. I never would have thought it was a candidate for a hit cover, though. Maybe Gloria Estefan liked the latin percussion in the original? Estefan's cover is so faithful I can't hear why it was worth doing.
Mac Davis, One Hell of a Woman
Opens exactly like "Satisfaction" -- and probably a thousand other songs. It's got a couple nice changes in the chorus. "She's one hell of a woman, young and strong and tan...." Well, it was the 1970s. Davis is probably best known for "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me" and acting in North Dallas Forty, but he was a good songwriter for other people; he wrote "A Little Less Conversation" and "In the Ghetto" -- did you know the Cranberries covered "In the Ghetto"? I think I'd rather hear Sammy Davis Jr's version -- and "Something's Burnin'" and "I Believe in Music" and "Watching Scott Grow". He definitely had the cheesy touch. (Mind you, I am not putting down "A Little Less Conversation".)
Posted on July 17th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Jud Strunk, Daisy a Day
I don't remember hearing this before. Strunk was a Laugh-In regular, and died in a plane crash in 1977. "Daisy a Day" is one of those toothless, cheerful novelty songs that had their last hurrah in the mid-70s. I let it come up a second time, out of duty.
Paul McCartney & Wings, Helen Wheels
The most forgettable song on Band on the Run.
Charley Pride, Kiss an Angel Goodbye
Nice sentiment, dull song. "And the answer is in this song that I always sing" is the sound of a songwriter yawning (Ben Peters -- best known for writing "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" -- who wrote twelve number one country hits and won a Grammy for this one).
Kenny Rogers, The Gambler
It would be a lot more helpful if you would tell me when I ought to hold 'em and when I ought to fold 'em, you addlepated old-timer.
Apollo 100, Joy
I had forgotten this thing existed. "A Fifth of Beethoven" I can enjoy for its exuberant corniness and the chutzpah of inserting an original disco bridge into the tune; "Joy" is just straightforwardly, cheesily awful. I believe it's a genuine one-hit wonder (as opposed to a VH-1 one-hit wonder).
Mary MacGregor, Torn Between Two Lovers
A polyamorous lament. Jason Hare and his readers were astonished at the gall of the narrator in asking her lover to stay even though she acknowledged she was "breaking all the rules". I think it's a welcome twist to the usual predictable pop-song narrative, but I still don't want to hear the song anymore. Cowritten by Peter Yarrow, though not presumably about Paul and Mary.
Diana Ross, Ain't No Mountain High Enough
Ashford and Simpson were great melodicists but uninspired lyricists, and the melodramatic spoken vocals here don't do the lyrics any favors. Historically overshadowed by the Gaye/Terrell original, though Ross's was a much bigger hit.
Elvis Presley, The Wonder of You
I have a weakness for songs in 6/8, and the increasingly emphatic choral vocals during the guitar break and at the climax are good for a couple laughs. According to Wikipedia, "The song has been adopted by English Football team Port Vale F.C. who run out to the song at the start of their home matches. The song is also sung by the club's fans throughout their matches." O-kay.
Donna Fargo, Funny Face
Near the top of the list of forbidden rhymes: "leave me" and "believe me". Fargo's near-lisping of her s's is an annoying affectation. The verses are so perfunctory that they're clearly only there as a skeleton upon which to hang the long, luxurious chorus.. You don't hear much about Donna Fargo today -- she was born Yvonne Vaughn, should've kept the name -- but she was a major country star in the 70s, even had her own TV show for a season, and wrote most of her own hits, including this one.
Alice Cooper, You and Me
Cooper's descent into schmaltz was surprisingly successful for a while; this is one of at least three adult contemporary hits he had after making his mark as a schlock-rocker. None of them are awful musically, though one expects this kind of thing more from Kenny Nolan. Cooper's a pretty bad sensitive singer, though, and he trips over his cliches into bathos with every other line: "I wanna take you to heaven; that would make my day complete" is the silliest by a hair. The vocal melodic jump into the chorus is reasonably pretty, and the details of the piano and the lead guitar are nice in several places. The song fades on the verse, which is also nice. The break for the strings, though, is nauseating.
Posted on July 13th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Frankie Valli, My Eyes Adored You
The most irritating thing for me about 1970s pop is the omnipresent strings. Strings can be great, but they rarely were in the 1970s. Most of it is by-the-numbers coloring, filling up space for the purpose of filling up space. This song is an example; it's a nice melody, worthy of Frankie Valli, and it's a pretty good longing song. But the strings, and the occasional harp swooshes, are completely unnecessary, contributing nothing good that isn't there already. Also, jeez, those cliche key changes at the end, another 1970s overused tool.
B.B. King, The Thrill Is Gone
I don't hate it, but I don't need to hear it again.
Andy Gibb, (Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away
Typical expert Brothers Gibb popcraft, more subtle in its musical layering and backing vocals than a lot of their stuff in the late 1970s. It's just not one of their most arresting songs. The chorus is oddly limp.
Rod Stewart, Do Ya Think I'm Sexy
Making it through this once was deadly rough.
Mark Lindsay, Arizona
Gets ahold of a good vocal hook and works it to death (and does it no great service with the horns in the first place). Not fond of Mark Lindsay's Neil Diamond approach to phrasing, which is self-indulgent and more melodramatic than dramatic. Not that the words are any more charming:
Arizona, take off your rainbow shades
Arizona, have another look at the world, my, my
Arizona, cut off your Indian braids
Arizona, hey won't you go my way?
Mmm, Strip off your pride
You're acting like a teeny-bopper run away child
And scrape off the paint from the face of a little town saint
Arizona, take off your hobo shoes
Arizona, hey won't you go my way?
And after all that berating -- coming after "and all you can do is laugh at her", mind you -- he gives us this:
Follow me up to San Francisco
I will be guide, your way
I'll be the Count of Monte Cristo
You'll be the Countess May
Which has a kind of incoherent chutzpah. At least he's made it clear that condescension will be the cornerstone of the relationship.
Posted on July 12th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
Chris Butler is one of the most variously interesting figures in post-punk rock and roll. Describing him quickly gets out of hand. A non-comprehensive list of stuff he's done:
The song began as a mere five-minute version (included on the CD for the chronologically impaired), with a 12-chorus vamp at the end. As a gag, I started writing extra choruses, and three months later I had enough to fill an entire CD. After recording a backing track with vocals and an acoustic guitar, I passed out 3- to 4-minute chunks to musicians I have produced and/or played with, asking them to flesh-out the arrangement in anyway they saw fit. With 14 contributors in hand (including Freedy Johnston, Kramer, The Gefkens and even my Mom), ace engineer Scott Anthony digitally edited the whole thing together into one long, seamless tune...
I have the album; it's weird and fun. Butler now has bigger plans for the song:
Today, I am pleased to announce THE MAJOR GLITCH PROJECT! Thanks to the internet, it is now possible for ANYONE to create a 3-4 minute chunk that can be edited into the original, the goal being to create an online version that plays/streams for hours and hours.
Many years ago I wrote a whole bunch of fake choruses for "The Devil Glitch", but I don't think I ever archived them. I hope a bunch of folks contribute to this.
Posted on July 10th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
Velma and I are (perhaps a little too) fond of breaking into "Could It Be Magic" when Kenny at the piano bar plays "Wild World". Yesterday my mp3 player, still doing the 1970s shuffle, played those two songs back to back, making me laugh but also pointing out to me that the two songs really aren't that similar. It's just the one repeating passage in "Wild World" that makes me want to go "Baby I'm grieving, now, now, now and hold on fast..."
Posted on July 4th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
We heard two versions of "I Am Woman" in the course of the day -- neither of them the original. The first was deliberate: I got the reissue of Betty Wright's (of "Clean Up Woman" fame) Hard to Stop from the library, and it leads off with a lively and impassioned cover of "I Am Woman". The liner notes, naturally, sneer at the vocal on Helen Reddy's original -- never mind that Reddy wrote the song, which the sneerer doesn't bother to acknowledge, since after all the only thing that redeems the song is Wright's singing. I very much doubt that Wright held Reddy in the contempt that the hipster music hack does.
The second was a disco version in a movie Velma was watching because it had bit parts played by a couple of piano bar acquaintances. It also had a disco version of "Dream Weaver".
Posted on June 23rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
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".
Posted on June 15th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
The first batch of songs to fall:
1. "Star Wars/Cantina Band" by Meco
I'd rather listen to this than the John Williams theme, but I'd rather not listen to either one.
2. "You Take My Breath Away" by Rex Smith
A Heartthrob Hit. No reason to listen to this generic piece of wimpery again.
3. "I Found That Girl" by the Jackson 5
I think it's a measure of the Jackson 5's huge popularity that this b-side got radio play, because there's nothing distinctive about it (and I love their best songs).
4. "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Even by the degraded standards of popular novelty songs, this song is too awful to waste words on.
5. "He Don't Love You (Like I Love You)" by Tony Orlando & Dawn
Fails even to rise to the catchy level of their best schlock.
6. "Dark Lady" by Cher
I'm surprised this doesn't get more consideration in lists of the worst pop songs of all time. It has ludicrous fake gypsy music, but is about a fortune teller in New Orleans. It has a cliched key change. It has an incredibly dumb melodramatic story, delivered with a poor simulacrum of earnestness by Cher. It has a revenge gundown. It has astonishingly bad lyrics. Here is a sampling, all grammar, bathos, triteness, and pointless wordspinning per the original:
On the backseat were scratches from/
The marks of men her fortune she had won[...]
I followed her to some darkened room/
She took my money, she said "I'll be with you soon"[...]
Dark Lady played back magic till the clock struck on the twelve/
She told me more about me than I knew myself[...]
Then she turned up a two-eyed jack/
My eyes saw red but the card still stayed black[...]
Then I remembered her strange perfume/
And how I smelled it was in my own room![...]
The next thing I knew they were dead on the floor/
Dark Lady would never turn a card up anymore
That's some of the worst writing in the history of pop music. It's not just bad, it's semi-literate. There is some amusement value to the song -- the way Cher sings "strange" and "perfume" and "caught her", for instance -- but not enough to make me want to sit through it again.
Posted on June 15th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
"Troglodyte" sounds like early King Missile after a blow to the head.
Posted on June 15th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
I think of "Rock On", "Chuck E.'s in Love", and "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" as a set: spare, slow, odd but groovy rhythms, underplaying their effects, and simple but expressive vocals; they all seem to me like longshots as hit singles, but they all were.
Posted on June 14th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
A friend has given me discs including the Billboard Top 100 for every year since they began keeping the annual chart (it was top 30 for the first few years), from 1946 through 2004. Needless to say, this is a glorious present. Needless to say, I am obsessing over it. And I am embarking upon another silly Project:
I have loaded my mp3 with every song on the 1970s disc* (a bit over a thousand, since in some cases they included both sides of a single). I have set it on shuffle -- it's always on shuffle, actually -- and I'm playing Survival: as I get sick of songs, they come off the player. Every song must be listened to all the way through at least once. If it survives, the next time it comes around it must be listened to all the way through again. If that makes me wince, I know it's time to delete the song. I'm genuinely curious what ends up surviving to my final hundred, fifty, ten.
So far, through twelve songs, I'm finding that this has me listening closely to songs I've never paid much attention to, from ones I've always enjoyed ("For the Love of Money", "Cold as Ice") to ones I've always hated ("Tonight's the Night", "Spill the Wine"). In fact, I've found a good deal to admire in the ones I hated -- in the case of the two I just named, I think the hatred is so visceral that I can't articulate it, and is probably fundamentally not about music. I can see myself changing my mind about a lot of songs this way. And that's good -- I'd always rather be open minded and able to appreciate whatever is there to appreciate -- but it may make this project end up taking a lot longer than I had planned. At any rate, I'm on the thirteenth song now ("Our Love" by Natalie Cole) and I haven't ejected a song yet.
[addendum: song 14 -- "Star Wars Theme / Cantina Band" by Meco -- is the first one-and-done. Now that's a stinky cheese.]
*n.b.: I love 1970s pop and rock music. If you think the 1970s suck, I don't care. Especially if you think the 1960s were far, far superior.