Sock It To Me

 

The thing about lists is they are designed to create controversy.  Witness Rolling Stone’s 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.  Everyone’s going to have a grievance or three.  This one’s too low on the list, that one’s too high.  And – especially, it would seem, if you’re a Celine Dion fan – why isn’t she (or he) on the list?

 

But this list created a different problem for me, because for every okay-I-get-it and are-you-serious? on the list there was also a who?

 

I must be getting old.

We Can’t Rewind, We’ve Gone Too Far

 

Maybe it’s not high art, but poignant lyrics and a thoughtful arrangement

elevate Video Killed the Radio Star above the status of just a silly pop song.

Check It And See One More Time For Me

Okay, you can justifiably say that Please Mr. Postman is just a formulaic, lame pop song.  But listen to John Lennon’s vocal on the Beatles version and tell me it’s not heart-grippingly soulful.

Does The Message Get To You?

Tarzan Boy by Baltimora might represent everything that  - for some – was detestable about the 80’s.  Sorry, but I love it.

Two Hearts

It's a pity that Paul McCartney and Phil Collins didn't become close friends.  The music would have been fantastic.

Two Of Us

Not that he hasn’t worked damned hard to overcome it, but Paul McCartney is forever destined to be remembered as John Lennon’s partner.  A little unfair maybe.  After all, he only spent 13 years with John.  And he’s given us a lot of great music and memories over the last 45 years as a solo artist.

Then again, maybe he’s never given up trying to replace John.  Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Elvis Costello, David Gilmour, Dave Grohl, Kanye West …  it’s a pretty impressive list of collaborations.

Or maybe Paul just digs music, is a fan like the rest of us, and understands that at bottom music is a shared experience.

Passengers In Time

Have a listen to Secret Separation by The Fixx.  Actually, have a listen, because the video didn’t age well.

Imagine your soul mate, your one true love, your reason for being - and you must giver her/him up because you are both committed to someone else.  You must sacrifice your happiness, and with it your true love’s happiness.  Talk about sad songs!  Heartbreaking lyrics, and, given we’re talking 1984, the music fits them perfectly.

Close your eyes, though, or you might not take the song seriously.  The video producers didn’t seem to.

The Simplest Things Set Me Off Again

Have a listen to My Brave Face.  What a great, catchy pop tune.

Maybe with a little help from Elvis Costello, but Paul still had it as late as 1989. 

Check that.  Listen to No Other Baby.  He still had it as late as 1999.  Ya, I know he didn’t write the tune, but he still knew how to rock and roll.

No wait!  Listen to Dance Tonight.  Pure joy, in 2007.  And with or without Kanye’s help, the man still has it.

Jump In Let’s Go

Hey, go have a listen to Sheryl Crow’s Every Day Is A Winding Road.

A vintage Stones groove, dripping in Beatles psychedelia.  Clever lyrics.  Catchy melody.  A pop tune can’t get much better than that.

Genrification

Speaking of genres (well, I was two posts ago), wasn’t it all so much easier when we though of everything as just pop – or rock ‘n’ roll (take your pick)?

But this genre thing is outta control.

I mean, I get that Easy Listening and Pop and Rock and Folk and R&B and Hip Hop just don’t cross paths too much any more(except maybe on awards shows).  I’m inured to the fact that rock has gone through all this cell division so we’ve got Folk Rock, Punk, Metal, Alternative, Prog, Indie and so on and so on and even more so on.

I’ve slowly come top recognize that we need additional labels such as House and Psychobilly, and Emo and Hardcore.  I guess they serve a purpose.

But brother, when I browse some online music sites, I’m overwhelmed by all these weird genres:  Doom?  Sleaze?  Sadcore?  Red Dirt?

Really?  What are these about?

OK, you can kinda guess what Melodic Death might be like, or Screamo, or Horrorcore, or Trip Hop.  Gothabilly you can almost picture (or hear, I guess).  Ditto Acid Folk, even Swamp.  I think.

And it turns out most ‘em have entries in Wikipedia, so I suppose there’s more than one band doing them.  But simple folk like me have to be enlightened as to why we need Shoegaze, Glitch or Grime.

But some of this sub-genrification is kinda pointless isn’t it?  I mean, Wikipedia defines Street Punk as “a working class-based genre of punk rock.”  Hello?  Was normal Punk something reserved for the upper class?  Like The Sex Pistols gave us music for Toffs?

Maybe some of these bands are just trying to distinguish themselves in ways that don’t involve their actual music.  Maybe they’re having us on.   Noir?  Heartfelt and Lyrical?  Youtube?  Jack Daniels?

I think I need a swig.

Let’s Go Crazy

I don’t know about pop’s greatest year (that honour would have to land somewhere around 1966 give or take a year or two), but Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Singles of 1984 definitely disproves the assertion that the 80’s were a musical wasteland.

Yes, you’ve got your abundance of Europop (some good, some bad; you decide which is which), like Dead or Alive, Wham!  Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Culture Club, or The Eurythmics.

Or you’ve got your hair bands, some of which didn’t quite stand the test of time (again, you decide which ones), like Scorpion, Ratt, Bon Jovi or Def Leppard.

You’ve also got a healthy reminder that R&B was alive and well thank you very much, thanks to Hall & Oates, Huey Lewis, Sade and Tina Turner.

Then there’s folks who did a great job riding the punk/new wave pop rock thing, like The Cars, Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper, or Mellencamp.

And of course there are the giants of the decade: Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, The Police and U2.

But, you also have blasts from the past, as it were, with entries from Springsteen, Genesis, Van Halen, ZZ Top, Elton John, and McCartney.  Heck, even John Lennon has a posthumous release on the list.

So, notwithstanding 99 Luftballons, there are a lot of fabulous tunes here.  And you know, I had almost as many of these records as I had for the Top 100 of 1966.

His Hair Was Perfect

Forget candy.  Forget schlocky horror flicks.

What you really need for Halloween is some kitsch, some funk, some pop, a couple of legendary riffs, and some butt-kicking rock.  Something like Billboard’s Top 10 Halloween Songs.  Go ahead and be thrilled.

Happy Halloween.

The Session Men

Gibson’s 10 Great Session Guitarists brings some well-deserved focus to some brilliant musicians who have delivered a heap of magic over the years.

Lukather, Cropper, Carlton, Tedesco, Atkins, Spedding … where would pop/rcok/blues/soul be without them?  Or, to put it another way, where would Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Steely Dan, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Elvis, Ricky Nelson, Sam Cooke, Bryan Ferry, Elton John and  Aretha Franklin be without them?

OK, some of them would probably have done OK, but you get the point.

And then there was this cat by the name of Jimmy Page.

Note to Gibson.  No one is going to dispute the importance of James Jamerson, but he was a bass player.  Is there really no other session guitarist out there that should have made the list?

Are We There Yet?

Here’s a curious list from Rolling Stone: 20 Hugely Popular Musicians Who Haven’t Gotten Famous In America (Yet).

Kudos to RS for, you know, trying to broaden our musical horizons.  But when I examine the list I just don’t get the title.  Are they suggesting that, after over 50 years of obscurity on this side of the Atlantic, Cliff Richards is likely to bust out sometime soon?  Do they think that, at the age of 90, Charles Aznavour gives a damn?  I think we’re maybe being a little optimistic here.

Twenty acts who should have made it in America, twenty acts Americans missed out on, not everything’s made in America … there are lots of titles that don’t need to include the rather silly promise “yet.”

More Hits Than Hats

Hey Rolling Stone!  What’s with the lists of twenty all of a sudden?  The lists were always ten, right?  Or, like if it was epic, 100.  Now we’ve got this rash of twenty? 

Anyway, Rolling Stone’s list of 20 Greatest Two-Hit Wonders is curious because, really, most of us probably only remember one song.  Maybe that’s just age and memory.  Maybe it’s corporate playlist rendering.  I mean, RS does tell you the chart position, so facts are on their side.

Before you look on the link, though, test yourself.  Do you know of a second hit by Quiet Riot, Janis Ian, Golden Earring, ? and the Mysterians, A-ha, Animotion?

Me neither.

There were a couple of exceptions for me:   I did remember both Tone Loc songs, and (when prompted) both Left Banke tunes.  And, if I’m honest, both Men without Hats songs.

Too bad some of these acts disappeared so fast.  After calling One-Hit-Wonder a derisive term, the article introduces the list by saying here are some acts “who managed to stick around a little longer.”  Faint praise, and a lot of these bands deserved better.

Success is a fickle mistress.

Dream Baby

Growing up, I never knew what to make of Roy Orbison.  Oh Pretty Woman was a great rocker, but it didn’t quite have the same edge as contemporary Beatles or Stones songs.  And the rest of his canon seemed better suited to my parents’ radio station than mine.

I know his tenor voice was operatic, but all those strings!  Sure, it was the doo-wop era, and rock had been tamed, bottled and homogenized, but where were the twangy guitars?  Where was the attitude?  Roy Orbison seemed more like Gene Pitney or Shelley Fabares than Elvis or Chuck Berry.

Pretty good with the sad songs, though.

Maybe it was just the production values of the time.  Much later on, in the 80’s working with Jeff Lynne, Roy proved he could rock out with the Travelling Willburys and U2.  And if you’ve ever seen Black and White Night, I’m sure you’ll agree his old classics sparked some great rock and roll moments when supported by the likes of Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Costello.

Ringo has said that Roy was the only act The Beatles didn’t want to follow.  With a different producer in a different era, Roy Orbison could have had ‘em all running scared.  Except it’s obvious everybody loved him just the way he was.

The Miracle

OK, so the greatest songs by one band list is becoming something less of a novelty, since Rolling Stone has now added Queen’s 10 Greatest Songs. 

Not that I’m arguing against it.  Monster band.  Killer songs, as the list aptly shows.

All the biggies are there:  Killer Queen, The Show Must Go On, Under Pressure, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Somebody To Love, Fat Bottomed Girls, and of course, Bohemian Rhapsody.

Two things jump out at my about this list:

1) They had too many huge hits to cram into a top 10 list.  Missing in action, for

    example, are Radio Ga Ga, Tie Your Mother Down and everyone’s favourite

    sports arena song, We Will Rock You.  You’d add your own, no doubt.

2) The breadth of these guys was amazing.  Prog, metal, pop, rockabilly,

   Broadway…  Wow.

We still miss you, Freddie.  You were one of our best friends.

Matchstick Men

January, 1968.  A psychedelic pop song called Pictures of Matchstick Men hits the charts, and man, was it trippy.   Vaguely drug-related lyrics, wah-wah guitar, and one of the early examples of the phaser effect.  OK, it was closer to bubble-gum than, say Cream or Led Zeppelin, but it was cool.

And then they were gone.

Fast forward to July, 1985.  Along with nearly two billion of my closest friends, I watched Live Aid.  The Wembley section of the concert opens up with this high energy bunch of British rockers who don’t seem to have left the 60’s.  They remind me of The Kinks, or any number of British Invasion groups I’d forgotten.  Didn’t catch their name, but they put on a great set.

And then they were gone.

Fast forward to early this century.  I’ve entered the digital age and I’m surfing the web looking for old tunes I once had on vinyl but can’t find on CD.  I go looking for Pictures of Matchstick Men, and find dozens of songs by Status Quo.  Oh!  That was that band from Live Aid.  Why didn’t I know about this?

From the 60’s through the 90’s, these guys reflected back a little of what was popular, but never wavered from their honest delivery of straight-ahead, stand-up, rock ‘n’ roll.

Funny how they never made it this side of the Atlantic.  They seem have a loyal following in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, and they deliver a similar brand of music to many other bands – British and American – that have made it and endured.  It’s a pity.  These guys should have been rockin’ all over the world.

The Road I’m On

Music Harmony 101:  harmonize your melody by using the chords based on the 1^st, 4^th and 5^th notes of the scale, commonly notated using the Roman Numerals I, IV and V.  If you want a bit of spice, add the chord based on the 6^th note (VI).

That’s enough for most western music: rock, pop, country, punk, hymns, national anthems, you name it.

You can just repeat a sequence endlessly, like I-VI-IV-V, as used in Stand By Me and a million other songs.

You can follow a rigid formula, like I-IV-I-V-IV-I, the 12 bar blues pattern used for a healthy majority of blues songs, also sped up with a backbeat for early rock ’n’ roll.

Or you can mix ‘em up endlessly like Jackson Browne does in Running On Empty.

The basis of the song is a jumped up groove on the church cadence (“amen”): IV-I.  Once you’ve got that approaching the hypnotic, let’s take it somewhere by adding the 6th: IV-I-VI.

Now let’s go crazy for the bridge.  VI-IV-V-I, then switched up to VI-V-IV-I. Back to VI-IV-V-I, then IV-V-I (this last sequence being something used by everyone from Bach to The Ramones).

Just four chords, mixed up and stirred around in a way that makes it both familiar and fresh at the same time.

Just what you’re hoping to find.

It’s Cold In Oz

In the guilty pleasures department, one of my favourite bands, who just fell out of favour and dropped out of our consciousness, is Three Dog Night.

It’s curious: not one but three talented lead singers, a terrific band featuring solid keys and good guitar work.  Maybe a tad on the poppy side as compared to, say Led Zeppelin, but they had a long string of hits that you would think should hold their own against some of the over-played stuff on classic rock radio.

Maybe it’s because most of their material was written by other people?

They spread some solid joy to the world.  Too bad they still aren’t embraced by the family of man.