Category: Music. & Lyrics
How should "Underexposed"songs be seen on Spotify?
The “Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band” anniversary and math
I hate posting this. I do. It’s just that a flaw in a featured piece about the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album anniversary over at Creative Loafing Tampa has an outright flaw quite early in the piece:
Sing it with me, children, all together now …
“It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.”
Uh, excuse me? Excuse me… Hi… Uh, I need to make a correction for you here (and for anyone else locked in on the 50th anniversary of the album). Let me quote the writing tandem of John Lennon and Paul McCartney here to point out the issue with history:
It was twenty years ago today
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play— “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” lyrics via Genius
If it was 20 years on June 1, 1967 (the date of release for the album), it’s 70 years in 2017. I realize the intention of the length of time is something to revel in here and the intro attempt by the article author is a rally-point, but add some logic here… Sgt. Pepper (the personality) and his colleagues had been around a while, going “in and out of style” but they remain “guaranteed to raise a smile”.
At any rate, the article touches on the weight of Sgt. Pepper to the Fab Four, it’s worth a click-thru and a read…
A tune to cue the start of “Summer”
Ah, yes, here we are… Memorial Day Weekend 2017. While I could cue Dancing in the Street or Summer in the City or many others from a very broad girth of other pop and rock classics, let me share with you a (mostly) instrumental number by Gypsy Star that you’ve likely never heard before: Summer
Refraining from “The Living Years”
You ever encounter something in music that you initially appreciate and hold in high regard but it doesn’t stand? Time passes, you engage yourself in the ditty and it starts showing flaws that start standing out? It’s this realization that both worries you (“Am I a critic now?”) and makes you understand why the song isn’t a broad sensation that passes the test of time?
There’s a number from the 1980’s doing that to me now. In some ways I’m guilt ridden by way of it because the song is highly personal… But it’s not the song itself that gets to me. No, no, The Living Years has its merits. But the flaw is too outright.
Mike and the Mechanics 1988 song didn’t just win a Grammy – it was song of the year. The arrangement is fantastic music and the lyrics are highly personal (the relationship between Mike and his father and his father’s passing). There’s nothing I can say against those key elements and they’re not what’s hitting me the wrong way. Yet these weren’t what drew me to the song as a kid; the music complimented it and I wouldn’t engage myself in the lyrics until adulthood when I came back to the song.
What gets me, what wrings me as wrong, what stands with warts? The refrain, the chorus, the element of songs that pulls the masses in. Read More
“Hush Yer Mouth” by the Pretty Voices (with Lyrics)
Hush Yer Mouth
Better hush yer mouth now baby
if yer talkin’ to me
How the hell you end up some place
ain’t supposed to be
You’re pretending it’s your first time
but I’ve seen you before
I’m pretending I don’t like it
but I come back for more
You shouldn’t be here with me
Don’t think I like what I see
You know there’s no guarantee
Nobody gets out for free
Better keep it on the down low baby
if you know what I mean
We both got our hands so dirty
never gonna be clean
You pretend it never happened don’t you?
Do you sleep through the night?
Try to sweep it out the back door, honey
that ain’t making it right
You shouldn’t be here with me
Don’t think I like what I see
You know there’s no guarantee
Nobody gets out for free
With indie music, what fans say can matter
Are you a fan of an indie band that’s actually got stuff out on the market? I don’t mean tracks-for-purchase on Bandcamp, I mean the major players – iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, CD Baby and the like. Is that small time band you like out there? Have you actually purchased tracks from them?
If your answer is “Yes”, I’ve got a follow up question for you: Have you written a review of the song or the album on those major shopping sites?
It’s something I’ve been noticing all too much with bands that aren’t going to get the hard line, big-time exposure that major record labels bring: They can be appreciated and looked fondly upon, but those same fans aren’t trying to spread the word or share the music to draw others in. A song or album review may just entice someone to at least check out a track that gets a good grade on Amazon. An album review may raise a group by just a notch (well, if the review is positive). And of course, sharing a track posted on YouTube, ReverbNation or Soundcloud on social media is the most direct attempt by a fan to draw in more attention to a group or a specific song.
Some songs need all the help they can get. It’s odd how songs that have been out in public view for several years have only a handful of listens in some cases. Oh, music videos draw people in but bands just getting started aren’t likely to have music videos. They do offer their songs for stream via YouTube, though.
(Side note: It’d help if the artists would properly title their music posts; just going by the song name does not necessarily make the song easily findable in web searches or on YouTube. Titles should be the band name followed by the song title.)
In the end, even if an artist or group have someone promoting their work, the fans and their own involvement at spreading the word to help boost the music. If you’re a fan of music by a certain artist, don’t just sit on that fact. Tell the public why you’re a fan or what you think about the music by a small-time group that you have in your library.
Unseen Sound: The Pretty Voices – Grease Fire)
Grease Fire by Pretty Voices
She’s a self-confessed killer of innocent house plants
Wearin’ business suits and librarian glasses
Hair piled high and a witty reply
Askin’ pointed questions has gotten my attention….
My Love’s a grease fire Baby
It’s getting hotter
My love’s a grease fire baby
Don’t bring me water
Her legs are long and so, so strong
I can ignore that rip in her stockings
Dark brown hair and focused ambition
I’m coming unglued, I can’t keep it hidden
My love’s a grease fire baby
It’s getting hotter
My love’s a grease fire Baby
Don’t bring me water
She drive’s too fast and she’s way to reckless
It’s balanced with grace, and she’s never selfish
She’s a girl of a different stripe
I might get nervous but I know what I like
My love’s a grease fire baby
It’s getting hotter
My love’s a grease fire Baby
Don’t bring me water
I’ve drawn a political conclusion by way of the Piano Man
I’ve come to a conclusion: The waitress practicing politics while the businessmen slowly get stoned would be a more politically affluent and effective President of the United States than Donald J. Trump. Your move, Billy Joel.
Interest in a song by way of a radio stream
I happened on this, “Be My Friend” by Tomas Fornstedt, by chance while tuned in on Lonely Oak Radio.
Give it a listen, what do you think?
I never heard it but I knew the unknown
You ever come across something totally foreign to you and yet you distinguish it? You know of things even if you have never physically interacted with them? I’m not talking about watching commercials for amusement parks or other famous locales and then going to them. I mean something more personal and yet something more physically removed than having seen or heard whispers about an item and then having it thrust on you by chance. Read More
Sounding protest of under-exposure of a high-level protest song
If you haven’t heard, Bruce Springsteen has partnered with an old chum and his group to protest President Donald J. Trump by way of a song. If you haven’t noticed, protests are becoming a mainstay and for the entertainment industry to show issue with Trump was to be expected.
There’s a failure here though. Not in the second day it’s public, at least.And no, this isn’t a partisan position, it’s simply something you have to do with music to really accomplish anything.
A message might be conveyed in “That’s What Makes Us Great” (the name of the song in question), but hearing that message in any way, shape or form only seems to be available via purchasing the song. Not from Google Play, the Apple Store, Amazon or another avenue, but from Joe Grushecky (Springsteen’s partner in this). No preview of the song is available to listen to either.
In essence, this has caused buzz, it’s aused interest, it’s caused talking, you can find a ton of that through a simple Google search. What it’s also caused is musical silence unless you pay the piper first. It’s a 99 cent song, but a way to truly compel people to want to buy the thing is to let them hear some of it first.
It’s like that Top 100 list I published the other day: Plenty of music, plenty of music underexposed to the masses. The big difference here is tha a music titan is who is a key performer in the song. That alone will drive some sales while wait-to-see/hear stops others.
I’d guess it’s only a matter of time before this goes further in where it’s sold, or if one streaming site or another gets to air it. Until then, it’s just chatter for the masses.
EDIT April 25, 2017: posted late last week but lost in a mire of video/news coverage of the song — the song itself:
An earworm from 80’s children’s television
Earworms are common in life. They happen – a song pops up at random or a snippet of something musical that you’ve heard, be it a professional song, a TV theme, a commercial, or something else. It happens.
I’ve been haunted in the past by a piano riff to a song I didn’t know the name to that I had heard off the radio as a child. A friend helped me find out what pop song it was. I now listen to the tune on a semi-regular basis.
I’ve got another song in my head and there are issues that likely make it impossible for me to ever hear it again; another volley from childhood in the 1980s. This time, though, I saw the song performed on television and I know the refrain from it… It’s just most every other factor is forgotten and web searches turn up nothing.
It was on Nickelodeon, I’m pretty certain of that. It wasn’t Pinwheel, or Out of Control (to even suggest that one is comical, which goes well with Out of Control’s comedic motifs), and it sure as shit wasn’t something from You Can’t Do That on Television. I just don’t remember the show besides being acting and musical – and I don’t mean skit musical but performing on-stage for children in an audience.
And while memory is dim on any other details, the acoustic song’s refrain isn’t forgotten:
Swimming in the pool and lying in the sun,
Swimming in the pool and lying in the sun
In fact, it comes off like a coda to end the song from my memory. It didn’t go on for 4 or 5 minutes but it was repeated over and over again until the last line: Swimming in the pool… And lying in the sun!
I can’t remember other verses, but the song was about summer time. I can remember the tempo. Everything else is a wash – who was performing it (guys), what show, all the lyrics. I’ve tried looking the song up quoting the refrain but results were minimal on Google and seeing some were linked to adult related content, I don’t think the wording is right on my part or the song is actually listed lyrically online.
It’s not like songs off Nick escape me entirely. I can’t forget Hocus Pocus from Today’s Special. The theme to Pinwheel is still in my head. Heck, maybe I have the wrong station where I heard this thing? It could have been CBS but the only live-action, children’s TV show that I remember watching was the Patchwork Family (I don’t know if that was a New York only broadcast, by the way; it was a Saturday morning show).
Back to the song in question, it’s catchy to the point you’d expect someone to cover it. Then again, it’s a kid’s song. It’s not going to get covered as so much remembered. In this case, it is indeed remembered – just without solid facts of who, what, where and when.
Exposing songs from Music Tampa Bay’s Top 100 list of 2016
Indie music is…well, independent to the point it adds additional responsibilities to the artist to expose their tunes to the masses. Sometimes that comes with ease. Sometimes that’s an afterthought.
I cited the other day when talking about Gypsy Star, keeps a competitive Top-40 list (which listeners and web visitors vote on). At the end of the year, the songs that rank highest in votes on the Top 40 are piled into a Top 100 song list. The site has a page devoted to the listings from several years – though the lists are graphics and somewhat illegible. It doesn’t really get the songs out there or make it easy for you to actually find them online.
This post is an attempt at changing that. I’ve taken the 2016 Top 100 listing from Music Tampa Bay and converted the image to an actual list. To build on that, to actually expose the artists who ranked so well to make this list, I’ve hyperlinked to as many of the songs as I could find.
While these are supposed to be Tampa Bay based artists, some have national attention (Four Star Riot among others). Also, while this list was for 2016 – some of the songs were published before then and I don’t mean just a year earlier.
The ranking of the songs itself is based off of votes cast in the Top 40 listing. I can’t say this was pure song rankings, or as if there was no “fix” regarding the top 10; don’t take the order as an opinionated or fine performance ranking. It’s just voting.
As of this writing, 80 out of the 100 songs are linked to so you can take them in yourself. I’ve linked to YouTube most of the time, but other places such as Reverb Nation and Soundcloud also get linking. Spotify contains many of the songs, including non-linked songs (I decided against using Spotify due to the forced registration to use the service). Some of those unlinked songs also are readily available on commercial sites such as Amazon or iTunes – this isn’t a sales-pitch though, so I didn’t link to any of that either.
Some of these songs, despite being listed as Top 100 and having age and radio play on Music Tampa Bay (at least) had never been viewed on YouTube by the time I crossed them while compiling this piece. Some came off as deeply hidden. It sort of furthers the point of limited exposure.
This article remains an ongoing project as I’d like to get music genre listed next to each song… I mean, c’mon! You’ve likely never heard of most (if not all) of these artists and you’re not exactly encouraged to blindly click to a song. At least knowing it’s supposed to be pop, rock, country, folk, etc. will encourage where you go.
Also, as this remains an ongoing project, if you can provide a link for a non-linked song that would be great. Just use comments below or contact me via email with a link. Read More
Indulged by the glimmer from Gypsy Star
I was on the Music Tampa Bay website yesterday. For those of you who don’t know, it’s an indie rock/music station in the Tampa Bay metro area (96.7 FM). I’ve interacted with the site before as I helped get the Pretty Voices on air on the station.
One key element on the Music Tampa Bay website is a Top-10 list of songs from local artists. It’s also directly tied to voting on the Top-40 of the station. I was looking at the list specifically to see if the Pretty Voices had any tracks listed at the time (nope). None of the listed artists or bands were familiar to me and that’s regularly the case with me and indie music.
What’s also regularly the case with me is checking out an indie artist because… why the hell not?
So, listed at #1 at the time on the Top-40 list was Gypsy Star, “I Feel Love”. I jumped to Google and typed that in and instead of pointing to a version of “I Feel Love” on YouTube, it pointed to the song Paramour:
All too often what I hear and what I see is bland rock. It’s not the lyrcs that make it bland, it’s just the non-riff of guitar and everything layered on top of each other to make the tunes forgettable. This was not that. I was taken aback by a violinist and accordion being part of the arrangement. Gypsy Star describes themselves as being “dynamic folk / rock” and this sure as shit felt like it. It transfixed me through Monday night.
Yet, listening to the opening of the song again, familiarity crept in. I’ve heard another variation of this before, haven’t I? Listen to the song alone for a minute, without the show distraction. Think about it for a minute.
It reminded me squarely of a song that “you can check out any time you like, but you can never” leave:
Don’t take that as a criticism, folks. I highly recommend checking out more of their tunes; they just released the album Under the Moonlit Night in January. Listening to “Paramour” and checking out some of their other songs (like the previously mentioned “I Feel Love”, you can find “I Feel Love” here, it is on YouTube… Not in concert version) I’ve been left curious and surprised. Gypsy Star is only a Tampa Bay local group? They sure as hell look an sound like a group that should be seeing a broader playing area in Florida, in the US and perhaps around the globe.
Listens and flaws are found at Spotalike
It’s easy to come to a dead end when you’re trying to find more music of a certain sound, temp, or variety. I’ve posted requests for song suggestions before as proof of that. Suggestions can lead to other people’s tastes from a wide variety of performers, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into you willingly following through on suggestions… Especially if you don’t know the artists.
There’s a tool out there on the web that I crossed last weekend, called Spotalike. It’s got a winter holiday motif that you need to ignore, that and it’s powered by way of Spotify. Simple directions: if you put a song/artist in the entry field, it’ll produce a list of what it considers similar songs. The first three entries tend to be by the same artist while what follows is a variety from other artists. What sold me on the entire tool is how I would enter songs from an easy-listening playlist that I have, and some of the first suggestions would be other songs from the list. The right similarity was there.
I also know it’s not perfect, though….
I like Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen; throw it in that easy-listen playlist because of the light music (side note: I need to find Bruce’s Oscar performance of the song where he played piano).
The problem here is Spotalike’s first suggestion. Born in the USA is a rocker with a strong beat, heavy lyrics and of course the famous chorus chant that people fixate on. There are others produced in the top 10 results that fit the bill (Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton, One by U2) and others that make me shake my head and say “no” (I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith). I guess this list is just proof no playlist suggested can be perfect, but some songs fit while others just seem to be a reach.
Yet the results for “Streets” aren’t what led to this post, no, no. I went with an early 1990’s rocker by one of the top axe men in music, Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz:
That was off a top album in 1993 (but failed to crack the Billboard Top 100). The attitude, the energy, the guitar work by Lenny, it’s just fantastic. Is it a one-of-a-kind ode? Arguable; there are plenty of songs that could be suggested just for guitar work and early 90’s popularity (Green Day and Basket Case as well as Longview immediately come to mind).
Yet one-of-a-kind is how Spotalike seems to be looking at it as it stands. Upon entering the song and going for the results, “Are You Gonna Go My Way” is the only song result. No playlist gets generated. It’s one thing for that to happen with an indie band (Pretty Voices are on Spotalike, for example, but don’t generate results) but for someone who has been so prominent in popular music and rock and roll to get brushed off? That’s either a flaw in the system, a business conflict between the powers-that-be and Kravitz’s camp or just an outright disrespect towards a musician someone at Spotalike doesn’t like. I’m going to side with the flaw factor. I’m sure it pops up with some other songs by popular artists.
This shouldn’t hold sway over you using Spotalike or not; there’s too much music out there to get hung up on flaws and misgroupings. So much music and so few quality suggestion tools exist. The system can’t be perfect but it seems like Spotalike is sound to one decree or another.
The Beatles video, “You’re Going to Lose That Girl”, missing in action no more
It’s arguable to write that the greatest song the Beatles ever recorded and didn’t release as a single was “You’re Going to Lose That Girl”, which was released in 1965 on the album “Help!”. It’s a standard Lennon/McCartney scribed ode that has ties to “She Loves You” as if it were a sequel. I write that point here but I don’t link because trying to find the source I read has been fruitless (this line will be deleted if I do find the link). There are only two words on record for any member of the Fab Four speaking about the song: John Lennon told Playboy in 1980, “That’s me.” You can find more in-depth coverage of the song here. There are touches on other facts about Lennon / McCartney and history that may pique your interest.
I was introduced to the Fab Four in 1985 when my father won a VHS tape of “Help!” from 101 WCBS FM in New York. I was skittish and disinterested at first in watching as the tape opened up with the black-and-white trailer to “A Hard Day’s Night”, the film the Beatles made in 1964. Black-and-white film and disjointed snippets of Beatle songs from the movie just didn’t win me over (and what would you expect? I was 5 or 6 years old at the time). I fidgeted, I tried getting up, but my father put his hands on my shoulders and sat me down.
Then “Help!” started, with actor Leo McKern reciting cult tidings in what amounted to an execution ceremony. Though it was a dark setting, the color blazed (in comparison to that “A Hard Day’s Night” trailer and my interest ticked up. One thing led to another in the film and McKern’s character of Clang bellowed to his cult sect that surrounded him, “Where is the ring?! Search her! What has she done with the ring?!” The cult cried repeatedly “The ring?!” in response and then… then…
Then you see the fabled ring, a large red gemstone on a standard gold band. It just so happens to be on the hand of drummer Ringo Starr as a performance of the song “Help!” gets underway (in black-and-white… which meant nothing to me at this point) and truly the movie began as the Beatles performed “Help!”.
There were seven songs performed in the movie, with “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” being my favorite. Heck, viewing the film a second time, I remember my brothers and I rewinding the video to replay the song and sing along with it. We were won over. That’s not to say “Help!” didn’t win us over, or “Ticket to Ride”, “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”, “I Need You” (George Harrison’s first composed song), “The Night Before, or “Another Girl”. It’s just the memory of this song in particular.
Director Richard Lester played with lighting but did a simple in-studio scene with John, Paul, George and Ringo. The hues and colors vary and smoke plays into scenes (hey, smoking was hip back then Ringo is doing it in some scenes of the song). I’d put this song, as a video; well ahead of the majority of music videos that also play the studio scene. And seeing it’s been 52 years since the damn thing was recorded, that should tell the music video director sect out there to raise their game.
You can’t find the song on YouTube though, and the simple Google search (which now produces extensive info results for most songs) only shows you amateurs playing.
Is there a business contrast playing out between Apple Corps LTD (the Beatles company) and Google? I don’t know. What I do know is that I started this write up fixated on not being able to find the videos from “Help!” on YouTube. Only a fraction of the movie performance of “You’re going to Lose That Girl” can be found.
A re-worded my web search just a tad (with quotation marks: “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” video, Help!) and lo and behold I found what has been missing via Vimeo.
“You’re Going To Lose That Girl” from Merritt Mullen on Vimeo.
Will it remain on the site? Dunno, though it’s 4 year lifespan tells me that it’s going to stay. You can find a low quality version of “Ticket to Ride” on there, as well as “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (standard quality). The other songs are missing / have mixed in content.
The Pretty Voices – “Haircut” (with lyrics)
From the Tampa Bay area indie rock group the Prety Voices, “Haircut” is off of their 2016 album Jangular:
Haircut
Goin’ out to see a band, by the stage is where I’ll stand
You look good standin’ next to me in a white t-shirt and blue jeans
A pretty face and crooked frame, I just wanna know your name
Swallow hard, what to say? I don’t even know your name
I just like your haircut
Blue black hair contrasts porcelain
It’s too much!
Asymmetrical Haircut, Asymmetrical Haircut
Sharp and original, you’re such an individual
Asymmetrical Haircut, Asymmetrical Haircut
Sharp and original, you’re such an individual (you make me fuckin’ miserable)
Let’s get a drink after the show, where do you wanna go?
I don’t know, I don’t care, she tilts her head and flips her hair
Where you been, all my life, do you wanna be my wife?
“I’m a vegan, so you know.” Hipster chick is status quo…
I just like your haircut
Blue black hair contrasts porcelain
It’s too much!
Asymmetrical Haircut, Asymmetrical Haircut
Sharp and original, you’re such an individual
Asymmetrical Haircut, Asymmetrical Haircut
Sharp and original, you’re such an individual (you make me fuckin’ miserable)
I just like your haircut
Blue black hair contrasts porcelain
It’s too much!
Asymmetrical Haircut, Asymmetrical Haircut
Sharp and original, you’re such an individual
Asymmetrical Haircut, Asymmetrical Haircut
Sharp and original, you’re such an individual (you make me fuckin’ miserable)
Lyrical hopes and poetic dreams for the immediate future
I’ve been going through older poems that don’t appear on the site, I’ve been going through a collection of my works over the decades . Things I wrote as poetry sure sound like songs (or at least look like them, and I can imagine melody to go along with them). I’m no musician though, no composer, or I’d try to put together a full song and get things on the market (not me as a performer, me as a composer).
I will admit right now that I do have a poetry/lyrical verse manuscript and am hoping to have a self-published book out in 2017. That’s still in the process of being honed out though. There are aspects I haven’t even explored yet with that, and those I have asked to review my work (as editor types) have yet to get back to me with any input.
All of that said, here’s an example of that lyrical-verse/poetry that I had a habit of doing in the past. It’s something that is not going to be included in the book as it stands, but that could change. I’d appreciate feedback on this too. It has been on the web before, when my personal home page was on Tripod ages and ages ago. Different title then.:
Reviewing lyrics and Living on the Edge
As a young teen, I was pretty fixated on Aerosmith’s 1993 album release “Get a Grip” and the hits that came from it. It was such a mix of Hard Rock and Pop, along with a mix of Steven Tyler’s attitude (which was most shown off during video performances – but that’s acting in part; lyrically it showed up in songs like “Flesh” or “Crying”.
The song that won me over was track #5 on the album, “Livin’ on the Edge”
Musical Demo: Picture Perfect (aka Picture Perfect Love Affair)
In the late 1990’s I was a poet and lyricist first and foremost. You can find some of the poetry I wrote and have written over the years on the site (click the writing tab above and move down to the poetry selection). That’s not the point though. One poem I wrote, just a lyrical mash-up inspired a bit by Green Day, was “Picture Perfect Love Affair”, a crazy guy in love with a girl in a photo. In fact, that story sort of mocks me at the time, as girls from High School still mattered, and I only had their photos to look at.
Years later, I forget when exactly, I had a little edit of the poem. “Edit” being the addition of a chorus to use between stanzas:
It’s a picture
Picture perfect
Picture perfect love affair
It’s a real simple build up and filler but it does the job that is expetec of it – it moves you forward and transitions you.
The summer of 2016 had me meet (online and off) Nick from the Pretty Voices. At one point or another I ran lyrical verse past him in a conversation and lo and behold, Nick delivered a demo of my work.
As it stands right now, I don’t think the Pretty Voices are going to record this thing, but it IS nice to have something I wrote put to music.
The missing hit: “You’re Going to Lose That Girl”
My first exposure to the Beatles, the most influential pop/rock group of the 20th century, came by way of a VHS tape. As a younger child before that, I’d probably already heard the group countless times on the radio; my father listened to oldies all the time on 101 WCBS FM in New York and I was exposed to a plethora of oldies through the first 6 years of my life while being driven around in the car. Dad also had a knack participating in call-in contests on WCBS and winning himself DJ autographs and other things from the station.
I don’t remember details of when and how, but I do recall my father sitting me and my brothers down to watch a VHS tape that he won from the radio. I also remember the fact it started with a black-and-white trailer for another movie and how it turned me off at the time… I mean, I was a kid! We had cable TV! I don’t remember what I wanted instead but I do think it was just expectations and that trailer didn’t catch my interest. That music-driven, black-and-white trailer was “A Hard Day’s Night”, the Beatles previous film.
Then the main picture started and my attention and interest was drawn in. I won’t go through the lead-in scene to Help! But between me and my two brothers who were watching, we got locked in with curiosity….and became enthused with the musical performances within the movie.
I could talk about Help! in-depth here as a film, but my focus isn’t on the entirety of the flick but a 2:23 performance that is, in my humble opinion, the greatest song not released as a single by the Fab Four in the group’s history (as an active band and after the breakup): “You’re Going to Lose That Girl.”
My brothers and I would rewind the movie and watch the performance of the band over and over again. John Lennon was on lead vocals, Paul McCartney and George Harrison backed him vocally in a harmonious fashion, repeating him and singing with him. Heck, the performance in the film itself was the band recording the song with the scene framing in-studio mystique (and before you ask: No, this was not filmed at Abbey Road).
I’d simply post the movie clip here but the powers-that-be (be it film industry or Apple Corps LTD) has removed the video from YouTube. In protecting copyrights and ownership, irrelevance is hoisted. It’s an ironic truth. Of course, if you know of the song and like the song, then that statement is not an attempted dressing-down of its value as-so-much an admission of where it has gone by being profit driven and thus hidden from the masses.
I don’t know how long covers of the song are going to be allowed to exist on YouTube (blame that on the powers-that-be if it isn’t long) but I post one of the covers of the song below. The biggest audio-difference between this and the original version is the depth of the sound and its richness.
Mediocre instrumental marked as top rock…. again
I’m not against art as music or as pop music for that matter… The Beatles give society enough reason for that. I’m not against fans voting for songs online either.
That being said, another installment of avantgardeaclue has christened a mediocre instrumental as the top Rock song on Jango / Radio Airplay. Solar Wind by Michael Wark is art, at best. Sadly, it’s proof of corruption on the system at its boldest. This ain’t Rock. It isn’t nearly so.
Warping of top indie music voting (again)
Once again, via Jango and Radio Airplay, artist Michael Wark came out on top of a weekly ranking. This following instrumental named “Nikola Tesla” came out on Week 40 as the top Rock song on the network:
Or would being the top avante gard a clue be more fitting? That song doesn’t fit Rock (aka Rock n’Roll), Alternative, Pop, Folk, Country, or many of the other main genres of Radio Airplay’s weekly top list. It’s instrumental / artistry. It is not of the Rock genre though.
Worse yet: It was put on YouTube to the public in December 2011; a nearly five year old song is voted to a top 10 list for a week in a field of indie musicians who offer a wide variety of music from much more recent times…
Wark might have fans and friends giving him a bunch of weekly voter support, but it’s also warping the concept that Radio Airplay/Jango put together to have indie submissions ranked weekly. That and this not Rock.
By the way, the top song for the genre of Metal on Radio Airplay/Jango for Week 40 – Final Breath – is a lot more Rock worthy than “Nicola Tesla”. Here’s a link to it on Jango because there is no YouTube video at the moment. Check it out.
The story of two Internet Radio streaming services
Internet radio… I don’t even know if that’s truly the proper title to use for this. It’s audio streaming of music and perhaps there is advertising but it’s not like traditional radio. Certainly not when you take in the aspect that computers and choices (by the listener and the software programming) are in control of the broadcasting and what’s airing and such. Oh, that is still a truth in traditional radio airplay, but disc jockeys and local advertising isn’t as ardent a factor. No, you’re the disc jockey ultimately and advertising is a different beast online. But I digress, this isn’t about ads.
I’ve been using Pandora casually for a few years. I know its power and influence… So it was a chance I took trying to help prop up the local garage rock/pop band that I’ve been helping out since summer of this year, the Pretty Voices. As someone who has worked in the distant, distant past for search engine submissions when they were a slower process, I thought the challenge of Pandora was a throwback. It was also intimidating.
Pandora has standards and a large audience. They’re not going to just take random submissions / they’re going to have standards that need to be reached and exceeded, applying to both the music and the actual submission form process. My first effort to get the band on the services proved quality mattered. The submission song (Scenius Genius, a rocker with foul language) and submission form came up short in the eyes of Pandora. Disappointing? Sure, but not a total surprise. It had taken a full week of review on their part and that could have been inspired by internal debate to go along with competition from other potential artists submitting new content to the network, but it still came up short. Close, though. Much closer than I realized.
It took me a second submission only a few days later, using another song as an example (Crackle Pop) and an elaboration on the form regarding the band itself and details on the song example used in the submission to get the accepted status. Yes, Pandora accepted the Pretty Voices and that was three days after that second submission! The album, Jangular, by the band went live on Pandora on October 4th and you can find it here. Quite the accomplishment for the group and a feat for the submitter!
This process seems a hell of a lot more complex-yet-involved than the one utilized by Jango and its formal audio administration area, Radio Airplay.
Simple enough, Radio Airplay lets musicians upload music to the network, but you have to have a paying membership; a monthly fee. While that comes off like an immediate downside the fact that it airs audio to international locations (Canada, Europe, the Russian Federation, Asia, etc) makes up for it. Limits on exposure do exist though; if you’re not paying the top level monthly fees, you only have so many credits per month to expose listeners to your music, and top ranked songs earn more credits from the network. This is another flaw of the system, but not such a big flaw as its weekly “top songs” list.
In concept, it’s a simple standard that’s known in the music industry: The song that was most well liked in major musical genres such as rock, metal, alternative, country, pop, dance, rhythm and blues (R&B), etc. All the songs get ranked by the listeners on Jango and it reflects music popularity… You can’t go wrong with having a top-ranked song list, can you?
In this case, yes…. Yes you can.
I’m not sure if it’s just the change of the music world or what, but I’m pretty sure there’s something going on when an instrumental, mid-tempo song is ranked top “Rock” song for a week, especially when it lacks guitar music. Case in point: Week 39 on Radio Airplay had an instrumental named Martha’s Vinyard as the top ranked “Rock” song.
You cannot tell me that’s rock. And my venting here isn’t just over the fact this is a mislabeled genre but also the fact this guy routinely gets ranked tops for his instrumentals in rock or pop. That and the weekly top list isn’t top songs by genre as-so-much singular songs that are weekly best per genre. Here’s the top list for Week 39 (where Martha’s Vinyard was ranked top Rocker)..
Weekly with these top ranked songs, you’ll find genre defying music as the top ranked numbers from Jango/Radio Airplay. It gets ridiculous. Fan reaction to music is one thing, wrongly categorization is another, but mismanagement from the host company to the point it allows this to go on and on and on tops it all.
Additions for “Relaxing, EASY favorites”?
I have a musical playlist that is 9 hours long. It’s specifically songs that I can relax to and that I enjoy listening to, spanning over 50 years…
And yet, I can use more songs or suggestions to add to the playlist. While every song on this list I like in one way or another, hearing certain songs too often can diminish them or make me want something else. At the same time, there’s got to be more than a few songs I’m outright forgetting from bygone eras of pop music, and I know I’m clueless on more recent songs that are catchy and fit this. Read More
“El Camino” by the Pretty Voices
Me and my girl are drivin’ cross the state
Gonna start over, with a clean slate
All that we own is in this car/truck that she hates
A ‘‘70 El Camino with airbrushed plates
She says slow down honey you’re drivin too fast
I pull her close and ease off the gas
It’s too late I see the blue lights flash
The cop says take it easy let the good times last
Palm trees and stars are reflected in our window
Ronnie Elliott is singing on the radio of my
Lime Green El Camino
Drivin’ over the Sunshine Skyway at night
Gulf coast’s on the left and Tampas lit up on the right
Out of gas and tired, guess it’s time to turn in
Wouldn’t you know the city’s got a drive in
Ten buck per car and they let us in.
We climb into the bed and settle in.
When the movie ends we’re the last of cars
My girl looks up and all we see are stars.
The stars and the sand are perfect tonight
The salt in your hair well it tastes all right
I love the stars and palm trees reflected at night, alright.
I love you and the bed of my car
I don’t have to drive we won’t go too far
Everything’s all right, when we’re here tonight.
All right!!!
Going for the "Jangular" from the Pretty Voices
A garage band named “The Pretty Voices” seems a little odd, but that’s the gist I think: to be a little off. The group isn’t aimed at a profound/powerful vocal arrangement; they’re about doing the rock thing in the garage-band kind of way: Independent, holding amateur flaws but also showing an ability that warrants exposure in one fashion or another.
It was completely by chance and a “well why not?” attitude on my part that got me to check out their album, Jangular, which was released in May of this year. The entire album is available online for purchase but it’s also able to be accessed through YouTube.
Now, I’m not a garage band listener on the norm… Heck, I rarely listen to anything of current (which holds to this story in a way, we’ll get to that in a second). I really did just listen to Pretty Voices by chance (the direct influence being Creative Loafing Tampa’s tweeting about their review of Jangular). I was drawn into the group from what I was hearing simply because the band could hit an influential riff in their pieces, such as in Control. It’s simple enough, though it also has its flaws (late in the song, it just ends up sounding messy).
El Camino, in beat and pacing, is pop rock in how it comes off. I can’t make out the lyrics but that’s my flaw with hearing disability and it – missing out on lyrics – is a running truth for most of Janular songs. That’s not a flaw for them, not as much as when engineering / production can’t diversify the sound produced for bridges in Pretty Voices songs.
The track that stands out for me to the point that I bought it was “Crackle Pop” which I embed here:
The oddity of the number is that it was released as a single three years ago by the group. The entire concoction of Jangular was put together and amassed over five years. Back to “Crackle Pop”, it’s a brilliant mix of the riff and pacing to truly come off as a crackling pop-rock number. The take from years ago seems a little less refined than the album version of the song.
In the end, Jangular and Pretty Voices are worth checking into in one way or another – be it an online listen on YouTube, buying a track from an online store, or checking the group out in-performance at a show in St. Petersburg.
Looking for suggestions: Relaxing pop/rock numbers from the 1980s
Over the years, a lot of 1980s classics that I’ve been exposed to and enjoyed have been mocked and marred because of stenotypes of music form the 1980s in general as being too cheesy or being too slow/sleepy/boring. There are people I know who continue to dress down 1980s music and certain artists specifically because of the era and…
And they’re still good songs so shut up.
There are rich pop songs that are slower and perfect for night when trying to relax (if not sleep). I’ve got a playlist for it, but I know I’m lacking a lot of the music from that era that would fit:
- ”All out of Love” – Air Supply
- “Another Day in paradise” – Phil Collins
- “Don’t Dream It’s Over” – Crowded House
- “Drive” – The Cars
- “I’ve Been Waiting For A Girl Like You” — Foreigner
- “One More Night” – Phil Collins
- “Steppin’ Out” – Joe Jackson (which I wrote about recently)
- “Take My Breath Away” – Berlin
The whole reason I blog about this is because I’m looking for other 1980s songs like these – soft rock, pop, mid tempo. I’m aware of other options from some of these artists (Air Supply and Collins specifically) but I’m looking for other artists. Hearing different examples or suggestions wouldn’t be a bad thing.
And yeah, there are songs from other decades that fit the bill quite easily (“Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel; “Tears In Heaven” (unplugged) by Eric Clapton), but right now the quest is to discover from 30 years ago, not rediscover from the 1990s and be introduced to numbers form the 00s/2010s.
Film memories, lasting legacies, and songs from forgotten films
John Travolta is not the subject of this entry, but he is the starting point to get to what I want to speak about. It’s the way I tend to write – to segue into the point/subject. The subject is tied to Travolta and his work but Travolta isn’t supposed to be the main topic.
I got introduced to Travolta with “Look Who’s Talking” in 1990. I was a kid and the film got a lot of exposure in pop culture by way of the cutesy aspect and the fact stars Kristy Alley (Cheers among other things) and Bruce Willis had their hands in the film (among others). John Travolta was considered an also-ran at that point, or at least that’s how things seem to reflect now. It was a long way from Saturday Night Fever as well as his TV role in Welcome Back, Kotter. If there’s other stuff that was a large success for Travolta between those 70’s entries and his late 80’s/early 90’s stuff… well, I fail there (Urban Cowboy is an exception, I think). I just know Staying Alive was forgettable and we’ll leave it at that.
Between Look Who’s Talking and its sequels, Travolta found himself back in film culture. This ruffled feathers, which is actually my second memory of Travolta that stands out: Quentin Tarantino talking down about Travolta being in “a baby movie” either after his casting for Pulp Fiction or after the film aired at one film festival or another. It was repeated a few times, Tarantino couldn’t believe someone like Travolta had been in a baby movie! How could this happen?! It’s a quirk of cinema in general, for actors to be brushed off or working in roles that seem beneath them because of a lack of offers form the high. Heck, actor Dom Ameche was working dinner-acting jobs because no one would call him and offer work opportunities. It was what he’d already achieved professionally that got him cast as one of the Duke Bros. in Trading Places without even having to read for the role… But it was the first role in a feature film in 13 years.
Travolta had roles though. One of them, his pre-Look Who’s Talking film, is what I’m trying to segue to. I don’t recall exactly when I got exposed to The Experts, but I did catch it on HBO and it’s a quirky spy-comedy that has one immense quirk driving me nuts lately: an intangible soundtrack.
To summarize the movie: Two (Travolta and Arye Gross as Travis and Wendell) unlucky hipsters who keep failing at starting a club in New York agree to trying to launch a club in a small town. They find themselves in a reclusive, socially stunted (read: 1950’s down-home style) place without a lot of normal, modern aspects of society. They don’t find out until much, much later it’s actually a spy town within the Soviet Union. It’s a play on the Cold War and a contrast of culture. The flick didn’t exactly set any precedence but it’s not bad either. Maybe now it seems extra dated – Travolta had a mullet, which should tell you enough – because the Cold War isn’t a driving factor in society.
All of this leads to that aspect about the soundtrack that is driving me nuts: how you can’t find it. While I say the movie comes off dated now, one song promoting Americana can stand the test of time as it’s a nationalism/pop culture ditty called “Hometown U.S.A.”. The song was part of the closing of the film, I’m not going to give spoilers on that… It was quite fitting for when it was played, I’ll just say that.
Yet you can’t find the song in digital music stores. The lyrics aren’t posted anywhere that can be found on a Google search. The song itself is posted on YouTube but the quality of the copy is suspect (at least from my hearing). The artist, for the curious, is credited as David Morgan, with writing credits going to Harold Payne, Pete Luboff, and Pat Luboff. It got posted on July 4th, 2011 – 22 years after the film’s release and yet again fitting as it was the 4th of July.
How common is this in film, where songs just disappear? Ones that stand out to you and yet you can’t find them anywhere besides in the film itself? I’m not talking about Matthew Broderick’s clarinet playing during Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; I mean specifically songs crafted for films that just slip away. Another 1980’s film song that I was searching for in the last year (just to find the full performance of it) was “Paradise” by Kaylee Adams, which you can hear a snippet of in the movie White Water Summer. The only thing I had luck in finding was the movie clip itself and some employ pages / other Kaylee Adams songs.
A song is something that lasts in your mind if you connect to it or what images it’s tied to, or what feelings are around when you hear it. Songs tied to movies are especially going to leave a mark with you if you like the scene they’re part of… And that’s a fact even if the film is a bomb in cinema – the music can still leave a mark and a memory, which can still draw interest (and make the entertainment industry a dime) years and years later.
My occasional social media habit: Musical Therapy
There’s a little habit I have on Twitter, usually in the hockey off-season but rarely too. It’s great form my end but I think it likely sucks from a Twitter follower’s end because I’m not sharing media as I do it. I just announce it. I call it Music Therapy or Musical Therapy (#MusicTherapy or #MusicalTherapy in Twitter hashttag terms).
The habit actually inspired some creative writing in 2014 but I never finished what I started or even found finality to work towards… That’s going off on a different subject than I was trying to aim at here, but oddly the not-going-to-be-completed story and my musings on Twitter had one thing in common: Music heals and pushes you forward. It gives you something to revel in and celebrate.
My therapy sessions on Twitter, running on summer nights mostly, were just me announcing songs I was playing and yammering out facts and thoughts and feelings brought on by the song at play, or the band in question. It drew in some very good chatter from friends and ran off a lot of people following me for hockey purposes (that’s my day job, so to speak). Maybe that was opinion derived from what I was listening to at the time – 50 years worth of pop and rock with a habit of 60’s and 90’s stuff being dominant, and without a broad palette of songs. Not heavy metal, not hair metal, not rap, not balladeers (okay, actually those pop in at times but still…), no country, some bluegrass (basically just Credence Clearwater Revival), too little Motown, etc, etc. I only have somewhere above 1,250 songs in my personal library (music I choose to listen to) and not that many playlists, so there is repetition going on there that concerns me. Heck, this whole paragraph is tilted to the negative of my mind because I’m concerned I’m running people off when I’m trying to gain some release.
In another universe, I’m a late night deejay who’s been married five times, has a torrid affair with hi-if going and it helps stymie his bitterness at the world… Music soothes the soul.
It does have a worthwhile DJ feel to it, though, and it’s fun when people are there with me (well — through Twitter) to talk up the songs or suggest music. Some actually consider themselves informed by what i say about songs, be they facts or opinions.
The end of the mystery earworm
A few days before Christmas 2015, my friend Liz contacted me through Twitter in an enthusiastic state and asked “is this The Song?” The ambiguity is an appropriate title of a mystery earworm that’s followed me around since childhood. A couple of notes to a song, a piano or synthesizer riff, that I had heard a few times while in the car with my family as we traveled late at night through Queens, New York.
do-do DA-do, da-da Dada….
We were always passing through Flushing Meadows, on our way home in Suffolk County, New York. It was late at night as-was and it was usually me and my father who were the ones still awake in the car. Dad had been working overnight for the United States Postal Service at their sorting facility at LaGuardia Airport at the time. Driving home late at night was no big thing for him. For the rest of the family – my mothers and my two brothers – it was time for sleep. The would be dozing as we were in the beginning stages of a trip to the Great South Bay area of Suffolk County, some 50 miles away
We visited Queens and specifically Jackson Heights on a regular basis; it’s where my parents were from and their parents were still there. Well, at least their mothers and siblings. My mother’s mother was the usual destination of our trips into the city, though we regularly made brief stopovers to my dad’s mother’s place.
I don’t remember the exact streets that were taken to get to the Long Island Expressway and back home, but I do remember passing William A Shea Stadium and the World’s Fair site in flushing. I loved passing those location sites. And it was guaranteed my father would have the radio on and be listening to the music playing on one station or another while we headed east.
? da-da Dada, dad a DA-da…. ?
It happened more than once, I just don’t know how many times; it was too long ago to even try to guess. Driving through Flushing that song would be playing. Memories of the streetlamps from the highway and seeing Shea Stadium and the World’s Fair sites at night were sown with the song and the memory a guys voice tied to the song. I couldn’t recall a lyric; I could recall the piano riff though. Was it a keyboard or a piano? Memory wasn’t clear on that one either, but as time went by it came off more and more like a keyboard. Blame that on time and distance distorting a memory.
The last time I heard that song was by chance after I’d moved with my family from New York to Florida in 1989. It was about 5 years later and coincidentally / fittingly we were visiting the tri-state area because my aunt was to be married in October 1994. We all had flown from St. Pete/Clearwater airport to Newark on the long-since-defunct Southeast Airlines, and had to make the extra long trek from Newark to a location in Nassau County where our hotel was. While it was just mid-afternoon, it was only me and my father awake in the car at the time when that song came on air over the station my father was listening to.
“What is this?? What is this song, dad? It’s been in my head for years, I’ve always wondered….” He answered, but between the events of the wedding-weekend and life in general, what he said didn’t get retained in memory.
A lot of things have taken place in my life since that afternoon, including me becoming deaf and regaining my hearing with thanks to an Auditory Brainstem Implant (it’s a variation of the Cochlear Implant). One thing that didn’t change was memory of that song that riff. It haunted me. I started imitating it and running it by people in person around 2004, seeking out suggestions from those who grew up in the 1980s. Maybe they’d know? I ran it by family first before reaching out more broadly in recent years (by way of social media).
Early in 2015 I compiled a list of Billboard Hot 100 lists from the mid to late 1980s and started to check songs whose titles I didn’t recognize… Maybe that one is it? Oh, by the way? I’m not even supposed to be able to enjoy music as much as I do. That’s supposed to be a shortcoming of having sound by way of the Cochlear implant – you can’t process music right, and can’t enjoy the songs for what they are.
Yeah, well, I’ve got 1250+ songs in my iTunes library, many of them songs I’ve only heard after going deaf, and they sound like they should depending on the era they were recorded in.
Back to the Billboard listings – I stuck it all in an Excel file, and while it reintroduced me to a lot of good music from 1987 through ’84 or ’83, I didn’t find what I was looking for. I didn’t go through everything though – getting impatient and disappointed as well as having the rest of life happening. I still have the spreadsheet tucked away somewhere on the PC and want to go through it again to sample other songs from the list but, well, that’s not necessary any more in the case of THE song.
I forgot how Liz got caught up in this. We were talking through Twitter I guess and out of frustration or because musical chatter had come up – I brought up the song. A little while after our conversation in the summer, I sent an audio recording of me humming the song. Like many had reacted to me over the years, Liz (who’s my age) recognized the riff but had no clue of the song – who it was, what the song title was. She’s a 1980s music fan and has friends who are 80s music fans. The plan was to keep an ear open for it.
Oh, by the way? Soundhound sucks. I’ve used that app a few times on Android phones and at no point has song humming worked to identify a song, let alone this long-standing sought after item. While I see the application as absolutely loved by the masses, it’s just never lived up to its reputation or abilities unless I put a smartphone up to a speaker when a song plays that I need to identify.
At any rate, back to Liz: She was traveling with her husband and a friend through upstate New York less than two weeks ago. A SirusXM station that focused on stuff from the 1980s came on the air. A lot of songs have been suggested to me over the years ago The Song, but all of those suggestions aren’t even of the feeling of 80s pop hits that this thing sounded like. It’s no rocker, it’s no ballad. It was… it was … something… Probably a one-hit wonder too if I’ve never crossed it again. And you can guarantee a one-hit wonder song will make it back on-air through a station that covers a decade…
@Johnny_Fonts Fontana! “Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson!!! Is that The Song??
— Elizabeth (@spitesprite) December 19, 2015
I click that link and the tempo alone matches the memory. Then the piano of Joe Jackson’s “Steppin Out” starts coming through strong….
That link Liz posted, that song and hearing it again and knowing who sang it… that was an early Christmas gift and turned out better than the majority of my tangible gifts received this year. To have such a long standing question answered. It brings a level of internal peace and allows a degree of comfort. Such a trivial and persistent question gets solved, and now the earworm can’t haunt me by way of ignorance of who and what.
Brian Wilson tells me his favorite song off the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album
please click the title to be sent to the Reddit “Ask Me Anything” interview with The Beach Boys Brian Wilson.
You can’t compare a win in Sochi to the cultural event of Lake Placid
“They’re as big as the Beatles!” “He is / she is / they’re bigger than the Beatles!”
That’s rock and roll and pop music, not hockey. The four Liverpudians who invaded North America 50 years ago last week and changed pop culture in America, set a new standard in music. They raised the bar for other groups to meet or exceed. From time to time in decades after the onset of the British Invasion and well after Beatlemania waned from the worldwide psyche, comparisons would be thrown out for different groups or different individuals who inspired a mania of some sort or another from their fans and who were wildly popular and charismatic.
The thing is the Beatles – both the event of appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 and their influence on pop culture and music – went well beyond a mania and album/record sales. They changed the course of music and their contribution still holds weight and influence today. Can you say the Bangles achieved that? How about the New Kids on the Block, or the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls? Is Justin Bieber’s music going to be endearing to the masses in the years ahead? One Direction?
Now what the bloody hell does this have to do with hockey?!
Last night while putting together Sunday’s deadliest s post, I came across Larry Brooks article in the New York Post that suggested that Saturday’s Olympic hockey win for Team USA over Russia was the biggest win for USA Hockey since the “miracle” at the Lake Placid games in 1980. I should not have to explain that event or that achievement to any single person who reads Raw Charge or knows the sport of hockey. If you want to know that story from those who were involved in it, I urge you to check out “Do You Believe In Miracles?” from HBO films. It’s not a dramatization like the Disney film “Miracle”, but it’s actual footage, actual interviews, actual recollections from the likes of Herb Brooks, Mike Bossy and other key players on both Team USA and Team USSR from the Games of the 1980 Winter Olympiad
Getting back to the point – Saturday’s shootout win by Team USA at Sochi over the Russian Federation was thrilling. It was playoff hockey as we know it here in North America and a great game by both teams… But in no way was it comparable to Lake Placid.
Lake Placid, the rag-tag college bunch trumping the versed pros of the Soviet Union, was a cultural moment. America was down; America was on a morale low that cannot be compared to at this time. Vietnam was in the recent past and the scars from it were still visible; Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace almost six years earlier, and the US economy was in the gutter at the moment. Iran was in revolution and the American embassy in Tehran breached, with hostages taken and failures by the US military to rescue them.
Things were shit.
The Soviet Union’s ice hockey team was indomitable. I can’t even tell you how incredible and powerful and successful their national hockey team had been for decades on end in international play. The geo-political landscape was black-and-white: they were the enemies and they were a force that could not be stopped, a force that could not be trumped.
And what happened at Lake Placid? Herb Brooks coached a bunch of college kids above, beyond, and outside their abilities (and with a whole lot of luck) to beat them. Team USA didn’t just defeat the Soviets; they’d end up earning the gold.
So what the hell do the Beatles have to do with that?
February 1964 was a dark time In the USA as well. John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been slain in Dallas only three months earlier; “Camelot” was over. Race issues were at the forefront at home, a military action was taking place in Southeast Asia that would further define the generation but hadn’t escalated to an oppressive force at that point. The cold war raged on… The Beatles and their mania had already seized Europe but had failed to dent the US up until February 1964. An America in mourning got a shot of pep out of curiosity, and perhaps regained a moment of innocence that had been lost in Dealey Plaza with Kennedy’s assassination. Oh, I’m sure plenty of people turned up their nose during the performance of “All My Loving” (American TV’s live introduction to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Richard “Ringo Starr” Starkey) – Sullivan’s own musical conductor famously stated that the hair was the only difference between the Beatles and everyone else – but the event of that performance stands out in American history… Much like Lake Placid stands out for USA Hockey.
There are no hockey events by USA Hockey – be it the World Junior Championships or the Olympic games – that compare to the feat of Lake Placid. And while the game of hockey probably enjoyed an uptick with the result of those games, it did not influence a grander embrace of the sport in America as-so-much boosted national pride; the chips were still down but god damnit! we beat the Russians! We can still do things!
A new member joins the Stupid Club fraternity
Amy Winehouse has been found dead. Not a surprise, not in the slightest. She officially becomes another member of the Stupid Club, whose members the pop-culture have immortalized for members contributions to entertainment, as well as their over-indulgence and untimely demises.
A consortium of famous musicians and entertainment industry personalities who died at 27/28 years old.
Speculation on something unimportant
Has this:
Been inspired by this:
Gotta wonder but I have my doubts… Just cuz it’s The Beatles we’re talking about. And even IF they did announce at tomorrow’s event, it’s not like fans haven’t bought the CD’s or ripped MP3’s of songs from the Fab 4 they really want… Meaning unless there is something new from #3 Abbey Road on top of the iPod event, it’s just inevitability coming to realization if they are part of the announcements tomorrow.
Six years ago today…
The St. Petersburg Times gave me my closeup (as Cecil B. DeMille was not available)
The low and high
it was Thursday night where I think I turned a corner on my funk. I am not in a good place still, but part of my turn for the better was finding a song that I identified with that wasn’t entirely a mope. It said exactly what I was feeling.
I’ve known it for years but with thanks to mumbled lyrics by Mick Jagger (a lot of spoken word recitation) and the dreariness of the tune itself, the epiphany of the lyrics just don’t come through as strongly as they should.
Indeed, it’s a gorgeous lyrics that I so identified with from the song Out of Tears.
It’s the second verse that captured me… That and of course the lyrics in general. It’s not because of the sadness, the personal loss that’s on display. It’s how that second verse ends…
I won’t drink
I won’t eat
I can’t hear
I won’t speak
Let it out
Let it in
All this pain
From within
And I just can’t pour my heart out
To another living thing
I’m a whisper
I’m a shadow
But I’m standing up to sing
In the face of all that despair and sadness, there is a defiance. I won’t keep suffering this, life goes on and I revel in that knowledge.
At least that’s what I take from it.
During the day Friday, just casually listening to my iPod… I had my moral rebound completed with a song that I should consider cliché in it’s uplifting message to me by now. Not uplifting per se but turning-the-corner… from what I took from the lyrics of Out of Tears, George Harrison and the Beatles Here Comes the Sun was the perfect compliment. Better times are ahead… The winter has passed.
It tells a tale
It was a couple of years ago that I was wondering just what Michael Stipe was singing about in the R.E.M. classic “Losing my Religion”. For the prudes or the ultra-religious, the title might suggest the song is about a conflict in faith of the Divine. It’s a crisis of faith, indeed, but it’s faith in ones own self and self confidence.
In simplicity, it’s about someone not able to work up the courage to talk to the object of their affection:
I'm doing something wrong, aren't I?
So I’m on Pandora — I have been here a few times in the past trying to find similar music to what I love as a way to introduce myself to new music.
The problem is more times than not I get introduced to stuff that doesn’t sound at all similar to what qualities I like in a song.
For instance, tonight I started with the Doors and Moonlight Drive — The deep baritone vocal from Morrison, coupled with the trance like bridge section from Manzarek and the jazz style drumming from Densmore make this song a classic to me. Those are the qualities I am endeared to in the music.
What I get are songs that are probably comparable in structure but not too comparable – to me – to what the song invokes with the mood. A song that invokes the pace. A song that simply makes me do a double take that I want to hear again.
I tried You’re Going to Lose That Girl by the Beatles next. Again, the genome project picked up on the structure of the music and not so much the mood that’s set. The pace of the song doesn’tseem to carry over in the suggestions, nor does the vocal harmonies, nor the rhythem bae of the song that doesn’t overstep it’s bounds… But mostly it’s the vocals that are most catchy with the song.
And wasn’t catchy at all with the suggested songs that followed. I know, I am asking for a tough act to follow with bands that can compare to the Beatles or songs that can compare to the Beatles but there has to be something out there. This is a 43 year old song for god sake…
I did have a better time when I tried surfer instrumental rock (Walk, Don’t run gave way to soem great music) but that’s instrumental all the way. That’s how Pandora is supposed to work.
Maybe I’m just too picky with music…? Or maybe I am just doing this wrong.
Beatle-izing Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven
I dunno… Making a pop song out of Stairway to Heaven? 8 minutes condensed into 2:40? If you’ve never heard Stairway before, you might actually buy this as the standard.
You be the judge:
Jacked In
So I’ve had my artificial means of hearing hooked up and running for more than six years now… I don’t brag about it much or talk about it much because every time I get confident in something audio-wise, I then get into a social situation and end up getting sent back to feeling outside the hearing world again because I can’t understand the conversation.
Of course, I can revel in the fact that I can enjoy music again. I have been able to for some time as I think it’s been a tool for me to adapt back to the hearing world in one way or another. Sort of like a personal configuration utility for my brain — I remember how certain songs sound or certain tones I should be listening for — a cymbil crash perhaps, maybe the backign orchestra section jumping in during the refrain to “Hey Jude” — and press myself to hear these things. I use it as a gauge to see how well I am doing.
That took on a new dynamic last month as I had two cords, termed as Personal Audio Cables – sent to me by Cochlear Corp. These two wires — for personal media players or hi fi stereos/TV’s/computers — let me connect my body-worn speech processor directly to the aforementioned objects so I hear the tones or the music directly instead of trying to sort things out through a set of speakers.
But lets dispense with the technical crap. I got these things in January and I unpackaged one of the cables. I connected it to my PC speakers and then turned on iTunes… pulled up a song and started to play…
You seen the Matrix?
That scene where Neo gets combat training information uploaded to his head by Tank? It was kind of like that.
“Hey, I think Mikey likes it. Want some more?”
“Hell Yes!”
Now, nothing beats hearing and feeling music coming through the air and through the speakers. Nothing beats listening to smething in surround sound (for example) where you feel the sound waves and it adds to the effect of whatever you are listening to.
That aspect is lacking. But the aspect of having music beamed directly to my head? I’ll take it any day of the week. It’s been so awesome that I bought an iPod Nano and am experimenting with music I’ve never listened to before – which I wouldn’t try much when I was relying on the speakers alone.
Just in time for the weekend
…an ode to Suburban Hell:
Pleasant Valley Sunday
Gerry Goffin and Carole King
The local rock group down the street
is trying hard to learn their song
to serenade the weekend squire
who just came out to mow his lawnAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Sunday)
Charcoal burning everywhere
Rows of houses that are all the same
and no one seems to careSee Mrs. Gray, she’s proud today
because her roses are in bloom
And Mr. Green, he’s so serene
He’s got a TV in every roomAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Sunday)
here in Status Symbol Land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
and the kids just don’t understandCreature comfort goals
they only numb my soul
and make it hard for me to see
My thoughts all seem to stray
to places far away
I need a change of sceneryAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Sunday)
Charcoal burning everywhere
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
here in Status Symbol LandAnother Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Ahhhh Pleasant Valley Sunday)
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
(Ahhhh Pleasant Valley Sunday)
(repeat X times)
Upon further review: Stephen King’s top 24 rock songs ever
I like reading Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly (side note, Uncle Stevie — sorry but I let my subscription run out after 15+ years as a subscriber. Too much tabloidism now in the magazine and not enough industry coverage) and a couple of months ago I read Stevie’s Wonders which was King’s top 24 rock and roll songs.
The thing that got me was when I read the following paragraphs…
”Best rock songs of all time,” he says. ”That subject always starts arguments, especially if you don’t put ‘Stairway’ on there.”
I realized he was right. Especially since the idea of putting ”Stairway to Heaven” on such a list grosses me out. So I decided to take my biker buddy up on his idea. Twenty-four great songs, one for every hour of the day, picked by the Infallible Me.
I began by throwing out most of those Internet lists, because they’re full of ballads (”Tears in Heaven” as rock & roll? Oh, really?), soul (”When a Man Loves a Woman” is a great song but it’s not rock), and tunes that have been played to death. There’s also an amazing number of draggy songs on the lists, like ”Hotel California.” When would I like to hear that one again? Uh…how does never work for you?
Slowly, Her Name Fades Away
Well, the daylight slips away,
And I start to forget her name
She loved me for such a long, long time
Unlike any other lover of mine
She was so different,
But in the end, the same
Slowly, her name fades away
Our time just passed,
I thought it’d last
But my mistake …
She’s one and the same.
Well, she couldn’t cope,
A lover on a rope
So I must say,
Her name fades away
It’s guaranteed
That her and me
Would have run away some day
But as time went by,
That thought did die,
And our love passed on a Wednesday
Miracles forge —
and also disrupt
Slowly, her name fades away
What she meant to me,
I now can’t comprehend
I thought it was love everlasting,
At the end, it was just make pretend
Our love was once a fantasy,
A tale that I did once believe
But it’s sad to say, she’s gone away
Slowly, her name fades away
©1998 John P. Fontana
There is just something wrong with this
No offense to Anthony Kiedis, Flea or the rest of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers but I just can’t get my head around their slightly funked-up version of the Beach Boys classic, “I Gget Around”
Found it on YouTube just tonight while looking for a better live performance of the song than what I have on my machine by the original band. To his credit, Anthony is a hell of a sight better than Mike Love… Yet Flea being a little too abrupt with some bass work (or blunt instead of smooth) hurts things.
But then again, what do I know? I’ve listened to the original for almost 20 years now… It’s so engraved in my mind I thought I heard Brian Wilson’s high-pitched singing during the RHCP’s performance. Ah well.
Hapri, Hapri, Joy Joy
Not only can this guy cover multiple artists (see below with his rendition of U2’s One) but he also looks way too much like me circa 1997 (or if I aged without having anything bad happen to me):
A little strange…
I laughed my ass off over this because I’m a sodding American who never saw Hugh Laurie performing comedy…
