ROCK AND BLUES
"As Time Goes By" (Hupfeld) in a rock and roll styling, Simon Jay live in New York with a trio including a drummer who played with Duke Ellington 1966-68.
EPISODES
The Beatles: Breakout Influences
The Beatles And What They Found In Classical Music
"Borat's" All-time Sexytime Songs
Electric Guitar Virtuosity Through History
Famous Electric Lead Guitar Solos
Lyrics: Ridiculous Song Lyrics
Pink Floyd: The Music Of "Dark Side Of The Moon"
Keith's Classics: Keith Richards Solo
Sound Effects In Music History
The Rock Fan's Friends: Essential Guitar Music
The Rolling Stones: Best Albums
The Story Of The Trio In Music History
Frank Zappa: The Ten Best Albums?
FILM AND OTHER MEDIA
GENERAL
The Month of January: Why Are So Many
Leading Musicians Born At This Time?
Music In The Key Of D Part 111
Free association classics Part 1
Free association classics Part 11
Free association classics Part 111
Free association classics Part 1V
THE BEATLES AND WHAT THEY FOUND IN CLASSICAL MUSIC
Golden Slumbers
This is a good example of how rock people can learn from classical music. The song is not the greatest Beatle piece, but it is highly rated by many people and is a high moment on the "Abbey Road" album.
Paul McCartney apparently saw some sheet music from the Elizabethan era by English keyboard composer Orlando Gibbons. The piece was called (or contained lyrics including the words) "Golden Slumbers". McCartney liked the title and decided to write a song with the same title. Further, in his song there is the passage where the tune descends way down in a sweep and then jumps up back to the tonic note (the part just before the chorus "Golden Slumbers fill ...." etc). This appears in composer Dvorak's famous Cello Concerto. It is certain that McCartney would have heard the concerto first. But it is a nice tune and very popular with Beatles fans. This is an example of how a person can pick up things from classical music, and fashion a pretty much new piece from this.
Hey Jude
In "Hey Jude", the first six notes (the first two bars, over the first two chords of the tune) closely trace the opening of the Largo movement from JS Bach's fourth Keyboard Concerto (BWV 1056 in F minor). Paul McCartney then, of course, took this beginning to new places. But the opening is very similar (McCartney adds a note before the first bar: the note of the word "Hey". He would certainly have heard the Bach first). What this means of course is that if you have only heard "Hey Jude", you have a starting point to investigate the Bach work (and this particular movement is stunning), and Bach generally.
Please Please Me
The opening notes of this the first number one for The Beatles (to the words "last night I said these words to my girl"), are an approximation of the powerful and grand opening of Tchaikovsky's Serenade For Strings in C major, quite a well-known work. There are even closer resemblances to a part of Castel-Nuovo Tedesco's Guitar Concerto and to a part close to the very end of Stravinky's "Firebird" Suite. Castel-Nuovo Tedesco's Concerto was one of the works recorded by famous Spanish guitarist Andre Segovia in the fifties and sixties when he popularised the classical guitar: George Harrison said in an interview with an American publicatiion in 1964 that he listened to mainly Segovia and Chet Atkins, amongst guitarists. So it is likely, or at least quite possible, that Lennon had heard the Castel-Nuovo Tedesco before he wrote "Please Please Me". Finally, everybody who investigates classical music as a teenager knows about the "Firebird Suite": it is reported that Lennon listened to a lot of classical music when he was about twenty.
Because
"Because" was famously begun by John Lennon reversing the arpeggiated opening notes of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata (second movement).
Love
"Love" has a close resemblance to a piano nocturne by nineteenth century Irish composer John Field. The point is, listen to great music and see what happens.
Penny Lane
The opening part of the tune of "Penny Lane" is close to the trumpet that begins Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
I Wan To Hold Your Hand
I heard a brief snatch of Bach in a Coffee Bean shop that was the same notes as those accompanying the chorus of "I Wan To Hold Your Hand". I am not sure of the name of the piece.
She Loves You
The music to "with a love like that, you know you should be glad" is over the chords C minor and D7, a relatively unusual way to return to the "home" chord (and key) of G. George Gershwin (if he can be called "classical" when speaking of his songs) used these chords in his famous songs "Embraceable You" and "The Man I Love", songs certainly very familiar to Lennon and McCartney. The effect achieved by these chords in "She Loves You" is almost identical to that in "Embraceable You": at the very end of its 32 bars: "my sweet embraceable you".
From Me To You
"From Me To You" has a middle section in a new key, F (the main part of the song is in C): "That G minor in 'From Me To You' is a whole new world", said Paul McCartney. It is: it's a move to a new tonal area, a new key, by what in classical music is called a "ii V I" chord progression, one of the two main ways to change key in music. In the Beatles' "From Me To You", the Gm chord is followed by a C7 and then you arrive at the new key of F major, for their middle section (the home key, the overall key, of the song is C major).
Yesterday
A further use of the ii V I chord progression to change key is in "Yesterday": ".... all my troubles seemed so far away ...." is (singing in F) over the chords E minor, A7 and D minor, a key change to the relative minor D minor. Neat.
Beatles "bootlegs" are a great source of inspiration for writers of music. You see the half-way stage of a well-known tune or record, or you find something that is important but that you simply didn't know about. Several examples are below, conveniently grouped on Youtube.
McCartney Medley
This clip is a recording of some McCartney music from 1967 or 1968. It hegins with "Step Inside Love", a hot written for an English singer Cilla Black, then there is a funny Latin spoof. Finally McCartney sings a snatch of Jerome Kern's "The Way YouLook Tonight" and segues into "I Will" (the White Album). The lattertwo songs show exactly what this site is about: a new song comes from knowing older songs.
Helter Skelter
Obviously written on acoustic guitar, again an important lesson fro writers, "Heletr Skelter" is heard played by McCartney at the mic, on acoustic.
McCartney At The Piano
Here Paul sings a song called "Suicide", demonstrating his showbiz style. At this time, elements of Wings melodies begin to appear.
Oh Darling
Heavy echo on a demo from 1969 (Abbey Road).
Get Back
A stand up rehearsal of "Get Back", 1969.
Something
Getting "Something"into shape.
"Let It Be" Sessions
A clear quality run of tracks from 1969. Older numbers are included, for example "Three Cool Cats" (1962 Decca demos).
6 July 1957
The day John met Paul: a tape of two tracks played by John's band on the day, The Quarrymen of course. Hear the boom of the tea chest skiffle bass.
The Beatles In Color, 1961?
An amazing clip, but with no sound. Who cares? This is priceless.
Live Manchester 1963 She Loves You
Perhaps the best footage of The Beatles: live in Manchester, and in color.
The twelve string guitar and its communicative properties: Beethoven once said the guitar was a miniature orchestra. The twelve string guitar is almost literally so, at least in terms of its texture. It has been utilised at pivotal times in twentieth century musical history. Twelve strings and the truth ....
Rich sound
Blind Willie McTell
McTell played a twelve string in the 1920s and 1930s. His most famous record is "Statesboro Blues".
Leadbelly
Only a twelve string would do for the jail-caged Leadbelly. On his pardon, he was the major engine of folk blues.
Pete Seeger
Protest singer Seeger used a twelve string and a banjo to break through the noise of the 1950s with his message.
The Beatles
In 1964, the Beatles' huge breakthrough year, George Harrison used a Rickenbacker electric twelve string, heavily featured on "A Hard Day's Night". Earlier, the beautiful solo on "All My Loving" was also played on twelve strings.
The Byrds
"In the Jingle jangle morning ..." the words from Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man", the Byrd's first big hit and featuring the jingle jangle of Roger McGuinn's electric twelve string Rickenbacker.
Leo Kottke
Kottke's first album was called "Twelve String Blues", and was recorded live in a coffee house. He has often soloed using a twelve string.
David Bowie
He wrote all his early, and best, albums on his twelve string acoustic, which he later had painted blue. He used the guitar on the famous English Top Of The Pops" program to play "Starman" from the "Ziggy Stardust" album. To clear up the bass, Bowie replaced the two bottom E strings with a single E bass string, making the guitar an eleven string.
Led Zeppelin
The riff on "Black Dog" (from Led Zeppelin's Vol IV of 1971) sounds so thick because it is: it's a twelve string electric (on a double-necked Gibson electric). Of course, Jimmy Page also used the guitar on "Stairway To Heaven".
The Eagles
Part of the sound of "Hotel California" is an electric twelve string (again, a double-necked electric).
Abba
Bjorn Ulvaeus plays an acoustic twelve string behind the singing on "Thankyou For The Music" (1978).
The Talking Heads
David Byrne frequently talked live with a twelve string.
THE MONTH OF JANUARY: WHY ARE SO MANY LEADING MUSICIANS BORN AT THIS TIME?
Several professors around the world have written articles on how "prominent" people are often born early in the year eg: in January through April. From history, it takes a moment to see that Leonardo da Vinci and Duke Ellington were born in April, Michelangelo and Eric Clapton were born in March, and Mozart and Schubert were born in January. Innovation and originality appear to be characteristics of the month, and also of late December and early February..
Reasons are probably several, but all relate to environment: in your class at school, you notice that most people seem to have their birthday parties later in the year. It's no accident; statistics show more people are born in July-September. As fewer people are born in December-April, the people born at that time are (statistically at least) more alone than their counterparts born in the middle months of the calender. They are therefore possibly more likely to take up an introspective past-time, a past-time that you can do on your own, or to try to compensate by achieving something big.
The early weeks of February and the later weeks of December also contain the birthdays of many famous names. January, however, has the most, and usually the most innovative as well (ie: the first of their kind). Further examples, in other fields, are both of the two modern ground-breaking painters, Manet and Cezanne, the first self-improvement guru Benjamin Franklin, and the first woman to lead from the front, Joan of Arc.
You could say that January-born people are the people who seem to fight their way through to something new. It doesn't matter if it's Elvis, or Rob Zombie or Los Angeles' first Latino mayor for a century Villaraigosa, they just don't stop.
A musical scene-setting example is the case of classical composers: the months of birth of the well known composers are ....
December
Webern
Rota ("The Godfather")
Gorecki
Mascagni
Sibelius
Martinu
Ponce
Cesar Franck
Morton Gould
Berlioz
Elliot Carter
Kodaly
Cimarosa
Beethoven
McDowell (American)
Varese (Frank Zappa's hero)
Puccini
Gibbons (English Elizabethan composer: Paul McCartney wrote "Golden Slumbers" ("Abbey Road") from music of Gibbons containing the phrase)
Sessions
Messager
January
Mendtner
Pergolesi
Bruch
Scriabin
Poulenc
Addinsell
Chausson
Clementi (the great piano rival of Mozart: both January-born)
Chabrier
Mozart
Schubert
Jerome Kern
Lutoslawski
Delius
John Taverner (current well-knownand semi-iconic English composer)
Glass
Babbett
Duparc
Quantz
Benjamin (the best known avant garde English composer of current times)
February
Mendelssohn
John Williams
Berg
Harris
John Adams
Corelli
Boccherini
Kurtag
Czerny
Delibes
Widor
Handel
Parry
Rossini
Bridge
March
Chopin
Smetana
Weill
Vivaldi
Bach
CPE Bach
Villa-Lobos
Ravel
Barber
Honneger
Cowell
Wolf
Telemann
Johan Strauss (the elder)
Moussorgsky
Sondheim
Nyman
Bartok
d'Indy
Grofe
Walton
Haydn
Ades (the new English composer on the block)
April
Busoni
Rachmaninoff
Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Ravi Shankar
Palestrina
Von Suppe
Leoncavallo
Prokoviev
Duke Ellington
Lehar
von Flotow
May
A Scarlatti
Brahms
Tchaikovsky
Massenet
Faure
Sullivan
Monteverdi
Satie
Wagner
Ligeti
Albeniz
Korngold
Xenakis
You may or may not know many classical composers, but take it from me that after this list of composers, composers born from December to May, there really isn't anyone left to be born in the rest of the year .... only Grieg, and ... Gershwin .... and Stravinsky, and Shostakovich .... It is easy to see this looking at the bigger names, in bold. You get the picture. There's noone left after May. It is the same with rock music writers. In fact, this pattern is, as researchers have written in academic journals, repeated in most fields of human endeavor. I have even written a book about it.
Rock Music
Represented by graph, with the number of rock composers/songwriters on the vertical axis and months on the horizontal, the higher numbers of famous names in the earlier months can be seen.
You need to weight for quality as well, as the December names (not all) are generally less famous or brilliant than the January names, individual by individual: it's just the way its seems to go.
The curve is characterised by being slowly descending in the early months of the year, then a sudden dip after April. Recovery is under way in October (welcome John Lennon, Paul Simon and Chuck Berry!). Hendrix is in late November and there are of course a plethora of names in December. January is the peak, both in terms of absolute numbers and, generally, the significance of the individual.
The Rock And Roll Era
Elvis Presley
The inventor of rock was born on January 8.
Alabama, 1956: rock out!
Two January-born
people together:
Elvis and producer
Sam Phillips (see below)
Sam Cooke
Sometimes nominated as the "best singer of all time", Sam Cooke was born on January 22. He was also a genius songwriter of influence: for example, "You Send Me" and "Wonderful World". As a "January innovator", he was the first black singer to set up his own label and publishing company, in Warner Brothers' offices in Holloywood. An excellent site is www.history-of-rock.com/cooke.htm: there is very detailed information here about Cooke's career.
Elmore James
The inventor of rootsy slide blues guitar ("Dust My Broom": his distinctive intro has been used by many, from the opening of The Beatles' "Revolution" to George Thorougood) was born on January 27. He was also the direct inspiration for The Rolling Stones, Brian Jones (himself born on February 28) started the band wanting to emulate Elmore James.
Phil Everly
The template for The Beatles: Phil Everly was born on January 19, and his brother Don was born on February 1! The Everly Brothers provided the bridge between rock and roll, ("January's" Elvis Presley), and The Beatles.
The Everly Brothers:
save for a few hours
in the case of Don,
both would have been
born in January
Almost January! ....
Little Richard
He was born on December 5.
Bo Diddley
He was born on December 30. Thus, with Elvis, three of the five main rock and roll figures were born at this time of year.
Alan Freed
Dick Clark
The two main media architects of rock and roll, Alan Freed (the DJ who coined the phrase "rock and roll" in the first place) and Dick Clark (the American Bandstand host), were born on December and Novemebr 30 respectively. The famous sixties and seventies DJ Wolfman Jack was born in the month that is the primary subject of this investigation, January (see below).
Bossa Nova/Latin
Carlos Antonio Jobim
The inventor of bossa nova and writer of some of the biggest hits of the sixties was born on January 25. Without him there would have been only "half" a sixties. There would certainly have been no "Girl From Ipanema".
Photograph: www.jobim.com.br
Xavier Cugat
As an interesting side note, the original populariser of Latin music in general (in the 1940s) was Xavier Cugat, who was born on January 1.
Almost January! ....
Stan Getz
The tenor saxophonist Stan Getz is of course the best interpreter of Jobim's music. His famous "Jazz Samba" album of 1962 and also the "Getz/Gilberto" album of the same time are definitive bossa statements. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Getz was born on February 8. As with the Everly Brothers above, Frank Zappa and George Duke (below) and many rock bands such as The Doors and Led Zeppelin (also below), two or more individuals from this time of year actually join together to maximise the "January effect".
Sixties Mainstream Rock
George Martin
The "Fifth Beatle" and most famous (and important) record producer was born on January 3. Guitarist George Harrison was born in February. John and Paul are famous EXCEPTIONS to the "early in the year" trend.
Sam Phillips
Eliv's producer and discoverer was born on January 5.
"All us producers are born
in January. Dunno why."
Jerry Wexler
The third important producer of the rock era (the soul of Otis Redding, Aretha Frankiln, etc) was born on January 10.
Wexler, at left, speaks to producer Arif Mardin
Joan Baez
The face of folk in the sixties was born on January 9.
Janis Joplin
The face of female rock in the sixties was born on January 18.
Robbie Krieger
The Door's guitarist wrote "Light My Fire", possibly the song of the '60s! He was born on January 8.
Marty Balin
The founder of the main psychadelic rock band, "Jefferson Airplane" was born on January 30.
Steven Stills
The main driving force behind Crosby Stills & Nash, and writer of '60s iconic tune "For What It's Worth" was born on January 3.
Steve Marriott
The singer of The Faces was born on January 30. An example of his distinctive efforts is "Itchykoo Park".
Steve Marriott
Syd Barrett
Born on January 6, Syd Barrett was the founder of Pink Floyd, who rivalled Led Zeppelin (see Jimmy Page below) as the biggest rock band of the seventies. As everybody knows, after writing breakthrough psychedelia tracks such as "See Emily Play", Barrett had a close encounter with some LSD that left him truly on the dark side of the moon. He became a phantom presence for the band, being the muse and inspiration for the classic album "Dark Side Of The Moon" and the classic later song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". This was one January guy who didn't make it through to the other side, but his influence did.
Neil Diamond
He is the definitive Brill Building writer, and was born on January 24. Neil Diamond wrote "Daydream Believer" for The Monkees (half of whom were born in December, by the way) and also wrote "Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon" (from the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack). He of course dominated the Seventies and is one of the most popular and accessible (to all generations) of singers. The male Barbara Streisand? Diamond's double live album "Hot August Night" (1972) was (and is) a defining moment of the '70s.
Almost January! ....
Carole King/Gerry Goffin
Major names from the Brill Building in the early sixties, Carole King and her husband and writing partner Gerry Goffin were both born in early February, two days apart, on February 9 and 11 respectively). Of course, Carole King went on to seventies solo stardom as well.
Keith Richards
Keith Richards has written most of the Stone's music, and a lot of their lyrics too (not such a well known fact), and was born in late December; (as was Beethoven): December 18.
Frank Sinatra
He didn't like rock, but partied like a rock star. He was born on December 12.
Dionne Warwick
Bacharach's muse was born on December 12.
Marianne Faithfull
Interesting singer and big help to The Rolling Stones was born on December 29.
Maria Callas
Edith Piaf
Marlene Dietrich
All three gold standards in their respective fields of opera, chansons and cabaret, they were born on December 2, 19 and 27 respectively.
Noel Coward
The ever-present yet unnoticed influence on Paul McCartney, and general all round British artistic genius; a December "partner" for January's Ivor Novello (ie: the name-sake UK song-writing award, who was born on January 15). Noel Coward was born on December 16.
Chet Baker
White trumpet icon and singer who dared to put down his trumpet and croon; much-listened to now by discerning younger listeners. He was born on December 23.
Phil Spector
The legendary producer almost joined his three famous producer colleagues, above, in January: he was born on December 26.
Jim Morrison/John Densmore
These two join January's Robbie Krieger in The Doors! They were born on December 8 and 1 respectively.
Frank Zappa
Zappa was born on December 21, again in keeping with the presence of innovation and originalty in the "January and its book-ending weeks" zone. It should also be mentioned that Zappa's keyboardist during his most innovative time (the 1973-1975 albums of "Live At The Roxy And Elsewhere", "Over-Nite Sensation", "Apostrophe" and "One Size Fits All") was George Duke. Duke was born on January 12, and through his career has been very much not the typical jazz pianist..
January's George Duke was an important partner and support for December's Frank Zappa.
Ray Thomas/Mike Pindar
Two of the most important members of the Moody Blues, who released two enormous concept albums in 1967 and 1968 ("Days Of Future Passed" and "In Search Of The Lost Chord" respectively), were the flautist Ray Thomas and mellotron player Mike Pindar. These two gave the Moody Blues the sound, while Justin Haywood (born elsewhere) wrote the bulk of the compositions. It is extraordinary that they should have been born on December 29 and 27 respectively (even in the same year).
"Days Of Future Passed" (1967)
Seventies Mainstream Rock
Jimmy Page
The major guitarist and rock composer of the 1970s was born on January 9. Led Zeppelin's bassist and also a very important contributor, John Paul Jones, was born on January 3. Half of Led Zeppelin was born in January!
Led Zeppelin: a January band?
David Bowie
The inventor of art rock, the writer who took music on from the Beatles, was born on January 8 (the same day as Elvis).
Rod Stewart
The popular face of rock and roll in the seventies and beyond was born on January 10.
Neil Diamond
(see above)
Jim Croce
The mainstream seventies singer-songwriter genius (and competitor to James Taylor) was born on January 10.
Paul Stanley
One half of the main Kiss songwriting duo. He was born on January 20.
Donald Fagan
Donald Fagan is the vocal half of Steely Dan. Steely Dan were a major part of the 1970s, and of course are very popular today also. Like most of these January artists, they are here on radio playlists forever. Donald Fagan was born on January 10. Fagan's partner in Steely Dan was/is Walter Brecker. Brecker was, in tune with the trend so prevalent in rock and jazz groups, born nearby on February 10.
Dolly Parton
The female face of modern country was born on January 19. She is brilliant, as, unlike many female country singers, she has written many of her hits, for example "Coat Of Many Colors" and "I Will Always Love You" (unlike Whitney Houston's version, hers is actually in tune!).
Terry Kath
The brilliant guitarist for Chicago (the band), who played one of the greatest solos ever (on "25 or 6 to 4") was born on January 31.
George Duke
Important assistant for Frank Zappa (see above)
Apart from Elton John (born in March), these guys WERE the seventies.
Almost January! ....
The innovator of "shock rock" was Alice Cooper: He was born in early February (February 8).
February Aquarian
The most famous film composer of modern times is John Williams. He was born on February 8 also.
Alien music
John Williams is usually writing for Steven Spielberg, who therefore gets a mention and who was born on December 18; the point of course is that Speilberg and Williams being born here is just another example of December supporting February (literally; he pays Williams his money), or of December working with January (like Frank Zappa and George Duke above, working together to make Zappa's best albums), or of February working with January (like, for example, Steely Dan above).
Frank Zappa
(see above)
Bette Midler
Donny Osmond
Ozzy Osbourne
All born in December.
Robin and Maurice Gibb
Two thirds of the Bee Gees were both born on December 22.
John Denver
The definitive balladeer of the seventies was born on December 31.
Benny Anderssen
The piano half of ABBA's songwritng team was born on December 16.
Carmine Appice
The famous drummer who co-wrote the film music supervisor's favourite "Do You Think I'm Sexy" (eg: as in January-born Kevin Costner's "No Way Out") with "January's" Rod Stewart was born on December 15.
Ted Nugent
The furious definitive seventies redneck rocker ("Cat Scatch Fever") was born on December 13.
Paul Rodgers
Another candidate for definitive seventies rocker (Free and Bad Company) was born on December 17.
Pattie Smith
An important designer of punk and REM-style rock was born on December 30.
JJ Cale
The "Cocaine" man was born on December 5.
Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts
The two main surviving lynch pins of The Allmann Brothers (after "Layla" riff creator Duane Allmann's death) were born on December 8 and 12 respectively.
Jimmy Buffett
The "Marguarita" man was born on December 25.
Jeff Lynne
The leader of ELO was born on December 30.
Jan Akkerman
Dutch guitar wizard (the band Focus) Jan Akkerman was born on December 24. He is the person who was quoted as saying to "Guitar Magazine" in 1975, "If you have a gift you have to do something with it".
Billy Gibbons
The guitarist of ZZ Top was born on December 16.
.... Do people born in December think they're special or what? Look at this list! (But they're not as weighty as the January people).
Walter Brecker
(see above)
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono was the catalyst of, and therefore essentially collabarator on, John Lennon's early seventies masterpieces. or example, Yoko gave Lennon the (lyrical) idea for "Imagine". She was born on February 8.
Punk
Johnny Rotten
The face of punk: he was born on January 31.
Tommy Ramone
The drummer and founder of America's main punks The Ramones was born on January 29.
Eighties Mainstream Rock
Eddie van Halen
The major guitarist of the 1980s was Eddie van Halen. The successor to "January's" Jimmy Page was born on January 26.
Malcom Young
The rhythm guitarist and co-writer of the music for AC-DC was born on January 6. His better-known brother Angus was born in March (March 31). Malcolm is said, however, to be the power in charge of the band (not just the power chord, (!) although he is that as well, as it is his constant almost soul rhythm that defines AC-DC's sound).
Steve Perry
The engine of typical stadium rockers Journey was born on January 22. Guitarist Neal Schon was born next month over, on February 27. One of Journey's somgs was a handy template for Bon Jovi, So, in many ways, their contribution is important.
Michael Hutchence
The singer and face of INXS, was born on January 17.
Sade
The "Smooth Operator" (the song of the '80s) was born on January 16.
Susannah Hoffs
The leader of the main girl band of the '80s, The Bangles, was born on January 17.
Pat Benatar
The main early '80s female rocker was born on January 10.
Robert Palmer
The writer of the eighties first "decent" hit ("Addicted To Love" in 1986) was born on January 19.
Phil Collins
The '80s icon and only artist who appeared at both "Live Aid" gigs in 1985, was born on January 30.
Kenny Loggins
The writer of eighties "anthems" "Footloose" and "Danger Zone" (from "Top Gun"). In 1991, he released an album containing a song called "Conviction Of The Heart", that Al Gore called the "the unofficial anthem of the environmental movement". He was born on January 7.
Michael Stipe
The singer of REM continues to lead the world's music scene, and to carry the flag for real music. He was born on January 6.
Almost January! ....
Peter Buck
Mike Mills
The REM colleagues of Michael Stipe were born on December 6 and 17 respectively.
Michael McDonald
The Doobie Brothers pianist and vocalist, who co-wrote the classic "What A Fool Believes" with Kenny Loggins above, was born on Februray 12.
Annie Lennox
The Eurythmics star was born on December 25.
Lars Ulrich
Metallica's co-director was born on December 26.
Grunge And The Start Of The Nineties
Almost January! ....
Axl B Rose
Kurt Cobain
Both these pivotal icons were born in February, pretty much as close to January as you can get, on 6 and 20 February respectively.
Eddie Vedder
Cobain's opposite grunge number, at "Pearl Jam", was born on December 23.
Nineties Mainsteam Rock: Nu Metal
Marilyn Manson
The shocker was born on January 5.
Kid Rock
The nu-metaller and ex-husband (?) of Pamela Anderson was born on January 17.
Rob Zombie
The third of these three main '90s icons was also born in January, on January 12.
Jonathon Davis
The lead singer and lyricist of Korn was born on January 18. Korn are said to have invented nu metal, so that is a clean sweep for January in the metal nineties! An extraordinary statistic: all four major lasting figures were all born in January.
Almost January! ....
Billie Joe Armstrong/Tres Cool
Billy Jo and Tre Cool, two thirds of Green Day, were born on February 19 and December 9 respectively.
Ricky Martin
The leading male singer of the late nineties was born on December 24.
The Eighties, The Nineties, And "Hip Hop"
January does not lose its pre-eminence and influence in the world of hip hop and related areas.
Grandmaster Flash
The originator of rap was Grandmaster Flash, who was born on January 1. He was the person who took music played on turntables in the late 1970s, isolated the breaks (the bits that everybody liked) and worked out how to extend them. Hey presto, hip hop.
Jam Master Jay
Jam Master Jay, from Run DMC, was born on January 21. Combined with Aerosmith in 1996: "Walk This Way".
Jazzie B
The biggest British star in black dance was Jazzie B (Soul II Soul), who was born on January 6.
LL Cool J
LL Cool J, the first rapper to "sing" a love song (!), was born on January 14. Still a name.
R Kelly
R Kelly, the only real songwriter of the area, was born on January 8.
Aaliyah
The talented Aaliyah was born on January 16. As her song said: "one in a million".
Mary J Blige
Alicia Keys
Justin Timberlake
In more modern times, the leaders have also been born on January: Mary J Blige (January 11), Alicia Keys (January 25) and even Justin Timberlake (January 31).
Almost January! ....
Ernie Simmons (Reverend Run) from Run DMC was born on December, partnering January's Jam Master Jay above in that group.
Dr Dre
The master hip hop music writer and sound shaper was born on February 18.Seal
Seal, who did everything, was born in February, on the 19th.Christina Aguilera
Britney Spears
Even them: both December!
Dido
The inventive English singer was born on December 25.
Big Boi
Half of Outkast, Big Boi was born in February 1
The Woodstock Rock Festival And January
An interesting example is the bill at the legendary Woodstock festival in 1969.
It featured primarily
a) Jimi Hendrix's insane version of The Star Spangled Banner, and
b) the following artists born in January:
Richie Havens: he opened the Festival with his improvised "Freedom".
Janis Joplin
Joan Baez
From Crosby Stills & Nash: Steven Stills; Graeme Nash was born on February 2! So two thirds of the timeless band (the best writers, from my point of view: Third member David Crosby may have been the one with the social skills; Steven Stills described him as a "social butterfly") are in, or from, "the Zone"
Country Joe McDonald: one of the most iconic momenets of the festival was Country Joe and the Fishs' "Fixin' To Die Rag", complete with his "teaching" the audience how to spell "F-U-C-K".
From The Jefferson Airplane: Marty Balin, the founder, guitarist and main (male) vocalist.
Almost January Woodstockers! ....
Tim Hardin: legendary fok singer who wrote the famous "If I Were A Carpenter"; he was born on December 23
Johnny Winter was born on February 23
His brother Edgar Winter (who played on two tracks) was born on December 28
Paul Butterfield (the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) was born on December 17
Graham Nash was born on February 2
"Also in keeping with the early months trend in life" Woodstockers:
Ravi Shankar was born on April 7
Sly Stone was born March 15
Roger Daltrey was born on March 1
So, from November 27 (Jimi Hendrix) to April 7 (Ravi Shankar), you have almost the entire famous name bill of Woodstock; most of these people were born in December, January and February.
Conclusion
So, in summary, if you take out the above you don't have most of the music of the last fifty years, at the singing, composing and producing levels. OK, you have Brian Wilson ...., yet brothers Carl and Dennis Wilson were born in December, and Brian's collaborator on the legendary "Smile" album, Van Dyke Parks, was born on January 3, so maybe you wouldn't have much of The Beach Boys either! You certainly wouldn't have the iconic song "Heroes and Villians" ( a major contribution of Parks). The (only) major figures from these areas not born in or near January:
Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder (May: May is still "early")
Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson (June)
Mick Jagger (July)
Bruce Springsteen (September)
John Lennon, Paul Simon Chuck Berry (October: the upswing to January begins)
[Jimi Hendrix was born on November 27, very close to December, so he is almost in one of the two January satellite months, December and February]
In other words, you are hard pushed to come up with names of significant writers (and often even singers) not born around the turn of the new year, in December, January or early to mid February, in rock music. March and April (not listed here) have some heavy names also, as in classical music, (Clapton, Muddy Waters, and so on), but the other essentially eight months can only deliver eight or nine comparable names.
It all seems to be another example of nurture triumphing over nature: being born very early in the year forces you to face issues such as mortality (everyone in your school class is younger than you, and so has an edge on you: so you have to compensate) and responsibility (as you are older than the other people in your class you assume responsibility: it is not surprising that this may translate itself into your work or other endeavours). People born in December may be euphoric: they are born after everyone else in their school class, and it's Christmas too: party time, a double bonus. These people may therefore feel special. They then turn to prove it. Or maybe they are older than everyone in the class, like their January counterparts, with a potentially similar result. Of course, January-born people may also feel special. They are also born at a special time of year: it's still the holiday season.
THE ROLLING STONES: RARE RECORDINGS
Some Stones ....
Demos of famous hits, rare live clips: these are much sought after with many bands. Here is a valuable selection for Stones fans, showing a different light on great creators. The links are to youtube: what a totally useful media outlet!
Demo Version Of "Honky Tonk Women"
This demo has a different second verse, and distinctively different guitar in the chorus.
Honky Tonk Women at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfnJzSTgvuQ
The Whole "Sympathy For ...." From "Get Your Ya Yas Out"
The live version sounds very good here.
Ya Yas at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t57C4K5bKk8
Classic Film Of "Brown Sugar"
A great clip of "Brown Sugar" live, with good footage of Keith playing the famous intro. This is at the beginning of another excerpt from the movie "********** Blues".
Brown Sugar at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Ju9_7Ut-g&mode=related&search=
Stones Play "Roll Over Beethoven"
I have never heard of the Stones playing "Roll Over Beethoven" until I found this clip. It is from 1970, in Italy.
Roll Over Beethoven at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scVhjBr83Oc&mode=related&search=
Good Time Woman (1970)
We can see an early attempt at what became "Tumbling Dice". It has the riff from "Tumbling Dice", and some of the tune. The film clip made by the uploader is tremendous, featuring great '60s film art.
Good Time Woman at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT63cHTEa44&mode=related&search=
Good Time Woman (1972)
This is a later version of "Good Time Woman", apparently from the "Exile On Mainstreet" sessions in 1972.
Good Time Woman at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmNlvgFVJ6o&NR=1
Demo Version Of "Brown Sugar"
A totally different version, which is said to have been a serious candidate for the official release.
The notes to the clip say:
"The official version of "Brown Sugar" was recorded on December 3rd, 1969 at Muscle Shoals Studio with overdubs being recorded later in August of 1970. According to [some sources] this song is from December 18, 1970, from a session at Olympic Studios, [which was] the Stones' preferred studio [atr that time]. The session was also a birthday party for Keith and Eric Clapton was there jamming with the Stones and they re-recorded the song. This version was considered for release instead of the one we all know, but Keith felt "Charlie really filled the sound and it was so easy to cut down there" [at Muscle Shoals].
The question is, is Eric Clapton on the record?
Demo of Brown Sugar at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fZlQU6Wwg&mode=related&search=
Mixing Little Queenie
This is a great short film of the Stones mixing a famous track from the live album of the 1969 tour of America, "Get Your Yas Yas Out".
Mixing Little Queenie at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUvjTyqNmdg&mode=related&search=
"********** Blues"
The Jagger and solo acoustic guitar soliloquy about a "lonesome schoolboy" just arrived in London. The film of the famous 1972 tour of America had the same name.
********** Blues at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEFhuvg1SEA&NR=1
The ********** Blues Movie (1972)
The immortal film of the 1972 tour, from mile high club action to Keith throwing a TV out of a hotel window. Two clips are here:
There is even an email address to buy the full DVD.
********** Blues movie at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INNeuD2AQQA&mode=related&search=
FRANK ZAPPA:
TOP TEN ALBUMS?
Frank says "Hello!"
Frank Zappa was a composer and all-round genius who recorded A LOT of albums, in varied styles. I once saw a poster in Tower Records of a huge "list tree" of the world's composers, from about 1200 AD to now (earliest at the top, current day down the bottom of the tree): Zappa was somewhere down the right hand side. People say you can listen to any one of his records and it will be brilliant. However, there have to be some essentials, right? In any event, you have to hear these:
Freak Out! (1966)
This was the first album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention. It is a stunning array of music that covers many areas. In keeping with Zappa's reputation for humour, a highlight is "You Didn't Call Me", a parody on doo-wop and seemingly also teenage movies.
Hot Rats (1969)
"Hot Rats", despite the name, is possibly Zappa's best album. It is almost totally instrumental, and is a combination of rock, jazz and classical, in that it is all those things together; not as in one track is this, another that. The album is one of the best "rock" era records.
Overnite Sensation (1973)
This album is Zappa's most conventional album, for rock fans, in that it has a series of medium length "songs" that are entertaing and clever, musically as well as lyrically. the album has sevral of his concertclassics, such as "Camarillo Brillo", "Dynamo Hum", "Zomby Woof" (how's that for a title?) and "Dirty Love". Several albums from around the mid '70s are classics. One thing the albums have in common is the presence of jazz pianist George Duke. With "Hot Rats", it is one of the two probably most essential Zappa albums.
Apostrophe
Has many fans. Cream's Jack Bruce played some of the bass on the album.
Roxy And Elsewhere (1974)
This is a double live album, with a lot of classics. Recorded over three nights in December, 1973 at The Roxy on Hollywood's Sunset Strip, it is a premier live example of the Mothers Of Invention.
One Size Fits All (1975)
The same time period: it was the last album to be credited to The Mothers Of Invention, and to include George Duke and other important members of that band. It is a straight-ahead rock album, and begins with a Zappa classic, "Inca Roads". The electric guitar reverb effect pioneer Johnny Guitar Watson appears on two tracks.
Sheik Yerbouti (1979)
The album title was a play on the the Middle Eastern figure Sheik Yemani and the disco craze ("shake, skake shake, shake your booty"). Zappa's most famous hit "Bobby Brown" is on the album, plus several other classics.
You Are What You Is (1981)
This album was the first Zappa album to include guitarist Steve Vai, who played with Zappa's band for a time in the 1980s.
Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger (1984)
Famous French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez conducted pieces he commissioned from Zappa
An alternative orchestral Zappa album is The London Symphony Orchestra I and II, double CD version issued in 1996. The recordings were made in 1983 in London under the baton of Kent Nagano, but the orchestra made a lot of mistakes. Zappa originally used reverb to hide mistakes, but the 1996 re-issue took away the reverb so that all the melodies and other intricate parts are hearable. The mistakes don't matter, according to listeners. Full details are at here
The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life (1991)
From the 1988 world tour, this is a double live album (in total, three double albums were released from the tour) that includes Zappa hits and a number of covers: the latter are wide ranging, from Ravel's "Bolero" to Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire", Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven".
A very interesting example of a Zappa cover is his version of The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus". I once said to somebody that the Beatles should be in the classical section of a record shop: the person answered that "music is classical if other people perform it" ie: strictly as the original. Well, this clip is certainly support for my view: all the strings, etc are there, as John Lennon wrote it.
There is an interesting site called www.zappa-analysis.com, that is a Dutch fan's commentary on most of Zappa's main album music; it includes some musical excerpts, and even notated examples! For example, the site suggests that two tracks from "Hot Rats" are in (classical) sonata form.
He also echoes my point, above, on "Overnite Sensation" being an album of more standard form rock songs: "a clear example of the regular [rock song] music two theme structure is "Camarillo Brillo" from "Overnite Sensation", whereas, he says, the long theme from "Florentine Pogen" (on "One Size Fits All") "is through composed".
The site has very detailed factual information as well, on Zappa's album chronology and phases (that's "phases", not "phasers"!).
Frank Zappa Quotes:
There is a brilliant list at here
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: THE MUSIC
I have seen a lot of notes on the lyrics to the famous album by Pink Floyd , "The Dark Side Of The Moon", but I have never seen anyone write about the music. It is the music that is really great. The lyrics mainly come, of course, from the history of the band's founder Syd Barrett, and so the concept really wrote itself, lyrically-speaking. But the music is totally out there ....
From the sound side, "The Dark Side Of The Moon" is not all music: there are a lot of sound effects, Moog synthesiser tumbles and so on. However, the album is supported by four very distinctive major tracks, whose music is characterised by just a series of simple-appearing and slow-shifting chord changes.
Side One:
Breath
"Breath" is the first of these "big" tunes. it is in the key of E minor and has big repeated Em to A (A7) chord changes (appearing "big" because of the slowness of the changes, and the grand sweep obtained by this) followed by a shift to C, then Bm, then an amazing jump to F before the neat Dm and Eb dim move back to Em again. The Em to A chord change is kind of funny, as it was the first chord progression I (formally) learnt, but it was from George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" single, a different type of record (or is it? ....). It does not get easier than playing Em (and then A) on a guitar: yet look what Pink Floyd did with it!
The move from A to C sees the music moving in a rock equivalent of "contrary motion", a basic rule in classical music ("you can't go wrong with contrary motion" I once heard in a music class in London) ie: the melody moves from C# down to C but the bass behind it moves from A up to C. Contrary motion is where one musical line moves down and another moves up, or vice versa. It keeps the music in balance and also adds tension. There is a lot of contrary motion on "The Dark Side Of The Moon", man.
Time
After instrumental passages we come to the next big tune, "Time". "Time" is up tempo (once the singing starts), and is in A minor. All of these four tracks have the "big sweep" referred to above: the big sweep of "Time" is set up by the introductory widely spaced, single low electric guitar notes, and continued by the Bm and following descending chords (Bm, Am, D, G) that wind up back to the Am beginning again. "Distinctive" is the word.
The album's pyramids picture
Side Two:
"Us And Them"
"Us And Them" follows "Money", these songs being the first two tracks on side two ("Money" is the only "standard" rock music song on the album). It's heart is just four chords, just as the four songs I'm writing about are the musical basis of the album. It begins, melodically, like Rogers and Hart's 1930s classic "Where Or When", albeit with a different beat, the tune indicating G and G6 chords to start. ("Where Or When" is a great song: there is a classic version by Frank Sinatra; it was also recorded by Benny Goodman's jazz clarinet trio, the same group that made "Moonglow", from the soundtrack of "The Aviator"). But then there is an F# aug chord that leads to C, before the return to G again. The power and musical picture of these (again slow) chords are amazing. The famous Finnish composer Sibelius (huge powerful symphonies) used the relationship between C and F# to describe evil (hear the start of his Symphony No 4, apparently copied by the film music writer on the David Lynch movie "Mulholland Drive"), but here the relationship appears to be pointing up thinking, or thoughtfulness.
I once had a conversation about "Us And Them" with a jazz alto saxophonist who had not heard much rock but had just participated in the world young saxophonist competition at Montreaux, Switzerland. He was saying that rock is very "direct", and used "that song from Dark Side Of The Moon" to illustrate. I said, "You mean the one with the augmented chrod?": "Yes", he replied. "Us And Them".
Of course, "Us And Them" also has its huge release, or "middle" section, ending on the F chord before returning up to G for the main part of the tune again.
"Us And Them" is in G: so is the last of these four big tunes, "Brain Damage".
"Brain Damage"
"Brain Damage" begins with a faint reference to the 1944 hit "Sentimental Journey" in the melody, but ends the first phrase on the minor third - the chord?: C7! Fantastic. Another brilliant simple-appearing chord shift: G to C7. The lyric of course is very funny: G .... "The lunatic is in your head" (C7) etc. The song (piece) is in two halves; first the part in G. Then the band plays G7 to change key to C: the words "the dark side of the moon" are heard as the tune changes key back to G again, by the classic classical method of "ii V I" ie: to get from C to D, you run the chords Em A to D (a ii V I key change), and then there is the other standard method known to music, simply placing in there a dominant seventh chord, here D7, to get back to the basic key of the tune, G.
The first key change, from G to C, used the latter method (just by way of a firmly planted G7).
As the last two of these four "main" songs are in G, and the first two are in Em and Am respectively, the overall album has effectively a big resolution to the key of G, by way of Em ("Breath") to Am ("Time") to G, then G again affirming the key of the album. "The Dark Side Of The Moon" is therefore like a classical symphony that has been carefully planned to end in G .... The four songs described here are like the four movements of a large symphony, the keys of each successive movement being Em, Am, G and G. The other tunes on the album are more like transitions between each movement.
The gatefold from the LP
There are some crazy lyrics out there, though luckily not too many. Some of them make no sense at all ....
"Have You Seen My Baby?" Ringo Starr (song written by Randy Newman)
"Your'e like a devil with horns in your head
The only way to get is to get you in bed" ....
OK, it was written by Randy Newman, but even then .... It actually is a very funny song: she's riding up and down the street with the milkman, etc. The track is on Ringo's album "Ringo" from 1973, which several other stars wrote songs for, including both John Lennon and Paul McCartney (separate numbers). It also features several name musicians of the time such as glam rocker Marc Bolin, who plays his distinctive "Get It On" rhythm guitar on this song. It is seen as Ringo's best album.
There's Only One Way To Rock Sammy Hagar
This is from his "Standing Hampton" album of 1981:
"There are many ways to make love
But there's only one way to rock"
What? I suppose that when the amps are so loud .... Hagar the Horrible? Why does van Halen attract these singers?!
Paranoid Black Sabbath
OK, let's bring on the Ozster: "Are you for my brain?" WHAT?
Jailbreak Thin Lizzey
'Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town". OK, It would be at the jail, right? Unless there is more than one in the town. Or unless he's speaking metaphorically. A great album, anyway, "Jailbreak" from 1976.
Hey Baby Jimi Hendrix
I have always wondered about this track: Hendrix recorded it possibly live in the studio, and the lyrics start "Hey baby, where do you comin' from?" "Do"? It should be "are". Did Jimi make a mistake and they couldn't be bothered going back to fix it, which would really have meant playing it again? It is a well known, long track, and was originally released on his "Rainbow Bridge" album. Members of Pearl Jam recorded it on a tribute album of 1993.
"Ebony And Ivory" Paul McCartney
"Side by side on my keyboard, Oh Lord, why don't we?" Why don't we what?
"Fat Bottomed Girls" Queen
"Fat bottomed girls make the rocking world go round"? Is the world already rocking, or does it rock because they make it rock (for him?)? Unclear, Freddy.
I Saw Her Standing There The Beatles
I once read a book by an English writer on the Beatles' music that told them off for writing ".... and I, I could see, that before too long ....", the point being that repeating "I" twice makes no sense. Well, in those Hamburg bars it was loud, you know, and you were always catching your breath!
I've Got A Crush On You Gershwin
The lyrics for this song were written by George Gershwin's brother Ira: "I've got a crush on you , sweety pie ...." Huh? Even "dirty bitch" would improve on that. Of course it was the 1930s, but the song has seldom been covered (it's hard to find Sinatra's version). The tune is great, so it must be .... the lyrics.
Tutti Frutti Little Richard
"Wop bop a loo bop, bop bam boom". Little Richard unleashes the world of nonsense lyrics. However, this is great: it's genius. It's not so ridiculous.
Everybody knows about "the other woman", and everybody knows about how the grass is supposed to be greener on the "other" side, but did you know about the "other album", the famous band's brilliant album that not everybody knows about, .... but they should!
Let's look at a few of these albums.
"Van Halen" Van Halen
Van Halen's "1984", released in, er, 1984, makes you wanna "Jump", there's "Hot For Teacher", and the desert-driving anthem "Panama". But did you know about their first album, "Van Halen". It's incredible. And it was released in 1978! It has all the 1980s guitar that was copied by a thousand poodle rock bands through that decade, and many of Van Halen's trademark songs, eg: "Runnin' With The Devil" (track one), the Eddie van Halen solo showpiece "Eruption" (track two), track three the single "You Really Got Me" (David Lee Roth leaves no doubt as to the meaning of the lyric, with groans and timed shouts, whereas the Kinks just used guitar to convey the message), and track four ( .... already) "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love". The latter cut has the "FM staple " van Halen guitar riff/lick that launched a thousand ker-chings in the eyes of later record producers. Buy it.
"Axis: Bold As Love" Jimi Hendrix
Jimi's second album of 1967, "Axis: Bold As Love" is nominated by serious writers as his best album, yet people only seem to "know about" the first one "Experience" and the double album "Electric Ladyland". "Axis: Bold As Love" premiered "Little Wing" (played as a concert highlight by Eric Clapton - see youtube) and musically wide-ranging guitar adventures on "If 6 Was 9" and the last track "Bold As Love". As the sleeve notes put it, ".... and the singer is Jimi Hendrix. He also plays guitar." ....
"Definitely Maybe" Oasis
In the US, Oasis' second album "What's The Story Morning Glory" was a big hit. However, in the UK many people seemed to prefer the first one, "Definitely Maybe" (1994). Maybe there were residuary or subconscious memories in the States of the identical recreation of the last notes of Elvis' "King Creole" in "Cigarettes And Alcohol": the latter word is sung with identical notes (and rhyme!) to " .... King Creole". In any event, the album has some great cuts, such as "Supersonic" ("she did it with a doctor in a helicopter") and "Live Forever". Burt Bacharach's photo appears on the cover.
"Led Zeppelin" Led Zeppelin
Perhaps the ultimate example of the "other album" is the first album from Led Zeppelin, released in early 1969. Everybody knows the fouth album, generally known as Led Zeppelin "IV" or the "Symbols" album with "Stairway To Heaven", etc, but the first album is killer. It has major tracks such as "Good Times Bad Times", the blues violence of "I Can't Quit You Baby", the sonic investigations of "Dazed And Confused" and "How Many More Times", the prototype garage rock or punk of "Communication Breakdown", and other brilliant Jimmy Page vehicles.
"With The Beatles" The Beatles
"With The Beatles" was the fourth Beatles album, appearing in latter 1964 after the breakthrough "A Hard Day's Night", an album that had music journalists comparing them to Schubert. "With The Beatles" had few new songs, half of the album being covers, yet the original songs there are very interesting: they are very well recorded, with interesting and expansive instrumentation. Inventive piano and a lot of percussion effects make it good to hear. Paul McCartney is on record as saying it was "well recorded".
"The Doors" The Doors
The first album by The Doors, titled "The Doors", is well known, but there may be people who only think of the final album "LA Woman" as "being" The Doors ("Riders On The Storm", "Love Her Madly" and the title track). Their first album truly opened new doors (they were named after trippy author Aldous Huxley's 1950s book "The Doors Of Perception"). From "Light My Fire" to the closing track "The End" (used extensively in the film "Apocalypse Now"), this is a true trip to new territories. Other classic tracks include "Soul Kitchen", Kurt Weil's "Alabama Song", and "Break On Through To The Other Side".
"John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band" John Lennon
Perhaps the ultimate "unknown" album is the first solo album John Lennon made after the Beatles: a pastoral cover of John and Yoko under a tree introduced "John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band". Nominated by some as the best ever rock album, the album is a spare precursor to the better known "Imagine" album. But it's not only the "other" John Lennon album, it's also (easily) the best. Opening with "Mother" (the sound and feel being ripped off by Phil Collins on "Something in the Air Tonight", in the 1980s), the album investigates Lennon's feelings via soft and loud electric guitar numbers and brilliant piano compositions. Possibly the two best works on the album are two of the latter: "Isolation" and "Remember". This guy is a composer. It also features "Working Class Hero" with its insightful lyrics on the glass ceiling of the English's discredited "class system", and his perhaps faintly wayward observations on "God". There is also the famous "Love", which appears drawn form one of the Irish composer John Field's nocturnes: Field invented the"nocturne", before Chopin.
"Wings Over America" Paul McCartney And Wings
Paul McCartney's Wings album "Band On The Run" (1973) is largely an album of genius, and, with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, one of the two best solo Beatle albums so far, but "Wings Over America" was a good triple live album of the Wings tour of America in 1976. Wings' "material" was mixed, some songs brilliant, some a little kitsch, but side three was an acoustic guitar side, McCartney unplugged. The tracks are superbly chosen: "Picasso's Last Words" from "Band On The Run", Paul Simon's song "Richard Cory", "Bluebird" (also from "Band On The Run", the "country" Beatles 1965 track "I've Just Seen A Face", the glory of "Blackbird", and "Yesterday". A large colour drawing of McCartney playing a twelve-string guitar graced one of the album internal side covers.
Paul McCartney once said that to write a song you find a good chord progression, and add a tune. With lyrics, the verse and chorus genearally come to you automatically, but you have to really look for the second verse, which has to take the subject matter to somewhere new.
I have always been a little bit jealous of the 1960s rockers, because they had the field of new chord progressions wide open to them: noone had written 4/4 songs, on the guitar, with meaning before. 1930s songs had all the combinations of C Am F G progressions (e; "These Foolish Things") and a large amount of diminshed chords to get from one chordal "area" to another, and the blues and rock and roll had the three chord blues progression, but rock on the guitar could go anywhere and then first songs written in the "genre" would sound original no matter what.
So Bob Dylan was able to take a G D Am progression and make it into "Knocking On Heaven's Door". If anyone plays those chords now, but with a different tune, they will be bound to get the comment: "Ah you've copied Bob Dylan". And the same lucky guy could take Am G and F repeated over and over, and call it "All Along The Watchtower". I don't think anyone has taken those chords since and put a song over it; they're not game! (Well, Jimmy Page did with the last part - only - of "Stairway To Heaven", but you get the meaning).
And "Wild Thing": lucky composer (Chip Taylor): in 1965 noone had smashed out those chords before: they were "available", like a web address or a business name.
On a guitar, certain chord progressions suggest themselves ....
But first, a brief look at what was before 1964.:
The 1930s and general jazz era saw generally smooth progressions using their fair share of diminished chords. The only real survivor of that era to make it to the rock and roll era was the "doo-wop" progression of (in the key of C) C Am F and G. This standard roundabout of the chords had been aroubd at least since Beethoven wrote something similar in his Pastoral symphony. The doo wop bands just repeated this set of chords over and over, ad infinitum. For example. "Looking For an Echo",
This set of chords had been featured in the swing era of course: "These Foolish Things" starts with it, but the swing era was jazz and so the chords were a bit smoother: the F was often replaced by a Dm (F's relative minor). The most "hack" (obvious) example is in the Hoagy Carmichael song "Heart And Soul" which has that school-child C Am F G repeated all day.
But with the advent of The Beatles (and in Los Angeles, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys) chord changes in popular music broadened out again. In some ways, they went further.
Enter the rock guitarist:
"She Said She Said" The Beatles (John Lennon)
John Lennon seems to have invented the standard heavy song progression of (in A for example) A G D and A D G again and again; the progression appeared in Led Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown" in 1968, then in the verse to "Sympathy For The Devil" (The Rolling Stones). Later examples are "Sweet Home Alabama" (Lynyrd Skynyrd) and the verse of "Sweet Child Of Mine" (Guns 'N' Roses). A variation is A E D (eg: "Do Ya" ELO).
"It's D C G, man"
"Purple Haze" Jmi Hendrix
"Purple Haze" has its verse presenting chords screaming up the guitar neck from E to G to A and back again. This is the insertion of the minor third blues note/interval into a chart hit. The interval is all over blues, of course eg: "Spoonful" by Howling Wolf - "spoonful, spoonful, spoon .... ful" (Cream recorded it on their first album "Fresh Cream", from 1966). The progression compares to the more straightforward, open, and earlier, E A B of a song like "Wild Thing" (or A D E, if you want to play it in A). The latter song is safe and predictable (like Buddy Holly's chords), the former is more modern, angular and dangerous (and more interesting). Heavy metal immediately invented itself, and heavy bands have blues-noted themselves to oblivion ever since, whether by chords, riffs or melody eg: "Dazed And Confused" by Led Zeppelin (1968), "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest (1980: as on the words "loaded, loaded"),
So far as riffs are concerned, it was Jimi Hendrix who also introduced the minor third riff into rock so prominently with the basic between-lines riff in "Hey Joe", in 1966. Pete Townshend of The Who was referring to the above when he said that he thought Hendrix changed the sound of rock more than the Beatles did.
"Let It Be" The Beatles (Paul McCartney)
The "She Said She Said" progression (above) morphed into A E F# D fairly quickly, eg" "Hey Jude" (that song is in C, so the chords are C G Am F). A million and one rockers haved used this progression, from say "Another Girl Another Planet" (The Only Ones) to "Basket Case" (Green Day"). And it will be used again. I don't know whether Paul McCartney was first with it, but he was early and it was new then in any event. It is a very common "post grunge" chord sequence.
"Imagine" John Lennon
"Imagine" is an example of the many songs from history that begins with the country-style I to IV chord coupling; the basic "imagine there's no this, imagine there's no that" verses are over a C F C F chord backing, before the song picks uip and Lennon writes the "answering" and bridge passages. Blues tunes also, of course, begin by running from I to IV, all day; the country and blues roots of rock obviously mean that many rock songs will do this too. Another famous example is "Honky Tonk Women" (The Rolling Stones, which began as a mock country somng called "Country Honk"). "Honky Tonk Women" was, incidentally, much admired by John Lennon.
"Canon" Pachelbel
Yes, Johan Pachelbel (born 1635, and so sixty years older than Bach) wrote his famous progression C G Am Em, instead of C G Am F. From "Streets Of London" by 1970s English folk rocker Ralph McTell to Oasis who, some believe, seem to have made a living out of it eg "Don't Look Back In Anger", this chord progression has a restful reassuring feel to it. it is in more somngs than you may think: there is a very funny clip on youtube.com by a comedian about the many songs that have this progression. Green Day have also used it, on their album "Dookie".
A letter from Pachelbel. Translation: "Where are my royalties?"
"Tales Of Brave Ulysses" Cream
In 1967 Cream released thier famous album "Disralei Gears". Eric Clapton,the guitarist in the band, contributed, amongst other work, "Tales Of Brave Ulysses". The song, which details some of the legend of Greek hero Ulysses, has the now standard "heavy" bass note series of A G F# F, over and over again until the contrasting section based (joke: get it?) on the note of E. That bass note progression (or chord progression if you like: Am G F# dim F) has cycled back and forth through rock ever since: almost immediately it cropped up in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by George Harrison (1968), with Eric clapton (again) on lead guitar. Later, it appeared in "25 or 6 To 4" by Chicago, and so on. It's tailor-made for a rock out.
"All Along The Watchtower" Bob Dylan
Similar to "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" is the above-mentioned "All Along The Watchtower". Bob Dylan "simply" strung a melody, and brilliant lyrics, over the same three descending chords, over and over.As in the incredible Jimi Hendrix version, the verses are structurally sepatarted by solos (harmonic in Dylan;s case). Again, a great progression for a rock out.
"Like A Rolling Stone" Bob Dylan
Again, Mr Lucky the early bird Bob Dylan came up with , in 1965, a chord progression by simply following up the bass notes on a scale: G Am Bm C and then to D before starting again. The next year Paul McCartney was sittng by Lennon's polol waitng for him to get up . He began to play G Am Bm C .... heyn presto, one pof tose grnice progressions hew as talking about, and a classic romantic jazz song from the "Revolver" album, "Here There And Everywhere" (covered by George Benson, amongst others). Richard Rogers had made a start on this progression in "Where Or When", but, in typical jazz era fashion soon sent the chords in a new direction.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" Queen
Jumping ten years, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is an example of a song where there is a key change within the path of the melody itself. It is of course a long piece and, like most classical music too, needs a key change to stop itself collapsing under the weight of just the one key, but it is still a neat example of a melody going to a "new place" (a "whole new world" as Paul McCartney once called it) during its initial setting-out. The tune starts out with the 1950s-and-before C Am F/Dm G progression, but then travels to a new key before returning to the whole same tune (so far) for the start of the second verse. Elegant one, Freddie!
The main example of key changes in songs before this (1975) was Brian Wilson: a great (and early) example is "The Warmth Of The Sun" (1963), which runs through three key changes in the course of the one verse of melody.
"Air On The G String" Bach/"Help" The Beatles
More common than the Pachelbel "Canon" progression, but also sourced in the Baroque era, is the very familiar falling bass than runs (in the key of A) A Ab F#, and then into the rest of the song in question. "Help" does it, the chords on top of the bass being A, Dbm and F#m. The Baroque source, for most people's eras, is Bach's "Air On The G String" (I always like to see air on a G string). Two years after "Help", the British Procul Harem released their famous "copy" of the Bach "A Whiter Shade Of Pale". The progression is very much in evidence.
A varient is where (in the key of A) the third bass note is G, rather than F#; F# follows the G as the fourth bass note: "Baby Love" by The Supremes, written by the brilliant Motown writers Holland-Dozier-Holland, was one of the first songs to showcase this progression. The first four chords of a verse with these bass notes became a type of signature of uptempo '60s Motown/soul numbers (or copies of the sound), almost a cliche. Simon And Garfunkle's "Homeward Bound" begins with this falling chromatic bass also. It can be an option if you want to write a "different" kind of song.
FAMOUS ELECTRIC LEAD GUITAR SOLOS
"Johnny B Goode" Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry should be mentioned here as he essentially began the rock and roll guitar solo. As he put it himself, he mixed up "a little bit of T-Bone (Walker) and.... " other sources to produce the basic rock guitar solo style, as repeatedly played by Keith Richards, Angus Young and many other guitarists since. The sound is a staple "default solo" of bands such as The Rolling Stones and AC-DC.
"You Really Got Me" The Kinks
There is a lightning guitar solo that erupts out of the middle of the first rock riff hit, in 1964. Legend had it that it was played by Jimmy Page, but it was actually Dave Davies (brother Ray wrote the songs).
Dave Davies
[See below] Eric Clapton
Clapton established his enormous reputation with the following solos:
"The SunshineOf Your Love" Cream
This solo has so much color: I see it as a bright reddy orange, flaring up on the horizon of the Hendrix-inspired riff vehicle from 1967. Cream wrote the song the same night after seeing Hendrix gig in London.
"Crossroads"
The famous recording is on the live album "Wheels Of Fire" (1968). Clapton said later that it was all played off-beat by mistake (it was all so loud in the hall): he should make those kind of "mistakes" more often. In the Cream box set it could bought as a 45 rpm 12" record.
"White Room"
Mainly playing behind the singing, Clappo throws in a high amount of expression, the sort of thing usually heard in jazz (eg: the sort of bends played by people like Louis Armsdtong or a Duke Ellington trumpeter). The jazz records that the music store owner in London's Richmond insisted him buy every time he bought a blues album, as a teenager, paid off.
"Hideaway"
Less well known, but very impressive, is the live twenty minute unaccompanied solo that Clapton plays on the blues classic "Hideaway" (Freddie King). C lapton used to playbyhis with his prtevious band The Bluesbreakers, but here he is with Cream. There is an album called "Live Cream Volume Two", and on the LP version the whole second side is this track. The band begins the track, but then the other two fall silent as Clapton plays a sort of orchestral guitar for most of the album side.
"The Art Of Dying"
This track is from George Harriosn's famous album "All Things Must Pass". The track begins with Clapton winding up a wailing Strat, and the whole record is Clapton filling in beautiful guitar lines behind each sentence of vocals. In the middle, all falls quiet as Clapton has a solo break: it sounds as if you are in a guitar shop listening to him trying out an amp. It is a brilliant recording: it shows that Clapton could paint with the guitar like say Van Gough. Surely it should be called "The Art Of Living".
[See below] Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix's best solos are:
"Red House"
Live in San Diego in 1968, Hendrix played the most bluesy version of Red House' available. It has a lot of soul, and the stopped section where he invokes the wah wah makes a great contrast.
"Johnny B Goode"
This is the most ballistic guitar playing of all time. Live in Berkeley on May 30, 1970 Hendrix blows the lid off the mountains, in the next State. What he laconically calls "a loose kind of jam" is where electric guitar becomes Wagner. The finish is too much.
"All Along The Watchtower"
Recorded in London in 1967 at Barnes' Olympic Studios (Barnes is the southwest Thames-side suburb where Gustav Holst of "The Planets" fame lived), this track encompasses every type of solo and device that Hendrix played. It stills sound like flying saucers.
"Purple Haze"
Taking us into the world of classical music, Hendrix adds his sci-fi solo to the tune itself.
[See below] Jimmy Page
Led Zeppelin's guitarist and master composer was the best guitarist of the 1970s.
"Stairway To Heaven"
The solo is a composition of its own, shaped over a considerable distance before the vocals return to round off this classically balanced piece. Page has many individual and distincitive licks and figures in this solo. As it is a separate composition (!), he always repeated the same figures live. if he didn't, it wouldn't be the full "Stairway To Heaven"
"Rock And Roll"
The lead-off masterpiece from Volume IV", the solo is a definitive rock and roll solo. You should also hear the live version from "The Song Remains The Same" (1976).
"Heartbreaker" (1969)
"Heartbreaker" is along track from the favoured album Led Zeppelin II. In the middle, there is a slowed down passage where Page plays a series of fast licks. It's not the most brilliant piece of playing in th world, but it is a good piece of unaccompanied Jimmy Page demonstrating some rock "cliches", and is a good thing to copy if you want to play some lead guitar, man.
"25 or 6 to 4" Chicago
This is a very fluid solo, very fast and long, by Terry Kath on this jazz influenced rocker. It is ocasionally played on classic rock station KLOS in Los Angeles. A friend made me aware of it when I was seventeen.
A copy of the Chicago single
"Smoke On The Water" Deep Purple
Richie Blackmore, like most of the guitarists here, listened to a lot of non-rock music as well eg: Medieval music. Cross- influences can inspire a really broad and brilliant solo. The slow but travelling solo on "Smoke On The Water" is a colorful classic, showing that speed is not necessary for expression; in fact, speed may hinder expression.
"Believer" Randy Rhoads
This is an Ozzy Osbourne track from his album "Diary Of A Madman" (1981). The album was the last album that guitarist Randy Rhoads played on with Ozzy. The solos are very fast and vvery "classically" presented. Apparently, Rhoads liked Vivaldi a lot, so most of the solos on the album become a little patterned after a few rock bursts, but the solo on "Believer" begins with a fantastic lightining quick passage of Cream-era Clapton before the Baroque classical patterns hit. It is an amazing feeling to hear it. The guy has "got it right".
"You Shook Me All Night Long" AC-DC
Angus\Young covers this classic track with some great grinding guitar, from the unmistakeable beginning to the architecturally (?) almost perfect solo itself.
What is behind your favourite song? Meet model rock and roll songs, and their descendents ....
"That's All Right Mama" Elvis Presley (1954)
This is the first rock record. It is the track that Elvis cut by accident and which was immediately played to bits on the local radio station. It was the fusion of blues and country, sung by a great voice: rock was officially here, a new type of music. It's sound is similar to Beatles songs on "Rubber Soul", for example, but the actual structure is pure three chord twelve bar blues. It's the feel that the Beatles took, as has everyone else since. Soon Chuck Berry was writing his largely twelve bar (and therefore just three chord) hits. But as Bono said, it's an example of "three chords and the truth".
Summertime Blues Eddie Cochrane (1958)
Photograph: www.eddiecochran.info
In the 1950s, one of the main rockers and songwriters was white guy Eddie Cochrane. He wrote several classics also recorded by later artists (The Who, Sid Vicious, etc) . His definitive hit was probably "Summertime Blues". The three chord anthem has been a huge influence on later bands, from mainstream rock to garage. The Who played it live in the 60s, including their great version on the "Live At Leeds" album (one of the best live albums ever). The song was clearly a strong influence on their greatest song, and another template model song, "Substitute".
"A Hard Day's Night" The Beatles (1964)
A straight-forward rock song, yet with a great subtlety in the writing. It was uncompromising in both music and lyrics ("when I get home to you, I find the things that you do will make me feel alright"). Musically, it has strong four beats to the bar, and given the time of release (when the Beatles first bust out all over and so rock came to the attention of all the world), most rock songs have since drawn on the style of the song, if not its exact form. The form, incidentally, is basically in two parts, the main section of the song, and the contrasting middle section (even sung, and possibly written, by the other main singer, Paul McCartney). Obviously, the music owes nothing to rock and roll formulas or formats (it is closer to Cole Porter or even classical music, which the Beatles had listened to extensively). As Pete Townshend of The Who said, "The Beatles brought songwriting to rock and roll".
In its wake, the Rolling Stones wrote "Satisfaction" and Bob Dylan turned rock.
"You Really Got Me" The Kinks (1964)
Dress like you write: Ray Davies is at left
This is maybe the first riff-driven rock number: rock and roll songs like "Bony Maronie" were powered by riffs, but they were, in reality, twelve bar blues numbers like their blues riff ancestors. "You Really Got Me" is a composed song that travels here and there on its way to its finish, like any composed music (classical or whatever). Many riff songs have followed: "I Feel Fine" and "Day Tripper" by the Beatles, "Sunshine Of Your Love" by Cream, and for some people the master riff song "Smoke On The Water" by Deep Purple. The durability of "You Really Got Me" is shown by the fact that Van Halen covered it as their first hit single .... going back to the source for their career start up.
Substitute The Who (1967)
Elvis Costello said once that this is a "perfect song". If you like, it has a "figure" (the "chord riff"), a verse, a bridge and the chorus to sing along to. It is a direct descendent of "Summertime Blues", whoch also has a type of chord driven figure up first. However, "Summertime Blues", like so many 1950s rock and roll songs, is very close to the standard twelve bar blues format (eg: "That's All Right Mama").. "Substitute" has clear divisions between the parts, and the bridge has a lot of activity of its own..
Purple Haze Jimi Hendrix (1967)
One of Jimi's favourite performers was Eddie Cochrane; Pete Townshend said that he thought Jimi changed the sound of "rock" more than the Beatles did. If you mean heavy rock, then that is certainly true: "Purple Haze" is a template for heavy metal and other hard rock forms. It is also a great classical composition, and the Kronos Quartet have played it forever in a string quartet arrangement by composer Phillip Glass. 1980s metal, like Judas Priest (the album "British Steel" from 1980) and Iron Maiden, might be seen as a combination of "Purple Haze" and "A Hard Day's Night", the heavy on top of the train beat.
Can't Get Enough Of Your Love Bad Company (1975)
A classic example of 1970s rock, it is a "boogie plus a tune" number that, if not the first such example, is a powerful survivor: it sounds good on KLOS Los Angeles! Unlike the other songs here, it has a triple beat (a boogie or shuffle-like beat): another similar example is the famous Southern rock anthem "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Tush ZZ Top (1975)
This is a definitive example of blues rock: the song is on a twelve bar frame (like of course the blues itself), and at the end of each verse it has the necessary lyrical hook payoff ( .... "I'm looking for some tush"). There is, of course, a blues riff to propel the song along, between each verse.
Pretty Vacant The Sex Pistols (1977)
The Sex Pistols reaffirmed the compositional lineage of mainstream rock songs. "Pretty Vacant" is not necessarily a piece of genius like the songs above, yet it returns to the train-along-the-tracks style of "A Hard Day's Night" and is a "real song": it has a figure (like "Summertime Blues" and "Substitute": in fact, the Pistols covered "Substitute" and punk was said to be "like The Who" at its beginning), excellent dynamic drama (ha, I mean the drum beats during the figure part), and a great verse and chorus; there is no middle section or bridge or pre-chorus. That is what rock songs usually have going for them, a notable figure or riff, a verse and a hot chorus, a linear effect rather than an "AABA" set up as with the usual 1930s song (the previous mainstream forunner to rock songs eg: "These Foolish Things" by Billie Holliday, Benny Goodman, etc).
Wonderwall Oasis (1995)
Oasis essentially fused the sound of the Beatles and the Sex Pistols. They therefore reaffirmed, as had the Sex Pistols, the musical foundation of the most colourful and lasting rock songs. I once heard a busker at midnight sitting on a pile of boxes outside London's Leicester Square underground station singing the opening words of "Wonderwall": the song cut right through the surroundings, illustrating the power of a good song.
That is ten template songs, but I could have added "Mama's Got A Brand New Bag" by James Brown: here we see a funk version of a figure: that is, the jangly guitar part, which is of course in addition to the brass riff. Blues is thus converted into funk. The influence of this track runs through disco and down to Prince (check out "Kiss" (1986)).
SOUND EFFECTS ACROSS MUSIC HISTORY
Sound effects?: I am referring here to an instrument being played to make a replication of a non-musical sound, eg: "I want my guitar to mimic a ...." I am not talkng about imported sound effects by non-instruments, such as Pink Floyd's clocks and money jingling on "Dark Side Of The Moon", for example, nor real instruments evoking certain moods.
ANIMALS
"Little Red Rooster" The Rolling Stones
On their 1964 number one hit (of the Howling Wolf blues classic), the Stones' guitars mimicked dogs "begin to bark" and "hounds begin to howl", because "everything in the farm yard [is] upset in every way" by the little red rooster being on the prowl.
"Livery Stable Blues" The Original Dixieland Jazz Band
The original "jass" band, at least on record
Here on the first jazz record ever (from 1917), the white musician band mimics farm yard animals: the clarinet and trombone in particular are used to make"horse whinnys" and other animal sounds. The band also recorded a record entitled "Barnyard Blues": if a gimmick works, do it again! There is a brilliant website showing rare photographs of the band: www.odjb.com. Unbelievably, there is also now a "new" version of the band touring.
THE HUMAN VOICE
"Yankee Rose" David Lee Roth
Moving into the area of sounding like the human voice, guitarist Steve Vai answewrs Roth's spoken comments with guitar notes that sound like "How are you David", etc for a couple of rejoinders at the start of the track (the first cut on "Eat 'Em And Smile" (1986). note that this is not by guitar electronic effects, but by actual original playing.
Nielsen Symphony No 6
No, not the Nielsen Soundscan play tracker: this is the most famous Danish composer Carl Nielsen. His sixth symphony deliberately has the trombone"yawning", sounding bored with things, in this comic touch where the second movement is commentating on the state of the modern classical music of the time (the 1920s).
Carl Nielsen
Duke Ellington
Several of Duke Ellington's earlier recordings feature his muted trumpeters, sounding like people speaking. This "wah wah" effect was a trademark of t he early Ellington tracks of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The first "growl" trumpet soloist in his orchestra was the famous Bubber Miley.
"Drive My Car" The Beatles
This Paul McCartney song (the lead off track on "Rubber Soul" from 1965) is about a girl who offers a guy a job as her chauffer. However, the position offered has a double meaning, as she doesn't really want the driver (she doesn't even have a car): she wants the guy. There are some sexual double meanings as soon as the first verse, and then a brilliant solo where George Harrison ends the solo by winding the guitar up high in a twisting human-like climax before the chorus is sung again. The Beatles were known for putting double meanings and puns everywhere. These were of course mostly in the lyrics, but this sounds like an intended musical one.
INANIMATE SOUNDS
"The Battle Of Evermore" Led Zeppelin
This masterpiece from a masterpiece album, (Led Zeppelin Volume IV), features busy almost clashing mandolin chord picking. It sounds as though the mandolin is representing the clacking of swords in an imaginary medieval battle. The effect is very insistent, and runs through the whole track as Robert Plant's vocals unveil the story of knights and battles "in the valley below". It is in any event a very descriptive track.
The cover of Zeppelin IV
"Who Can It Be Now?" Men At Work
As the title implies, this up-tempo classic from 1981 is about the singer speculating who might be knocking at his door. The line "I hear knocking at my door" is followed by a series of quick door knocks. By contrast with the examples above, this is of course not hard to do (presumably very easily by the drummer when playing live), and perhaps the presence of this example shows the few number of examples in music (particularly rock) of instruments mimicking sounds: only a door knock? However, a door knock on a record has a very famous forebear ....
Beethoven Symphony No 5
The cover sheet of the Fifth: so who is this
"Louis Beethoven", then ....?
The most famous motif in music, (the "da da da dah") at the start of the first movement of the symphony, was reportedly said by Beethoven to have been intended by him to mimic the sound of Fate knocking at the door.
"Jailbreak" AC-DC
Finally, we find the mimicking of the sound of "machines", as opposed to "man". As singer Bon Scott tells the tale of the jailbird who tries to escape from jail, guitarist Angus Young "plays" rifle shots and spotlights.
So, whatever the type of music, I say that there there should be more instruments mimicking sound effects in music ....
The punk explosion happened in England in 1976-77 (primarily 1977). However, like the word "punk", its origins were in America ....
1960s
The Sonics (from Seattle): a stripped down garage band
The MC5 from Detroit): more rock, but a punk approach
Best track:
Kick Out The Jams
The Stooges (from Detroit): the Igmeister, Iggy Pop
Best track:
I Wanna Be Your Dog
Iggy Pop in 1980
Pre-Sex Pistols 1970s
The New York Dolls
They were quoted as a major influence on the Sex Pistols, and one of their songs, "Puss 'N Boots" has a verse musically identical verse to the verse of the Pistols' "Liar". Their major records were made over 1973-74. The Dolls' records sound a lot like early Rolling Stones: were the Stones the first punks?
Best tracks:
Personality Crisis
Looking For A Kiss
Jonathon Richman and the Modern Lovers
Their song "Roadrunner" was played by the Sex Pistols: part of the song is on a hilarious and live studio jam version of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode" is on the double "The Great Rock And Roll Swindle" album.
1976-77 And UK Punk
After the UK had literally become a third world country, (with three day working weeks because of strikes!!), something corresponding had to happen artistically; it did, and it is no coincidence that its primary image was safety pins and torn clothes. The slogan was "We don't care", a line from the Sex Pistol's "Pretty Vacant". The song title says it all anyway.
There were five main UK bands:
The Sex Pistols
A combination of Chuck Berry guitar and The Stooges, the Pistols featured genius and punk spokesman Johnny Rotten. He was twentyone, had Irish parentage, grew up in Norf London and was a brilliant lyric writer ("you follow me around like a pretty pot of glue .... I look around your house, you got nothing to steal": "New York"). Johnny was and is the ultimate punk. He also understood Machiavelli's statement of the real purpose behind a monarchy ("the Fascist regime, she ain't no human being": "God Save The Queen").
But musically the Sex Pistols were excellent, their straight-forward blocks of chords supporting great sing-along choruses. Oasis were really a fusion of the Beatles and the Sex Pistols, Liam Gallagher at times sneering ala Johnny Rotten over a Pistols train-bass.
The Pistols covered The Stooges' "No Fun", with its chugging spastic bass and lyrics such as I'm on the dole and it's no fun". A lot is made of Malcom M"cLaren's "manufacturing" of the whole punk thing, but there would have been no punk without Johnny Rotten.
In summary, the Sex Pistols' sound was great, with funny and highly descriptive lyrics.
There was only one true album, "Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols". Issued on a garish but attractive pink and green cover, with news print cut-out text, it was the best album of the late 1970s. It was totally original art.
Iggy Pop set up the punk template, and then the UK delivered the social circumstances and artists in bulk, for the punk explosion to finally happen.
However, the band had fired the main songwriter (of the music), bassist Glen Matlock, because he was "into Paul McCartney" (in punk everything old was, at least so far as publicity wa concerned, out): although fitting the punk look, his replacement Sid Vicious couldn't even play let alone write (supposedly the pure punk ethic) and so the band collapsed. Matlock is now back when the band tours: their first comeback tour was in 1996.
Best tracks:
Pretty Vacant
God Save The Queen
Bodies
Seventeen
Johnny Rotten interviewed in
1987 on Finnish television: his hair
was predominantly orange also in 1977
The Damned
The Damned were a sort of deputy band to the Sex Pistols, with a hot single "New Rose" and later a cover of 60s drama-rock number "Eloise". They also covered The Beatles' "Help". Their bass player Captain Sensible has had solo hits. The Damned were performing live in London 2001. It was the only gig I have been to where I was scared of the audience; there was a lot of slam dancing by bald-headed hooligans! But I had to see the Damned, to see what it was all about.
The Stranglers
This band was a sort of rock-punk hybrid, with a taciturn image and a spare bass-prominent sound.
Best tracks:
Get A Grip On Yourself
Peaches
The Clash
Everyone knows the Clash; they put out a long catalogue of classics, including the brilliant album double album "London Calling".
The Jam
Fronted by UK "Modfather" Paul Weller, the Jam released a lot of bare but melodic and chorus-driven singles. Weller used the Beatles riff from george Harrison's Taxman to help create one of their stronger records, which is frequently used (re-recorded) on advertisements in the States. His singing is deliberately Cockney-style.
Best tracks:
Underground
A Town Called Malice
Prominent hit writers were The Undertones from Northern Ireland (famous DJ John Peel's favourite record "Teenage Kicks") and Manchester's Buzzcocks ("Orgasm Addict"). The impact of punk on UK popular culture is still felt, evidenced for example by the TV panel game series "Never Mind The Buzzcocks", and of course Liam Gallagher's Johnny Rotten-like singing "snarl". And a punk compliation came out a few years ago entitled "It's punk, innit?".
There was also:
Generation X (Billy Idol's first band: they had a great single, "Ready Steady Go"), Siouxsie and the Banshees (they covered the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" and had a big hit with a song called "Hongkong Garden"), The Ruts and many other bands. Several characters, other than the main Pistols) were thrown up during punk, including a guy who named himself Dee Generate (although I don't know of any actual records, if any, recorded by him) and Polly Styrene, who was the "singer" for X Ray Specs: their single "Bondage Up Yours" was a punk classic and has the worst saxophone "solo" of all time. But to some extent, that was the point of punk.
US Punk
The Ramones
Part of the New York CBGBs punk scene, everyone knows the Ramones. Dee Dee, Johnny, Joey and Tommy Ramone (not real brothers) played fast and frenetic, but with melody.
Best tracks:
Blitzkrieg Bop (a good title for their sound)
Rockaway Beach
The Dead Kennedies
Funny records; the front man was/is Jello Biafra.
Best tracks:
"Holiday In Cambodia"
"Too Drunk To Fuck"
After Punk
What did punk do to music? Quite a lot, actually: the individuality (and gimickry) of records went up, but musicality fell; musicality only truly began to rise again, across the board, from 1986-87 with George Michael's solo albums, U2's and Prince's continuing advances, and Nirvana.
In the UK, punk gave way to "New Wave" (in theory Elvis Costello, and others) and then the plastic keyboard, empty sound of the "New Romantics". Luckily, U2 and the Police powered away from the memory of the latter as the 1980s unfolded.
In the US, bands like Blondie and the Talking Heads quickly developed from out of the CBGBs scene in New York. Even Madonna had, in part, a punk image in her early days; her look from around 1984 and later in "Desperately Seeking Susan" are from UK punk. REM took some of the characteristics of New York's New Wave, as they began to write their own chapter in music..But blandness crept in in other areas: the "corporate rock" of the early '80s and a less musical brand of metal in the form of the '80s hair metal bands: lite metal.
Many musicians sell themselves, either accidentally or by design, by their image.
Ozzy Osbourne
After leaving Black Sabbath in the late 1970s, Ozzy recorded a series of successful albums featuring guitar maestro Randy Rhoads (until Rhoad's death in an air crash in 1983 while on tour). Ozzy's image was (and is) the image of "crazy". His first album featured his signature hit "Crazy Train", his next album was called "Diary Of A Madman", and the next "Bark At The Moon". You get the picture. Even the second track of "Diary Of A Madman" begins with "crazy" in the first line. Extreme sells, and "crazy" is a good type of extreme. That's marketing, but what else would you do to focus listener's attention on a guy who earlier accidently bit the head off a bat live on stage?!
"I'm crazy!" Black Sabbath
in 1973
The cover of a great album:
"Diary Of A Madman" (1981)
This is a good album: the song "Believer" shows Ozzy (or whoever wrote the lyrics) as philosopher
".... Rise above the obstacles
People besiege me
But they'll never teach me
The things I already know
You've got to believe in yourself
Or noone will believe in you
Imagination's like a bird on the wing
[It's there] for you to use
I am a believer
I am no deceiver
Mountains move before my eyes
Destiny planned out
I don't need no handout
Speculation of the wise
[Note: The CD reissue, however, apparently features different bass and drums to the original recording].
.
Hank Williams Jnr
Hank is the son of Hank Williams the country great and song-writing genius. The son had to go another way. After a near death climbing experience that left him a little facially disfigured, Hank Jnr became the "Man Of Steel" (one of his song titles). He's rough and tough, and brings all his "rowdy" friends over for a night of TV and drinking. The music also, has distinguishing features: straight ahead rowdy electric country boogie, with the interesting presence of saxophones and even (on one track) a clarinet. The image?: loud and proud, conveyed by the beard (to hide the scars), the hat and the dark glasses.
Dizzy Gillespie
When bebop hit in 1945, it was clearly a complicated intellectual music. You literally had to be a virtuoso to even play it. Dizzy became (or was) "Professor Bop", complete with small round glasses, beret and suit. He titled an album "Professor Bop". It was a good way to (try!) to sell bop to the public. And they referred to the Metropolitan "Bopera" House, aligning bebop with opera. Dizzy also had a crazy image anyway, indicated by his name (he was always playing pranks when starting out in big bands) (his real first names were John Birks). He was the nutty professor, playing complicated scales and harmonies, and way high on the trumpet.
"Ready, students?"
Professorial: Dizzy in 1955
Louis Armstrong
"Satchmo": from "satchel mouth". Like the above, he took his image from his physicality: the genial, OTT Louis (though also more palatable to rascist whites in the 1930s). He also did a lot of "muggles", the title of a 1920s track: his real-life daily existence as a toker dove-tailed with (or caused?) the "laughing Loius" image; there is even a record called "Laughing Louis", when Armstrong was totally stoned one day in the studio and a track was recorded.
"I'm gonna rock this joint"
Little Richard
Oooh! Scream! There is an image right there. And he rode it to the end, even if by the time I saw him in London he had become more Liberace standing on a piano than Little Richard. The girl couldn't help it, and neither it seemed could Richard (one of his hits was "The Girl Can't Help It", title song of the famous 1950s rock and roll movie). Who screams and jumps up and down? Little Richard. That is the use of image.
Howling Wolf was a blues equivalent: the howl.
Flamboyant: Hollywood, 1988
"I can't help it":
it's the 1950s
The Beatles
Yes, though they were geniuses (three geniuses in one band) they were very carefullt MARKETED by their meticulous manager Brian Epstein. The collarless suits may have (allegedly) led John Lennon to nearly punch Epstein, but they sold a lot of records. The lyricist Marty Panzer (Barry Manilow) told a class at UCLA that, early on, people didn't buy the Beatles' records because of the music (I would dispute that, myself!), but because of the clothes, ie: the image.
"Like these suits, John?"
Marketing: dressing a mop.
The Rolling Stones
The Stones were deliberately sold by their go-getter manager Andrew Loog-Oldham, as the bad boys of rock and roll, the total opposites of the "good boy" Beatles. That'll work! As with the top five artists, it was based in truth: they WERE "bad": Brian Jones fathered many children in his native Cheltenham, Mick is self-explanatory, Keith looks bad (!), and Bill Wyman (as well as being named after a woman - Jane Wyman) wrote in his autobiography that at one point in their first period of touring, Mick and Keith had had about thirty girls each, Brian a hundred and Bill (who kept score) 291 (he was married, though in the England of the time it was effectively more of an arrangement).
The Eagles
Country rockers wear jeans. As The Eagles were in California, they added blonde hair. The image suited the music. A modern equivalent may be Maroon 5: the keyboardists have the same look, thought the singer has a suit. That of course is also image, attempting again to fit the music.
KISS
This is marketing gone wild. The band rehearsed in secret for months until they had the musuc and the look perfect. It would therefore appear as though they had come out of nowhere, and there was no (known or observed) history of their performances to compare them to. That's image with a bang. Whether the image exploits any pre-existing personas in the band is hard to tell, but Ace Frehley was seen by the band as kind of "spacey", and so became the "spaceman". The monster image of Gene Simmons would seem to suit! So it is likely that the band members took aspects of their personas and then extrapolated them into their overall IMAGE.
Michael Jackson
Gloves and moonwalking are certainly an image. But, unlike as with some of the artsist above, it seems to have been purely artifice: his truer image began to appear later. Or did he just wreck the image?
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE ROLLING STONES
The Rolling Stones
The Stones released their first album in 1963, "The Rolling Stones": it contains the Chuck Berry and R&B template that the Stones had learnt from and would follow frequently in the future. Many Americans, such as Bruce Springsteen, learnt about Chuck Berry from this album. The Stones had discovered the music, and presented it to the future US rockers. People learnt Chuck's riffs from Keith Richards.
The majority of the tunes were covers, as the Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham had only just locked Mick and Keef in a kitchen and told them they couldn't come out until they had written a song of their own.
Tracks:
Oh Carol (Chuck Berry classic)
Down The Road Apiece (groovy fluid Keith intro)
Out Of Our Heads
This came out in 1965, and featured a song named "Satisfaction". It also has the Stone's first "real song" (as Keith described it) "The Last Time". Ted Nugent would, as a teenager, drive down the highway standing up in the car with this song blasting. Many of the tracks are soul covers eg: one of Keith's favourite songs, Otis Redding's "Pain In My Heart". The album shows theStones's emering interest in soul.
Highlight tracks:
Satisfaction
The Last Time
The Spider And The Fly (where Mick seduces a "machine operator" into his web)
This album also has a superb title, guarenteed to freak out older people of the time! The cover photo fits this perfectly, virtually (or relatively, for the time) punk in its image.
Aftermath
A long record, from 1966, showing a broadening of the Stones' sound. Color is well to the fore, and several commercial hits are on the album eg: "Out Of Time" and "Under My Thumb". The latter has extraordinarily funny lyrics that just may have started the feminist revolution: Mick sings how his girl is totally under his thumb: the romantic fourth verse begins, "Under my thumb, she keeps her eyes to herself, but I, I can still look at someone else"!
Highlight tracks:
Out Of Time
Under My Thumb
Mother's Little Helper (about valium dropping mothers)
Beggar's Banquet
The first "modern" Stones album, from 1968. Following their 1967 excesses of trying to out-psychedelic The Beatles and everyone else (bassist Bill Wyman said of their experiments, "I didn't like that music"), Keith discovered blues legend Robert Johnson and got back to basics. As true artists, the Stones realised that you couldn't go any further with the darkness of their most extreme early period single "Have You Had Another Baby, Standing In The Shadows?" (1966). The psychedelia that followed was a diversion, to set them up for the new period of 1968 and later.
Beggar's Banquet was the first of a run of four classica albums over 1968-72, the ulitiamte Stones period.
Highlight tracks:
Sympathy For The Devil (remixed a thousand times on a thousand dance floors)
Streetfighting Man
Let It Bleed
Generally regarded as their best album, and released in 1969. Nearly every track is a classic, and the Stones have regularly played most of them as staple live tracks, at varying periods of time.
Highlight tracks:
Gimme Shelter
Midnight Rambler
Let It Bleed
Love In Vain (the Robert Johnson cover)
Monkey Man (a more recent live favourite)
Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers, from 1971, begins with possibly the best Stones song, "Brown Sugar". It was written by Mick alone in a trailer in the outback of Australia while he wa filming the movie "Ned Kelly"; his hand had been injured by a gun going off, and was recovering when he wrote the song. Keith arranged the track. Several classica are on the record, including also "Wild Horses". Side one, in particular, is bery good: it plays like a themed album, until the last track on the side.
Highlight tracks:
Brown Sugar
Wild Horses
Sway
Bitch
Dead Flowers
Exile On Main Street
This is the Stones' peak period, and for many "Exile On Main Street" is their best album. It is a double album, was made in 1972 in the basement of a mansion rented in the South Of France by Keith (the Stones were by now in tax exile), and rocks: as Keith said ".... we were cooking up a good album in my basement."
Highlight tracks:
Either all of them, or ....
Rocks Off
Tumbling Dice
Casino Boogie (about the casino at Monte Carlo)
Happy (Keith's major solo number at every Stones gig)
Sweet Virginia
All Down The Line
Ventilator Blues
Some Girls
"Some Girls" was a "comeback" album, from 1978, after a semi-lay off when guitarist Mick Taylor was replaced by leaping Ronnie Wood and Keith nearly wound up in the can for seven years over heroin powder was found in his limo in Toronto. He kicked both heroin and his 60s model ex Anita Pallenburg.
Highlight tracks:
Miss You (the Stones go disco, and very well)
Some Girls ("black girls just want to get fucked all night long, I don't have that much jam")
Before They Make Me Run (a solo Keith number about his Toronto experience)
Respectable ("you're the easiest lay on the White House lawn")
Shattered (about the declining state of New York's finances at the time)
Tattoo You
Two albums on from "Some Girls" in 1981, and a fixture at number one, both the album and its single Start Me Up".
Highlight tracks:
Start Me Up (the Stones' first number one since "Brown Sugar")
Little T & A (Keith's love song to his new wife PattieHansen: "She's my little rock and roll. Her tits and ass have got soul, baby")
Waiting On A Friend (includes Sonny Rollins on tenor sax, as do other tracks on the album)
Neighbours
Voodoo Lounge
The Stones were niow in the '90s, and in 1994 put out "Voodoo Lounge". The band had seemingly actually split in 1986, after the last "main" Stones period album "Dirty Work". Mick and Keith had been fighting, and it was suddenly in 1989 that they were back with "Steel Wheels", their first "CD" length album. "Steel Wheels" is quite a good album, but "Voodoo Lounge" has some really high quality consistency to it. All tracks have great hooks and some are great records.
Highlight tracks:
"Love Is Strong"
"The Worst" (the first of two Keith-sung classics that continued his new breathy style begun on "Steel Wheels": slow jams with low gruff vocals)
"Thru And Thru" (another Keith solo song)
I would like to add the latest Stones album, "The Biggest Bang", which is very good (the single "Streets Of Love " is a classic and there are many other really artistic songs), but I have already listed ten albums.
Keith is coming to git 'cha
Photograph: Wikipedia
Keith Richard's solo works, with both the Rolling Stones and on his two solo albums, have a disctinctive quality not present on Stones records where Mick Jagger is the singer and/or writer.
Here are the main Keith tracks:
"You've Got The Silver"
Keith on piano provides a contrast on side two of "Let It Bleed", a strong candidate for the Rolling Stone's best album.
"Happy"
Keith's theme song, from side one of "Exile On Main Street" (I think it helps it think of albums as having sides, even if you hear it on CD, as it gives a sense of structure to the whole album, a structure that was certainly deliberately created by the makers). Keith plays this at every Stones gig, and so he should.
"Before They Make Me Run"
This track was on side two of "Some Girls" in 1978. It was written after he was arrested for heroin possession in Canada, which was nearly prosecuted as a trafficking case. It's a great rock and roll song, with the typical Keith laconic approach; at Wembly in 1989 he couldn't remember all the words to it, and when he came to play "Happy" afterwards he said, "I hope I remember the words to this one".
"All About You"
This is the first of the Stone's longstanding tradition of "the last cut on the album is a Keith song". It is great music, and the lyrics tell of someone that the singer is well sick of, someone who at a party is, amongst other things, "always the first bitch to get laid". At the time, people thought it ws about Anita Pallenberg, who he broke up with shortly before, but later wisdom has it that it was about Mick!
"Little T & A"
A classic from "Tattoo You". "She's my little rock and roll, her [T ....} and [A ....] have got soul, man " should indicate what the "T" and the "A" stand for. A great dance floor rocker.
"Sleep Tonight"
This was a restful piano ballad at the end of the "Dirty Work" album from 1986. The Stones did sleep for a while, resurfacing intact with the interesting "Steel Wheels" in 1989: belief that they had split was inaccurate.
"Talk Is Cheap"
Keith's first solo album, from 1988, and much better than the previous Stones album. The record introduced fully Keith's new "speaking voice" sound, the gnarled and gruff but cool vocals and edgy guitar grind that serve so well as a counterpart to Jagger's more mainstream rock sound. The tracks sound like a sort of Keith take on Al Green, but with 90% Keef, 10% Al. Stand out cuts are "Take It So Hard", "Neglected" and the "Make No Mistake" which was featured in a Sopranos episode in 2000. I knew a sax player who used to play "Struggle" in a duo in pubs, repeating to me Keith's gruff "neglected " line. Brilliant: a song is good if other people play it.
"Can't Be Seen" and "Slipping Away"
These two songs are from "Steel Wheels", the Stones' "comeback album" in 1989. "Can't Be Seen" is really funny: it's Keith in a relationship with a married woman, so he "can't be seen with ya, baby" .... 'cos youre married anyway". It is a different take on music too, an uptempo rocker that is nevertheless a complete departure for the Stones: Keith's voice also is not very recognisably Keith, which make it even more interesting as a recorded track. "Slipping Away" is a classic composition that was also used to close the Stones' well known late '80s video documentary, "25X5". The breathy vocals and laid-back drums are typical of his new infectuous style.
"Main Offender"
Keith's second solo album, from 1992. The record is a presentation of both Keith's down and dirty grind rock, or Keith -inflected reggae. The outstanding feature is his rhythmically-distinctive guitar chords combined with the shaded soundscape. "Wicked As It Seems" is a good example of the feel.
"Thru And Thru" and "The Worst"
Keith's two songs from "Voodoo Lounge" (1994). Both songs are classics. Brooding, or Keith's idea of a love song? The latter.
Keith now ....
The "Country" Keith
Keith's live version of "The Nearness Of You", the Hoagy Carmichael classic (he wrote "Georgia" and "Stardust") and his duet appearances with such people as Nora Jones (who also covered "The Nearness Of You" on her first album "Come Away With Me") has seen him adopt a country feel to many of his solo performances and recordings. His latest solo-sung songs on Stones albums have a country/Martin guitar touch.
See Keith's website www.keithrichards.com
A GUIDE TO THE BEATLES' ALBUMS
1 Please Please Me
The first Beatles album, and recorded in a day: it was their live act, so George Martin just added microphones to their act, in effect. Also, sex sells, and the Beatles named their first album, and the hit single of the same name, well.
Stand out tracks are
I Saw Her Standing There (track one; it follows Paul McCartney's famous 1 2 3 4 intro)
Please Please Me (their second single and first number one)
Twist And Shout (Isley Brothers soul cover rock out; six bar orgasmic climax)
2 With The Beatles
Photographs: Wikipedia
"With The Beatles" brought The Beatles fully into the spotlight. With songs like "All My Loving", it was obvious that these guys were, either collectively or one or two individually, geniuses. It was released in November 1963, and within a month there was a TV program screening on UK TV about the songs of the Beatles; they had only been banging around a year, from the point of view of record releases.
The first track, "It Won't Be Long", seems to be a grouping together of these influences: a Duke Ellington chord progression for the verse (from "Black Beauty" of 1928, showcasing Ellington's first attractive melody), a bit of Motown to continue it on, a very distinctive (# dominant to tonic) melody leap from a little known Gershwin tune of the 1920s (that I found on an album of piano rolls by Gershwin), and of course the killer riff of Lennon's that drives the song. It was "put together", but it rocks. If anything shows the depth and sophistication of the Beatles' influences, then this tune does.
The next track is another John Lennon tune, influenced by his R&B hero Arthur Alexander: the song opnes with a climbing melody over a descending chord progression, classic "contrary motion", as the classical people call it.
Track three is McCartney and his "All My Loving". You will hear the shape and indeed essentially the first half of the verse in the second movement of Mozarts's Symphony No 28! Top influence.
There is so much on this album. It expanded from the first album "Please Please Me" by light years. It appears as though all the music the Beatles had been listening to before really came through here, not what you may expect from the photography, ie: the half lit cover.
Tracks:
All My Loving
Til There Was You (show biz cover from 1950s musical "The Music Man")
Money (R&B cover)
3 A Hard Day's Night
Said by one author (Albert Goldman in his book "The Lives Of John Lennon") to be as close to a John Lennon solo album with the Beatles as you could get, "A Hard Day's Night" is the main musical representation of Beatlemania. And McCartney's three contributions are perfect also: "And I Love Her", "Can't Buy Me Love" and side two's "Things We Said Today".
Tracks:
A Hard Day's Night
I Should Have Known Better
And I Love Her
Can't Buy Me Love
4 Beatles For Sale
"Beatles For Sale" was released after "A Hard Day's Night", and for reasons of time available was filled fifty per cent with versions of OPS (other people's songs). However, there are original hidden classics, particularly from John Lennon ("No Reply" and the verse of "Every Little Thing", for example). An interesting aspect to these tracks is their sound: the album is more sonically colored than the earlier albums: rich pianos and large drum effects. In fact, Paul McCartney described one of his songs on the album ("What You're Doing") as "a bit of filler .... Maybe it's a better recording than it is a song." There are some interesting recordings on the album. Even the version of Chuck Berry's "Rock And Roll Music" has a distinctive sound.
Tracks:
Eight Days A Week
5 Help
"Help" is a more innocent-sounding album. And .... it contained "Yesterday".
Tracks:
Help
Yesterday
It's Only Love
You're Gonna Lose That Girl
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (sixties flute solo included; Oasis-covered)
6 Rubber Soul
This was George Harrison's most listened-to Beatles album. I walked off a bus in the centre of London's South Kensington area, and heard "Norwegian Wood" playing on an FM radio on a newsstand: it sounded so brilliant, a testimony to genius, analog, a bit on the side, and four tracks.
The pad that launched "Norwegian Wood", "Help"
and all the rest: John Lennon's house "Kenwood"
in Surrey, England. Photograph: Simon Harper
Tracks:
Drive My Car
Norwegian Wood
You Won't See Me
Nowhere Man
Michelle
In My Life
The Word (yes, it's "love"; a brilliant pre-hippy psychedelic blues number)
Is "Rubber Soul" then actually The Beatles' best album? It's a strong case.
7 Revolver
Many have said that this is, really, the Beatles' best album. It's the most compact, and from the point of view of unity, variety and invention I say it is almost like a Beethoven or Mahler symphony: maybe try Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique". It has a lot of color, and has provided a template for intelligent and observant "indie rock" ever since .... and "Britpop". Ha. It begins with "Taxman", once described in a record by record Beatles discography book as a "minor miracle for a George Harrison composition". At the time it no doubt was: but "Something" else was still to come. The Jam recast the riff to "Taxman", and most succesfully so as a cover of the Jam's track was recently riding a TV ad in Los Angeles.
The album only goes up from there, with "Eleanor Rigby" following on. The jazz standard (!) "Here There And Everywhere" gives way to "Yellow Submarine", and then the road is left open for the world of John Lennon (and the others) to "expand your mind and let it float downstream" for the rest of the album. Many of McCartney's songs (compositions really) on the record have an especially crisp, classical touch: not just the obvious "Eleanor Rigby", but also "For No One" and its McCartney predecessor on the album, "Good Day Sunshine".
This album is so good, and has such a character, that there is even a site, www.revolverbook.co.uk, that tells the "story of the album", complete with links to maps and other resources detailing the London of the time.
The garden at John Lennon's house "Kenwood" near Weybridge, Surrey.
Paul McCartney wrote "Here There And Everywhere" sitting next to John's
pool, while waiting for him to get up one day.
Photograph: Simon Harper
Tracks:
Taxman
Eleanor Rigby
Yellow Submarine
Here There And Everywhere
I'm Only Sleeping
Dr Robert
Got To Get You Into My Life
8 Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Side one has to be one of the greatest twenty odd minutes of music ever, seen as a continual picture. It picked up from the end of "Revolver". The side is distiguished by, amongst other things, the first use in rock music of prominent and commercial electric guitar licks to paint musical pictures, for example: "With A Little Help From My Friends", and particularly "Fixing A Hole". If the quality of recording had been as on "Abbey Road" ....
Tracks:
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
With A Little Help From My Friends
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
A Day In The Life (nominated by many as the BEST Beatles song or piece)
9 The White Album
Hey, guess what? It's here ....
There is a case to be made that "The White Album" is the best album the Beatles put together (given that an album is a snap-shot at a given time of what the musicians have written and/or recorded).
Individually, the tunes are among the best and most far reaching: many new genres emerged in the wake of some of these tracks eg: grunge/heavy metal/shock rock ("Helter Skelter"), lampoon country ("Rocky Racoon"), and overblown stadium rock ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps": the song itself and the recording are of course masterpieces, and Eric Clapton played an interesting solo, but every group of rockers from Lynyrd Skynyrd up to the 80's stadium bands seem to play only variations of the broad descending chords and bass progression, first heard here; a perfectly-blown stadium rock example of a descendant of the song, however, is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven") .... and the beast goes on.
"Back In The USSR" is generally acknowledged as probably the best of the Beatle rockers (some of its influence crops up in Blur's "Well Respected Man" of 1996, on high rotation in British pubs through the apex of "Britpop"). And to rock out further there are "Revolution" and "Birthday". "Blackbird" is another very well-written McCartney number: is it the best acoustic rock song ever?
The Lennon vision was never so in evidence as on "Glass Onion", "Dear Prudence" and even "Cry Baby Cry". "Dear Prudence" is copied all the time today by would be acoustic "indie" warblers.
The only problem is that there are so many styles juxtaposed that at times you feel that you are in a fair-ground trying to absorb too much all at once. But did people really need to be told, "Get yourself this album?"!!
Tracks:
Back In The USSR
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Helter Skelter
10 Abbey Road
George Martin has said he likes "Abbey Road" more than "Sergeant Pepper". As a whole experience, the album certainly takes you on a journey: more so than "Pepper" does. Also, the sound quality is better (two years was a long time in sound development in the 1960s). From a personal viewpoint, I will never forget walking down a London street and when approaching the next cross street I suddenly saw the road sign, imprinted on an old wall, whose photograph appears on the back of the album cover. But the reason this made such an impression is of course the music. The lush sounds say it all. It was the Beatles' final recording, in mid 1969.
Tracks:
Come Together
Something
Here Comes The Sun
The brilliant side two medley/collage
11 Let It Be
It was recorded before "Abbey Road" (which was therefore the Beatles' true last album) but released after it, in 1970.
Tracks:
Let It Be
The Long And Winding Road
All Across The Universe
Get Back
The Double Compilations:
The Beatles 1962-66
In 1973, two major double album Beatles compilations were issued. With nearly thirty cuts on each one, the two albums are a sort of "Beethoven Complete Symphonies" presentation. The Beatles 1962-66 is the first of them. This one was issued in red binding. It begins with "Love Me Do" and ends with "Yellow Submarine".
The Beatles 1967-70
The main text book at Beatles College, Oxford
This is the second of the two best of compilations that make up the grand overview of The Beatles. The 1967-70 album is nothing less than a great statement of modern music. When I was seventeen I spent about a whole year listening to it and nothing else (except the Hollywood Bowl album below). Noel Gallagher from Oasis has said something similar. It's the modern musical sacred text of sacred texts. A worthy inclusion is George Harrison's "Old Brown Shoe", the flipside of the "Hey Jude" single release in 1968: Harrison displays some violent electric guitar in an interesting composition, an example of what was meant when one music book said, "if you want to see how to be a guitarist in a band, listen to George Harrison with the Beatles: any record".
********
Bonus live disc!!:
The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl
The flavor of live, the groupies ....
This album, produced by George Martin and released in 1977, attempted to show the Beatles live in America in 1964 and 1965. I learned a lot from this album, as it presents a sort of greatest hits of the earlier Beatles, including a covers of rock and roll classics like "Long Tall Sally" (which sounds almost like a classical orchestral piece, when you hear how they structured George's Harrison solo interlude). The album has not been released on CD yet, as the sound quality is definitely way down, "on the ground" in fact (words from "I'm Down", which is not on the record, but is on the tapes of the Shea Stadium concert).
I didn't bother to comment on the first album "Please Please Me" (1963) or the quasi albums like "Magical Mystery Tour" (1967). They are more a collection of random songs, some brilliant of course.
The poster from the White Album (airbrushed)
When Is "Popular Music" High Art?
I feel that all succesful and popular mainstream rock albums, if they were paintings, would be in a good art gallery. For example, an album by Genesis or Steely Dan may not be at the level of the Beatles, but if the album was a painting it would still be in a major gallery in New York. But there are some songs and writers who are definitely in the "high" art area, that is the equal of the BEST paintings, not just any paintings in a good gallery. Try these ten examples from the "rock" era ....
"If You Go Away" Jaques Brel/Rod McKuen
I noticed after making this grouping that many of the songs here have highly original chord progressions: "If You Go Away" is one example (very sophisticated chords); others include "Blackbird" (obviously: how about all those "jazz" passages in the middle section?) , "Yesterday", "Strawberry Fields", "I'm Still In Love With You" (I'm hearing Duke Ellington and classical music here) and "Little Wing" (a very versatile set of chords there) .... and naturally the Brian Wilson compositions like "God Only Knows" (on the "Pet Sounds" album). "If You Go Away" is the English version of the immortal "Ne Me Quitte Pas", the English lyrics being by American poet/composer/singer Rod McKuen. The French voted it the top song of the twentieth century (both the French and English language versions).
Brel was also involved in film
Photograph: Wikipedia
A great version "If You Go Away" is on Rod McKuen's famous live album "The Amsterdam Concert" (1971). It is now available as a double CD. When I heard it I thought, "This is close to the sound I have been hearing in my head", ie: of music I would like to play on stage. In a link to Jim Croce (see below), Rod McKuen is the only writer to have an entire album of his (words and) music recorded by Frank Sinatra (the album "A Man Alone" from 1969). Sinatra could spot high art!
Rod McKuen live
"Blackbird" Paul McCartney
"Blackbird", "Yesterday", "Penny Lane", "And I Love Her" and many other McCartney songs eg: I would suggest even "Lady Madonna", and certainly "Fool On The Hill" (classical guitarist John Williams's favourite Beatles piece) are high art. In keeping with my comments about interesting and different chord progressions, you will notice that, with the partial exception of "And I Love Her", these songs have very "different" chord sequences. It makes sense, therefore, that "And I Love Her" was written in 1964 and so is two years (a long time in "Beatle time") before the earliest of the others: he was developing. In 1968, "Blackbird" appeared. It has amazing chords, as it plays out.
Blackbird: one of these feathery
friends inspired a great piece.
Birdcalls can be great music in themselves. I once heard a bird after visiting Warwick Castle in, er, Warwick, central England that "played" a blues riff: the notes (in C) were C [new bar] D E C A; the C A provides the "blues bend". French composer Messaien spent large amounts of his life transcribing bird calls: why didn't he just tape them?!
"Strawberry Fields" John Lennon
One of John Lennon's peaks.
Here it is: how "Strawberry Fields" looks in April. The name is on
the gate at left. I had just survived a night bus trip to Liverpool,
including a breakdown on the freeway, so I needed to take five.
John Lennon grew up down the road to the right, and then left up
Menlove Avenue.
Photograph: Copyright 2004 Simon Jay Harper.
"Brown Sugar" The Rolling Stones
Recently I actually dreamed an entirely new version, slower with different lyrics at the start and a "slow" melodic middle section! Both the recording and the song itself are masterpieces: Mick Jagger wrote most of it himself in the country in southern Australia while filming the movie "Ned Kelly" in 1969. Marian Faithfull said that she realised during the writing of "Sympathy" and other "Beggars Banquet" tracks (in 1968) that the Rolling Stones were making high art. "Brown Sugar" was released in 1971, in a swaggering version as good as the song itself.
"I'll HaveTo Say I Love You In A Song" Jim Croce
A beautiful song, and beautifully recorded. It's a model of a song. Croce was so good that he was one of the very few seventies writers to have a song recorded and made into a hit by Frank Sinatra ("Bad, Bad Leroy Brown"). Recently an album of "Home Recordings" has been released, and also a live album and DVD "Have You Heard - Jim Croce Live?" Some people nominate his song "Time In A Bottle" as his best song, but "I'll HaveTo Say I Love You In A Song" is broader.
Jim Croce: "Help! I'm in a bottle".
"Where Do You Go To My Lovely?" Peter Sarstedt
The sound of the swinging sixties (and seventies) and the Cote de Zur. I met Peter Sarstedt in London at The Twelve Bar Club on London's Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street: he said the track was recorded at a small studio behind London's nearby busy "masses" shopping thoroughfare of Oxford Street, not exactly where I would have imagined it would have been recorded, from the sound and the lyrics! But at least he said it was written in Denmark, in 1966. The lyrics take you from the "back streets of Naples" to the South of France. In England, it is a busker's favourite (well, for the more aware buskers!!). The song was awarded the Ivor Novello Award in 1969 (the UK's Grammy), shared jointly with David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (see below). I should think so ....
Peter Sarstedt on the UK's Top
Of The Pops TV show in 1969.
Photograph: Peter Sarstedt
Official Website
"Pet Sounds" The Beach Boys
Also of course "Good Vibrations". And don't forget those tracks like "I Get Around", with almost equally extraordinary sounds. Brian Wilson's most subtle songs used diminished chords, the chord type found all over "The Great American Songbook". but the unique sonic inventions, such as are on "I Get Around", didn't need extra chords: just great riffs and the instrument combinations that Brian was trying for. If you want to "see" waves and sand, play "I Get Around". That is high art right there.
"The River" Nick Drake
Nick Drake was an acoustic and compositional maverick who died at 26 after investigating, amongst other things, magic mushrooms. He combined acoustic sounds with orchestras, anything. His last album "Pink Moon" (1972), however, was a sparser recording. Drake painted pictures in words and in music. 'The River" is just one of his masterpieces, and is recorded with a string orchestra. He only released three albums originally, so you should buy them all. He was a tremendous influence on Oasis' Noel Gallagher, and others.
Drake holds a bag of mushrooms
"I'm Still In Love With You" Al Green
It's hard to know what to say about this: it's a timeless soundtrack for lurve. Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones said that "my nineteen son has it on when he has a girl around". No surprise there. And the chords in it: if you want to write a classic, it seems you should find a new chord grouping. That's real artistry.
Al Green's Greatest Hits, from 1975. Buy it
and score.
"Little Wing" Jimi Hendrix
It's no surprise that this song is one of the highlights (if not THE highlight) of Eric Clapton's current live show. It was written by a master composer, with a great chord progression. Hendrix himself recorded two classic versions, one the studio version on his second album "Axis: Bold As Love" and the other a live version, also freely available. See a master clip of Clapton's take on the song below, with jazz drummer Steve Gadd and David Sanborn blowing an alto sax solo.
Extra mention: David Bowie's "Space Oddity" which shared the Ivor Novello Award with "Where Do You Go To My Lovely?" (see above) in 1969. I swear I did not know this when I ran up the above!: in a year with two tunes like that, you have to award both.
A menage a trois, musically-speaking, can yield great results. Read on ....
Classical Trios
Mozart
The Kegelstatt Trio (K498) is a famous work by Mozart in Eb for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, apparently written while Mozart was playing a game of skittels in a bowling alley. No doubt as in the game, Mozart indulged in some unusual scoring: the original publication stated that the piece was for violin, viola, and piano, but that the violin part could be taken by a clarinet. The clarinet is usually used.
Beethoven
Beethoven's summer hangout, near Vienna
Two of Beethoven's most famous works for trios are the grand "Archduke" Trio and the ghostly "Ghost" Trio (both for piano, cello and violin). There is also a great clarinet trio in B flat major for piano, clarinet and cello op. 11
Jazz Trios
The Benny Goodman Trio
And yes there is a link between Beethoven and Benny Goodman: Goodman was a very good classical performer as well as a premier jazz clarinetist. He recorded a pumping version of the Beethoven clarinet trio above. His jazz trio was formed in 1935, but swiftly became a quartet after Goodman's discovery of the vibraharpist Lionel Hampton. The trio comprised Goodman, Teddy Wilson piano and Gene Krupa drums. One of the classic recordings of the trio is "China Boy": I once found a 78 rpm copy, and the sound of the clarinet shooting out sideways at one point (the freedom of a trio) sounded better on the 78 than a CD version I also heard.
The classical connection was strengthened by Goodman's use of quasi-classical names for two of his small group recordings: "Opus1/2" and "Opus3/4"!! (Beethoven's clarinet trio was Op 11, ha ha).
Benny Goodman in 1943
The Nat King Cole Trio
Nat King Cole's famous trio of piano, guitar and drums began in Los Angeles in the early 1940s. With his developing voice added, it was a very smooth sound. Soon the guitar was replaced by the double bass, and the standard jazz piano trio of the current day came about. Perhaps the most commercially successful is the Oscar Peterson Trio; a graceful album is "We Get Requests" from 1964, just in time to include two bossa nova tracks from Carlos Antonio Jobim. The trio had been playing for five years by the time the album was recorded. However, Peterson himself still had a guitar in his trio at times in the early1950s.
Do you guys know "The Girl From Ipanema"?
Further examples of the conventional piano jazz trio of piano, bass and drums are the trio recordings of Bud Powell (the "Charley Parker" of the piano), one-time Miles Davis pianist Bill Evans and, now, the former John Coltrane pianist McCoy Tyner.
In a further variation of the jazz trio, guitar maestro Wes Montgomery's first album (1959) was for guitar, organ and drums: he was discovered playing in bar in Philadelphia with this format. (However, his second album was recorded with a quartet: a more commercially conventional guitar, piano, bass and drums band).
The famous Riverside cover
Rock And Roll Trios
Johnny Burnett
He formed the Rock And Roll Trio in 1956 and was basically the inventor of rockabilly, having played it before Elvis came up. His basic format was the trio, allowing the guiatr and vocals to satnd out, in front of bass and drums. This format is the standard for rock trios, up to and including Nirvana.
How do you like my haircut?
Buddy Holly and the Crickets
Following on from Rocky Burnett, Buddy Holly truly brought the rock trio centre-stage. His band The Crickets was of course the model for the Beatles, who not only realised that they could be a "band" (ie: without a separate leader), but also took an insect name in tribute!
Cream
"The first super group", "the original power trio": all these appellations are accurate. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were preferred by some diehard fans to the Beatles . They also inspired a certain Stratocastor toting guitarist by the name of James Marshall Hendrix: how apt that Jimi should happen to have the name of the legendary amp as his middle name: you couldn't make it up!
Cream's first album "Fresh Cream", 1966. It included
a brilliant version of Howling Wolf's "Spoonfull"
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
"All Along The Watchtower" still sounds like flying saucers, light years ahead of anything yet recorded in terms of both sound and playing. Pete Townshend said that Hendrix really changed the sound of rock more than the Beatles did ie: because of the lasting dominance of heavy electric guitar. You could even say that the four piece rock groups with three instruments and a singer, like The Who and van Halen, are actually also trios of a kind, as they only have three instruments. This leaves more room to move, as each player is the only instrument of his type in the group: the player has sole responsibility and so is relatively unrestricted, as with a "real" trio. Van Halen even tended to prove it by replacing their original singer.
The Police
The free nature of the trio enabled Sting to easily present his jazz-like musical visions to the world. Mobility is a key word of the trio: it is not just easy to play; it is easy to tour, and this is certainly what the Police did and are now doing again!
The first album, 1978.
Bring on the night: they're back!!
Nirvana
And yes, the trio was the best vehicle for Curt Cobain, too, to put out his message.
Electric Guitar Virtuosity Through History
1930s
Charlie Christian "Solo Flight"
This track was recorded by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra in 1939, the year Charlie Christian joined the band. Charlie solos through most of the track, on top of the full orchestra. Hello, electric guitar! Charlie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, despite not living beyond 1942 and the age of twentyfour, as an "Early Influence".
1940s
T-Bone Walker "T-Bone Boogie"
T-Bone Walker sounded at times as if he was an electric blues guitarist placed leading the Count Basie Orchestra: "T-Bone Boogie" is an instrumental illustration. It is a swing orchestra with electric blues on top. He is famous for "Stormy Monday" from 1947, a track that BB King said inspired him to take up guitar. Chuck Berry of course took a lot of T-Bone into his records. BluesAbout.com says, "his legacy lives .... just about every time a guitartist take a solo" (http://blues.about.com). The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame site adds its comment:: "[T-Bone's] single string solos influenced blues players like BB King and .... rockers [such] as Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan" (http://www.rockhall.com). T-Bone's first names were Aaron Thibeaux, hence his nickname.
1950s
Johnny Guitar Watson "Space Guitar"
On February 1, 1954 the "first Jimi Hendrix" record was recorded, that is, Johnny Guitar Watson introduced electric guitar pyrotechnics. Check it. Born in 1935, Johnny was two days short of his nineteenth birthday when on that February day in Los Angeles he recorded using the new "reverb" that Fender had just released on their amps. He said later, "Everyody didn't really understand what it was all about, man, and I was experimenting with it .... They said it made things sound too spacey, and I thought it was just a great way to sustain notes .... It was the first recorded reverb solo. The engineer said, 'I don't know what you're trying to do man, but .... what is it? Are you some kind of spaceman?'"
Frank Zappa said that Watson's 1956 record, "Three Hours Past Midnight" inspired him to become a guitarist." Singer Etta James stated, "They call Elvis the King; but the sure-enough king was Johnny "Guitar" Watson."
Johnny Guitar Watson rocks out at right, in outer space
BB King "Mean 'Ole Frisco"
The slip-sliding notes that form part of BB's intro to the record are a clear pointer to the solos of Eric Clapton. Artistry and excitement.
Hubert Sumlin (guitarist for Howling Wolf) "Sitting On Top Of The World" and others
Sumlin played at times Clapton-esque guitar before Eric did. He was obviously a model for Clapton. Clear and attractive. He toured the UK in 2003.
There is a great quote attributed to Jimmy Page on the website www.homespuntapes.com:
"Hubert Sumlin has always been highly regarded in blues musicians' circles and is an acknowledged hero to many famous guitarists including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Frank Zappa and Keith Richards. [Jimmy Page said]: "Sumlin is one important person .... I love Hubert Sumlin. And what a complement he was to Howling Wolf's voice. He always played the right thing at the right time. Perfect."
1960s
Eric Clapton
"Beauty" is most definitely an apt word for Clapton's playing. His solo on Crossraods is to Mozart level. It's a four minute record, mainly soloing, on Robert Johnson's classic track. Clapton's version of Freddie King's early sixties instrumental "Hideaway" (a favourite of Clapton's) is a whole side of one of Cream's live albums ("Live Cream Vol II"). And for most of that album side he is unaccompanied, playing soaring orchestral-like sounds without the other two guys playing.
Thirdly, Clapton's solo on "Sunshine Of Your Love", the Cream classic from "Disraeli Gears", is a magnificent psychedelic coloration.
The album cover that launched
a thousand psychedelic solos
The guitar hero, two years earlier in 1965. He
rocked the Staples Centre in LA in March, 2007
Jimi Hendrix
Like Eric, Jimi is an obvious choice. The solo in "Purple Haze" (released studio version) is a masterpiece of soloing. The solo is indeed an essential part of the composition, and is written into the Philip Glass arrangement, played and recorded by various string quartets including the famous Kronos Quartet. Yes, Hendrix is a classical composer!
His version of "Johnny B Goode" at the Berkeley Community Centre concert on September 30, 1970 is probably the best recorded electric guitar playing to date (competition: Clapton's "Crossroads", see above). The ending, while the rhythm lays out just before the final beat, is the stars meeting Armageddon .... but in a good way!
Finally, his version of "Red House" at San Diego later in 1970 (appearing on the LP "Hendrix In The West") is the best version of that blues. It is really bluesy, and has a "slow down and stop" passage where Hendrix plays a long solo wah wah passage. My family had a cat that, faced with another part of this track blasting at it from the speaker placed in the window, literally hugged the earth with its ears back, trying to avoid the sonic attack.
Further examples of Hendrix's brilliance: many people
think this is his best album: "Axis: Bold As Love" (1967)
1970s
Jimmy Page playing the twelve-string half of his double-necked
Gibson that he used for "Stairway To Heaven" live; he changed
to the six-stringed lower neck for the solo
Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin)
The long building solo on "Stairway To Heaven" is a classic, lyrical and powerful. On the same album (Led Zeppelin IV) the opening track "Rock And Roll" has a superb solo, full of brilliant lead guitar parading.
Richie Blackmore "Smoke on The Water"
The solo on the Deep Purple classic is a slow piece of electric color, similar really to Clapton's earlier effort on "Sunshine Of Your Love".
1980s
Eddie van Halen "Eruption"
Eddie does not have the compositional ability of Clapton, Hendrix or Page, but there is a lot of inventiveness and virtuosity on his various playings of "Eruption". A good version is viewable at
Some of the clip is even presented in a four picture grid! The picture shows his "Frankenstrat" guitar, Eddified. If you want further edification, ah ....
Thanks to Wikipedia for photos
Not if you don't have recordings by these ten performers!
RURAL BLUES
Robert Johnson
He is the fountainhead for all the acoustic blues players (from the 1920s and early 30s) before him. He crystallised what was there into a brilliant series of songs, each different. Many of his predecessors, and himself, became famous or known again (even if they had left the planet) as part of the folk blues resurgence in the 1950s and 60s eg: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Patton, Son House, Big Bill Broonzy (a major influence on Paul McCartney), Skip James, twelve-stringer Blind Willie McTell ("Statesboro Blues") and so on. In 1938, Robert Johnson apparently made one pass too many at a married woman, and was poisoned. The impressario John Hammond was looking to book him for the first Spirituals To Swing historic concert at Carnegie Hall, New York in that year. On finding he was no longer "available", Hammond booked Big Bill Broonzy instead. He recorded twenty nine different songs just singing to his guitar, but they define the blues and blues rock to come particularly from the 1960s to now.
His tracks have been covered by The Rolling Stones, Cream, Eric Clapton and many other rockers. They range from the melodic and breezy "From Four 'Til Late", to boogie template "Going To Chicago", to the Stones live classic "Love In Vain".
Big Joe Williams
He wrote a commercial blues classic that is well-known today "Baby Please Don't Go". He first recorded the song in 1935 (see photo). In 1941, he recorded it with Sonny Boy Williamson I, and the electric template to come (with Muddy Waters) was pretty well set; all you need is an amplifier. As with Howling Wolf (below), this style of blues song regularly appears in commercials, and more modern blues rockers like George Thoroughgood have made careers out of the song (and songs like it). The complete lyrics are printed at
http://www.earlyblues.com/BabyPleaseDont.htm
Acoustics rock!
Electric Blues
Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters moved up the Mississippi to Chicago in the early 1940s, like Louis Armstrong and his jazz colleagues twenty years before. He electrified the rural acoustic blues, putting it in a band format. This became the template for The Rolling Stones and in fact every rock band to this day: they all play electric guitars with a bass and drums, and with (hopefully) an artistic lyric on top. As a teenager in about 1930, Muddy saw acoustic blues master Son House play with a bottleneck slide, and it fired him up. by 1941, he was the number one recommendation made to musicologists who had come down South to look for bluesmen in the style of (the by now dead) Robert Johnson.
Muddy with a Gibson Les Paul
John Lee Hooker
Boom boom. His first recordings were in 1948. They were electric music, but with a very rural feel: "Boogie Chillun'", "Queen Bee", and "Crawling King Snake" (covered by The Doors). Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, he became the boogie king with such tracks as "Boom Boom" and "One Whisky, One Bourbon, One Beer".
Howling Wolf
Down and dirty, the Wolf exhibited the hard image still suitable for modern commercials ("Smokestack Lightning", "44", "Backdoor Man": "the men don't know but the little girls understand", "Sitting On Top Of The World"). The first song that Jimi Hendrix played at the Monterey Festival in 1967, the first blast of Jimi that America saw, was a fast version of the Wolf's "Killing Floor". It was also what he blitzed Eric Clapton with, when he played for him on arriving for the first time in London in 1966. The Wolf's guitar soloist was Hubert Sumlin, who was touring the UK in 2003. you can hear the Clapton to come in some of Sumlin's solos with the Wolf.
The Wolf howls
The Wolf up close and personal
Jimmy Reed
"Bright Lights Big City", "Honest I Do", "Big Boss Man": Jimmy Reed had a sound in the 50s that sounded like the 60s, a bright commercial Stones-like sound. Just as The Doors covered Howling Wolf, so the Stones covered Jimmy Reed.
Elmore James
The commercialiser of the slide guitar: he took "Dust My Broom", from Robert Johnson and others, and threw in the signature electric slide riff at the start. Boogie rock. John Lennon adapted the sound it for the start of The Beatle's "Revolution". When Keith Richards and Mick Jagger first met Brian Jones at a club in Richmond, London, Jones was calling himself "Elmo Lewis" and playing like Elmore James: said Keith, "I said, it's Elmore James!"
The Three Kings
BB King
Freddie King
Albert King
The three Kings were not just in the Bible! With the "three Kings" here we see the rise of the electric guitar solo. Begun by Charlie Christian in jazz in 1939 and later adapted into 1940s jump blues (from Blind Lemon Jefferson's acoustic solo lines) by T Bone Walker, the blues guitar solo was fattened out by BB King in the 50s. Eric Clapton tried to sound like Freddie King's early instrumental '60s records (he thought he sounded easier than the other guys!), and then adapted wholesale Albert King, who came to prominence in 1966 just in time for the Cream/Hendrix revolution. On "Strange Brew" in 1967, Clapton played off Albert King's solo on "Laundromat Blues" but with Eric's psychedelic aura. Some Hendrix solo explorations also sound like Albert King.
Albert King is also famous for singing "The Very Thought Of You" and thereby putting a famous 1930s crooner song into the blues repertoire.
Two of the three Kings: top Freddie and bottom Albert
"My Merry Old Oldsmobile"
From 1905, this car song is not as, well, racy as some of the later ones below. "In My Merry Oldsmobile" had music by Gus Edwards and lyrics by Vincent P. Bryan. But if you look at the cover of the original sheet music, you can see that already, in popular cultuture, the connection between cars and girls is well underway.
.
Here we see the front page of the sheet music for the song,
so you can step down from the Oldsmobile and go knock
it out on the piano
"Rocket 88"
This song is generally considered to be the first rock and roll song. It was written in a hotel room by Ike Turner, later of course Tina's husband. Recorded in 1952, it is about a car, the Oldsmobile 88. The 88 was a General Motors car in production from 1949 until 1999. Indeed, from 1950 to 1974 the 88 was the Oldsmobile division's biggest seller. Over its first years in particular, the 88 rocked: it was one of the highest performance cars on the road, because of its relatively small size and light weight but advanced overhead-valve high-compression V8 engine. Despite appearances, it obviously went like a rocket, and launched rock and roll as a by-product.
The Rocket 88, 1949. In that year, the car
was the official pace car at the Indy 500
Chuck Berry
Two of his classic songs set around cars are:
"No Money Down"
Chuck buys a car; there is a lot of detail in the lyrics about buying a car in the 1950s
"No Particular Place To Go"
This is about cruising in a car with a girl; at one point Chuck laments that he "can't get her (seat) belt-a-loose".
The Chuckmeister in Germany, 1973
Photo: The Berry Home Page
"Something Else" Eddie Cochrane
The song is about the singer asking out a girl and standing outside her door knocking. He says it's too bad his car is "a '41 job not a '59". It's a classic line in a classic song, and even Sid Vicious made it sound effective in the late '70s. Eddie Cochrane was a brilliant songwriter, the "Elvis with an electric guitar", and also wrote the classics "Summertime Blues" and "Come On Everybody". He was very influential on The Who, and was named by Jimi Hendrix as a special favourite player of his. Not so fittingly, Eddie was eventually killed in a car driven by an apparently careless English taxi driver, in west England in 1960.
Eddie rocks out
Photo: www.simona.com
The Beach Boys
Brian Wilson wrote more car songs than Los Angeles has palm trees.
Three of the greatest are:
"Little Deuce Coupe"
Apparently about a 1932 Ford.
"Fun Fun Fun"
In which "she drives to the hamburger stand, now" .... until "Daddy takes the T-Bird away". There is a website where the story of how the song came to be written is recounted; the girl existed, she did drive to the hamburger stand, and her Daddy (not her "daddy"!) DID take the T-bird away":
And here is a 1959 Thunderbird convertible:
check for hamburgers
"I Get Around"
This may be the ultimate car song!! It's certainly close to being the ultimate sixties music; Brain Wilson has the surf riffs flowing. It's an extraordinary piece of music.
"Mustang Sally" Wilson Pickett
The wicked Pickett on Sally riding around in her Mustang.
"Highway Star" Deep Purple
The powerful music on Deep Purple's classic album of 1972, "Machine Head", includes many Purple "hits". One of the most signature is "Highway Star". When I was a child, my brother and I found the wreckage of a recent car crash on a country highway near where we lived. There was a damaged tape in the wreckage, and the tape that we found in the wreckage was .... "Machine Head"!! No prizes for guessing what those guys were listening to as they failed to take the bend.
The cover of "Machine Head": beware of sharp bends in roads
"Life's Been Good" Joe Walsh
"My Maserati does 185. I lost my license and now I don't drive". Joe describes part of the rock star life in 1981. The mention of "Maserati" stills conjours up the song in 2007.
"Little Red Corvette" Prince
In 1983 Prince released this song on his "1999" album: a song about a girl, the driver of the Corvette. It is also a song just straight out about sex: "the ride is so smooth, U must be a limousine." The music is sensuous and almost orchestral.
A little red Corvette (1966)
"Pink Cadillac" Bruce Springsteen
From 1986. Springsteen also of course wrote the stunning motorway lyrics of "Born To Run" (1975), the reason he's "The Boss": "girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors", "strap your hands across my engines Wendy".
The Boss
Sexy Time Songs (For Valentine's Day)
Hi. My name a Borat. I make listings of all time sexy time song. I like. I hope you like.
"Bolero" Ravel
As featured in the Dudley Moore-Bo Derek movie "Ten", and written by famous French composer Maurice Ravel on Moorish themes in 1928. I once read a book published in 1940 ("Great Modern Composers" by Oscar S Thompson) that remarked that [for some reason] this music was very popular with the French masses, "who did not ordinarly care for serious music". Well, dude, listen to it! Then you'll know why it was a huge seller. Repetitive and hypnotic, the "Bolero" is the ultimate sexy time music.
"Poeme d'Extase" Scriabin
Freaky Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) wanted to picture sexytime with an orchestra. This was the result: the poem of ecstasy.
Scriabin: freaky
A page from the score (get it?) of the Poeme d'Extase (1906)
"You Go To My Head" (Coots-Gillespie)
Not surprisingly recorded by "Mr Move" Brian Ferry in 1976. The song was written in 1913, and first recorded by Al "You ain't heard nothing yet" Jolson that year. Brian Ferry: special mention should also be made of Roxy Music's "Love Is The Drug", also from the mid '70s: "I parked my car at the red light place .... I say 'Go', she say 'Yes'. Dim the lights, you can guess the rest". Man, it ain't "love" that's the drug; that's a song about sexy time.
"Go All The Way" The Raspberries (Eric Carmen)
The title says it all. Classic gasp rock from the '70s.
"Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus" Serge Gainsbourg
Moans provided by Jane Birkin. After the "Bolero", this must be the number two sexy-time record and composition of all time. It has very clever chord progressions, and .... very clever mixing.
"You Made Me Love You" (McCarthy-Monaco)
And the lyrics continue: .... I didn't want to do it". A major crooner classic: Nat King Cole has a very good version. It is an example of "Great American Songbook" writers trying for an obvious double meaning that could be played on 1940s or 1950s radio.
"Please Please Me" The Beatles
The chorus is reached by a pre-chorus build up of "come on come on come on come on". "Gentleman, you have you have your first number one", said George Martin on hearing the playback.
"Bump And Grind" R Kelly
"Ain't nothing wrong with a little bump and grind".
"Get Down On It" Kool And The Gang
"Love To Love You Baby" Donna Summer
From 1976, the soon to be disco diva Donna Summer puts sex on record. Producer Georgio Moroder apparently turned down the lights in the studio to find the mood. A seveteen minute version also soon appeared.
The Beatles: Break Out Influences
In 1962, and shortly before that, several records were released that pointed the talent of The Beatles in the direction they were to follow. Up to that point, they "had a lot of ability but weren't sure what to do with it", in the words of an observer of the time in Hamburg (where The Beatles spent their pivotal training time). Spin the jukebox!:
Peggy Lee "Till There Was You"
This is a latin-inflected recording of a song from the American musical "The Music Man" by Meredith Willson (he appears on a series of US stamps of composers of musicals released recently). The Beatles recorded it themselves on their second album "With The Beatles" of 1963. The Peggy Lee version, already distinguished as it is because of being by the "female Sinatra", is a truly catchy record.
The Shirelles "Boys"
Released in 1962, this record sounds like The Beatles but with girl singers. It is a rock record; my theory is The Beatles took it and copied its sound, adding their own singing on top. Hey presto, The Beatles' early sound. The Shirelles were a girl group that made a lot of good records, with the songs written by the Motown masters. Ringo sang "Boys" on The Beatles' second album amd also frequently live, apparently earning himself a gay following for a while! (It is on the live "Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl" album 0f 1977). Iggy Pop was interviewed by an English newspaper in 2003, and on top of his stereo the reporter noticed a copy of a best of The Shirelles.
The Everly Brothers "Cathy's Clown"
From 1960, this Everlys number one sounds exactly like John Lennon's early Beatles sound. A template. The Everlys said The Beatles copied them. Maybe in the sound.
James Ray "If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody"
This R&B song, and the album it came from, was a huge influence on The Beatles. George Harrison bought it in 1962 (when it was released) and the song, again, SOUNDS a bit like The Beatles, but this time the 1967 Beatles of "Penny Lane" and so on, because of the use of a tuba, very effectively. It also clearly had an effect on "Love Me Do" and the prominence and positioning of the harmonica on that record.
The Shirelles "Baby It's You"
This song was written by Burt Bacharach, and was recorded by The Beatles on their first album "Pleae Please Me". Again, The Shirelles show their faintly earthy style. This R&B approach, with brilliant writers, thus gave The Beatles their (last minute) vessel for their first albums. The Shirelles' version was a top ten hit in 1961. The Beatles kept the girl's vocal arrangements.
Arthur Alexander "Anna (Go To Him)"
Arthur Alexander was a "country-soul" singer of the early '60s. His vocal style influenced John Lennon, this song was recorded on The Beatles' first album. Alexander's writng style came out in the Lennon song "All I Gotta Do" from their second album. This latter song was an example of the composer writing his own version of his model, stepping away from the original for the first time instead of simply covering it.
Barrett Strong "Money (That's What I Want")
Covered by The Beatles on their second album, it was a number R&B hit in 1960. It has Link Wray rock touch, but with the R&B/soul (ie: emotion) singing and tune. A Britsh band did a lofi version in the late 1970s, and it appears on Lennon's own "Live Peace In Toronto" album of 1969.
Larry Williams
Recording from 1957 to 1959 on Specialty Records, Larry Williams had a modern sound that fired up both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Hits: "Bony Moronie" (recorded by John Lennon on his 1973 "Roack And Roll" album), "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", "Slow Down" and Bad Boy" (all recorded by The Beatles), and "She Said Yeah" (recorded of course, with lyrics like that, by The Stones).
Chuck Berry "I'm Talkng About You"
In 1961, Chuck Berry released an album called "New Juke Box Hits" with a lead off track ("I'm Talking About You") that had a bass-line that is the same as The Beatles' bass-line on "I Saw Her Standing There". That was a useful record for Paul McCartney to hear!
Carole King and Gerry Goffin
The Beatles recorded "Chains" on their first album, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Of course, there were many stellar Goffin-King songs in the early sixties, and it was apparently John and Paul's stated aim to be the next Goffin and King. They were.
There is a lot of competition for the best moon songs: here are ten that are definitely very high quality music. We begin in the nineteenth century.
"Song Of The Moon" Dvorak from the opera "Rusalka"
A hit of "classical" music, it appears in a an opera full of folky and catchy music.
"Shine On Harvest Moon" Bayes and Norworth (1903)
A timeless classic of Americana
"By The Light of The Silvery Moon" Edwards-Madden (1909)
A film was named after the song in 1953.
"Blue Moon" Rogers-Hart
True genius from Rogers and Hart. When Elvis recorded it on the Sun Sessions he didn't bother with the middle section.
"Blue Moon Of Kentucky" Bill Monroe (1947)
With "That's All Right Mama", it was on Elvis' first piece of vinyl to go to a radio station, and thus helped change the world. Again, a main part of the Sun Sessions.
"Moonglow" De Lange-Heyward
A swing music classic, recorded by Benny Goodman in a definitive version (this version plays in "The Aviator" when Hughes flies over LA in the movie). The title and lyrics are very clever, providing a new spin on how to describe the effect of the moon (here it glows, not shines), and a new word is invented at the same time by joining "moon" and "glow" together, creating a virtual trademark.
"It's Only A Paper Moon" Arlen-Harburg-Rose
This is one of those songs that is so part of the furniture that a hit movie can be virtually named after the song: ie the Ryan and Tatum O'Neill film "Paper Moon" from 1973.
"Moonlight Serenade" Glenn Miller
A masterpiece that has been recorded also in solo guitar version, by Charlie Byrd (who studied under Segovia).
"Moon River" Henry Mancini (1961)
A candidate for many people's favourite song, and better known than "Yesterday".
"Harvest Moon" Neil Young
The 1992 song, from the album of the same name. A beautiful song that really shows you the harvest fields and, well, the moon.
There is also Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata (No 14 in C# minor Op 27 number 2), though he didn't name it that himself, and it ain't a song as such. One of the most extraordinary short piano pieces ever written is "Clair de Lune" ("Moonlight") by Debussy. As a moon "song" I feel it shines (or should that be "glows") even stronger than any of the songs above.
While I naturally did not rely on the list for choices, there is a very complete listing of one hundred Twentieth Century moon songs (!!) at http://www.moonlightsys.com/themoon/tunes.html
The list is divided by musical category, and there are also recommended versions.
Story songs: very popular in America, in particular. What I mean by a story song here is actually a psychological song, where the character or characters are examined minutely, and where a portrait is painted of these people.
"Angie" Helen Reddy
As a songwriter for a publishing house in the 1970s, writer Alan O'Day consulted a psychologist to develop the character of Angie, and then completed the song. The work and care paid off when it became number one in 1974. He told me that O'Day is also his real name: a great name for a mainstream seventies melodic songwriter.
"Where Do You Go To My Lovely?" Peter Sarstedt
He told me (!) that this was recorded in a studio behind London's massed and crowded shopping street Oxford Street, but was written in the more exotic Denmark in 1966. This song is one of my all time favourite tracks, the story of a girl and a guy from "the backstreets of Naples" and how the girl joins the jet-set and forgets him: "where do you go to my lovely when you're alone in your bed?"; the song was what made me want to visit the South of France. In fact, whenever I hear it I think I'm there.
"Taxi Driver" Harry Chapin
The first line tells the scene. By the end of the song you know everything about this guy's life.
"Eleanor Rigby" The Beatles (Paul McCartney)
Yes, that is the grave of the real Eleanor Rigby, in the church yard of the church across from the church fete where John and Paul met in 1957, in Liverpool's attractive and small Woolton district. "All the lonely people, where do they all come from", and where do they all go? As you may be able to see, the real Eleanor Rigby was married. not so lonely afterall.
Photograph Copyright Simon Jay Harper 2006 All rights reserved.
"In My Life" The Beatles (John Lennon)
This song tells of another group of universal people, everybody: everybody you have met. No specific characters are mentioned, but it's the story of everybody's past.
"Ballad Of A Thin Man" Bob Dylan
This very famous song from his famous album "Highway 61" in 1965 discusses a "Mr Jones": you don't know what's going on, do you Mr Jones?. Who was Mr Jones? I think he was the older generation, and how they didn't understand the new, open, "anything goes" world.
"Ruby Tuesday" The Rolling Stones
There is the classic couplet: "She would never say where she came from, yesterday don't matter when it's gone." Now that's a story and a portrait of no portrait, because the only story that matters is from today on.
"The Old Cricketer" Roy Harper
He is of course the folk singer, the "Hats Off To Roy Harper" in the song by Led Zeppelin. The song is about a village cricketer in the backblocks of England somewhere (probably in the North) who lives year to year to drink a few pints and hit the ball to "mid off", as there is nothing else nowhere anyways.
"Sophisticated Lady" Duke Ellington and Mitchell Parish
There are not so many pre rock era songs that deal with complex issues or intricate characters. This song is no exception, but it does attempt to portray a dissolute chick who is apparently wasting her time living a shallow lifestyle and going nowhere. Parish, the lyricist, also wrote the words for such classics as Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust". Indeed, there was once a musical launched that was united not by the music of one writer, but by the lyrics, and it was Parish who was that lyricist. It is not so inappropriate, then, that one of his songs is in this list.
And:
Honorary mention for all the opera arias of history that outline a character.
It has been said that leaps are where the action is/the interesting bits of a song are. The biggest melodically-reasonable leap is an octave leap.
Here are ten songs that are so famous they tend to prove this suggestion beyond argument.
Absolute octave leaps:
"She Loves You" The Beatles
After the words "she loves you" in the middle of the "verse" (the whole "verse" and "chorus" are really one through composed piece) the melody drops an octave to "and you know that can't be bad': the octave leap down from "you" to "and" catches the ear, and sets you up for the final chorus section.
"I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart" Duke Ellington
This is one of Duke's popular hits, written in the late '30s. It begins "I let a song ....". The octave leap is up from "a" to "song". It is at the start of the tune: instant classic.
"Someone To Watch Over Me" George Gershwin
The octave leap is at the end of each "A section" of the tune: it is from 'watch" to the first syllable of "over .... me".
"Somewhere Over The Rainbow" Harold Arlen
This has a claim as the most readily identifiable song ever. The FIRST TWO notes are an upwards octave leap. 'Nuff said.
"Don't Cry For Me Argentina" Andrew Lloyd-Webber
Although clearly based at least in part on one sequential phrase in Brahm's Violin Concerto, the song has an identity of its own. The octave leap is down from " " to "I kept my promise", and so is at the end of the "verse" section. Lloyd-Webber grew up when the Beatles were big, and the leap has a broad resemblance in positioning to that in "She Loves You".
"Connected" octave leaps:
These are five very famous songs or tunes where a lot of the action is in a rising or descending run of notes that run right across the octave, (but not in one full ocatve leap as in the songs above).
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" The Beatles
The Beatles again, and they will also apear a third time here. The first statement in the "chorus", the joyous (?) flow of the full title of the song "I want to hold your hand", begins on the top of the octave (the note "G") and ends on the same note an octave down. The repetition of the song title after that also starts at the top of the octave and ends at the same note an octave lower, but the last note is preceded by the note a semitone lower than the lower "G" note (F#).
"Yesterday" The Beatles
At the end of the repeat of the middle section of the song, as everyone knows, Paul McCartney warbles from the top of the octave (the note "F") down almost an entire octave and sings again the first word of the next verse, "Yesterday". The "yes-" is the note "G:, and the note the "G" falls to is of course the "F" at the lower end of the octave, where he has just come down from the higher "F" note. McCartney has simply ket his voive fall down from the top of the octave to the lower "F" at the start ofd the next verse. At the end of the first middle section, he omits the falling notes. Either way, we come from down a whole octave, with one or more notes filling in the descent. The effect is dramatic: dare I say emotional.
"Take The "A" Train" Billy Strayhorn
It seems that the strain, or excitement, of finding his way up to Harlem to meet the Duke, in a city new to him, pushed Duke Ellington's composition partner Billy Strayhorn to the world of stretching octaves.
"Moon River" Henry Mancini
The third note is the root or key note of the song; the "in" of "crossing you in style" (the opening words are: "Moon river, wider than a mile, I'll be crossing you in style someday" is the same note an octave lower. The octave is utilised again shortly afterwards: "wherever you're going ...."; the first two notes of that phrase are at the lower end of the actave, the "go" of "going" is at the top again. Technical? No, not really. It is just sliding up and down the octave. Sounds good!
"Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" Jerome Kern
This tune is all built on sweeps everywhere. The song starts on the root note at the lowwer end of the actave, and after two melodic figures arrives up at the top of the octave. The ear is truly hooked. Kern can't leave the octave alone, and eventually we see the full octave in consecutive notes, at the end of the song: "smoke gets in your in your eyes"; the leap is down on "gets in".
Important records for the rock fan and musician. I list ten wonders of the rock and roll world.
Robert Johnson Complete (Proper Records)
All the blues you can muster; solo voice and guitar, he plays all the prototypical blues styles from The Stones peak period to ZZ Top. He wrote (or copped) a mean lyric also: he uses the phrase "girl-friend", ahead of his time, on "When You've got A Good Friend".
"Phonograph Blues" rhymes "phonograph": and "just to hear your little motor mouth", "you got your hair all tangled and you ain't talking right" (so "where did you stay last night?") on "32-20 Blues", which also has the comment "the 32 special, boys, it do very well!!" on how to deal with an unfaithful woman.
"Walking Blues": "From her head down to her toes, how nice [breathed]". On "Travelling Riverside Blues" he sounds exactly like Elvis' voice, at one spoken phrase, and of there is also the "Zeppelin" line "I want you to squeeze my lemon 'til the juice run down my leg". Robert Plant was rumoured to have paid something like $150,000 to buy an eighteen second video clip of Johnson, the only footage of him believed to exist.
Muddy Waters
Eg: the early tracks with Little Walter eg: "Hootchie Cootchie Man"; you ain't lived till you've heard Little Walter's wailing harmonica whirling around in a garden square in London's Kensington on a summer's night (I don't know who was having the party but they had good musical taste). Also "I'm Going Home": has the sound and feel of the Stones, who drank and breathed these records when they were beginning.
James Brown From "Please Please Please" to "Papa Got A Brand New Bag" and "I Feel Good" "Please Please Please" was his first hit, in the '50s, yet it sounds, in terms of communication, like the Beatles and other sixties rock. He kept writing earthy intense music through the early sixties, and you should find these records. With early Ray Charles, they constitute the templates and forerunners of meaningful pure rhythm/beat music.
The Beatles "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul"
The best examples still of what I mean by "meaningful pure rhythm/beat music".
The Beach Boys "Pet Sounds"
So good that a track from it "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" made it onto a Rolling Stones-selected Artist's Choice compilation of 2003 (chosen by Ronnie Wood), amongst all the blues, soul and reggae also picked. Even the instrumentals (there are two) are unbelievable; with "Let's Go Away For A While" you just stare at the speakers and stare again, trying to work out what is going on: "what exactly IS that?"
Cream "Disraeli Gears"
Bitching acid rock. The blues get stoned! Eric Clapton begins with the recast "Laundromat Blues" Albert King solo on "Strange Brew", then in comes "The Sunshine Of Your Love". OMG. There is an amazing live "We're Going Wrong" at www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvZdFMtKRV0&mode=related&search= (cut and paste), and on side two of the LP is the Clapton stone out "Tales Of Brave Ulysses", a recent live version of which is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxhLPOPdivE&mode=related&search= (cut and paste yo' all).
Jimi Hendrix "Axis: Bold As Love"
Almost a Coltrane style avant garde jazz album at times eg: the bass and drums on "If 6 Was 9" (turn off Jimi's stereo speaker side and listen to the other guys for a while). Has all the effects, "Little Wing", and even what amounts to rapping on "Castles Made Of Sand".
John Lennon "Plastic Ono Band"
Especially side one of the LP, which has "Isolation", Julian Lennon's stated favourite song of his father's; drama and meaning without falsity.
Neil Young "Harvest"
His famous album: it plays like a concert, which is a valuable reminder of how musicians are supposed to present a balanced show, and of real music. Songs include "Heart Of Gold" and "Alabama".
The Sex Pistols "Never Mind The Bollocks"
Simple chords and changes, and colourful lyrics.
Ten Excellent Film Scores And Soundtracks
"Battle Of Britain" the air battle scene: this is a long and dramatic scene, and shows the skill of the traditional English composer William Walton, by the late 1960s long practised at writing epic film scores.
"No Way Out" electronic tension: works well as Kevin Costner tries to alternately jump Sean Young and dodge secret service forces. Maurice Jarre is the composer (he is the father of Jean Michel Jarre, of "Oxygene" fame).
"Casablanca" the song that is a film music supervisor's dream: "As Time Goes By".
"Dangerous Moonlight" this is a movie made in 1941 about a fictional Polish pianist-come-fighter pilot and the German attack on Warsaw. It is famous for the "Warsaw Concerto", a short but brilliant mock up of a Chopin-style mini piano concerto with themes by the British composer Richard Addinsell and orchestration by Roy Douglas, also British. It is a "popular classic".
"Boogie Nights" contemporary ('79s and '80s) tracks, carefully chosen to accompany the story, sometimes literally echoing the main dialogue subject matter of each short scene.
"Immortal Beloved" the mid '90s film on Beethoven's life and the question of who his "immortal beloved" really was. New recordings were made by amongst others, the best recent contemporary conductor Georg Solti, the last of the "great maestros".
"Ben Hur" great orchestral color from the Hungarian composer Miklos Rozsa
"The Red Pony" a clever score by mainstream American composer Aaron Copeland for a film based on a short story by John Steinbeck. Released in 1948, the film may have been seen by a young Paul McCartney as one theme is clearly repeated in part of The Beatles' "Ob La Di Ob La Da"!!
"Thunderball" a brilliant soundtrack to the Connery Bond movie set in the Bahamas in 1965. John Barry excels with chromatic orchestral themes that beautifully evoke the tropical water that is so much a part of the movie.
"Koyaanisqatsi" the city and desert film-scape of America, with constant and insistent music composed by Philip Glass. Whether it is a movie, an art film or an extended music filmclip, it has very effective music.
MUSIC in the key of D (PART 1)
There are so many famous and often anthemic pieces or songs written in D, the "bright key".
For example, check out these:
Bryan Adams "The Summer of 69"
Lover Boy "Working For The Weekend"
A major, if kitsch, mega eighties hit, certainly anthemic, and certainly in D.
Abba "Waterloo"
This was their breakthrough hit and signature winner of the 1974 Eurovision song contest.
The Dictators "Savage Beat"
This was an early (US) punk rock anthem
The Beatles (John Lennon) "All Across The Universe"
John Lennon is no stranger to the anthem, or to the key of D. All his anthems are written in D! Two more famous examples follow.
John Lennon "Give Peace A Chance"
John Lennon "Power To The People"
Rick Springfield "Jessie's Girl"
Beethoven Symphony No 9
Arguably the greatest symphony ever written, and it climaxes with the ultimate anthem, the "Ode To Joy".
Beethoven Violin Concerto
A rifferama, and the best violin concerto (see below for another example of a famous violin concerto in D).
That is just ten examples of songs, pieces or works in the "D key".
(part 11)
Here are ten more songs or classical pieces in the key of D major:
Sting "Fields Of Gold"
The subject matter is gold, and the key is the golden key, the lustrous key of D. It is also Sting's most recognisable post Police hit.
Slade "Far Far Away"
This was the song that introduced me to rock. I heard it randomly playing on a jukebox at an airbase, where I was on an air cadet camp. The song called, its message being helped no end by the key of D. It was Slade's last hit, and has a bright quality, lasting in the memory. Had the song been in G, for example, it is unlikely it would have been as successful.
BB King "3 O'Clock Blues"
This was BB's first hit, perhaps by no coincidence being written in D. It could therefore more easily stand out, like "Far Far Away".
Keith Urban "Days Go By"
The lead off track from his "Be Here" album (2004) is in D: "Days Go By". The tune is a driving/road song to open the record. D is the best key for that. (See for example the Beatles' album "Rubber Soul", where the first song is also in D,"Drive My Car"). Urban won the Country Music Association award for top male vocalist in 2004 and again in 2005, when he added the Entertainer of the Year award also. In other words, it all started with a song in D.
The Beatles "Penny Lane"
Penny Lane is not in D, but the tune climbs INTO D for the peak of the chorus. It is generally felt to be the brightest of Paul McCartney's Beatle compositions, and you will notice that the chorus reaches the D chord (and key, because it is coming from the chords A and A7 up to the destination D chord) before it finally gives way again to the verse again, which is in the key of B major. it is as if the tune climbs to a mountain top, when it reaches the key of D.
The Beatles "Here Comes The Sun"
George Harrison clearly was tired of waiting for the English winter to disappear in early 1969. I have seen dogs in England sitting down in the park facing and stretched out hesitatingly towards the sun, wondering what this strange apparition is finally shafting through the clouds in February or March. The song that Harrison wrote to bring in the brighter warmer times is not surprisingly in D.
Peter Frampton "Show Me The Way"
This was a flag-waver on Frampton's famous and huge selling live album, "Frampton Comes Alive". It is in D and it is how the album began ie: the anthem and the attention grabber. Bono of U2 was describing the start of U2 in the mid to late '70s, when he told of how fantastic the ringing of the D chord sounded when the band began this song (or "piece" as he more correctly called it) at a teenage gig in Dublin.
Parry/Elgar Anthems
The key of the recordings of the famous anthemic English hymn by Hubert Parry, "Jerusalem", and Edward Elgar's famous anthem "Land Of Hope And Glory" played at The Oval cricket ground in 2005 when the English cricket team won a cricket trophy against Australia for the first time since 1986 .... anthems are in the key of D.
Sibelius Violin Concerto in D
This is a big hit concerto, bright and noticeable. It is a favourite of virtuosi and, naturally, it is in D.
Simon Jay Harper That's me; I have two tunes in D that are anthems of a kind: both were written "naturally" or "automatically" in D, without any planning. They just happened: it seems that people often automatically write an anthem in D major (see the dudes above!!). One is "Rock And Roll Is In My Soul", and is meant to be anthemic. The songs are rockers, and I play them often at the beginning of a show, certainly the latter track. That both songs were written "accidentally" (ie: not consciously) in D is truly not a coincidence.
There are of course still more, and we will mention other D songs in a later Ten Discoveries Of The Week.
Music In The Key Of D (PART 111)
Prokoviev Violin Concerto
If you saw the last group of ten pieces in D, you will be aware of the popularity among composers of writing their violin concertos in D (for example, Beethoven and Sibelius). Well, here is another one, this time from the man who once dressed in a yellow and orange check suit. This was his first violin concerto of two: both are famous and attractive.
Sibelius Symphony No 2
This is Sibelius' most commercial symphony, and is very catchy. He wrote it after the Finnish government gave him "holiday money" to go live in Italy for a while. It certainly paid off.
Borodin String Quartet No 2
This beautiful and classic quartet is a must hear and a desert island record for me. Two movements were made into popular hits in the 1950s, resurfacing as "Baubles, Bangles And Beads" and "And This Is My Beloved", when much of Borodin's music was adapted for the the musical "Kismet" in 1953.
"The Stars And Stripes"
Unbelievably (?), the key of a performance of "The Stars And Stripes" performed at an English village in the film "Patton" when the subject of the film visited. Well, a bright and popular key that gets attention.
"Jeopardy"
TV shows know about the key of D: it was the key of the theme tune of "Jeopardy 1999" in a sketch by Steve Martin.
Two advertisments on TV: for Hummer and American Airlines.
Yes, advertisers also know about D.
Marvyn Gaye "A Stubborn Kind Of Fellow"
Great song.
Rick Springfield "Jessie's Girl"
Big hit, big key.
The Cardigans The first two songs of The Cardigan's "Life" album
The Cardigans come across as a bright sound. The album they released before "Firts Band On The Moon" began in D, twice over! Presumably not an accident. (Just as The Beatle's "Rubber Soul" began with a song also in D, "Drive My Car").
Pharrell Williams and Snoop Dog "Beautiful"
Yes, even when a supposedly hip hop duo want to convey something bright, they pull out the "D". But this isn't hip hop; it has a real tune, with real guitar and guitar chords (thank God).
Vaughan-Williams Concerto for Tuba in F minor
How could an English composer already famous around World War One (well he did write a piece about WASPs at that time!) "invent" heavy metal? Well this 1954 work has the opening four notes of the riff to Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love", the famous da da duh da that opens the heaviet riff ever. You heard it hear! I mean here. There is a quote from the Wikipedia: "While at first viewed as the eccentric idea of .... the concerto soon became one of Vaughan Williams' most popular works, and an essential part of the tuba repertoire." "Eccentric idea?" It's the birth of heavy rock, man! Tuba repertoire? It's an essential part of the HEAVY ROCK repertoire.
The Kinks "You Really Got Me"
A variant of the above, from adding a synchopated note at the start! I guess Jack Bruce and Ray Davies were spinning the hell out of their Vaughan-Williams album.
The Beatles "She Said She Said"
As John Lennon sings "She said who put all those word in your head?", the guitars are hammering the signature power chord progression of many a future heavy hit such as Judas Priest's "Living After Midnight" (1980).
Cream "Sunshine Of Your Love"
The aforementioned master riff, written after Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton saw their first Hendrix gig.
Iron Butterfly "Inna Gadda Da Vida"
Clearly built on "Sunshine Of Your Love", the psychedelically insistent riff of "Inna Gadda Da Vida" etches the motif forever in rock history. And nothing is heavier than an iron butterfly, right?
Led Zeppelin "Dazed And Confused"
The chromatic bass line all but defines heavy rock. There is a clip on youtube of Jimmy Page playing it with the Yardbirds in 1967 on a Paris TV rock show.
Black Sabbath "Iron Man"
Here it is, the second heaviest riff? Like most classical motifs, it appears to be moving to another key briefly.
Black Sabbath "Paranoid"
Chord progression?, beat?, motif at the end of a beat? Who knows, but this is a classic and needs no introduction to heavy rock fans. It is always Ozzy's finale, and, in the words of a Johnny Rotten lyric, his grand creation (lyrically: Tommy Iommi would have written the music).
Deep Purple "Smoke On The Water"
A fire in the sky.
Beethoven Violin Concert in D
After all this, I still think the comet of a bass riff or figure that appears near the end of the work, and which is the first five notes of Hendrix's rifferama in "Hey Joe", is the origin of hard rock. And it's heavier than Hendrix, because it stops on the next note (Bb) and hammers it into extinction.
This week we have a collection of pivotal records with a Beatles, and analog, thread: ten rocking cuts, true discoveries whether you already know them or not. To highlight the importance of analog recording, I add a couple of post Beatle records that have a lasting quality about them. An LA musician told me he was driving with the radio on when he heard, after a succession of digitally recorded songs, a seventies track, from Thin Lizzy. He said the Thin Lizzy record jumped out of the speakers, unlike the other, much newer tracks. Says it all.
Ray Charles "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand"
This record was one of the very early records (about 1950) Ray made before he joined Atlantic. The Beatles clearly heard this when they were in Hamburg, or before. The title may sound a little familiar also!
Frank Sinatra "South Of The Border"
Frank seduces a Mexican girl: a lot of colour, lyrically and musically. According to a poster I saw, Sinatra was arrested in 1938 in New Jersey, and charged with "seduction". Here he is at it again, but this time getting into it on vinyl .... I once heard a cassette of Sinatra singing " ", and, as the tape was quite old, he sounded quite a bit like John Lennon: when you also consider that the song itself has a small piece of "And I Love Her" in the melody, the influence of Sinatra on the Beatles, musically and sonically, is clear.
Buddy Holly "Oh Boy"
The Beatles, expressed as an equation, were Cole Porter over Buddy Holly: great songs superimposed on a rock vessel, the latter being Holly.
The Beatles "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"
What a record: bits of guitar weaved into the mix; sounds great on CD! (But it was recorded analog).
The Beatles "Lady Madonna"
It's 1968, and Paul returns to the 1950s. Listen to the sax solo; it sounds brilliant blasted out of speakers on a dance floor. You are trapped in that avenue of sound.
The Beatles "The Ballad Of John And Yoko"
A rocked up contemporary piece of Buddy Holly, almost ten years after the '50s.
Abba "Honey Honey"
This was one of the first Abba songs out there: it is a very clever song (and recording), the middle section presenting far more than might appear is in the song from just the introductory lines.
Wild Cherry "Play That Funky Music"
A classic R & B (almost reggae) track from 1976, released in the '90s on a CBS triple compilation that covered the history of Afro-American music from the begiining of recording to the present era. "Play that funky music, white boy ...."
The Sex Pistols "God Save The Queen"
A masterpiece from the beginning of punk. Raw rock rediscovered, and a brilliant sound recording as well. I have the 45 rpm copy. The flipside is a very rugged record, almost comic in its "I don't care" attitude: "Did You No Wrong".
U2 "Bullet The Blue Sky"
(Natural) sonic effects match the lyrical imagery. This track is of course from U2's masterpiece album "The Joshua Tree" (1987).
The point of this list is to highlight what Bob Dylan recently said,"There has been no good [sound recording] made in the last twenty years", and that the recent "records" sound like "static". They do, because of the current approach to digital methods of recording. There is no track listed here recorded after 1987. One Los Angeles producer, Brian Malouf, has said there are ways analog can be recreated digitally, but this does not appear to have reached the airwaves .... at least not yet.
People have to get the message: music has to be listenable in the recording, so that it will last forever.
The Benzedrine Monks Rhino 1994
AC/DC Live VH1 Classic broadcast London 1977
Jimi Hendrix "Hendrix In The West" Reprise 1971
Henry Purcell "Songs From Taverns And Chapels" Musical Heritage Society 1979
Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concert 1943 Jazz Anthology
Louis Armstrong "I Cover The Waterfront" Denmark 1934
Frank Zappa "Over-Nite Sensation" 1973
Kiss "Rock And Roll All Night" 1975
Howling Wolf "His Greatest Sides" Chess
Crosby Stills Nash and Young "Deja Vu" 1970
MY MUSIC DISCOVERY SAYS:
The Benzedrine Monks
This is a classic result of the mid '90s chant mania that saw a multitude of Gregorian chant records released. Rhino had the idea for a "chant" version of a medley of rock hits, and so came about the Benzedrine Monks. The CD is a sort of EP of six tracks including The Monkees' theme ("Here we come .... Hey hey we're the Monks ...."), Queen's "We Will Rock You", Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", REM's "Losing My Religion" ha ha: these monks lost it long ago), and eventually the grand finale, a great version of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?".
AC/DC
Apparently AC/DC's first gig in England: Bon Scott is the singer and they have just released the new album and single of the same title "Let There Be Rock". The lyrics are really clear! Bon Scott's between song comments are quite funny, being totally without affectation or "stadium bravado": "Here's a song inspired by the young boy Angus here, 'Problem Child'", or "This one's about a big fat Tasmanian woman, 'A Whole Lotta Rosie'"! Finally he informs the residents of Yarmouth (a coastal town) that AC/DC will be there "on Thursday".
Jimi Hendrix
This album, which has not yet made it to CD, is a compilation of the best live Hendrix tracks. It starts with the famous "Johnny B Goode" at the Berkeley Community Centre gig on May 30 1970, continues with a lightning fast "Lover Man" (Hendrix's version of "Rock Me Baby") with Eddie van Halen-fast note flurries. Then comes an arpeggiated "Blue Suede Shoes", looping with improvised riffs. A dense "Voodoo Child" gives way to the classic opening of his appearance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, where he began with "God Save The Queen" segueing into "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The announcer at the start speaks the fabled phrase "A bit more volume on this one Charlie: it's gonna need it .... and the man with the guitar, Jimi Hendrix". There is also the live version of "Little Wing" and the album closes with the very best ever version of ":Red House", complete with slow wah wah passage.
Henry Purcell
This is a collection of songs from Purcell, the first and only major English composer of "modern times" before Edward Elgar. Purcell was famous for his melodic operas "Dido And Aeneas" and "King Arthur", amongst other works. The first half of this collection is religious, but the second half lets loose with such timeless classics as "Sir Walter Enjoying His Damsel". The lyrics are great (eg: "he brought her to such a height ...."), but the music is essentially rounds and canons ie: several guys singing the same thing, but overlapping eachother: fashionable at the time and no doubt good if you're in a tavern.
Duke Ellington
In 1943, Duke Ellington made it to the classical holy of holies, Carnegie Hall, New York. By this time he had developed the concert format that continued into the 1970s: the main body of the concert, then a medley section which came eventually to be introduced by his phrase "I've been very lucky as a songwriter ....". As he was at Carnegie Hall, with a white audience and in a more formal environment than usual, the Dukester is very interesting when announcing pieces, eg; "And now one of our clarinetists, Jimmy Hamilton, will improvise on the theme known as "Honeysuckle Rose". Drummer Sonny Greer highlights with his chimes on the famous concert feature "Ring Dem Bells".
The record's concert format also clearly shows how Ellington's music was "classical" eg: the huge amount of music in a three minute track such as "Ring Dem Bells": hear the original recording.
Louis Armstrong
This live clip could be the most important document of popular music ever! It was featured on a history of jazz trumpet documentary presented by Wynton Marsalis, and is now on Youtube: many thanks to the guy who put it up. The song is an emotional classic, recorded for example by Billie Holiday, about a girl scanning the waterfront for the return of her lover. Louis' version is unreal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63xtCLvfTWk
The tune was written by the same guys who wrote the classic "Body And Soul", Ed Heyman and Johnny Green.
Another brilliant performance is that of "Dinah" from the same show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiPKPsjD05A&NR
Frank Zappa
This is the most accessible Zappa album, the rockiest and possibly the funniest. The tracks include "Camarillo Brillo, about a Latin girl with cool castanets, the concert classic "Dirty Love" and the classic rock comedy song "Dinah-Moe-Hum": "I once met a girl called Dinah-Moe-Hum. She said, 'I've got a forty dollar bill says you can't make me come'. So I got on down to it ....". Then there's "Zomby Woof". After that you may want to be "moving to Montana". The music is straight ahead rock, with additions!
Kiss
A great song, with the chorus "I want to rock and roll all night, a party every day". Kiss deliberately modelled themselves on the Beatles: John Lennon and Paul McCartney became the amended names Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley! This song has always seemed to me to be musically allied to "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", but of course with its own brilliance.
Howling Wolf
The Wolf recorded very influential records in the '50s and '60s. He was one of the four main influences on the Rolling Stones (the others being Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed). His guitarist Hubert Sumlin was a model for Eric Clapton: some of the solos sound a lot like Clapton. A stand out track is "Sitting On Top Of The World", which Clapton later covered with Cream. Another classic is "Back Door Man", covered by the Doors: "... the men don't know but the little girls understand".
Crosby Stills Nash and Young
This album sounds like a greatest hits: with four brilliant songwriters there was going to be a lot of good music. There are, for example, "Helpless" from Neil Young, and the song popularised by Madness, "Our House", from Graham Nash.
Artist, Album or Composition, Label, Year of Release/Composition
Charlie Parker "Chasin' The Bird" Four CD live set Proper Records [info@proper.uk.com] [bought] 2006
Hindemith Kammermusik No2 Op36/1 Sviatoslav Richter piano and Moscow Conservatory OrchestraYuri Nikolayevsky Yedang Classical Treasures 2001 (recorded May 22 1978)
Beethoven Piano Sonatas No 9 in E major Op 14/1 and No 10 in G major Op 14/2 Friedrich Gulda
Bach Brandenburg Concerti, I Musici (Holliger and Andre) 1958, 1965 [1993 re release] Philips
John Lennon Anthology Capitol 1998
BB King "The Best Of BB King Volume One" Ace Records 1986
"Toscanini + Goodman = Gershwin!" American Classics Opus 1 Vintage Jazz Classics Ltd, VJC-1034 1991
The King's Record Collection the original versions of songs later performed by Elvis Presley, Volume Two Hip-O 1998
The Rolling Stones "A Bigger Bang" Virgin 2005
JJ Cale "Troubadour" Mercury 1976
MY MUSIC DISCOVERY SAYS:
Charlie Parker:
This is worth it literally for just the first track: a version of the vehicle that Charlie used to bring bebop to the world, the popular song "Cherokee". It was recorded at Monroe's Club in 1942 in New York, and it is not even clear who the backing musicicans are, but what a piece of history. The next track is almost as good, Parker with Jay McShann's swing orchestra live also in 1942. The third track is a peek into the evolutionary stage of modern jazz: Bird and Dizzy Gillespie accompanied by Oscar Pettiford on bass recorded in a room at the Savoy Hotel in Chicago in February 1943, BEFORE they got together in Billy Eckstein's band and nailed it completely. Hear Diz play his "wrong" notes.
Following these pieces of gold dust are four cuts from LA live gigs in December 1945 and January 1946, when he played very fast (the time of his masterpiece "Koko", based on the aforementioned "Cherokee"): people say he was not as fluid after the upcoming drug induced Camarillo hospital episode later in 1946. These tracks are great, as the quality is really good and not only is Gillespie on hand but also Parker's definitive pianist Al Haig.
And as if that wasn't enough, the next five tracks are live with Miles Davis on trumpet, still in LA and still before the Camarillo blow up.
Several classic gigs are on this set, including the very famous "Summit At Birdland" concert in 1951, and a gig in Harlem that noone even seems to know he played, but which was recently turned up! Hear it or die.
Hindemith:
This piece is for piano and orchestra, so it is essentially a piano concerto, the most popular format of classical music. Hindemith was first active in Germany, but came to the US in the 1930s after the rise of the Nazis. His music is basically tuneful and percussive: importantly, he was one of the classical composers listened to by one Christopher Charles Parker, (the others were Stravinsky and Bartok). This work proves that Charlie Parker listened to him. The first movement has a favourite and distinctive Parker melodic lick prominently featured, except that Charlie added to it, as any composer would.
Beethoven:
Friedrich Gulda is the (Austrian) Hendrix of the piano! He plays jazz also, and is very famous at it; and so at one point the Beethoven almost sounds like jazz, which is useful for a cross comparison of music. Sonata No 9 begins its second movement with a tune that is basically, at this point, the same climbing notes as the opening the Beatles' 1964 McCartney song "I'll Follow The Sun", and further into the movement there is a clear piano triple ring effect that is exactly the same as Keith Richard's rapid triplet chord "kerring!" in "Jumping Jack Flash". And there are many more great moments in these works. Beethoven's thirty two piano sonatas are the equivalent of his "hit singles", whereas the nine symphonies are more like his "albums".
Bach:
Of Bach's works, the Brandenberg concerti are some of the most accessable and brilliant. This brilliant 1950s and 60s era orchestra includes as soloists the European kings of oboe and trumpet respectively, Heinz Holliger and Maurice Andre. The sound quality is excellent: many of the definitive classical recordings to date were made in the fifties and sixties: in fact, I think that these concerti are even better performed by Karl Munchinger and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, also recorded in the fifties.
John Lennon:
This is the four CD set that covers his entire solo career including the 1980 demos. The first of the discs is especially good, as it has what are effectively demos of Lennon's first two, and best, albums "Plastic Ono Band" and "Imagine". The version of "God", from the first album, is "better" than the first released version, for me: it is more straight ahead, a more bandlike format. These recordings are like listening to new albums. Also included is the (now ex) bootleg recording of Lennon's reply to Dylan's late 1970s religious songs, called "Serve Yourself".
BB King:
That rolling, falling, walking bass and great rural lyrics: "like being hit by a falling tree, you upset me baby" ("You Upset Me Baby", a wriutten by BB King himself); there are also classics like "Every Day I HaveThe Blues". Then there are the model guitar solos like on "Mean Ole Frisco": the history of blues guitar soloing is basically that in the 1940s T Bone Walker played a single note line style that came from acoustic blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson, whom he used to lead around as a teenager in Texas. BB King then took that single line (the Texas style) and added the thick note approach of the Delta (Muddy Waters, etc). He also added slurs, instead of T Bone Walker's clear notes. So BB married sophisticated note runs with the feel and colour of the Delta. He took the Texas guitar clarity and power and blended it with the Delta .... to invent lead guitar as we know it. All of this and more is featured on this twenty track best of his early records in the 1950s.
"Toscanini + Goodman = Gershwin!":
Classics indeed: The Overture to "An American In Paris" from the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini, The Piano Concerto in F (feat Oscar Levant at the piano) Rhapsody In Blue (the pianist is the free flowing Earl Wild, with the opening clarinet hook from Benny Goodman). Finally there is the ideal encore: three live tracks from Benny Goodman backed by Johnny Green and the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra: Gershwin's masterpiece "The Man I Love", the ad man's favourite "I Only Have Eyes For You" and a frantic work out called "Dizzy Fingers": 74.33 minutes of colour and interest.
The King's Record Collection:
This is a brilliant collection. These songs are classics and the original versions are revelatory, if you haven't heard them. The album opens with Hank Snow singing "Now And Then There's A Fool Such As I", and is unified in the middle by two Jimmy Reed tracks, "Big Boss Man" (performed by Eric Clapton and other early English blues rockers in the mid '60s) and "Guitar Man". "Guitar Man is a great great record, better than Elvis' version for me. It truly tells a story: it has a great feel.
The songs were all recorded after Elvis left the army, so they are perhaps a little more subtle than the more obvious hits he recorded in the '50s. Other highlights include "Love Letters" and "The Wonder Of You". These songs were not written for Elvis: and because they are of a particular type, the album therefore has an identity all of its own. They also allow you to see what music had been, the country and the rhythm and blues, before Elvis put his stamp on it
The Rolling Stones:
This is a really good album. Released, of course, in 2005, it contains a real Stones classic "Streets Of Love", and other hot cuts such as "Biggest Mistake" and "Oh No Not You Again", which has been performed live by the Stones this year (2006). Mick Jagger's lyrics are very good, and almost amusing with the second track "Let Me Down Slow" where he sees his partner return from a "walk" looking flushed and "so hard core", and tells her to take it easy telling him she has just been with someone else. Shouldn't that be Mick who was with someone else?
The melodic hook in this song sounds like one of their mid '60s classics, which somehow makes it even more interesting. This album is good music, and a real "Discovery".
JJ Cale:
This an album from 1976, and contains the powdery strains of Cale's all time hit "Cocaine". The song was recorded by Eric Clapton at the same time, and Cale's original appears to have pretty much exactly the same backing. The whole album has a real groove right through it; a good example is the opener, "Hey Baby".
Artist, Album or Composition, Label, Year of Release/Composition
David Bowie "The Man Who Sold The World" EMI 1971
The Four Freshmen "All Time Favourites" Capitol (1985) Re-release
Triple CD "The Big Beat" Various Artists .... and a monkey Ellipsis Arts 1994
Bach "The Art Of Fugue"; Emerson String Quartet DG 2002
Musique De La Grece Antique Harmonia Mundi Atrium Musicae De Madrid Gregorio Paniagua
1979
Chopin Nocturnes Guiomar Novaes piano Allegro
Mozart Ein Musikalischer Spass K522 Academy of St Martins In the Field Chamber Ensemble (with Eine Kleine Nachtmusik K525 and Divertimento D136)
Hossam Ramzy "Source Of Fire"
Bartok Violin Concerto No 2 in B minor Kyung -Wha Chung/Rattle City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra EMI
Ghana Ancient Ceremonies, Songs and Dance Music recorded by Stephen Jay; Elektra Nonsuch Explorer Series; first released 1979)
Mymusicdiscovery says:
Bowie: The album is a template for grunge, and other styles (Nirvana played the title track, which is essentially the sound of Nirvana, on their live "Unplugged" album). Bowie also brings in the "space rock" electric riffs .... that sound as though they were written, or played, by aliens: "Black Country Rock" introduces a new identity in music, the guitar riffs in the middle section being the progenitor of the whole Berlin "Low" experience. "She Shook Me ...." is an earlier example of the "Moonage Daydream" trip of tied up sex and tension: the lyrics tell the story ... "she sucked my dormant will .... she blew my mind .... I threw her to the ground" (on the Bronte "Wuthering Heights" wind swept hill side).
The opening track, the very classic "Width Of A Circle", plays for about eight minutes and brings in Cream era Eric Clapton-like guitar along with the Wagnerian riff that sets the scene for the whole album. You know that something is coming, from this riff, and when you think the piece is finishing Bowie introduces a new part: very classical.
The last track evolves through various Nietzschean mouthings over an ABABCB musical structure, then dissolves into a Hendrix style chaos at the end, the guitar presaging the "John I'm Only Dancing" repeated high pitched guitar "sound".
The Four Freshmen: Brian Wilson listened closely to the singing harmonies of The Four Freshman (as well as to Gershwin's chord progressions) when he was fashioning the Beach Boys. A friend of Brian Wilson told me that he has said he just took their whole sound lock stock and barrel, and put a rock beat to it. That is of course a simplification, but listen to "It's A Blue World" and beginning of "Angel Eyes": very Beach Boys. Even the song "Graduation Day" has a lyrical subject matter immediately recognisable in the Beach Boys' records.
Triple CD "The Big Beat": A stunning collection of different drumming from all over the world, from a monkey beating off on a tree trunk to Jack de Johnette's shimmering cymbles in 1975. The music is primarily "Third World", but Carl Palmer also makes an appearance (from '70s prog rockers Emerson Lake and Palmer), as does jazz supremo Elvin Jones. African drums, Indian drums, Pacific Island drums, .... I saw Jack de Johnette live in 2006, and he stills shimmers the cymbals, and more.
Bach "The Art Of Fugue": Diana Ross fans will spot more than a suggestion of the "Theme To Mahogony" residing in variation number 20 (at about 1:20 seconds and the same theme varied at 4:00 minutes)!!; 5 and 7 are good jazz bass style, 8 is great and 6 would be good to play to a sports team before they go out to play. Also ear catching are numbers 17, 19 and 21. If you want to see why Bach is popular with jazz musicians (and indeed rock musicians), the Art Of Fugue is a good place to start listening.
Musique De La Grece Antique: This is an imaginative attempt by musicians of today to present ancient Greek music as it may have sounded, the music itself being from fragments discovered by archeologists; the occasional dramatic voice part adds to the feel, and something about this CD makes you think, at times, that you may actually be there, back more than two thousand years, in ancient Greece. Interesting tracks include "Hymn To The Muse", "Hymn To Nemesis" (a jazz sax feel, written on michigan papyrus), and "The Second Delphic Hymn To Appollo" by Limenios, son of Thoinos.
Chopin: I found this on a cassette tape: it is volume 1. Chopin's Nocturnes are some of the most beautiful and also varied music of, really, all time. It is good to hear the nocturnes, one after the other, and not mixed up here and there with other examples of his piano works. This is one of those records where I feel that the music sounds sort of like rock music (ie: because of the musician and the way it is recorded, it is directly translatable into modern listening tastes), and yet it is "classical".
Mozart: People should hear this: Mozart deliberately writes (or tries to write) bad music!! He was always a joker, even in his usual music. The final chord is great: it sounds like some kind of modern jazz. The English translation of the title is of course "A Musical Joke".
Hossam Ramzy: Hossam Ramzy is an Egyptian percussionist, and he played with Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page on their "No Quarter" tour in the mid nineties. This album is very relaxing yet also rhythmic and exciting. It blends with almost anything in terms of human activity, which is one reason why it is a "must hear".
Bartok: The opening of the violin concerto is very up to date: it sounds a little like a brief touch of Brian Wilson, mood setting, a real groove. The work as a whole is of course excellent, but the beginning is a whole world of its own. It could fit at the start of virtually any popular work of quality and similar feel. There will be more Bartok in .... the Discoveries.
Ghana Ancient Ceremonies: This is unreal. Varied musicians and singers were recorded in Ghana in the late seventies. It is interesting to hear the similarities to some current Western (American) music. The "Gonje songs" are the blues, pure and simple: you would just replace the single string "violin" with a guitar, the language would become English (the track would therefore be slower), and there you are. The drummers have the "Western" beat: I played a country style song along to the first track, "Dogumbo Song", from Sandema. "Ahanta Chant I", from Dixcove, is a great piece, the sound and tune being in general familiar to Western listeners. One of the featured instruments, the "wiick", is a flute. There is also an accapella song by a girl recorded in central Ghana ("Marilli") that sounds like '60s soul/rock. Yet at times the singer is producing multiple notes. You gotta hear this.
Artist, Album or Composition, Label, Year of Release/Composition
Stan Getz "Jazz Samba" Verve 1962
John Lennon "Menlove Avenue" Capitol 1986
Alexander Scriabin "Preludes" Vol 2 Evgeny
Zarafiants Piano Naxos 1892-1914
Django Reinhardt "Jazz Ballads" Membran 1936-1949
Arno Bornkamp "The Classical Saxophone" Brilliant 1994
The Cardigans "Life" Trampoline Records 1995
Cream "Disraeli Gears" RSO 1967
Saint-Saens "Rhapsody Of The Auvergne"
Koukouzeliz "Chant en l'honneur de
l'archeveque, etc" Harmonia Mundi 1989
Mozart Concerto For Flute, Harp
And Orchestra K299 Time Life 1999
Mymusicdiscovery says:
Stan Getz: The ultimate seduction record: clothes will defy gravity no longer if this CD is put onto the player. There was a huge hit track: "Desafinado", an enormous chart success in 1962, partially because of the clear sensuality of the sound. The album fully introduced bossa nova to the world.
John Lennon: A compilation from 1986. Many tracks are from the 1974 album "Walls And Bridges". There is also the cover of "Angel Baby", an outtake from the "Rock And Roll" album and document of Lennon's famous "Lost Weekend".
Scriabin: He was the mystic modern Russian composer. See Bud Powell and even Thelonious Monk in development. Don't forget also his salute to ecstasy, the "Poeme d'Extase" (the Poem Of Ecstasy), where you can hear origins of Duke Ellington's trumpet writing.
Django Reinhardt: Excellent ballad double CD compilation eg: "Body And Soul", "Georgia" and "Sophisticated Lady".
Arno Bornkamp: Double set of mainly French compositions; Ibert's Concerto De Camera For Alto Saxophone And Eleven Instruments is a highlight. (Part) recorded in a church, like Getz above.
The Cardigans: Great album, just before their big hit album "First Band on The Moon". Has a soft jazz sound and many diminished chords, usually unusual in a rock album.
Cream: The great psychedelic electric blues rock album from Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. Has the Hendrix inspired riff-driven track "The Sunshine of Your Love", which features a very colourful solo from Eric Clapton .
Saint-Saens: A short work in C major, taking folk melodies of the French Auvergne region and mixing them together with groovy high profile piano.
Koukouzeliz: This is extraordinary. The actual title of the album that I discovered is "Grece: Les Grandes Epoques Du Chant Sacre Byzantin (XIV - XVIII Siecle)". It is Greek chant performed by the Ensemble Theodore Vassilikos, and the highlight for me by far is the two works by fourteenth century monk Ioannis Koukouzeliz, who lived at the famous Aghia-Athos monastery. His melodic gift makes him an early George Michael!! Turn it up and rock out.
Mozart: What can you say about this little known Viennese master?!! You should at least listen to every one of his works from before official number K300 on, ie: up to his last work the Requiem K626 (that's only about 320 compositions ....). The work mentioned here is K299. Everything he wrote is definitive music; further, as should be well known, listening to his music improves thinking: it cured Gerard Depardieu of his early teenage speech inabilities. It's all in the composition ....
An article distributed at a UCLA Extension record production class in Los Angeles revealed that the record producer's job is amongst other things to make sure the instruments are in tune. That's right! The producer is responsible for the proper recording of the session. He has to make a good record, a listenable usable recording. He has to be able to hear anything that is not the way it should be, and then fix it (see Desmond Child's comment below).
However, some producers have gone further ....
Sam Phillips
"When I press this button, I will go back to 1780"
Sam Phillips and the joy of analog
Sam Phillips had been looking for some time for a white guy who sang like a black guy. One day, at his Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tennessee, in walked Elvis Presley. At the first organised session that Elvis recorded, Phillips heard the four guy band knocking out a jam version of "That's All Right Mama", an earlier release by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. He told them to do it again, and recorded it. The result was played basically all night by the first Memphis radio station it was given to. Elvis himself was pulled out of a movie theatre by his family to go straight on the air to do an interview. Rock and roll was here.
"Elvis, this is a B minor"
Photographs: www.audiogalaxy.com
George Martin
George Martin had already produced a lot of comedy records in London, before he recorded the Beatles. He produced the famous 1950s Goon Shows and the 1960 novelty Peter Sellers/Sophia Loren hit "Goodness Gracious Me", a story of a hot Italian actress getting it on with her Indian doctor (Sellers spoke here with an Indian accent). With the Beatles, Martin used his classical knowledge to great effect, arranging and playing on the records and translating many of the Beatle's visions into reality. As an "A&R" person, he had even been the person who spotted their talent for his record company (EMI). At the time, producers worked on salary for a record company.
EMI signing Sophia Loren:
with engineering like that,
who needs Geoff Emerick?
Phil Spector
He invented his cacophonic "wall of sound" by recording say six guitarists strumming together, then five of something else, then by double or triple tracking them all. But he could also write the classics that he recorded: "Be My Baby" is the most famous example. Hearing this record for the first time on his car radio, Brian Wilson pulled over to the side of the road, saying "No way, no way". And so he too bacame one of the most brillaint sound-in -the-studio creators ....
Brian Wilson
Actually, Brian Wilson was primarily a songwriter/composer, but of course he also "produced" the famous "Pet Sounds", with its astonishing sounds and feelings. He is the prime example of the blurring of composer and producer. One imagines that Beethoven would also have exercised complete control over how his symphonies sounded on record, had he had studios at his time!
"Ich bin ein genius (producer)":
that was the real speech of 1962
Jerry Wexler
For the record label Atlantic, Wexler produced the classic records of Aretha Franklin and created soul's "Atlantic sound". Other great examples are Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman", Sam And Dave and Wilson Pickett.
Arif Mardin
"This is how we write in Turkish, lots of squiggles and dots!"
Photograph: Wikipedia
Arif helped shaped the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" era: "Nights On Broadway" is a great example, with its Barry Gibb falsetto. He didn't realise he was creating disco: Arif is innocent! He came to the US from Turkey in the late 1950s, when Quincy Jones awarded him the first Quincy Jones Scholarship to the Berkelee School Of Music, after hearing three demos sent via a friend who worked at a radio station in the US. Amongst others, he produced Barbara Streisand, Bette Midler and significantly in recent times, Nora Jones.
Hear an NPR interview with Arif, from 2005, at
"Mutt" (Robert) Lang
He produced the grind and the shatter of "You Shook Me All Night Long" and the rest of AC-DC's album "Back In Black". His ability at making real one's vision of the sound has seemingly often been the most visible recent function of a producer.
"Knocking me out with those American thighs, [Kiran]" ....
Thighs: a rocker's inspiration
Desmond Child
Desmond Child is also, and very importantly, a writer/composer. He said in a recent talk given by the National Association Of Recording Professionals (NARIP) in Los Angeles that he likes to fuse two different sounds to make a new one. For example, he checked off, firstly, fusing guitars with disco (his and Kiss's "I Was Made For Loving You"), then latin with rock and roll (he wrote all the Ricky Martin hits, beginning with "La Vida Loca"), and thirdly rock and rap (would I want to claim credit for that??): "Who Let The Dogs Out". Like George Martin, therefore, he brings more than the usual producer's overseer function to a recording; and in his case, he probably wrote the record too.
He wrote the big hits for Bon Jovi, the more recent Aerosmith hits (on the night of his talk he was due at Steven Tyler's birthday party), and Alice Cooper's "Poison". "Poison" is a very interesting track because of the run of key changes.
So Desmond Child is really a composer, but he calls himself a producer: "I'm a producer: I hear everything" he said, when someone at the event clicked their telephone! That really is the job of a producer: to hear everything .... especially out of tune guitar strings!
The Child and myself in Hollywood, 2007
Wilhelm Furtwangler
Furtwangler, at right, tells Stravinsky he
should be able to fit those chords on a 2"
tape. "Studer OK, Igor?"
Photograph: www.furtwangler.net
Furtwangler, the ultimate creative classical conductor, performed the same function, in a way, as a visionary record producer; his take on the masterpieces of Beethoven, Bruckner and others amount to production, ie: his personal presentation and over-seeing changing the listener's perception of the original composition. His interpretation of the great symphonies has cast an everlasting picture of how some of these great works can be presented. (Indeed, he often recorded live).
Last weekend in a record shop I met, as you do, the son of a Hungarian studio engineer who engineered for Furtwangler in the 1930s; he said that, once at a rehearsal with a deputy conductor before a session, the percussionist looked up suddenly because the orchestra had for no apparent reason lifted their game .... he just caught sight of Furtwangler walking past the door! Furtwangler had that effect.
A great example is his 1952 studio version of Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony, recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic. So Furtwangler crafted, and was thus responsible for, the sound that comes out of the speakers today. That is what many of the above producers did. And afterall, wasn't Brian Wilson actually trying to write what he called "pocket symphonies" himself, or "teenage symphonies to God"?
David Lynch
David Lynch is a film director, but an imaginative film director can fulfill, for a (high art) film, the same function as a visonary record producer. Lynch gave a well-attended talk at a Borders store in West Los Angeles in February, 2007. He described his take on directing and making films in general as appears below. Record producers like Sam Philips, Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, had they been there, would have related to his words.
"Abstract .... you have an idea, then the film or story starts. You fall in love with the idea.
I have never studied "film history". It's common sense how to make a film really, once you have the idea. Don't let anybody fiddle with your idea; keep the power. Never turn down a good idea. You select ("get") the best, the ones that stand out. Write out your idea immediately, so that the notes bring it back later.
With a second [idea] you see how it marries to the first one.
"Desire is a beautiful bait when you are fishing for ideas". How deep can you desire?
There may not be be much on the surface: expand the power."
Maybe he could also be involved in some visionary record production.