Billboard‘s “Hits of the World” (2/28/70, p. 65) shows Robin Gibb’s “Saved By the Bell” as the only non-Yugoslav Top Ten entry. It’s J.J. Light’s “Heya,” appearing at #9 in Switzerland, though, that really has me swooning.
Full page Rig ad from the May 23, 1970 issue (p. 73) (click to enlarge). I still can’t get Kendell (bottom left) to admit to liking anything about the album or its cover.
The cassette version of Aja I used to listen to in my teens had a totally different song sequence from the LP version. Still don’t know what the reasoning was behind such drastic reshuffling. I maintain that not only should the cassette sequencing for Pretzel Logic become the standard version, but also that the cassette sequencing for both Aja and Can’t Buy a Thrill are much stronger and more sensible than the LPs.
All the Steely Dan albums through Gaucho, incidentally, had weird cassette vs. LP sequence discrepancies. Gaucho is actually the one Steely Dan album that I feel strongly about as having a better LP lineup. But again, why the difference in the first place?
Aja (LP): Side 1 – Black Cow; Aja; Deacon Blues. Side 2 – Peg; Home at Last; I Got the News; Josie.
Aja (Cassette): Side 1 – Aja; Deacon Blues; Josie. Side 2 – Black Cow; I Got the News; Peg; Home at Last.
Gaucho (LP): Side 1 – Babylon Sisters; Hey Nineteen; Glamour Profession. Side 2 – Gaucho; Time Out of Mind; My Rival; Third World Man.
Gaucho (8-Track): 1 – Babylon Sisters; Time Out of Mind. 2 – Gaucho; My Rival. 3 – Hey Nineteen; Third World Man. 4 – Glamour Profession.
December’s always a good time to check in with Hal Schneider, a.k.a. Hal Holiday, the man that brought us the deathless “Sleigh Bell Rock”/”Booze Party” single in 1960 and whom I declared, quite astutely, back in ’07 to be “Utah’s King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Hal continues to perform live in the Ogden and Salt Lake areas and recently gathered up some local press when the makers of the Australian film Red Dog used “Booze Party” for a bar scene. A smashing development for someone who, as of four years ago, had yet to see a dime for his nearly half-decade-old songs.
The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” hit #1 over the Thanksgiving weekend in 1958. I had a mini-Dooley fest on Folkways today, where I played the hit version, the Smothers Brothers version, Grayson and Whittier’s original 1929 version (Grayson was actually related to the Grayson in the song), and “Tom Dula” by the late Bill Morrissey with Greg Brown from 1993. I did not, however, play this 1974 Incredible Bongo Band version of the song, called “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley, Your Tie’s Stuck in Your Zipper.”
Kendell Kardt has posted a disarming children’s story with a Thanksgiving theme on his blog. It’s called The Pearl, and let’s hope that by this time next year, some wise publisher or animator will have gotten to know William the Bell Buoy, Sally the Seagull and Freddy the Fish and given their story its due.
This is a mural done by William M. Tracy that once graced the entryway of the Terror Ride at Lagoon, which is an amusement park in Farmington, Utah. See it in full splendor at Ichabod Sanz’s Flickr page.
When I was a teenager in the ‘80s, the current hits of the day always aired at swimming pools, arcades, malls, grocery stores, and theme parks. You didn’t need your radio carefully tuned to the Top 40 station to hear contemporary hits. As an adult who now takes his own kids to these places, 85% of what I heard this summer were hits from the ‘80s.
If public background music targets adults so aggressively nowadays (at least in my neck of the woods), I wonder how kids are hearing current hits. Do they listen to Top 40 with more premeditated determination than my generation ever did? Are they sneakier about it? Are chart positions today swayed by an even smaller segment of the population than before? Are the dance clubs that cater to late teens and twenty-somethings now the primary venues for Top 40 exposure? Is it TV that’s introducing kids to these songs? Someone should get empirical about this and let me know how it turns out.
I can at least talk about some of the hits themselves. What follows is a quick skim through all 23 titles to have roosted in the Top Ten of Billboard’s Hot 100 between June 1 and August 31 of this year. I’m no mathematician, but I’ve listed them according to popularity in terms of chart positions and weeks in the Top Ten. I’ve gone out of my way this summer – which is what it requires for an adult – to take these songs in along with their accompanying videos. I’ve done this by keeping my ears glued to the local Top 40 station (avoiding mornings) and spending unrecommended amounts of time on YouTube.
Before getting started, allow me to touch upon six trends I’ve noticed in this year’s summertime hit parade:
1) Eurodisco: At first glance, the term might seem dated and out of context, but I can’t think of anything more accurate to describe the frenzied, Ibiza-friendly sounds that presently make “rock” and “R&B” seem like far more badly dated terms than “Eurodisco.”
2) Workhorse 4-bar chord sequences: Hit songwriters of today and the audiences who support them are very happy with refrains consisting of four repeating measures with four chords, each one assigned to an entire measure. The “With or Without You” (U2) template (“wowy” is what I call it) is among the most popular. The plodding persistence of this 4-chords per 4-measures in 4/4 time approach to songwriting (Adele’s “Someone Like You” is only the latest) is partly responsible for giving everyone over thirty the impression that their own teenage soundtracks were somehow innovative and/or Gershwin-esque.
3) Gap rap: As I put it once before, “gap rap” is a “longstanding musical feature unique to radio and music video in which ‘clean versions’ of (mainly) rap songs contain non-vocalized gaps in place of rude language. The effect is that of a rapper using a very cheap microphone cord.” An aura of defectiveness, in other words, accompanies all gap rap tracks.
4) The Katy Perry/Lady Gaga/Britney Spears corruptathon: The three biggest female singers of today are currently competing to see who can kill your preteen daughters’ childhoods the fastest. In their defense, they may be merely attempting to affirm that they are not, in fact, preteens themselves.
5) Whistling: The sound of whistling, either actual or synthesized, appeared in enough songs this summer to qualify as a full blown (so to speak) trend. Who started this? What does it mean? Does it prophesy the revenge of the “tweeter” after the long reign of the subwoofer?
5) Winks to the ’80s: Most of these songs contain a synth hook, melody, drum pattern, sample, or chord sequence that middle-agers will say sounds especially familiar. This is likely because contemporary hits are targeted to, and in many cases created by, kids who have subconsciously developed an ear for their parents’ ‘80s music, continually airing as it does in public spaces. (All of the short sound samples place the current hits alongside the ones they salute.)
The Neighborhood Archive is a gathering place for “all things Mister Rogers” lovingly maintained by curator Tim, who adds to it regularly.
Five of my favorite discoveries:
1) If We Were All the Same, a storybook about Lady Elaine Fairchild discovering the Purple Planet.
2) The Matter of the Mittens, a 1973 storybook featuring Lady Elaine at her edgiest and King Friday ordering everyone to wear mittens in the middle of the summer.
3) A plastic trolley that plays “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” as it rolls around.
4) The Mr. Rogers record player (this page has a bonus link to the Mr. McFeeley Speedy Delivery documentary DVD).
5) The Johnny Costa Plays Mister Rogers Neighborhood piano jazz LP.
Five things that I’ll be recommending for Tim the curator to include:
1) Footage from synth legend Bruce Haack’s appearance on the show. [Update: The whole thing’s now on YouTube]
2) More stuff about Chef Brockett.
3) A mid-fifties appearance by Johnny Costa and “Handyman” Joe Negri on Ken Griffin’s 67 Melody Lane.
4) The floppy blue record Lady Aberlin gave me at the Valley Fair Mall in 1975.
5) A terrific 1998 Esquire article by Tom Junod called “Can You Say…Hero?“
Clips:
Spirit – “Taurus” (1968)
The Chocolate Watchband – “And She’s Lonely” (1969)
Led Zeppelin – “Stairway to Heaven” (1971)
More about Page and his borrowing activities here.
Update, 5/21/14: Spirit will now be taking Zeppelin to court over this, which is a shame. A descending guitar figure is not substantial creative property and the two songs are otherwise very different. Time and money will be wasted and the beautiful “Taurus” will be tainted, regardless of the outcome.