A "stream of consciousness" observation on music and how we relate to it. How we purchase, listen to and enjoy music is changing. What does it mean to be a music fan in a world where every song, performance and video is literally at your fingertips? I hope to be a guide to this new world of musical experience. Featuring tunes and comments about artists, old and new in nearly every genre.
The Beatles first UK album was released 50 years ago today. Even though you can't listen to the Beatles on Spotify, Rhapsody, Mog or RDio, (at least not the Beatles tunes that most people are familiar with)through the miracle of You Tube, the entire album is available for your listening pleasure in one steaming chunk. The entire album was recorded in one 9 hour and 45 minute session in the London Abbey Road studios on February 11, 1963 and released about 6 weeks later. "Twist And Shout" featuring the throat-shredding lead vocal of John Winston Lennon was recorded last, due to John's battling a cold. "Hold Me Tight" was recorded but not used, and then re-recorded for "With The Beatles."
The title "Off the Beatles Track" was considered, but rejected by Beatles Producer George Martin. He also considered recording the album "live" at the Cavern Club but found it logistically unsuitable. The resulting document is essentially the Beatle's live show at that time.
The album is 39th on the list of Rolling Stone's Greatest Albums of All Time.
PJ's Lager House in Corktown will be hosting the International Pop Overthrow, the music festival created and run by the one and only David Bash, rock music writer and theoretician par excellance! IPO, as it's called by it's many fans, comes to a new venue this year, with a $10.00 cover charge and 26, count 'em, 26 great local bands providing the rockin' backbeat from 7:30 Thursday to the wee small hours of Sunday morning(taking time out only to comply with local liquor laws and to change the kegs). A splendid time is guaranteed for all.
Appropriately, the IPO starts the weekend the AL Champ Detroit Tigers open their season. The Tigers are the team that has bedeviled David's beloved New York Yankees the last few playoff runs. I hope David doesn't mind that I will be showing up after the Opening Day game, wearing my Tigers regalia.
I am gonna throw some links out to David's website, where you can read a lot of David's writings, reviews, top ten lists and the like. David writes very well. On his worst day about a 100 times better than I can write on my best day. And he doesn't have many bad days.
I also threw up a link to "Kim The Waitress" by the band Material Issue, who's seminal "International Pop Overthrow" release lent it's name to the whole enterprise. You can find more Material Issue on my Spotify "Chadwick's Listening Room" playlist. This great album, originally issued in 1991, is being reissued on the cool Hip-O Select label, with about an extra cd worth of bonus tracks. Material Issue main man Jim Ellison sadly killed himself in 1996, before there ever was an IPO festival, so the band never got to play IPO during his lifetime. Poignantly, the remaining members did play Chicago's IPO in April 2011 with recording artist Phil Angiotti taking Ellison's place. They played their most famous album from start to finish, along with some other fan favorites.
Webb Wilder aka John Webb McMurray released the "Hybrid Vigor" album in 1989. I bought this cd "sound unheard" from the old Repeat the Beat store in Royal Oak. It just looked kinda cool. I think it was in the used bin. Back in the day, I was the RTB lawyer and I got paid in trade (Ha Ha It's 24 years ago Mr. IRS Man!). I would come in to one of the fine RTB outlets and knock a hundey off my legal bill by getting a box of new releases, catalog stuff, used, whatever. Impulse buying at it's best.
Loved this cd, and the first tune, "Hittin' Where It Hurts" set the proper tone for this rockin' disc. Webb is still recording, at least he was as of a 3-4 years ago but his early stuff is the best. Rootsy, kind of Americana sounding, with a deep resonant hillbilly voice. Enjoy!
I like a good piece of radio cheese as much as the next guy. I found "Love Will Keep Us Together" to be a prime example of good cheese. Written by certified platinum Brill Building tunesmith's Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and originally recorded by Neil himself, the song broke big in 1975 hitting number one on just about every chart in the world, including Billboards. Though my rock-n-roll loving buds dissed it, I proclaimed my like for this song, finding it to be bouncily tuneful. I liked Neil's mid 70s comeback tunes too like "Bad Blood" which was to Neil what "Whatever Get You Through The Night" was to John Lennon, a good tune no less helped by it's connection to the Elton John Platinum Hit Machine. Bonus points for the fact that the Captain had played keyboards with the mid 70's Beach Boys.
Five years later, down on their luck and signed to Casablanca, Toni Tennille plays this demo to label head Neil Bogert who proclaims "It's a HIT BABY!" Sometimes life is stranger than art. The song is recorded giving The Captain and Tennille their second and final number one hit, launching Toni Tennille into a solo career that was pretty much roundly and soundly ignored. This tune made LWKUT sound like "Jumping Jack Flash" making many listeners wish the group were called "A Chainsaw Wielding Maniac and Tennille." Further releases flopped and the chart run of the Captain and Tennille was over. Further Toni Tennille Trivia. She sang on the backing tracks of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" album along with Beach Boy Bruce Johnston ("The Show Must Go On").
As a kid who grew up in a family with a lot of music, it was not uncommon to hear Ray Charles classic "Modern Sounds In Country Music" or "Genius Hits The Road." My mother, who was in the music business, got a lot of promotional albums for free. She played John Gary, Bobby Vinton and the ethnic Polish sounds of "Lil" Wally Jagiello, the Polka King of Chicago (little known fact-Lil Wally co-wrote the "Go Go White Sox" theme song for the South Siders!). When the Beatles hit, they hit hard and we ended up with stacks of Beatle albums, Beatle 45's plus sides by their countrymen, the Dave Clark 5, the Rolling Stones, The Animals and on and on. I was a typical, British Invasion Rock-n-Roll kid. The idea that I would ever willingly play a record by Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra, well, that would be like eating meat on Friday, something that was just not done in my Catholic neighborhood.
When I saw guys like Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti June 7, 1917) or Sinatra on TV, I just wanted them to go away. Get out of the way of whatever young artist Ed Sullivan was featuring.
But then I grew up. Started working in a record store in high school. Worked part time right through college. Had some of the best times of my life in that store. If I could support my family and own a record store doing it, then I would be running a record store. Most fun I ever had in my life. Very much like the movie "High Fidelity" (and the fine Nick Hornby book it was based on!
My boss at Harmony House (and good friend to this day) Lloyd Welch, put on some Sinatra. The album was "Sinatra-Basie: A Historic Musical First" with Frank and Count Basie on the Hazel Park Harmony House turntable. My initial reaction was, WTF? But the undeniable musical skill of these two giants hooked me. From that day forward, I became a Sinatra fan. Which ultimately leads me to this appreciation of the fine musical talents of Dean Martin.
Dean, of course, first came to fame as the "straight" man to Jerry Lewis' trained monkey in the biggest act in show business, Martin & Lewis. Every Martin and Lewis film had a couple of vocal spotlights for Dean and he soon became a visitor to the Pop Charts with tunes like "That's Amore, "Volare" and "Memories Are Made Of This." Dean's string of hits continued into the 60s even having a number one song as late as 1968 with "Everybody Loves Somebody (Sometime)" which became a theme song of sorts.
Dean also became as well known for his acting, in movies such as "Kiss Me Stupid," The Matt Helm Spy series, "Airport" not to mention the so-called Rat Pack films with Frank, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. The original "Oceans Eleven" and "Robin and the Seven Hoods" epitomized the height of early 60s white male cool. And Dean may have been the coolest of all, impressing "Clan" leader Sinatra by just not giving a f___!
Dean's musical variety show continued on NBC for years, where he played up his persona as a drunken, devil-may-care playboy. You can still buy the "Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts" through an infomercial running on a station near you (AVAILABLE ON VHS!).
Unfortunately, in 1987 Dean's son Dean Paul crashed his jet into a mountain while on duty in the California Air National Guard. The death of his son destroyed him, and he essentially waited around to die, which he did in 1995 of cancer. Before his death, he attempted to go out on tour with Frank and Sammy but quit the tour halfway through never to perform again. His heart just wasn't in it.
In his glory days, Dean recorded for the guys in the big record stack in Hollywood, Capitol. 3 years before the end of Martin & Lewis, Dean started recording more frequently. He cut "Sway" in 1953. "Sway" was a tune by Mexican band leader and composer Pablo Beltran Ruiz, and hit number 16 on the Billboard Charts in 1954. Later redone well by Michael Buble who had a minor hit with it as the third single on his first album, and redone horribly by the Pussycat Dolls who.... let's just say the less said the better.
I have blogged before about the excellent Chris Richards and the Subtractions whose fine "Get Your La-La's Out" release in 2012 showed up on several of the most discriminating ten best lists. He has released a new video for "It's Something" which is shown here.
Chris and the guys will be playing PJ's Lager House on April 6, 2013 during the not-to-be-missed International Pop Overthrow Festival (more on that later). I plan on attending and being nicely-rocked while enjoying a cold, malt beverage. Give Chris' video a "spin" and make plans to attend. Maybe while your there, stop in and buy some vinyl from the friendly fellows at Hello Records, a mere blocks from PJ's.
Had I never met my wife Kelly I don't know where I would be. Probably be a shell of a man, appearing to be three dimensional only with the proper lighting. To the extent that I have made anything of myself in my life, as a father, as a husband, as a lawyer, as a human being I owe it to her. Kelly, much love on your St. Patty's Day Birthday.
