OK, so a bit of international licence here, an entente cordiale to fit the subject, which, like a kinky boot, it does, très snug. I love a bit of foreign, do I, so it was with some disappointment and frustration I have felt it wise to cancel a forthcoming jaunt to Paris. Little to bear, in comparison to our friends in Ukraine, but Putin can go sit on one. OK, as he could before, but this biscuit has been well and truly taken, the birds of his political interferences in US and UK governments now arguably coming home to roost, as "we" struggle to work out what is and isn't justified in return. Bad and sad days.
Endeavouring to remain upbeat, let's pursue the arena of pop in translation. Yé-yé, as our french cousins say. One rule, mind, that being an avoidance of where an anglophone artist simply translates their song into french, and copycats it, so none of this, no Bowie or Blondie. (Strangely, this is a trick the Beatles never pulled off, even if tried a bit of Deutsch.)
Africain à Paris/Tiken Jah Fakoly
The above is an extraordinary piece of translation, changing both the words and the locations, succeeding in an impressive alchemy. And, musically, is it any less wrong to suggest the Parisian music scene is to Africans that New York might be to an Englishman? The number of artists from that continent in the French capital, making there their music, is immense, belying a concept that Paris could well be the home of African culture.
Hey Joe/Johnny Hallyday
I'm uncertain if the translated lyric has actually, name apart, anything to do with the original, but, it being my favourite song, possessing dozens of versions of it, yes, of course, this I already have and was so already well familiar with. Fond of, less. Having said that, it was a song he never stopped playing, with this considerably later version even quite edgy, in a poundshop Keith Richards way.
L'Amour C'Est Comme Une Cigarette/Sylvie Vartan
Well, if we are going weird, we have to go here. Ms. Easton's paean to the early morning commute seems clearly a whole different concept through a French lens, this song stealing only the tune, as it, well, as you do, compares love to a cigarette. A Gauloise, I assume. I will avoid smutty allusions around sucking on it and watching it turning slowly to ash.
D'En Haut de la Tour de Guet/Francis Cabrel
Another of my favourite songs in coverland, the translation itself a labour of love. Indeed, so wordy is most of his work that you forgive all the continentals who sang on, regardless, in English, rather than wrestle long and hard, as clearly had the performer here. It comes from an entire album's worth of similar fare, and I tip my chapeau his way.
Hôtel de Californie/The Cat Empire
Is this cheating? I suspect it is, but it is such a delightfully gallic take on the song to ignore the fact it was cobbled together in Australia by Melbourne ska-punkers The Cat Empire. And what better place to end this reverie.
There is a
Turkish saying about the month of March that goes like this: it'll make you
look (longingly) out the door and cause you to burn your (wooden) shovel and
pick handles.
March 1st
here was a balmy 50 degrees F; March 3rd it snowed.
Myself, I feel the weather
all day long since my workplace is required to leave all the doors and windows
open to mitigate the virus. But it will soon pass. The cold weather, that is.
The weather?
... we have no control over it. Or do we? You want to get into climate change,
do you? After COVID mitigation, you say you want to take on weather patterns?
Well,OK ...
I'm not a
climate data scientist but I do believe that we don't have (and likely never
will have) the long-term data to prove human-caused climate change - there are
just too many factors). But I still believe I carry some responsibility for my use of the resources I consume. Guilty until proven innocent.
But
without fruitless worrying, we *can* start by making a (limited) list of
weather issues:
too much
rain
too cold
too hot (kind of off the mark - except that it is Hot Tuna and Jorma is hot)
Do note that the Weather report intro solo at the top is played on a bass guitar
Looking back or looking forward. There's something about the human condition that goes like : "the grass is always greener on the other side". My co-horts here have referenced both directions: looking forward to a time of live music, looking back to a time before for the guidance and wisdom of those who came before us.
There's a rather extensive "play-by-play" of the history of <I'll Follow the Sun> at beatlesebooks.com and more at their sister site thebeatlessongbysong.com - both of them worth the few minutes you'd spend perusing them.
For my second Beatles post in a month, it need be the theme that carries this: Forward, as in better days ahead (as in 'getting better all the time') or, possibly, moving on. Actually, the song's lyrics appear open to interpretation as to for whom the future looks better and who is moving on. Is it the singer leaving for better days or is it the girl who's going to know in the end that times were better with him. The lengthy beatlesebooks article makes the remark that you probably shouldn't dig too deep for meaning from a song that was, after all, written by a 16-year-old McCartney.
For the final 1964 recording, the original lyrics ‘Well, don’t leave me alone, I need you now hurry and follow me my dear’ were replaced with 'and now the time has come ...'. How does this color our interpretations of the lyric meanings? The words 'I need you' and 'follow me' only seem to muddy the overall message: who's looking forward to a better day for who? As for following the sun, it would seem pretty indisputable that (a) the sun is a symbol for the day ahead/future - especially if you set out to follow it - and (b) sun is better than rain - something to look forward to (when the rain comes ...). Chalk the mud up to the lyrics skills of a 16 year old?
Most Beatles songs at the time were pretty much R&B with little room for a more melodic, more romantic musical style. And that is certainly true of the original version of the song from 4 years before the version you probably know. The tempo of the 1960 recording is much more in keeping with the R&B persona they thought they needed to project to keep their fans. And my two sources note that even a year later, their next "melodic" piece, Yesterday, was initially released in the US before the UK - again aiming not to alienate the R&B-expectent fan base.
I have done a post or two about the Beatles here, here and here before: one of my most felicitous Internet discoveries was the <Beatles Complete on Ukelele> back when their entire archive was free, with new songs appearing more or less weekly over a period of 2 years. And then we lost free download access. The website is still there, but it's not set up for downloading the files for free any longer.
In digging around for this post/searching to see which - if any- Beatles songs had Open/Close in their titles, I ran across another cool Beatles resource that allows you to search their lyrics - in this case necessary if I wanted to continue to persue the Beatles idea, because from among the (officially) 213 songs they recorded, surprisingly not one has either Open or Close in the title.
I was thinking: surely... open heart ... open mind and if not closed heart/mind how about something along the lines of "close to me".
That said, the two words of our current theme show up multiple times in their lyrics. Enough of them that I'll have to pick and choose from among them.
beatlesagain.com lists 4 for "open" and 10 for "close". Across the Universe has open ears. Dear Prudence and Tell Me What You See also include open eyes and Help has open doors.
Looks like the eyes have it. All My Loving has "close your eyes"; Good Night has "I'll close [my eyes]"; Think For Yourself has "if we close our eyes"; Strawberry Fields of course has "living is easy with eyes closed". Five are about close as in near: Do You Want To Know a Secret has "Closer"; Besame Mucho has "Close to me"; Glass Onion has "close as can be"; Twist and Shout has "twist a little closer" and Words of Love has "hold me close".
Good Morning, Good Morning is an outlier with "everything is closed".
Nothin' about hearts open or closed nor about opening your mind. Nothing particularly romantic/mushy here either.
Pat Lewis & Joe Coghlan/Tell Me What You See:
Beatles out-take: Across the Universe
Alanis Morissette: Dear Prudence (and a story about its inception)
If we are talking about questions, I suppose the question word <why> is at the fore of this theme. What better choice then, than a song that asks that self-same question: why?
Without any previous background knowledge, I would have posited that the Beatles' <Why Don't We Do It In The Road?> was a Lennon composition. You know? Free Love ... Push the limits...
To my surprise, I learn that it is a McCartney piece with Starr's assistance and that - to top it off - Lennon is said to have been hurt that he was not included.
By the time the <White Album> came out, the band was all but defunct. As opposed the the relative conformity/sequence/progression of songs on <Revolver>, <Sgt Peppers>, <Magical Mystery Tour>, the <White Album> is disparate, disjointed in terms of theme.
Granted, there is a certain amount of non-sense coming in from time to time starting earlier. Earliest Beatles songs were very muchly boy/girl themed, and then we start getting things like "We all live in a yellow submarine". WTF? I mean, I can kind of see "We're Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" in terms of lyrics, but by this point in time, we've gone a bit off the rail - in terms of what AM radio thrived on.
And then there's "why dont we do it in the road?"
I suppose there's the distant possibility that what we could be doing in the road is scat, but that's not much more sociologically acceptable than the actual, more obvious notion behind the song.
McCartney apparently witnessed 2 monkeys in the act in the streets of India. But as I said, this seems much more the kind of question that Lennon would have raised - delving into and questioning the social stigmas that define our behaviors. You know: if love is so beautiful/the answer to all our troubles, then why don't we do "it" in the road?
The first records for Star Maker Machine in the Wayback Machine date back to 2008. That's less than the 20 years I had been hoping to see (seems like I've been here at least that long!). That said, SMM has racked up close to 2.5 million visits since it began. Further, it is close on to 20 years since Blogger first came on line - even if SMM didn't incorporate at that time.
In some time frames, 20 years is a drop in the bucket. For the Internet, that's half a life-time. The 11 years of SMM's existence is not bad for an Internet life. Many online lives don't last that long. So ... here's wishing that SMM eventually celebrates its 20th in one form or another. 20 years in terms of rock/pop is nothing to snear at either. Or the 20 x 2 years behind this song! Again, many come, many go, but that's a theme for another post (Gone Before 20?).
I'm not sure it is "the most important and influential rock-and-roll album ever recorded" as per Kevin Dettmar. But it may be. It certainly took us from AM radio style to ... something different. It's a "concept" album - the band had an idea that encompassed a series of songs about a single theme: an "alter-ego" fictional pseudo-Edwardian experiment.
Maybe you had to have been around at that time to latch on to its importance. The overall/lasting effect has been lost to time with (shortly) later output from the likes of Hendrix and pyschedelia that this album introduces to the main stream , but the Sgt Peppers album should be reconsidered in light of its ground-forging effects on popular music: the Beatles commanded the top lists and so anything they did affected the trajectory of the market.
OK, OK, a bit obvious, but I can think of a dozen and two thirds reasons why it has legs aplenty, perhaps even enough for two crabs. Plus, and here is the bonus, it gives the opportunity to celebrate one Connie 'Guybo' Smith. Who he? What, aw, c'mon (everybody), SWIDT.
No, of course I didn't know either, a gap in my and, possibly, your encyclopaedic I am now happy to fill.
Twenty Flight Rock, or 20 Flight Rock as it looks better, was a rock'n'roll/rockabilly banger that first made its appearance in 1956 film, The Girl Can't Help It, a film to celebrate the emergence of teenagers as a viable sub-group of society and a market for the cinema to exploit. Naturally, music and sex were the selling points, the latter in the form of twin peaks, not the film, actress Jayne Mansfield. As in most such films, the plot is the usual mess of wannabe stars, svengalis and shattered dreams. Or thereabouts. The plot doesn't really matter, it is really all about the music, the OST littered with soon to be idols like Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino and, of course, Eddie Cochran.
Following the success of the film, Cochran put out the song again, re-recorded, to be a bit more polished than the raw barnyard trio version in the film, where the instrumental might had been voice, guitar, bull fiddle and a cardboard box. A 2nd guitar and backing vocals were added for the newer version, which is, inevitably, not a patch on its predecessor. Apart from Cochran, the other one constant was Guybo. A boyhood chum of Cochran, he played various stringed bass instruments alongside him for most of the early classic years, and was on the farewell tour of the UK, that ironically became just that, as Cochran was killed in a road traffic accident. Guybo lost his place in the sun, but continued to be a reliable source of detail around these formative days, popping up in documentaries. Hell, he even has a facebook page, if somewhat quiet of late.
Arguably the Cochran legacy gained no small boost from his death: nothing like the early burn of a free spirit to grant status as an icon. This happened perhaps more in the UK than at home, as, unlike many of his compatriots yet or ever to grace these shores, the british Teddy Boys took especially to Cochran, likewise to, injured in the same crash but surviving, Gene Vincent. (But let's face it, these cool dudes looked one whole lot more street than much of their R'n'R compadres.)
The song has lived on in many versions. True, most do nothing fancy with it, regurgitating the basics and, give or take an occasional sax, leaving at that. Indeed, think of any revivalist band treading the boards between now and then, yup, they'll do it, whether anodyne chart teds, Showaddywaddy, or genuine believers like the Stray Cats. But a few bear mention. Legend has it that it was the song used by Paul McCartney to serenade John Lennon, as the latter recruited the former to what, in time, became the Beatles. No recordings of that remain, bar this near decade later studio eavesdrop, but McCartney has oft included it in live performances. I prefer this version, however, from the Beatles in Hamburg biopic, Backbeat, where the story and the song see to come together.
Rivals the Stones, always IMHO a sturdier torch holder of the R'n'R essence, had to show that anything they did was better, an easier task given the Beatles being long gone by this 1981 performance.
But all this rock and roll credibility forgets this is essentially a rockabilly song, the country hick version, no les potent for its lesser sophistication. So who better than Commander Cody to give a (slight, very slight) country twist.
Perhaps the closest in spirit to 1956 and The Girl Can't Help It is this final clip, the effervescent energy of Leith identical twins, Craig and Charlie Reid, aka the Proclaimers, bursting through the grooves.
Aaah .. the Beatles. Or is it Ahhh ... the Beatles (How does one convey the proper inflection online?)
I confess: I will be a Beatles fan forever. Older stuff, later stuff ... they had the magic.
Sure ... their music is kind of basic, but basic/less can be more (if you get it right)
The lyrics for this ditty (a lot of their early stuff was one-step-removed from ditties) are typically repetitive:
What goes on in your heart?
What goes on in your mind?
You are tearing me apart
When you treat me so unkind
What goes on in your mind?
I think they were the first "band" I ever heard. Rather innocently. Probably hard not to have heard of them at that point in time - but I was maybe 10, so it didn't mean an awful lot. Certainly not as much as it means now with a deeper perspective.
And then, about 15-20 years ago, I happened across the freely distributed Beatles Ukelele project. Which sadly turned not-so-free after a few years. And which I have brought up here before.
I think I also recently brought up the fact that I once appeared on stage with a short-lived ensemble called the Beatless. (Sorry: those were VHS days - me, far left in shorts)
In 1996, Tom Hanks was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. He had recently done A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump (a move that I found to be overrated and uncomfortable to watch), and Apollo 13. And many of these roles won him Oscars, Golden Globes and other awards. But Hanks, like many actors, it seems, wanted to write and direct a film. While doing the lengthy publicity tour for Forrest Gump, Hanks became tired of talking about himself, and banged out a screenplay in 30 days, which 20th Century Fox agreed to produce it as long as Hanks agreed to star in it (which he did, as a record company executive).
Hanks, who had a love for early 60s music (particularly the Dave Clark Five, who he inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame That is Missing Many Great Acts and Includes Some Terrible Ones), wrote a story about a 60s band’s rise and fall, and even wrote much of the music for the soundtrack. The film, That Thing You Do! was filled with then-unknown actors, many of whom later became stars, including, in rough order of future fame, Charlize Theron, Liv Tyler, Tom Everett Scott, Giovanni Ribisi, Steve Zahn, Ethan Embry and Johnathon Schaech (and many of Hanks’ family and friends in smaller roles or cameos). And it was a charming, fun movie that was well received by both critics and the general public.
But one song that Hanks did not write was the title track, “That Thing You Do” (without the exclamation point). It was written by Adam Schlesinger, who wrote it at roughly the same time as his band, Fountains of Wayne, was working on its great debut album. Schlesinger (who I just found out is a cousin of Jon Bernthal, TV’s “The Punisher”) had just gotten his first publishing deal, and someone from the company told him that there was a call out for a song that would sound like something that an American band in 1964 would write, after being blown away by the Beatles. Schlesinger, who considered it a writing exercise, wrote a bouncy pop song, and recorded a demo, with Mike Viola, of The Candy Butchers, singing lead vocals because, as Schlesinger later stated, “He’s just a much better singer than me.” He got the gig.
In the film, “That Thing You Do” is originally a ballad, but when the band’s new drummer joins, he plays the song faster, and it becomes a hit. In the movie, the song hits #7, and the liner notes to the soundtrack album state that it peaked at #2. But, spoiler alert, the band breaks up before any more of their songs become hits.
The real world also liked “That Thing You Do.” It had moderate chart success in the United States and overseas. Schlesinger was nominated for both an Oscar and Golden Globe for the song, losing out to a tear-jerker from Evita sung by Madonna.
The version of the song that appeared in the film was not played by the actors, who nevertheless learned to play their instruments so that it looked convincing, but instead was a re-recorded version of the demo. In 2017 three of the four actors got together and performed the song live—missing was Steve Zahn, who was the lead guitarist and who was replaced by someone else wearing a Zahn mask. Ethan Embry, who played the bass player, and in a running gag, was never named (and whose character was listed in the credits as "T.B. Player), did perform.
Remarkably, the song has been covered a number of times, including by another Beatles’ influenced band, The Knack (although it failed to make my piece on their covers), and by ‘NSYNC.
I recently came across a lengthy interview with Paul McCartney in GQ mag (Untold Stories of Paul McCartney) that added perspective to the post that I had already decided would fit my choice for the new <Amazed> theme: Maybe I'm Amazed
The original recording, appearing on 1970s McCartney (the one with the cherries bowl on the album cover), was very much a home-studio effort, but was later incorporated into the Wings collection in a more elaborate production.
For me, it is the home quality of that entire McCartney album that endears it to me: pure McCartney in many ways. End of the Beatles, but an indication of what the man is capable of - even in a home studio.
But as for Maybe I'm Amazed, it is supposed to be a paen to Linda, who helped him make it through the Beatles break-up. "In the middle of something he doesnt really understand ..."
It's as good as any of McCartney's Beatles work: lyrics, harmony, timing.
purchase the film [Help!] purchase the album [Help!] You've heard the adage "Good thing come to those that wait." I certainly did because I was brought up the child of missionaries - plenty of Christian mores. The statement applies here because I have been looking at the Beatles' Help! film as a possible posts, and today's Guardian includes an article about the making of the film. The Guardian article leads off with the comment that the film has been "lost" for 50 years. There are screen shots from the film and some info about the process in the news article, but the [unseen] video itself is up for sale - if you've got $50,000 or so. Help! from the Beatles comes pretty close to fitting the <Movies About Musicians> theme. It is their second (aiming to build on their success -both after the Hard Days Night film, and their back to back album successes) - but today, the film comes across as almost pathetic .[How the years affect perceptions] What seemed "must view" back in the 60s is now so trite you can hardly watch unless you bring historical perspective glasses with you. That said ... Help! has value. The album itself has several classics: Help (of course), Ticket To Ride and You've Got To Hide Your Love Away.
As the most recent notice to SMM bloggers said, the traditional leftovers theme could be interpreted several ways: missed opportunity songs you might have posted during the past 12 months' themes, or perhaps something you can relate to leftovers of another sort.
Myself, I confess that I have to push to meet the bi-weekly output of SMM, and although I have discarded a number of posts over the past 12 months, there are none that I am driven to return to as leftovers that need re-working and then posting.
On the other hand, there are various Beatles songs that didn't make the official cut, and I guess they qualify as a kind of leftover. While you can find out-takes and un-published studio sessions for most every musician, a look back 50 or so years in and of itself amounts to a leftover of sorts. Yes, it was more or less "50 years ago today ..."
There is an extensive Wiki article about bootlegs of Beatles recordings: considering the number of performances - both in semi-private venues as well as over the airwaves, it is no surprise that there exist unofficial copies of performances (despite the limitations of the days' technology - If you are younger than 50, you ought to take the time to research what it was like to make a copy of live/radio ... music before the 90s.)
A decade or so ago, I ran across the original Beatles Complete on Ukulele project at which time they were providing a download link to each of the songs. The songs are still online but not longer easy to download. The site notes that they have a version that includes a ukulele of each of the 185 officially released Beatles songs.
Lennon/McCartney were prolific composers, and there are a number of songs that weren't distributed by their various recording companies: kind of left overs. Two in particular here from different eras of their careers The Palace of the King of the Birds from about the Magical Mystery Tour days, and then Bad to Me from 1963:
When the "Girl" theme first popped up, it seemed a natural to go with a post featuring the Beatles - "Girl" from Rubber Soul. The more I delved into the Beatles/Girl idea, the more I was amazed at the number of Beatles songs that reference "girl". Enough so that it prompted me to dig deeper into the word itself: just what is "girl"? My research indicates that first and foremost, a girl is younger than a woman, So, I wonder how cognizant of this the Beatles were as they penned their lyrics - there is an element that might be flagged inappropriate today: a little on the young side. A "girl" is certainly un-married (and the term girl-friend only dates back to the 1890s apparently). The OED guesses that the word comes from "gyrle" , that meant a child - either male or female, but possibly around the 14th Century, it became mostly female. That said, there isnt much doubt that today it means an unmarried female, likely younger than 20 (that number is mine). The term also seems to embody a certain amount of protective ownership. That is, if "she" is your girl, your have taken responsibility - for care, upkeep and maintenance. (And that could possibly continue beyond her marriage) But, back to the Beatles and their girls. The band has girls all over the place - not just in the obvious song title alluded to above: I count 4 beatles songs with "girl" in the title, but more songs than you would beleive have the word in the lyrics! I'll start you off with a few, but suggest you head over to the quiz below to quench your thirst for more. "Moscow girls make me sing and shout" - Back in the USSR; "She's not a girl who misses much" - Happiness is a Warm Gun; "She was a girl in a million my friend"- I'm a Loser; "You know you twist little girl..."- Twist and Shout. Here's the quiz: http://www.sporcle.com/games/scarequotes/beatles-girl-songs If pressed, I might call Rubber Soul my favorite Beatles album (after the White Album, which is so eclecticly perfect). Herewith, a collection of "girls":
Perhaps the greatest rock reunion that
could have been but never did happen was the Beatles. I wonder what was “going on in
their minds” as the Beatles came up with Get Together. By all accounts, they
were pretty far from getting together (although individually, they may have been
getting their s*#! together at that point in time)
The Beatles as a group dissolved
at the height of their career (what better way to go out?) But, as we now know,
there is much, much more behind what was visible on the surface.
That said, in the early 70s, there was hope
that the Beatles would get together at least one more time. The Concert for
Bangladesh … partial participation. And then McCartney going solo with and
“Band on the Run” and John Lennon’s solo projects … sort of put an end to it.
10 years ago, I fortuitously caught the
early days of a project titled “The Beatles complete on Ukelele”, during which period, Roger Greenawalt deemed it the right thing to do to give away every
song in their project to cover the entire Beatles collection – provided the
cover included a ukulele. I dutifully/religiously collected them all – visiting
the website more or less every week to get the most recent addition. The
project included many no-names, and a few knowns. Some really good, some not so
good. Regretfully, they turned the project into a monetized endeavor after
about 2 years.
The Beatles are not going to rise from
their graves and perform a reunion concert, so in its place …
We've got both covered in the post: Russia and the Ukraine.
I'm crazy about Creative Commons. Create something and share it with the world while you keep the rights you want to keep. For 185 weeks, from 2009 to 2012, every Tuesday the Beatles Complete on Ukelele project released a new Beatles song under a Creative Commons license. Each "cover" included a ukelele among the instruments. I think it was via BoingBoing that I must have first learned about this and then religiously visited the site and downloaded each new [legally] free addition to the collection.
Some were better than others, but it is a collection that I am glad to "own". One of them, of course, was "Back in the USSR". "Own" is in quotes for two reasons: at the conclusion of the stated project wrapup date, the link to the online files became purchase files. That's their perogative I guess, but it leaves me wondering if the files I once-upon-a-time legally collected are now illicit. The second issue that leaves me wondering is that the original Back in the USSR version has been replaced with another that - I'm sorry - is nowhere near as good as the first.
Although I have my own copy of the first, I assume that whatever rights I was given when I saved my own copy back in 2009 do not confer "sharing online rights". However, I scoured the web and found a way to link to the relics of the TBCOU project in the form of an mp3 version they left active but not visible in their "podcasts". Not only have they left it online, but there are links to the "liner notes" from the original posting. They are worth reading. Let me tantalize you with an excerpt:
Presciently, the song begins with the sound of an approaching jet
engine, prefiguring 9/11, the 21st Century, and calamity in general. The
entire song has jet engine Doppler effect sound design throughout. It’s
Scary up there on the Scareplane.
Another drastic disaster occurred the day this song was recorded.
Ringo quit the Beatles, left the studio in huff, and went home. Paul’s
reaction? He played the drums on Back In The USSR himself.
I cant begin to do justice to those notes: the relationship between the ukelele and the balalaika ... just follow the link.
I think one of the most incredible things about Buddy Holly is not that he influenced so many other musicians, or that he wrote so many songs that have withstood the test of time and have been re-recorded by so many other bands and singers, but that he did it all at such a young age and in such a short span of time. Holly had his first hit with the Crickets in May of 1957, at the age of 20, and he died in the infamous plane crash in February 1959, at the tender age of 22. Just a little over a year and a half, but what an impact he had in that short time! He was really just a kid through all of it, but he still runs strong in the blood of rock and roll.
Choosing a song to feature here was a tough choice, as there are so many great options. I considered the ones that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones chose to record early in their careers, acknowledging their debt to Holly -- "Words of Love" and "Not Fade Away," respectively -- and "Rave On," which I think could arguably be pointed to as one of the earliest forms of punk and power pop.
But I finally settled on "Well . . . All Right," the flip side to Holly's 1958 single, "Heartbeat." I find the song to be remarkably mature in its melancholy sound and confidently defiant lyrics. The message is actually quite an upbeat one, but there seems to be some element of wisdom beyond his years running through it. The acoustic instrumentation is also something rarely heard in pop music of that time, hinting at Holly's country influences but staying firmly within the bounds of a pop song. It's a sound that the Beatles fleshed out years later with Rubber Soul, an album heralded for its maturity very much thanks to that type of song, but its roots can most definitely be found here.
"Well . . . All Right" was covered quite well by Blind Faith (Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech) on their one and only album in 1969, but it was much more forceful and lost the quiet fortitude of Holly's original. Listen here to Holly's original for a song truly ahead of its time.
This selection is
a little off the original train of thought for our new theme: work. Still, my choice
complies with the theme in that it includes the word <work> in the title.
Whereas I had
initially thought this week’s theme would provoke musical ideas about
employment, I found myself thinking repeatedly about the Beatles' "We can
Work It Out". By 1965, when Rubber Soul came out, the Beatles:
Were an established
hit band
Had been to the
US on tour
Appear to have
been inclined to alternative sounds (their India contacts start at about this
time and I think you can sense it in Rubber Soul)
Two years ago, I
was lucky to catch the initial round of “The Beatles Complete on Ukulele”, when
Roger Greenawalt and crew were giving away their collection for free (it is still a free listen but no longer a free download). The Beatles' Rubber Soul
album is one of my all-time favorite albums. It's an album that contains
several personal preferences and seems to me to mark a turning point in pop
music (what else was “hot” in ’65?)
There are YouTube
versions of the original masters doing their thing: Lennon tickling a (more orless) pre-electric organ in one. But the version that I chose here carries so
much more value to me. Without making my voting preferences too blatantly
obvious (among the available options, of course), there are several things that
caught my attention here:
Mr Obama (and
even more so Mrs O) are clearly groovin' on the sounds (with Paul sitting right next to POTUS). More importantly, there is the
underlying message that fits with Obama’s message of Hope : We can "work it out.” Throughout this
version, I get the feeling that the timing isn’t quite right – but it works out all the same.
Star Maker Machine does not accept music submissions from artists or promoters. However, most of the contributors here do accept submissions for our own blogs, listed below. Please visit our blogs, take the time to listen to what we post, and then feel free to contact us if you feel that your music would be a good fit.
__ThatThingYouDo(design2)3.jpg)
