It’s an annual happy day today as my Fantasy Baseball Guide magazine arrived in the mail. Though I’m neither kissing a man nor smoking a fag in this year’s edition, it made me think of this Wire Pink Flag classic.
Every forming hardcore band that could hardly play covered this in the early 80s.
Thank you Peter Kreutzer and his superhero alter ego Rotoman.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
New York based funk metal band Living Colour burst onto the music scene in 1988 with the release of their debut album, Vivid. That album was popular; reaching #36 on the album charts on the back of the video for “Cult of Personality” that was in heavy rotation on MTV. It ultimately earned them an armful of Grammys and MTV VMAs.
Today’s SotW is “Glamour Boys,” also from Vivid.
Mick Jagger saw the band perform at a club and offered to produce a few songs for them. “Glamour Boys” was one of them. This relationship ultimately led to an invitation for Living Colour to be the opening band for the Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels tour.
It was written by band leader Vernon Reid. It’s a social commentary on the late 80s, New York club scene and the dress and behavior of the wannabe wealthy kids that frequented them. That was something Reid witnessed firsthand and gave him the authority to write about.
The glamour boys swear they are a diva
The glamour boys have it all under control
Always dancing and always laughing
The glamour boys are playing the role
The glamour boys never have no money
The glamour boys wear the most expensive clothes
The glamour boys are always at the party
Where the money comes from heaven only knows
“Glamour Boys” has a reggae-ish donut with a fast tempo, a pop filling, and with a metal glaze on the choruses.
It’s all good fun… and you can even dance to it!
Enjoy… until next week.
Stumbled into this tonight and I love most everything about it:
3) The musical equipment
2) The video premise (beautiful chicks just hanging out in your backyard listening to you play)
1) The guitar solo (about every wonderful guitar solo cliché known to man in two wonderful solos).
My apologies to the rest of the website.
Guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke died of pneumonia today and Motorhead joins another fave The Ramones as a band with no living members from the real lineup.
Oh well.
Here’s the opener from the iconic Ace Of Spades.
Here’s that band again and that album again. I think you could do the same dance to this song too.
Fun novelty tune from Ellis, who also did the bewitching and irksome Name Game, but a mesmerizing dance video as well, like a kaleidoscope with swing. Thank you, Walker, for the hat tip.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
The Stylistics were one of the best soul groups of the early ‘70s. They scored numerous hits that crossed over to the pop charts on the strength of lead singer Russell Thompkins Jr.’s falsetto, the work of ace producer Thom Bell, and the songwriting by the team of Bell and lyricist Linda Creed. Between 1971 and 1974, they charted an impressive series of consecutive R&B Top 10 hits, including:
Stop, Look, Listen (#9 R&B, #39 Pop)
You are Everything (#10 R&B, #9 Pop)
Betcha by Golly, Wow (#2 R&B, #3 Pop)
I’m Stone in Love with You (#4 R&B, #10 Pop)
Break Up to Make Up (#5 R&B, #5 Pop)
You’ll Never Get to Heaven (#8 R&B, #23 Pop)
Rockin’ Roll Baby (#3 R&B, #14 Pop)
You Make Me Feel Brand New (#5 R&B, #2 Pop)
The best was 1972’s “People Make the World Go Round” (#6 R&B, #25 Pop), today’s SotW.
Bell and Creed’s orchestral style was often reminiscent of the Bacharach/David team. (Dionne Warwick probably agreed since she popularized so many Bacharach/David songs and also recorded a hit with the Bell/Creed penned “You’ll Never Get to Heaven.”) The similarity is especially evident in “PMtWGR,” with its use of mixed time signatures.
The track also follows the early ‘70s trend originated by Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder to write songs that reflected social issues of the day; in this case, addressing inner city issues like garbage and bussing strikes, and air pollution.
Trashmen didn’t get my trash today
Oh, why? Because they want more pay
Buses on strike want a raise in fare
So they can help pollute the air
The story behind this song’s chart success is that it was originally an album track, not intended for release as a single. But so many fans demanded radio airplay that the label rushed the record into release as a single. That was a good decision!
Enjoy… until next week.
A girl playing the Highway Star guitar solo in her underwear on the dining room table.
Those crazy kids. . .
I am not sure why Sometimes of all songs from my past popped into my head the other day. I think someone asked me a question, and I answered “sometimes,” and poof, there you go.
But, I am glad because I remember loving the shit out of this song when I bought Paul Revere’s third album Here They Come, though it was never a hit or even released as a single. It was covered later by The Cramps and The Flamin’ Groovies, however.
The Raiders were certainly a hot band in 1963. I saw them twice in the early 60’s opening for the Beach Boys (whom I actually saw six times and was in attendance August 1, 1964 when Beach Boys Concert album was recorded) and with music and television growing, The Raiders became a house band on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is, his follow-up to Bandstand aimed at the next generation of pop music kids.
But, talk about an advanced sounding song, recorded in 1965, Sometimes was produced by Terry Melcher. Melcher was a principal producer for Columbia Records at the time, and was the son of Doris Day. Melcher had a band–The Rip Chords–who had an early 60’s hit (Hey Little Cobra) and as part of Bruce and Terry (Here Comes Summer).
Bruce, was Bruce Johnson who eventually became a member of the Beach Boys, but Melcher also was tied to Charles Manson. Melcher rejected Manson’s audition tapes, clearly pissing Manson off. Melcher had owned the home where the Tate-LaBiancha murders took place, but (obviously) did not live there any longer when Manson’s minions did their dirty work.
Rumor has it that some of the recording of Here They Come was performed by The Wrecking Crew, but Drake Levin probably did play the guitar and his solo is pretty hot. Levin was a pioneer with guitar pyrotechnics, having been among the first to double-track a solo on Just Like Me.
To me, however, Sometimes sticks out as an actual substantive song as opposed to a lot of what turned into the car song pop dreck that highlighted pop music, along with surfing, before the Beatles and Brit Pop rescued us. Nothing represents this pre-genre better than Hey Little Cobra.
Compare that to Sometimes.
And, will try to write here more often. The re-launch of Creativesports, and work on my latest book have distracted me!
I learned about this from a Facebook post by my friends Annastasia and Herrick. Hand went to school with Herrick.
Hand takes songs and breaks them down into their component parts. Haven’t heard anything like this before, and don’t know how the he gets to the individual tracks, but it’s pretty neat. Here’s the show:
https://audioboom.com/posts/6503846-studio-session-on-fhf-let-there-be-rock-by-ac-dc-11-20-2017
Here’s the whole song.
