Tag Archives: The Guess Who

Song of the Week – Undun, The Guess Who; Sunlight, The Youngbloods; Only a Fool Would Say That, Steely Dan

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Ignored           Obscured            Restored

I had this idea to write a post that featured a few of my favorite rock songs with a Latin flavor.  But not the obvious ones performed by Latin artists like Santana.  As I listened to them, I realized I didn’t have the technical expertise to properly describe them.  Were they Samba, Rhumba, Bossa Nova?  How do you tell the difference?

I strive for factual accuracy in these posts (though I’m sure I’ve made mistakes) so I gave a list of my selections to my high school friend, Dan D, who has a DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) and teaches courses in trumpet, Chamber Music, Music Theory and The Beatles.  I asked Dan for help.  Here’s what he had to say:

So I gave a listen to these (songs) with your question in mind. The Samba, Rhumba, and Bossa Nova all share similar characteristics and each one of these works are not completely defined by the Latin genre – they are Latin-infused rock tunes. The genre not closely identified in any of them as rhumba. The conga sound is prevalent in any of them. For rhumba, the Beatle cover of “Mr. Moonlight” by Roy Lee Johnson fits that bill. Samba and Bossa Nova are closely allied. Often, the Bossa Nova is associated with jazz idioms. I could identify a jazz flavor in the Guess Who and Steely Dan tunes but it is not really that strong to differentiate. So with all that said, I am most apt to describe these tunes with a Samba flavor. Whew! A long, winding answer!

Thanks, Dan!  So here are a few tunes I like that are loosely tied together through “a Samba flavor.”

“Undun” was the B-side to The Guess Who’s “Laughing.”  Written by Randy Bachman, it reached #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969.  (“Laughing” rose to #10.)  In an interview with Ear of the Newt, Bachman was quoted saying “I remember the joy of hearing that (“Undun”) on the radio, figuring ‘Wow, a song with more than three chords,’ you know, ‘with lyrics that don’t rhyme.’ “

He goes on to describe the inspiration for the song came when he learned about a woman who went into a coma after taking some bad acid at a party he attended in Vancouver.

“Sunlight” comes from one of my favorite Buried Treasure albums – Elephant Mountain (1969), by The Youngbloods.  Lester Bangs endorsed the album in his review for Rolling Stone.  Written by Jesse Colin Young, “Sunlight” is an ode for a special woman.

Have you seen the sunlight pouring through her hair
Felt her warm mouth on you in the summer’s air
Running in a field of brown
Laughing rolling on the ground
Smiling as she pulls you down
That’s the way she feels about you

Three Dog Night, who in their early days were masters at finding great songs to record, covered “Sunlight” on their 1970 album Naturally.

Steely Dan’s “Only a Fool Would Say That” (1972) has often been interpreted as a dig at John Lennon’s utopian worldview as professed in “Imagine.”  This position was recently described in an article in Far Out, by Sam Kemp.

I’m not sure I buy into Kemp’s thesis.  Steely Dan’s lyrics are always cryptic and subject to varied interpretations.  To me, it’s a cynical knock on hippy idealism more generally.

Wait until the very end of the song where you can hear laughter and someone utter the phrase “Jiji, solamente un tonto lo mencionara”, “Only a fool would say that” in Spanish!

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Songs for Sweet Connie Hamzy

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Ignored            Obscured             Restored

Two weeks ago, Connie Hamzy died.  She was 66.  What band was she in?  Well, she wasn’t in any band – she was a real life “Penny Lane”; a Groupie based in Little Rock, AR, and the “sweet, sweet Connie” made (almost) famous by Grand Funk.

Out on the road for forty days
Last night in Little Rock put me in a haze
Sweet, sweet Connie, doin’ her act
She had the whole show and that’s a natural fact

She also earned a mention in a less well known song about life on the road – “Pleasin’ For Reason” — by The Guess Who.

Order some cash, we’ve got another tour to make
Workin’ so hard, just to pass the time away
Connie my love, our movie was great and so was the taste
It was pleasin’ for reason

And she scored a trifecta, getting name-checked in yet another song, by Cheap Trick!

I had a vision
That was bigger than life
Oh Connie likes nighttime, every night
Connie likes candy, every bite
All day sucker, Connie might
Swallow that thing ’cause she does it right

The enterprising Connie was so determined to become a famous Groupie that she made round, pink stickers that she gave to the bands and roadies.  They read “Call Connie in Little Rock” and included her phone number.  I searched the internet for a picture of one but couldn’t find it.

Connie’s connections to members of The Allman Brothers, The Who, ZZ Top, The Doobie Brothers, Rush, Eagles, KISS, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Queen, and Fleetwood Mac make her one of the most famous Groupies of all time.

Connie was unapologetic about her lifestyle.  And I’m not here to judge.  But I read comments from many of the people that knew her, published in The Lefsetz Letter, and they were all respectful and mentioned how sweet she was and how well she treated the bands.

She wrote a memoir titled Rock Groupie: Intimate Adventures of ‘Sweet Connie’ that was published in 1995.  She also spent a considerable number of years in a very different occupation… as a substitute teacher in Little Rock!

Enjoy… until next week.