Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Eric Carmen

 

There was a time when having a strong, distinctive voice made a singer a star. It took more than that, of course. Emotion. A powerful singer made you feel the song. That was Eric Carmen.

Obviously, thousands upon thousands of hit songs have been written on guitar, but Eric was a classically-trained pianist, and there's something more melodic about songs composed on piano. Too, Eric taught himself guitar, and the guitar's dominance is evident in his band's, The Raspberries, million-selling 1972 hit:

2004

 
1972

But really, Eric Carmen's legacy rests largely on the decade of the eighties. Self-styling himself solely as a songwriter, sorry, but the following songs would not have impacted us the way they did without Eric's soaring tenor.
 

 

Not iconic, but still a nice top ten hit:
 

Though sung by Ann Wilson and Mike Reno in the movie Footloose, this, too, was written by Carmen:
 

Not a perfect comparison, but Eric Carmen's music was operatic much like Roy Orbison's. There is no disputing his killer songwriting skills, and there is no denying his uniquely superb voice.
 
Rest in peace, Eric Carmen. Thank you for those eighties memories. 


Thursday, February 8, 2024

Toby Keith


There's much to be said for being a good man. By all accounts Toby Keith was a good man. Imagine an entertainer still being married to his first spouse! Imagine doing eleven overseas USO tours.

It seemed like Toby Keith was always around. His 1993 debut single, "Should've Been A Cowboy", shot straight to number one. All told, he scored 20 number ones and several top tens. 

For me, who considers the nineties the best decade in country music, Toby didn't resonate strongly. I thought several of his hits were "fine" and I even purchased his first CD. I preferred his more introspective tracks, like "Wish I Didn't Know Now", and found his bombastic tunes, well....funny. (There's something to be said for funny.) And c'mon, "put a boot in your ass" has gotta evoke a chuckle. I realize "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" was supposed to be serious, but that line...

I SO admire Toby for taking on those bitter wenches previously known as The Dixie Chicks. And he definitely could push their buttons. Androgynous Natalie Maines even wore a "FUTK" t-shirt to an awards show. I bet that really made Toby sob into his pillow. 

And the tall tale about Toby and Kris Kristofferson's little spat has since been debunked. Kristofferson is a master songwriter, but if this incident had actually occurred, sorry, I would be on Keith's side.

He also got knocked for playing at Trump's inaugural, as if that was the mortalist of mortal sins. Good on Toby! I bet he reveled in the criticism.

One thing Toby possessed was an ear for catchphrases. "How Do You Like Me Now", "I Wanna Talk About Me", "Who's Your Daddy?"

“I write about life, and I sing about life, and I don’t over-analyze things,” Keith told The Associated Press in 2001.

While there were many artists I would place above him, the fact remains that he was an original and most importantly, a decent guy.

 


I saw this on X a while back and found it sweet:


 Toby is going to be sorely missed. Rest in peace, Toby Keith.




Monday, December 4, 2023

My 2023 Spotify Wrapped


I love Spotify. Sure, it has its drawbacks, like any technology does, but those drawbacks are not Spotify's fault. Record labels, for some reason, don't release their entire catalogs, and some artists (I'm looking at you, Garth Brooks) refuse to allow their recordings to be streamed on the app (Amazon? Really, Garth? Who in the world streams their music on Amazon?)

It's rare that I don't find one of my treasured albums on Spotify. Of course, streaming doesn't compare to spinning the actual LP's, but I don't own a turntable; thus, the blips and pops are missing. Scoff if you will, but those little imperfections in an album are cherished by those who once spun it endlessly. 

Nevertheless, with Spotify I can actually hear that music once again. And it's rare that a particular track doesn't pop into my head that I can't locate on Spotify's app. Too, if I want to sample the new music that my favorite blog writes about, it's as simple as typing in a name. Obscure releases that probably only I like? They're there, too.

I am a big proponent of playlists. Whereas I was once at the mercy of radio, with my own curated playlists I can hear only the tracks I want to hear. And since mood dominates our music choices, I can have as many diverse playlists as I need, whether I'm feeling nostalgic or festive, or simply bored. If I 💓 a particular song, it drops to my playlist of "liked" songs, and wow, do I ever get an assortment!

At the end of every year, Spotify supplies each listener with his or her own yearly wrap-up (thus, "Wrapped"). It's fun, but almost unbelievable. If I was to create my own summary, I would have come up with completely different lists. As I scrolled through my Wrapped, I asked myself, what was I thinking? And more importantly, why? 

Here is my summary:

Top Artists:

George Strait

Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass

Vince Gill

Dwight Yoakam

Emmylou Harris

 

Now, to some degree, I understand it. Vince Gill, after all, released what I soon realized was the best country album of 2023. I became hooked on it immediately and streamed it over and over. George Strait is admittedly my favorite artist of all time, with Dwight a close second.

And yes, I found The Tijuana Brass's album, Going Places, on the app and I love, LOVE it. If anyone thinks it's cheesy or a relic of bygone days, too bad for them. The album is awesome.

Emmylou Harris in my top five is puzzling. Sure, I like her, but not enough to stream her music over and over. I think her placement simply means that I spun a lot of artists and she beat out the others by a hair. 

 

Top Songs:

Backside of Thirty

Zorba the Greek

Down on the Rio Grande

Down That Road Tonight

3rd Man Theme 

 

Well, Herb Alpert reared his wonderful head again, with two of my top five streamed songs. Those two tracks are simply feel-good music. Like them or deride them; I don't care.

Backside of Thirty surprised me. When John Conlee's single was released in 1978, I gave it little regard. True, I wasn't listening to country at the time, but I still had my finger to the wind of what was going on in that world. I may have rediscovered this track when I was listening to SiriusXM, and thought, hey! That's pretty good! It was almost new to me. In '78 I dismissed it, but aside from Rose Colored Glasses, it's easily Conlee's second-best release. 

Down on the Rio Grande is simply a smooth, pretty Johnny Rodriguez track. I loved Rodriguez back in his heyday ~ Pass Me By is probably one of the best country singles ever. It's hard to discern why a certain song catches one's imagination, but apparently Rio Grande did that for me.

As for NGDB (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), Down That Road Tonight is hands down my favorite of all their releases. It only charted at #6 in 1988, but my love for it was sealed when I endlessly spun the group's album, Workin' Man.

 

My Top Five Genres: 

Classic Country Pop

Country

Classic Rock

Bubblegum Pop

Rock and Roll 

 

Classic Country Pop? What the hell is that? I hate country pop with a passion. I can only surmise that the country songs I streamed were somehow misclassified. Country pop, to me, screams Kenny Rogers and Tim McGraw. 

And as much as I despise country pop, classic rock is the fiery pits of hell. For many years when I was working I listened to a radio morning show that was mildly funny and mildly entertaining (graded on a curve). Unfortunately it was hosted on a classic rock station, so between the banter I was subjected to the likes of Aerosmith and The Who and Van Halen; and not only to the groups themselves, but essentially to the same four tracks over and over. And not even good tracks! The most non-melodic claptrap every laid down in a recording studio. I usually used those musical interludes to visit the rest room or the company cafeteria. So, again Spotify must be free with their music classifications.

Sure, I'll cop to bubblegum pop. Hey, listen to it ~ it's great! What better time in music than the nineteen sixties? (The Beatles, by the way, are probably classified as bubblegum pop, which is rather a misnomer. They definitely did start out that way, though.)

Country and "Rock and Roll"? You betcha. That's my wheelhouse, although I don't know what exactly Spotify terms rock and roll. But I'm not going to quibble. 

 

Other Stats:

Minutes Listened: 7,015 (my calculator tells me that's about 117 hours ~ ehh, pretty middling)

Genres Listened To: 36 (What?? There's 36 genres??)

Artists Listened To: 524 (I'm eclectic ~ yay!)

Songs Listened To: 1,296

I'm a top 4% Strait fan, with Baby's Gotten Good at Goodbye my top George track streamed (weird, because though I like it, it's really not one of my top favorites.)

Apparently, August 6 was a big listening day for me. (a Sunday, which makes sense.)

Some really astute discriminating music fan in St. John's Bay, Canada listened just like me. 

Spotify labels me a "collector", or an "anti-hero". Oh, absolutely. I both collect and anti-hero-ize. Define that made-up word however you like.

 

So, while I may quibble at some of these stats, I guess math doesn't lie (it is racist, however ~ but that's a discussion for another day.)

The Wrapped roundup is a fun little diversion.

But I gotta figure out a way to finesse those numbers in the coming year.

 





 

 

Saturday, November 25, 2023

Sorry Kids, But Most Christmas Songs Reek

 

I have a rule ~ I only stream Christmas music a couple of days before the holiday, because frankly that's about all I can stand. And I only stream it at all because of...I guess, tradition. When I do, I'm very choosy.

But this morning my husband and I were breakfasting at a local restaurant and (naturally) we were seated just adjacent to the sound system speaker. I found myself growing more and more irritated. Finally I piped up, "Did someone try to curate the worst Christmas playlist ever?" 

There's some kind of itch that pop singers have, in which they need to jazz up a Christmas standard. Just f***in' sing it straight! Ooh, you're great with the glissandos and all, but I'm gonna need a few more mugs of eggnog before I can even tolerate your riffing. Here's the thing: If you (the singer) hate a song so much that you need to turn it unrecognizable, don't record it!

Over our booth, we got to hear some dude scatting White Christmas, then that awful jazz piano thing from the Peanuts Christmas special, then "My Favorite Things", which isn't even a freakin' Christmas song. It's from The Sound of Music! 

And people listen to this drivel starting the day after Halloween! What is with these freaks? At a prior workplace, they piped in music; very bland, inoffensive music. Normally, I would have simply ignored it, but no one was allowed to talk (seriously, it was an infraction), so that stuff came in LOUD and clear. If any country music wafted out of the speaker, it was that pseudo-country that nobody, pop fan nor country fan, could stomach. I heard Steve Wariner's "The Weekend" about 5,268 times. But Christmas season was the worst. Even a "good" holiday song makes a person want to beat her head against the wall after the two thousandth airing. I couldn't even speak up and bitch to my neighbor about how much I hated it.

There was a particular Andy Williams track that, if I ever hear it again, violence will ensue. I don't know the name of it, but it was jazzy to the point of air-sickness. Lots of scatting and be-bopping. Ahhh, Merry Christmas! I actually searched it out on Andy's Christmas album list, just to refresh my memory, but it appears even he was too embarrassed to include it in his repertoire. Of course my office was a gun-free zone, so I couldn't whip out a 45 and shoot that speaker dead.

And that's what we're supposed to listen to for essentially two months? Nope.

There are a couple of rules when it comes to my Christmas playlist:

1. Classics

By that I don't necessarily mean 1940's classics, but definitely Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" and Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock", and Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad".

2. Old Classics

If anyone is going to sing "White Christmas", it had better be Bing Crosby. Nat King Cole had better be warbling "The Christmas Song". 

3. Anne Murray

If you're a good singer, you don't need to change songs. Just sing 'em.


4. Marshmallow World

This is a must, people! I'm serious!


I've got 36 songs on my Spotify Christmas playlist, but that's only because I felt a need to flesh it out. I could honestly eliminate half of them.

So, businesses, if you see me alighting your premises, shove the volume down on your holiday glop. I like Christmas as much as the next guy, but a sane person can only take so much.

 

Friday, November 10, 2023

80's Radio

 

I certainly wasn't a kid in the eighties, but radio made me feel like one. I'd left country at the right time and discovered rock at the exact right time. My kids were still pre-teens, meaning they'd still agree to go places with me ~ drives to the mall, maybe a jaunt to pick up a pizza. And all the while our companion was rock radio. I foisted my musical tastes on them, swirling up the radio volume anytime a song I really liked kicked off. When "We Are The World" became a big radio hit, I patiently explained to them which singer was singing which part. My oldest really glommed onto Corey Hart's "Sunglasses At Night", a song I hated ("so I can...so I can..."), but I can never hear that song today without being reminded of that seven-year-old kid. On one of our yearly sojourns to South Dakota's Black Hills, Van Halen's "Jump" was the hot hit of the day. That organ-sounding guitar solo blasted out of the car radio's speakers approximately every seven minutes, to the point where I wasn't sure if I was experiencing car sickness or David Lee Roth-sickness. But my kids liked the song.

The eighties were the era of one-hit-band wonders, mostly British it seemed, but those tracks remain some of my favorite eighties songs to this day. The Dream Academy with "Life In A Northern Town", The Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy". And who could forget (or ever would be allowed to forget) Rick Astley?

 

Music snobs tend to denigrate eighties music, but I bet if they got a gander at my Spotify playlist they'd soon be dancing around their living rooms, or if they were male, at least tapping their foot. One thing about eighties music, it was joyous, not morose ~ not navel-contemplation. All that introspection is overrated. I like songs like this:

 





Yes, I am country at heart, but I wouldn't give up my eighties rock for the world. It speaks to me in ways that little other does.

Monday, November 6, 2023

The "New" Beatles Song

 


The first time I heard "Now And Then", I was confused. I'd read that with the help of AI, John Lennon's voice had been isolated and enhanced. Thus, when the song began playing I wondered why Paul was singing lead on this Lennon-penned song. Of course it wasn't Paul, but John singing in a higher register than what we've become used to, rather than Paul's Wings voice. Maybe that's why the two always melded so well -- they could inadvertently mirror each other. 

My second thought was, well, that's not a very good song. John wrote it during his solo years, which were hit and miss. (Who knows what his solo career could have become?) Had he proferred it during the waning Beatles days, would it have even been recorded? Perhaps. (When George heard it, he proclaimed that it was "fucking rubbish".

Third, I thought, well, that's definitely George's guitar. Certain musicians' solos are instantly recognizable. Mark Knopfler comes to mind. Eric Clapton as well. You know them when you hear them. Hearing George was melancholy, yet comforting.

So, to sum up:

1. That's not John (it is)

2. The song isn't great

3. I miss George

Then I watched the video, and I suddenly liked the song more. Video, when executed well, so much enhances a recording, and after all, this is The Beatles


To complete the circle, the recording was produced by Giles Martin, George Martin's son, and the inclusion of a string section is classic Martin (senior). 

And the truth is, the song has grown on me. So, if this is truly the "last" Beatles song, I'm okay with it.

Monday, October 23, 2023

Radio's Merciful Death

 


Radio has been popular since sometime in the nineteen twenties. I don't know if much recorded music was played (believe it or not I wasn't around then), but rather live programming -- serials (i.e., soap operas), comedy acts, even game shows commanded the airwaves. WSM began broadcasting the Grand Ole Opry in 1925, but a radio was expensive -- about one hundred and fifty dollars (equivalent to more than $2,000 today). These units were so large, they were essentially part of the furniture. But as more and more people clamored for this wondrous new entertainment outlet (really, what other means of diversion was there?), mass production kicked into gear. This, along with "vacuum tube" technology brought prices down and soon everyone was listening to Jack Benny, The Lone Ranger, and something called Fibber McGee and Molly.

By the mid-thirties, recorded music wafted out of folks' radio speakers more frequently, and that essentially birthed the dreaded "music industry". Bing Crosby was huge, along with multiple incarnations of big bands, like Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. Individual radio stations had autonomy in choosing the music they played, and listener demand was crucial. 

It is said that listener preferences held less sway starting in the sixties, but as a kid I often called up my local DJ to request a specific record and he played it. Too, a big thing in the early-to-mid sixties was record giveaways. "If you can name this group, you win a fantabulous copy!" The only time I ever was the designated fifth caller, it was for a '45 I already owned, but I still had Mom drive me over to the local Dairy Queen to politely request my free record from the counter girl whose fingers were sticky with vanilla soft serve. I won! The waitress was rather blase about the whole thing, I must say. 

And as a child in the country, radio was everything -- a glimpse of an unknown world. I carried my transistor with me everywhere. Tramping through the shelter belt behind our farmhouse and perching on a big fallen log, traversing dirt back roads with nary a soul in sight, I could imagine I was inside a recording studio in Liverpool (it was actually London) or I was at a party with Lesley Gore when Johnny walked in with another girl. Radio allowed my imagination to soar.

By the mid-sixties I began to suspect that there were actually more than twenty singles released at any given time, but my local station never owned up to that. Thus we can all rightfully blame commercial radio for those tracks that have rattled around in our brains for decades, ones we never even liked. 

FM became more ubiquitous in the late sixties, but the FM station in my town was insular, and clearly the DJ's hated the country music they were tasked with playing. Oh, man! I gotta play 'country' music? What the hell? No Pink Floyd? What the fuck did I sign up for? Thus, they spun the pale music of Willie Nelson, who was a such a niche, nobody who gave a whit about country music bothered giving him the time of day. I still can't hear the track, "Me and Paul" without shuddering. Glen Campbell's version of "Elusive Butterfly" was another apathetic DJ's pick. Everything spun was awful. Simply awful. And not country.

In short order I abandoned my FM experiment and returned to AM's chattering disc jockeys and ear-splitting commercials. Pearl-white Ford LTD, fully loaded! White-wall tires! Stop down to Parzley Motors and grab a free cookie! Say hi to Phil!

I stuck with AM throughout the seventies and most of the eighties. AM was everywhere -- at work, in the car, on my bedside radio. I didn't even have FM in my car, where the bulk of my radio listening commenced. AM still played the same twenty songs, but they were good songs, so I didn't quibble. FM got a firmer foothold and got its act together, and AM eventually migrated to talk, surrendering music to better sound quality, which was entirely dependent on one's musical conveyance. With popularity came the same plethora of ads, though, just as annoying, mostly now for the big payouts at Paha Sapa Casino!...and the same twenty tracks. But by now all autos came equipped with cassette decks, and later, CD players, so an impatient driver was no longer held hostage.

By the 2000's it began to dawn on listeners that radio didn't care what they liked, only what their computerized software instructed them to play. DJ's stopped mattering. They were there to provide weather updates and to tell us that it was five minutes past the hour. Paid plugs interrupted songs -- "Chelsea Chippins is my favorite country singer!" some voice-over hack would erupt and the DJ would pretend he was having an actual conversation with the recorded voice. "Did'ja catch her at the Bronze Center last Saturday?" Thirty seconds into the track they'd finally stop jabbering, proving that anyone listening to this dreck didn't actually give a damn. It was just noise. (There was an early period when I actually taped songs off the radio, and I fumed anytime the stupid disc jockey couldn't manage to shut his stupid mouth.) A dentist I used to frequent had this blather playing loudly in the background, perhaps to muffle the zzzzz-ing of the drill, but if it was meant to be relaxing, I would have preferred gas.

But now, mercifully, we had subscriber radio in our cars. That, too, was hit or miss, but at least we could punch up a different pay channel if necessary. We could listen to virtually any era of music and hardly anybody talked, much less jabbered. Then, even better, we could jam a cable into a slot from our phones and hear music we chose.

Now, if anyone still listens to radio, it's because they're simply lazy. Charts don't mean anything, because who is the decider? Streaming counts toward the charts, sure, as does actual purchases (as if), but radio is still right there in the mix. That might explain a lot.

Nineties country music is experiencing a resurgence and it's certainly not because radio is playing it. Luke Combs caught fire with a 1988 cover, not because radio played it. Radio played it after it erupted (with, I'm sure, the inevitable talk-over). Hey-ey! Here's the huge Luke Combs hit! Are you traveling to his arena show in Des Moines? Word is he drew 50,000 at Lunar Field last weekend! Call us if you were there! By now, Luke is well into the second verse.

Radio is dying a merciful death, much like that set of Encyclopedia Britannica your grandparents spent years collecting, only to find that the info contained within was now outdated. At least a radio is easier to toss away than twenty-two ponderous faux-leather tomes, though just as outdated.