Mod of the Day

Kansas | Carry On Wayward Son

Many thanks to uber-regular contributor JB for this submission! For anyone who was alive — and less than retirement age — in mid-1970s America, “Carry On Wayward Son” was nothing less than inescapable.

“I’ve always thought Kansas was an interesting hybrid of two different genres: Prog vs. ‘trad’ rock … I remember hearing a surprising amount of Kansas at frat parties during college, mixed in with the Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd — you’d never hear Genesis or Gentle Giant in a frat basement, but there was Kansas, WAY more rhythmically and harmonically complex than the other hard rock songs … a sheep in wolf’s clothing, as it were.”

LouderSound reports that “the track peaked at #11 in the US (1976), helping to propel parent album Leftoverture to #5 in the Billboard Hot 100 … Four decades on, it’s become more even famous than the band that recorded it, its meaning almost lost to ubiquity. It was the second most played track on US classic rock radio in 1995, topping the same chart in 1997, and at the last count, having appeared in TV comedy shows and films that include South Park and Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, has logged up more than two million downloads during the digital era.”

After the tune begins in A minor, 4:14 brings a shift to E minor.

Why (from “Tick, Tick…Boom!”)

“Why” is from the 1990 musical Tick, Tick…Boom! by Jonathan Larson. Larson wrote Tick, Tick as he was approaching age 30 and questioning whether he should continue pursuing a career in the theater after struggling for years to get his work recognized and produced. The show is autobiographical, and of course Larson would finally find success with his acclaimed, Tony-winning 1996 musical Rent, which opened in 1996. Unfortunately Larson did not live to experience the fame that he had so long sought, as he passed away suddenly at age 35 from an aortic dissection the night of Rent’s first Off-Broadway performance.

“Why” comes near the end of the show; it depicts Jon remembering how and why he fell in love with theater in the first place, and what amount of sacrifice is required for sustaining a career in the arts. He ultimately decides he can’t picture himself doing anything else. The track modulates at 3:39.

A new film adaptation of Tick, Tick…Boom!, starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, premieres on Netflix this Friday.

Bee Gees | Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)

Released in 1975, “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love”) peaked at #12 on the United States Billboard Hot 100 chart and #2 in Canada. “According to Maurice Gibb, producer Quincy Jones called “Fanny” one of his favorite R&B songs of all time.” (SteveHoffman forums) Written by Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb and produced by Arif Mardin, the tune was recorded on the same day as “Jive Talkin’,” according to a 2001 interview in Billboard. Blue Weaver, keyboardist for the Bee Gees during this period, was influenced by Hall & Oates’ 1973 LP Abandoned Luncheonette: “The key change in ‘Fanny (Be Tender)’ was a complete rip-off from Abandoned Luncheonette (from ‘She’s Gone,’ which was also produced by Mardin). I only had it on tape, and I didn’t know that Arif produced it”.

The group did not perform “Fanny” live because of the layers of harmonies used to create the studio recording. In the same Billboard interview, Maurice Gibb explained: “We all love that one, but it’s just a bitch to sing.”

After starting with an intro and verse in E major, the tune shifts to its relative minor (C# minor) for the pre-chorus and chorus at 0:24. The pattern holds through verse 2 and chorus, followed by a bridge built around A major at 1:55 and another verse at 2:16. 3:00 and 3:05 bring two half-step modulatons.

Many thanks to our Brazilian follower (and first-time contributor) @julianna_arai for this submission!

Silk Sonic | Blast Off

On their album An Evening with Silk Sonic, released today: “Working together as Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak revisit that bygone analog era (the 70s) in a hybrid of homage, parody, throwback and meticulous reverse engineering, tossing in some cheerfully knowing anachronisms,” (New York Times). “They flaunt skill, effort and scholarship, like teacher’s pets winning a science-fair prize; they also sound like they’re having a great time.”

Mars and .Paak inhabit different regions of the R&B/Soul/Pop/HipHop vortex, but the overlapping section of the resulting venn diagram is intriguing — and apparently synergystic. The NYTimes continues: “Silk Sonic comes across as a continuation for Mars and a playfully affectionate tangent for Paak. Mars is a multi-instrumentalist with a strong retro streak … Paak’s catalog has delved into more complicated matters. On his albums, named after places where he has lived, he switches between singing and rapping, and his lyrics take on contemporary conditions; he’s also a musician steeped in live-band soul and R&B, and a hard-hitting drummer … On An Evening With Silk Sonic, Paak’s specificity merges with Mars’s pop generalities, while both of them double down on craftsmanship and cleverness.” With Parliament Funkadelic’s bassist Bootsy Collins serving as something of an intermittent master of ceremonies, the album “revives the sound of 1970s groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Spinners, the Manhattans, the Chi-Lites and the Delfonics … a Fabergé egg of an album: a lavish, impeccable bauble, a purely ornamental not-quite-period piece. Mars and Paak don’t pretend to be making any grand statement, but there’s delight in every detail.”

After a short intro peppered with compound chords, the tune settles in somewhere in the E major/E Lydian neighborhood. That duality is spelled out multiple times in the chorus (the first time at 0:44):

F#/G# — A/B — Emaj7

The use of densely-packed chromatic bass motion combined with compound chords as connective tissue (1:44 and elsewhere) keeps us happily wondering where we might touch down next. At 3:16, an extended outro leaves earth’s atmosphere entirely as the groove falls away. We continue to ascend a ladder of brief modulations (3:54), further and further into an ecstatic stratosphere — but not without a knowing and neighborly wave from Bootsy.

Lorde | The Man with the Axe

“Well, I thought I was going to make this big acid record but I don’t think it was an acid album,” New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde said upon the release of her 2021 album Solar Power. “I had one bad acid experience in this album and was like meh, it’s a weed album. It’s one of my great weed albums.” The record, which represents a departure from Lorde’s typical synth-dominated style in favor of more acoustic, folk-oriented arrangements, reached #1 in Australia and New Zealand, and charted in the top 10 in thirteen other countries.

“The Man With The Axe” is autobiographical, a love song about a person who affects the singer in a way no one else can. “I wrote this track almost as a poem,” Lorde said. “I was very hungover and I think that fragile, vulnerable quality made it in here. It’s funny because it’s kind of melancholy, but I also think of it as very cozy.

“I’m expressing a huge amount of love and affection for someone. To me, it sounds very private — I sort of don’t even like thinking about people listening to it because it’s just for me…I really didn’t change the poem, apart from maybe taking one line out. That was one of the biggest accomplishments of the album.”

The song modulates from E to F# at 3:14.

Connie Laverne | Can’t Live Without You

“Can’t Live Without You” by Connie Laverne was originally released as white label DJ copy on the New York record label GSF shortly before the label folded in 1974,” reports Sam Beaubien of NPR affiliate WDET’s program CultureShift. “This record is rarely seen and is highly coveted … (it became) popular through modern DJs playing this song in their sets, specifically in the UK. Since then, the track has been remastered and released for the Club Classics album celebrating 50 years of UK’s Northern Soul scene.

Information on the vocalist Connie Laverne is extremely hard to find. GrooveCollector states that the single was produced by George Kerr. Phyllis Hyman later recorded (but didn’t release) a version of the tune. From The Guardian’s overview of the genre, which is said to have been the UK’s answer to Motown: “One of the many beauties of Northern Soul is its sheer unknowability. It’s a scene that has always thrived on the rare, the obscure, and the undiscovered. Since it first emerged in the dance halls of northern England in the late 60s, it has existed in direct opposition to the very concept of greatest hits … There is no carved-in-stone canon – everyone’s journey through it is unique. Northern Soul is a culture based on chance finds, crate-digging and word-of-mouth recommendations.”

1:12 brings a half-step upward modulation; at 1:43, we seem to be headed for another, but we fall back into the original key instead! Many thanks to our prolific contributor JB!

Bruno Mars | Versace on the Floor

Featured on the 2016 album 24K Magic, “Versace on the Floor” is an homage to the slow jams of the 1990s, and gives singer Bruno Mars a chance to show off his sentimental side.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mars claimed the song through several different iterations before arriving at the final version. “At a certain point, I needed to stop telling you we’re gonna get down, and just get down,” Mars said of his inspiration for the hook.

The track charted moderately well, peaking at #33 on the Billboard Top 100 in the US. A music video, starring American actress and singer Zendaya, and a popular remix produced by French DJ David Guetta, were both released in 2017.

The tune begins in D major and modulates up to Eb for the final chorus at 3:19.

Cécile Chaminade | Concertino in D Major for Flute and Piano, Op. 107

“The pianist and composer Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) was admired by the British Queen Victoria, for whom she often performed at The House of Windsor.” (I Care If You Listen). In 1913, France awarded her the Légion d’Honneur. But after her death, Chaminade was virtually forgotten. “George Bizet, a household friend at the Chaminade residence in Vésinet, a stylish suburb of Paris, lovingly called her ‘My little Mozart’. He advised her parents to send young Cécile to the Paris Conservatoire to study piano and composition. Papa, director of an insurance company and amateur violinist, refused permission, however: ‘Bourgeois girls are predestined to become wives and mothers.’”

Nonetheless, Chaminade gradually built a career in France as a composer and a performer. Eventually, she wrote 400 works and “not only succeeded in getting all her four hundred works performed, but also got them published – not a matter of course for a female composer at the time.” Despite her father’s reductionist attitude towards her career, after his death in 1887, Chaminade “had to support herself and her mother with her compositions and recitals, and this may be the reason why she concentrated on chamber music hereafter. The often-heard assessment that her music ‘doesn’t transcend the level of salon music’ is an affront. Yes, her writing is easily accessible and shies away from the drastic dissonances Wagner or Schönberg offer, but it is very well made and shows a remarkable control of classical counterpoint.”

Chaminade’s Concertino in D Major for Flute and Piano, Op. 107 (1902) is so prominent in the flute literature that among flutists it’s generally referred to simply as “The Chaminade.” Originally written for flute and piano, it was later also arranged for flute and orchestra. The piece was dedicated to the prominent French flutist and educator Paul Taffanel.

Beginning and ending in D Major as advertised, it cycles through quite a few other tonalities along the way, as this score-based video illustrates.

Shania Twain | Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under

“Shania Twain has been in our lives seemingly forever,” (WideOpenCountry). “So long that it’s hard to even imagine that she has a beginning. Shania just… is. Well, we all start somewhere and country music’s favorite Canadian is no different. Her first major hit, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under,” from her second studio album The Woman in Me, reached No. 11 on the Billboard country music charts in 1995 and vaulted Shania into stardom. Twain’s first single to get recognition was actually so popular it won Song of the Year at the Canadian Country Music Awards.”

Shania co-wrote the song with then-husband, songwriter/producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange. Lange, who has produced AC/DC, Def Leppard, The Boomtown Rats, Foreigner, Michael Bolton, The Cars, Bryan Adams, Huey Lewis and the News, Billy Ocean, Celine Dion, Britney Spears, The Corrs, Maroon 5, Lady Gaga, Nickelback, and Muse, later produced Twain’s subsequent album Come On Over. According to the RIAA, the album became the best-selling country music album ever released and the best-selling studio album ever released by a female artist in any genre

After an instrumental break, a now-familiar chorus starts at 3:05 — but doesn’t get a chance to complete itself before 3:15 brings a second start for the chorus, this time a full step higher. Many thanks to Ziyad for another great contribution!

No More Wasted Time (from “If/Then”)

“No More Wasted Time” is from the 2014 musical If/Then, featuring a Tony-nominated score by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey. The music incorporates folk elements with a contemporary edge. Performed here by original cast members Idina Menzel, LaChanze, Jenn Colella, and Tamika Lawrence, the song begins in Db and builds into a dramatic modulation up to Eb coming out of the bridge at 2:44.