Category: Elise

Mike Curb Congregation | Burning Bridges (from “Kelly’s Heroes”)

Kelly’s Heroes (1970) featured Clint Eastwood “and a rowdy gang of G.I. goofballs including roughneck Telly Savalas, new agey Donald Sutherland, bitter wiseass Don Rickles and young, harmonica-playing, exactly-the-same-looking Harry Dean Stanton (credited as Dean Stanton). It kinda feels like one of those fun ensemble war pictures like The Dirty Dozen or The Great Escape, except the idea behind it is much more cynical,” (OutlawVern.com). “Clint plays Kelly, a once great soldier, demoted and disillusioned after an incorrect order caused him to blow up some of his own men. When he finds out about a stash of gold bars in a German bank, he finally has a mission he can believe in again.

… The theme song ‘Burning Bridges’ (is) performed by The Mike Curb Congregation. Curb … scored The Wild Angels and The Born Losers … and was also the president of MGM Records. ‘Burning Bridges’ was the Congregation’s biggest hit (#1 in Australia!), though they also had some success with a version of ‘It’s a Small World’ from an album of Disney covers, (and) were featured on Sammy Davis Jr.’s version of ‘The Candy Man.’ … I thought the cornball vocals of ‘Burning Bridges’ added kind of a flower children-y touch to the movie, but I’m not sure Curb would like that characterization. In the same year Kelly’s Heroes came out, he made a splash by dumping The Velvet Underground and other groups from MGM because he thought they promoted drugs. In 1978, Curb was elected lieutenant governor of California, a Republican working under Jerry Brown. Still, the Congregation found time to record ‘Together, a New Beginning,’ the theme song for Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign. So, not really the hippie I took him for.”

In Curb’s version, half-step key changes hit at 0:58 and 1:40. Keep scrolling for a mellower version (performed by Clint himself) which features an artier V/IV upward half-step shift at 1:55 and skips the second modulation of the original. Clint’s version wasn’t in the movie itself, but was also released as a single. Many thanks to our regular poster Rob P. for this submission!

Wilson Pickett | 634-5789

Prattville, Alabama native Wilson Pickett ” … did something which always thrills the telephone company to no end: he recorded a song which featured a phone number as its title,” (Rhino). “Written by Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd, “the song came about when Pickett took a trip to Memphis in order to make another visit to Stax, where he met up with Cropper and Floyd at the Lorraine Motel. They had two songs for Pickett: ‘Ninety-Nine and a Half (Just Won’t Do)’ and ‘634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.),’ the latter being a driving shuffle which was an homage of sorts to a 1962 single called ‘Beechwood 4-5789’ by Motown’s Marvelettes.

Clearly, Pickett had his fans’ number: the song proved to be an even bigger hit than ‘In the Midnight Hour,’ spending seven weeks at the top of the Billboard R&B Singles chart and hitting #13 on the Hot 100 in 1966.”

A late key change (hitting at 2:31 on a tune with a run length of just under three minutes) shifts the tonality up a half step as a transition into a fading outro.

Brad Mehldau | Don’t Let It Bring You Down

“Locked down in the Netherlands (during COVID), pianist Brad Mehldau decided to compose a 12-part cycle (Suite: April 2020) that reflects his response to our new normal (Downbeat) … Don’t come looking for Mehldau’s long, lustrous improvisations—or even short ones, though there might be some light embellishments here and there. This is a composer’s work. If its bite-size pieces are easily digestible, so are its penetrating melodies. Like the thinned-out harmonies, they emphasize the isolation at the heart of both the work and the context. Well, that and the pure strangeness …

Neil Young’s ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’ is fraught with tension …” The track, originally released by Young in 1970 and covered by Annie Lennox in 1995, alternates quickly between A minor and A major throughout. It’s only as the lone chorus arrives (1:41) that the piece settles into A major in earnest for more than a measure, but even that respite from ambiguity is briefly interrupted by A minor just before the piece ends in A major.

Devo | Whip It

“The magnitude of Devo’s effect on music is one that is horrifically overlooked… something that completely baffles me,” (DrownedInSound). “Here is a band with everything required. Great catchy songs? Check. Insane live show? Check. Uber-intelligent members with a penchant for witty socio-political satire? Check. A sound completely different to everyone else? Check.

For many, Devo are just ‘that band’ who wrote ‘Whip It’ and wore red flower pots on their heads … This was when punk music was taking off; when ripped T-shirts and spikes were de rigeur. There were only three chords to a song, and certainly no keyboards or synths … What Devo did was decapitate the evolution of music. Their sound was not the next genesis of what had come before them. They envisioned a sound and distilled it, as opposed to (99 per cent of other) bands that merely mix various influences to create something ‘new’.

Devo’s Gerry Casale: ‘We had punk elements, but we were Punk Scientists. We weren’t nihilists or anti-intellectual. We had a degree of anger and intensity that definitely echoed punk, but we weren’t writing the same type of music. We were much more experimental … we met with so much resistance from radio and never got help from the powers that be, so we never really made any money. I made a little from the publishing of ‘Whip It’ … I wish Devo had made money, but it is nice to have respect from other creative people now … It is a great feeling and something a lot of people don’t get.'”

“Whip It” (1980) featured an intro verse written in an oddly colorless key of E, comprised of a non-standard quadratonic scale — only the first, fourth, fifth, and flatted seventh steps of the key (joined by the second/ninth in the guitar hook starting at 0:39). At 0:49, the chorus arrives for the first time; the highest keyboard notes finally throw us a bone with a major third, revealing that this section is in C major. The pattern continues from there.

Procol Harum | Salad Days (Are Here Again)

“Formed in 1967, the sophisticated and forward-looking British band Procol Harum … recorded and released 1967’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale,’ a smash hit that today remains the band’s most well-known song,” (MusoScribe). “After opening for Jimi Hendrix in London in that same year, the band organized a tour.

… The band’s sound had always been a mixture of the members’ r&b influences (and) a progressive – but not overly fussy – musical bent (aided and abetted by the presence of not one but two keyboard players) … Those qualities had largely fallen out of favor with the record-buying public by 1977, so the members went their separate ways.” The band regrouped several times, including a new album, Novum, and touring in the late 2010s.

“Salad Days Are Here Again” (1967) begins in G major. At 0:31, there’s a brief shift to an F major chorus before a return to G at 0:44.

Ludwig van Beethoven | Symphony #5 (2nd movement, Andante con Moto)

“In his epochal review of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808), Op. 67, E. T. A. Hoffman praised it as ‘one of the most important works of the time.’ … Beethoven started to sketch the Fifth Symphony in 1804, almost immediately following the completion of Symphony No. 3, Eroica … During the long four-year period of composition, Beethoven broke convention on several aspects,” (esm.rochester.edu). “Most particularly, it was the first symphony that Beethoven wrote in a minor key—C minor. Minor-keyed symphonies were not unheard of, but were not the norm at the time.”

The second movement begins with a lighter mood than its infamous introduction, the symphony’s first movement: ” … (it) begins piano with a noble, restrained theme in A-flat in the lower strings before bursting into a brief forte contrasting C-major militaristic theme, featuring trumpets and timpani.” In this performance by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, this modulation occurs at 1:17; other shifts in tonality follow.

The Treasures | Right Combination

The Treasures were a female R&B vocal trio who appeared on The Midnight Special, a popular late-night television show focusing almost entirely on music, in 1974.

We have scoured the web and couldn’t find one piece of information on the group, other than the fact that their nearly empty IMDb page matches the date of the Midnight Special performance on the video. Not one! There may have been a studio album which featured “Right Combination,” but if so, we could find no information on it. A truly unusual problem!

Hopefully we’ll be forgiven, though, because it’s a memorable tune — performed by a trio that sounds like the Supremes and Aretha Franklin had a baby! Starting in C minor, the horn-driven arrangement shifts to Eb minor at 0:34 for the chorus. At 0:57, the verse returns in C minor.

We Five | You Were On My Mind

“In 1965, We Five was near the top of the charts, with a great tune, ‘You Were On My Mind’ … I’d rate it among the best songs of the 60s,” (Brad’s All-Vinyl Finds). ” The band had a few other minor hits, but nothing else like this … (Lead singer Bev) Bivens’ voice starts out rather quietly; then there is the signature strum … Folk-rock was about to begin.

… singing the song took everything (the band) had. The released version … is take 13, with an earlier take of the shout-out-loud ending vocals spliced on from an earlier, less fatigued take … Today’s bands can multitrack and digitize their way to an essentially perfect song. But in 1965, We Five keep singing it until they exhausted themselves. They performed.“

After a start in E major, the tune shifts up a whole step to F# major at 1:25. Originally written by Sylvia Fricker and perfomed by her duo, Ian + Sylvia, in 1961, the tune was subsequently covered several times by artists in several countries. But We Five’s version was by far the most prominent version of the tune, hitting #3 on the Hot 100 chart and reaching #4 on Billboard’s year-end list of 1965’s best songs.

Many thanks to Paul G. for reminding us about this distinctive tune!

Claudia Telles | Eu Preciso Te Esquecer

“Daughter of one of the most important female singers of the bossa nova (Sylvia Telles), Claudia Telles recorded for the first time in 1976 (the ballad “Fim de Tarde” by Robson Jorge/Maura Motta), which scored a hit,” (AllMusic). “After recording other singles, she recorded her first LP, Claudia Telles, in 1977. Along with her bossa nova interpretations (covering her mother’s hits), she also dedicated a CD to the samba masters Cartola and Nelson Cavaquinho.

She passed away due to complications from endocarditis at age 62 in 2020. “‘Each of the fans who made her career, her life the way it was: she had immense affection for each one of you’, said Bruno Telles, the singer’s son, to the newspaper O Dia.” (uol.com).

Built primarily in A major, 1978’s “Eu Preciso Te Esquecer” (I Need to Forget You) features a late downward key change to Ab major (3:32 – 3:47) before reverting to the original key. Many thanks to our Brazilian reader and contributor Julianna A. for this submission!

Calvin Harris | Stars Come Out

The Guardian seems to be no fan of producer and vocalist Calvin Harris, who hails from Dumfries, Scotland: “Some musical genres have an everlasting impact: all subsequent rock and pop bears something of their influence. Others just vanish: once their time has passed, it’s as if they never happened. So it was with handbag house, which bestrode the charts in the mid-90s, the glittery, shallow sound of Britain’s mainstream dancefloors … Handbag house seemed almost wilfully depthless, which, you could argue, made it the perfect music to soundtrack the brainless antics of DJs and club promoters … Handbag was music that sounded like it thought that was quite a good idea.”

Harris released the track “Stars Come Out” on his 2009 album Ready for the Weekend. The track features ” … the sound of a producer frantically chucking ideas at a melody so slight it’s impossible to hit. When Ready for the Weekend is over, it vanishes, leaving no discernible trace: like the music that inspired it, it’s as if it never happened.”

Nonetheless, the uptempo tune has garnered nearly 400K Youtube views, while Harris’ channel has nearly 20 million subscribers! The track starts in D minor and cycles through multiple repeating sections before shifting up to A minor at 2:57.