Elise – Page 62

The Ramones | Bonzo Goes to Bitburg

“In 1986, the Reagan Administration entered into its second year of the second term in office,” (Consequence). “The Iran-Contra affair hadn’t fully been exposed at the time, and a group of leather jacketed punks from Queens, NY called The Ramones were entering their twelfth year together.” About a year before the release of The Ramones’ album Animal Boy in 1986, “President Reagan had made plans to observe the 40th anniversary of V-E Day. As a result of preplanned events, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl took the opportunity to show the strength between the U.S. and Germany and mend the differences between the nations that existed forty years prior. After all was said and done, President Reagan’s trip to Bitburg on May 5th, 1985 immediately caused outrage within the United States.” Much upset resulted — please look up the details. But the Jewish Virtual Library called it “one of the most acrimonious confrontations between any U.S. administration and the American Jewish Community.”

Consequence continues: “Joey Ramone (himself Jewish and sickened by Reagan’s visit), Dee Dee Ramone, and Plasmatics’ keyboardist/bassist Jean Beauvoir wrote the song in protest as well as a document of American history. “Bonzo” refers to the chimpanzee in the two movies that Reagan starred in during his acting career in the 1950’s, Bedtime For Bonzo (1951) and Bonzo Goes To College (1952).

At 2:39, the tune — an uncharacteristically polished and lengthy release for the band — shifts up a full step.

Olivia Newton-John + Cliff Richard | Suddenly

Olivia Newton-John, a winner of four Grammy awards and an artist who sold upwards of 100 million albums worldwide, passed away today after a multi-year battle with cancer. We’re featuring a tune from one of the many high points of her multi-faceted career.

“Longtime Olivia Newton-John associate John Farrar composed ‘Suddenly’ for the soundtrack to the movie Xanadu in 1980,” (AllMusic). “Recorded in Los Angeles in March 1980, a somewhat slight ballad was transformed into a genuinely heartfelt duet between the Australian and Cliff Richard, with whom she had enjoyed a decade-long association as friend and occasional co-performer (she was a regular guest on his early-’70s TV series). ‘We do have a good relationship and I think it really comes across in the song,’ Richard mused. Indeed, released as Richard’s 79th British single, ‘Suddenly’ reached number 15 in that country, despite the general failure of the accompanying movie. It also became Richard’s fourth U.S. Top 40 hit in a year, when it reached number 20 in October 1980.”

Newton-John was always more than just a pretty face; the same could be said for her UK duet partner! Richard was a massive star in the UK by 1980s, but was beginning to catch on in the US market as well — with plenty of boyish pop cred belying his age (40 vs. Newton-John’s 32). “Suddenly” was a central part of the Xanadu soundtrack, but on the eve of MTV’s appearance in 1981, a promotional video featuring both singers was called for, rather than footage from the fanciful rollerskating-centric movie. If the US Top 40 somehow had a baby with the visual aesthetic of TV soap opera General Hospital, one of the largest media blockbusters of the era, this video would have been the result (move over, Luke ‘n’ Laura … Cliff and Olivia are super cute and have pipes!) The chemistry here might not have been entirely the result of acting: upon her death, Richard said of Newton-John: “‘We hit it off straight away. She was the sort of soulmate that you meet and you know is a friend for life. When I and many of us were in love with Olivia, she was engaged to someone else. I’m afraid I lost the chance,'” (Daily Mail).

After a somewhat aimlessly wandering intro (OMG, we have synths now! Let’s use them a lot!), Richard’s half of the verse begins in Ab major (0:16) but ends in B major; Newton-John’s half begins in Bb major (0:35) but effortlessly glissades into the Eb chorus (0:53). Lots of pivots continue from there.

Natalie Cole | This Will Be

“Natalie Cole bloomed into a superstar with her debut single, ‘This Will Be,’ released in 1975 when she was 25 years old.” (JazzIz) With its funky, soulful sound, the song helped her step out of the shadow of her father, Nat ‘King’ Cole, one of the most iconic vocalists of the 20th century. Since its release, it has also been featured in several movies and was used in a long-running series of eHarmony commercials.

‘This Will Be’ was written and produced by Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy. It became a Billboard hit and earned Natalie a couple of GRAMMYs, including that for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, a category that had been dominated by Aretha Franklin up to that point. As mentioned, it also turned Cole into a major star and her popularity continued to soar through the ’70s. While drug issues would slow her down, she would launch a comeback that peaked with her 1991 album, Unforgettable … with Love.”

The track has a unique layout which doesn’t adhere to traditional songwriting structure; there doesn’t appear to be a chorus! After starting in Bb major with an extremely long groove-driven intro for a tune that clocks in at less than three minutes total, two verses unspool as Natalie sings an impeccable duet with herself. As the third verse begins, there’s a transition up to Db major at 1:02. Each verse has a different overlay of vocal melody, but the underlying chords are the same. A stop-time bridge appears at 1:29. The intensity ramps up right to the end; even as the volume fades, Cole unfurls more and more of her powerhouse upper range belt. The swing momentum, effortless vocal prowess, and the sheer joy she communicates through her performance are reminders of the Cole family’s jazz and pop legacy, which started in 1940.

Astral Drive | Love, Light + Happiness

After performing with, producing, and/or writing for The Jam, Paul McCartney, XTC, Duran Duran, The Cure, Thompson Twins, Sting, Hot Chocolate, Cyndi Lauper, Natalie Imbruglia, Pixie Lott, and Bryan Adams, what does one do for an encore?

“After decades of making records, hits and misses for other artists, Phil Thornalley began making his own under the Astral Drive moniker in 2017, a combination of seventies recording techniques, impromptu jam sessions (with himself) and starry-eyed idealism,” (The Progressive Aspect) … Thornalley seems to have enjoyed the broader focus allowed by working for himself: “In my days as a songwriter-for-hire, I could happily contrive a tune at the drop of a hat, imagining the artist’s voice and sensibilities as I made choices about melody or chords. But for my own music I have the freedom to allow the songs to bubble up from the unconscious. Perhaps that’s a more natural and organic route than writing in a caffeinated sweat, hoping to deliver something for an impatient platinum-selling artist.”

Astral Drive’s 2021 single “Love, Light and Happiness” opens in A minor with a deceptively simple five-step ascending melodic run (the tonic to the fifth degree of the scale). Via a common tone, the melody lofts right over the border of the A minor tonality and makes an ecstatic landing in the anthemic chorus (an F# minor/E minor vamp) at 0:55. F/G provides some sleight of hand for the transition back into the A minor verse (1:18 – 1:24).

Bull | Disco Living

Silent Radio UK explains that the York, UK-based band Bull “were formed in 2011 by vocalist and songwriter Tom Beer and guitarist Dan Lucas with a mission to simply make the music they wanted to listen to, inspired by their ’90s heroes such as Pavement, Yo La Tengo and the Pixies.” DIY reviewed “Disco Living,” the band’s 2020 single: One of the band members ” … walked past one mansion which was under construction and it had a facade of the completed house on the front with the extremely bold tag line, Discover Effortless Living. I thought this was really funny so I wrote the song with that as the opening line, kind of about that and how absurd it all was.”

The video is based almost entirely on advertising “air dancers” and human approximations of same. The band is almost completely upstaged by the funkier-than-average air dancers, occasionally joining in via window-within-window footage of them having absolutely no fun at all. “It’s everyone’s favorite slogan / It’s a ‘Food Coffee Food Cocktails Party!’ / Help me forget all my problems / Or I’ll pay someone to solve them.”

The very early whole-step key change kicks in gradually (0:55 – 1:03), leaving the listener a bit disoriented. It feels like the tempo should have also increased, as if someone turned up the playback speed on a vinyl record. But the the tempo remains the same — and the party continues from there.

Edison Lighthouse | Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes

The inclusion of Kate Bush’s distinctive mid-80s track “Running Up That Hill” in the streaming video hit Stranger Things might be the most prominent digital-age revival of a decades-old song — but it was hardly the first. “Proving that essentially all of pop history is now fair game for a TikTok revival, one of the biggest-growing streaming hits of 2022 now belongs to Nixon-era one-hit wonder Edison Lighthouse, with their bubblegum smash ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),'” (Billboard) … “The song, which reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1970, has seen an explosion in its streaming consumption after the song started getting adapted into a TikTok meme of users posting clips and photos of themselves to accompany the song’s lyrics … ” Streams were up by 1,490% and the song also moved onto Spotify’s daily US top 200 chart, just outside the top 100.

“’Love Grows’ marked one of just two Hot 100 appearances for the British pop/rock quartet Edison Lighthouse — the other coming in early 1971 with the No. 72-peaking ‘It’s Up to You Petula.’ The group’s frontman, Tony Burrows, was perhaps the most prolific bubblegum singer of his era,” scoring hits under his own name as well as an anonymous vocalist for the groups White Plains, Brotherhood of Man (‘United We Stand,’ 1970), The Pipkins, and First Class (“Beach Baby,” 1974). “He also provided backing vocals on a pair of early Elton John classics ‘Levon’ and ‘Tiny Dancer.'”

The track shifts up a half-step at 1:57.

Brad Mehldau | New York State of Mind

In spring 2020, jazz pianist Brad Mehldau released a suite of tunes inspired by the opening months of the COVID-19 crisis. “Locked down in the Netherlands, (he) decided to compose a 12-part cycle 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 … Billy Joel’s “New York State Of Mind” and Jerome Kern’s “Look For The Silver Lining” find new reservoirs of heartbreak.”

On his Bandcamp page, Mehldau released these liner notes for the Suite: ” … a musical snapshot of life the last month in the world in which we’ve all found ourselves. I’ve tried to portray on the piano some experiences and feelings that are both new and common to many of us. I’ve pointed to some of the strong feelings that have arisen the past month or more … a bittersweet gut pain that has hit me several times out of the blue when I think back on how things were even just a few months ago, and how long ago and for away that seems now … Billy Joel’s ‘New York State of Mind,’ a song I’ve loved since I was nine years old, is a love letter to a city that I’ve called home for years and that I’m away from now. I know lots of people there and miss them terribly and I know how much that great city hurts right now.”

Like Joel’s original, Mehldau’s cover grows most sentimental during its softly stated middle section. Although the tune is in C major overall, the midsection (1:10 – 1:43) is a parade of ii-V progressions through multiple keys whose eventual destination is back home to the original key. During the piece’s closing bars, a distant echo of the iconic main theme of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” somehow boosts the NYC quotient even further.

Michael Lucke’s wonderful transcription of Mehldau’s solo is featured on this video.

George Michael | Freedom ’90

“Freedom ’90” was the second single from George Michael’s 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice. The album attempted to accomplish the nearly impossible task of following up on Faith, Michael’s global smash 1987 album that produced multiple hit singles and was among the top 50 best-selling albums of the 1980s.

Billboard’s review of the track included some colorful prose: “Platinum pop star waxes both cynical and philosophical on this well-worded stab at his early days of fame.” From The Daily Vault: “Its catchy chorus and uptempo, jangling instrumentation, coupled with his signature soaring vocals, make this confessional a striking example of Michael’s newfound independence.” From Music and Media: “… a stirring Bo Diddley beat, a gospel approach, and a great piano riff are the main features of this addictive hit candidate.”

Completely independent of radio airplay: the focus on a pantheon of the world’s top supermodels at the height of their own careers, rather than Michael singing to the camera, sent the video into the highest strata of popularity. The fact that all of the cover art iconography of Faith — the leather jacket, the jukebox, and the blonde hollow-body guitar — ends up spectacularly reduced to ashes didn’t hurt, either.

Beginning in a slightly uptuned C major, the verse is followed by some relatively delicate syncopation of the vocal line during the C minor pre-chorus (1:46). At 2:07, C major comes roaring back for the monstrously huge sing-along chorus. 3:30 brings another minor pre-chorus; at 4:52, a minor bridge also provides a contrasting lead-up to the chorus.

Eric Clapton | Layla

British guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, “with a band of stellar musicians that included the late Duane Allman, went into Florida’s Criteria Studios to record what would become one of the great classic albums of all time, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” (American Songwriter). “With its standout track ‘Layla,’ the album became a timeless record that helped determine the direction of 1970s rock guitar, performed by a band called Derek and the Dominos, as Clapton didn’t want to use his name for the marquee value.

‘Layla’ was a song Clapton wrote, with Dominos drummer Jim Gordon, about his forbidden love for the wife of his close friend George Harrison (she eventually became Clapton’s wife) … The album might have done big business had Clapton been up front about being the big name in the group, but instead, it stalled on the charts. When the edited version of ‘Layla’ was released to radio as a single in 1972, it did fairly well, but by this time Allman was dead and the band had broken up.” But in 1992, “propelled by ‘Layla’ and ‘Tears in Heaven,’ Unplugged became Clapton’s biggest selling-album, as well as one of the biggest-selling live albums in history, with a purported 26 million copies sold. ‘Layla’ won a Grammy, more than two decades after it was originally recorded, for Best Rock Song …”

After the iconic intro states the guitar-driven hook, a surprising downward half-step key change hits as verse 1 begins (0:24). We’re thrown off-kilter by a bar of 2/4 among the track’s overall 4/4 meter at 0:22, immediately preceding the modulation. The key reverts up a half-step for the first chorus, and the pattern continues from there. At 3:11, an instrumental section featuring piano drops a full step as it morphs into a more peaceful major key, taking up the second 50% of the track.

The Kinks | The Village Green Preservation Society

“A very reflective and nostalgic song written by lead singer Ray Davies, this is about the innocent times in small English towns, where the village green was the community center,” (Songfacts). “The entire album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) was based on this theme.”

From Pitchfork‘s review of the album: “The problem facing The Kinks when they released (the album) wasn’t merely the competition– Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, Led Zeppelin’s debut, and the Rolling Stones’ Beggars’ Banquet offered plenty– but that this subtle, funny, surreal, and at times almost tender record could have been recorded on another planet. During the summer of 1968, stateside fans were hooked on a high-intensity diet that had them jonesing for aggressive, overstated fare like “Street Fighting Man” and “You Shook Me” and “Communication Breakdown.” The disconnect between The Kinks and the rock world’s rapidly narrowing palette could hardly have been more pronounced. Compare the Stones’ bombastic, urban “Sympathy for the Devil” with understated work like “Village Green”, bouncing along like a horse and buggy as Ray Davies paints the landscape: “Out in the country, far from all the soot and noise of the city … Though widely disregarded at the time of its release, The Kinks’ 1968 apex, The Village Green Preservation Society, has had a profound impact on the present state of indie rock.”

A whole-step modulation hits at 1:12.