“Sarah” was a single first released by Dublin Ireland’s Thin Lizzy in 1979; it reached #24 on the British pop charts and #26 in Ireland.
The Academic, a band from just west of Dublin, met while attending the same secondary school during the 2010s. AllMusic reports that the group ” … rode a series of punchy, melodic singles to national success when their 2018 debut album topped the Irish charts. They soon netted a deal and followed up with a couple of dreamy singles … “
“Sarah” was apparently a live one-off for the band; the track wasn’t included on either of its studio releases. This performance was live on Today FM, an Irish radio station. After starting in A major, 1:48 brings an instrumental bridge, followed by a shift to Bb major at 2:08.
Longtime collaborators Chick Corea and Gary Burton, pianist and vibraphonist respectively, released their jazz duo album Crystal Silence in 1972. (A follow-up album, New Crystal Silence, was released in 2008.) Allmusic called the record “a sublime indication of what two master improvisers can do given quality raw material… Improvised music is rarely this coherent and melodic.”
Corea, a titanic pianist in the history of jazz music, is known for helping introduce the jazz fusion genre as a member of Miles Davis’s band in the 1960s. A 60-time Grammy nominated performer and 23-time winner, the 79 year old Corea passed away on February 11, 2021 from a rare form of cancer.
While this performance by Corea and Burton doesn’t directly modulate, the interplay and improvisation between the two push at the boundaries of the A minor tonality throughout, reflecting the innovative spirit Corea championed throughout his career.
Spain’s 1973 Eurovision entry, Mocedades’ “Eres Tu” (It’s You), was voted by Spanish fans as the nation’s all-time favorite. Its win was in spite of the song’s having secured only the silver medal at the global competition that year, according to Wiwibloggs, a site devoted to Eurovision.
Billboard details that the tune peaked at #9 in the Hot 100 chart and also reached the top 10 on the Adult Contemporary chart. With “Eres Tú”, Mocedades are one of the five musical acts from Spain to have scored a top ten hit in the United States (including Los Bravos, Julio Iglesias, Enrique Iglesias, andLos del Río with “Macarena”). It was also the only song to become a top ten hit sung entirely in Spanish. The song was inducted into the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2015, it ranked #47 on Billboard’s 50 Greatest Latin Songs of All Time.
The half-step modulation hits at 2:24. Many thanks to Christopher Larkosh for submitting this tune to MotD months back, and for the many other modulations he sent us over the past several years. MotD will never forget you!
“Baroque and Blue” is the first movement of composer Claude Bolling‘s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio, written in 1973. A piano prodigy, Bolling began playing jazz professionally at age 14 and scored over 100 films. The piece was also a breakthrough for the legendary classical flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal. This suite was the first of a series of “crossover” compositions that synthesize Baroque and swing era jazz elements, and spent well over a year on the Billboard Top 40 chart. Bolling passed away at age 90 last December.
The movement follows a large scale ABA form — beginning in G major, modulating to the parallel minor at 1:54, and returning to G at 4:36.
To quote novelist Anne Lamott: “If you don’t die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.”
Young, the longtime folk/rock sage and a resident of LA’s storied Laurel Canyon during its heyday as a music nexus, has penned a dozen or more well-known hits. But “Winterlong” was a concert-only rarity for the Canadian-born artist — until the track inexplicably showed up on a compilation album. Songfacts reports: “One of Neil Young’s rarities, ‘Winterlong’ finds him yearning and waiting, possibly for a woman, but that’s no sure thing. All we know is, he’s looking to find his way, and not sure how to get there. The song contains one of the more evocative lines in Young’s catalog: ‘It’s all illusion anyway.’ Fans recall hearing Young perform this song as early as 1970. It’s likely he recorded it in 1974 during the session for his album On The Beach, but ‘Winterlong’ wasn’t released until 1977, which it appeared on the Decade collection.”
Starting in C major, the chorus starts squarely in C but ends in D major at 1:18. At 1:38, C major returns. 2:21 – 2:40 brings another D major patch before the tune ends in C major.
Hailed by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time, Stevie Wonder‘s “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” was featured on his 1972 album Talking Book. The track was awarded Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy’s, and nominated for both Record and Song of the Year; it also was Wonder’s third song to hit the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Key change at 2:09.
Chris with MotD co-curator Elise at the piano in 2011 — probably singing “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”
This post originally appeared on MotD on April 8, 2019. We’re bringing it back in expanded form today in honor of Christopher Larkosh, who contributed the tune to us. Chris passed away from a sudden illness at the age of only 56 on December 24th, 2020. He was a MotD fan who contributed multiple tunes to our collection; others are still in the queue, waiting their turn.
May the memory of Chris’ enduring humanitarian spirit, deep understanding of music’s ability to motivate and heal, and pervasive musicality be a comfort to all who knew him.
Elise
MotD fan Christopher Larkosh contributes today’s tune: “Musical geniuses Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager put ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ in good hands with Melissa Manchester. This is probably why it’s one of my all-time karaoke and piano bar favorites to this day.” A 1978 top ten hit in the US and Canada for Manchester, the tune was later covered by Rita Coolidge and Liza Minelli, among others. The modulation kicks in at 2:35.
In an interview with Scott Holleran, Manchester, a songwriter in her own right, said of the tune: “I remember being friends with Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager and hearing (it) as a very quiet song, bringing it to him and saying yes, it’s gorgeous, let’s do it the way Peter did it — as beautiful and quiet. [Then] I showed up in the studio and the cannons blew on this huge version — which turned out beautifully, it turned out as a gift.”
In a 2004 Billboard interview, Manchester expressed uneasiness about the song’s take on grief: “I finally understand what it meant … I [originally] thought it was a brilliant song, but it seemed like the antithesis of everything Carole [Bayer Sager] and I were writing, which was always about self-affirmation and crying out and sharpening your communication skills. But it’s a beautifully crafted song that was all about how in the end you just have to learn to cope — and that’s no easy thing.”
Those of us who knew Chris will remember that he was never one to hide his feelings, either — and we’re all the richer for it.
“Their self-effacing name to the contrary, Average White Band are anything but — one of the few white groups to cross the color line and achieve success and credibility playing funk,” AllMusic reports. “With their tight, fiery sound also belying their Scottish heritage, evoking American R&B hotbeds like Detroit, Memphis, and Philadelphia instead.”
Wikipedia details that the band had several soul and disco hits between 1974 and 1980: “They are best known for their million-selling instrumental track ‘Pick Up the Pieces’, and for their albums AWB and Cut the Cake … They have influenced others, such as the Brand New Heavies, and been sampled by various musicians, including the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, TLC, Too Short, Ice Cube, Eric B. & Rakim, Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, and Arrested Development, making them the 15th most sampled act in history.” Despite many changes in lineup, as of 2020, the band continues on — 48 years after it was formed.
“A Love of Your Own” (1976) starts in F# minor, shifts to A minor at 0:44, then returns to F# minor at 1:12. The pattern holds through a second verse (through 2:24), where a wholesale shift upwards to G minor kicks in for the balance of the tune — which amounts to an extended 3-minute chorus/outro. Many thanks to stalwart mod wrangler JB for submitting this tune!
“In 1970, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Todd Rundgren, fresh off of a successful stint as a co-songwriter and guitarist for rock outfit The Nazz, began experimenting with the additional roles of vocalist and producer. The album Runt, released in 1970 when Rundgren was 22, was perhaps understandably somewhat spare and tentative compared to his later output. AllMusic reports that “such isolationism lends Runtits unique atmosphere — it is the insular work of a fiercely talented artist finally given the opportunity to pursue his off-kilter musical vision … it’s apparent that Rundgren could never have made Runt with the Nazz — and that’s before the introspective ballads or the willfully strange stuff kicks in. Throughout the record, Rundgren reveals himself as a gifted synthesist, blending all manners of musical styles and quirks into a distinctive signature sound …”
That the word finally can be justly applied to Rundgren at 22 gives some idea of his early-career impact. Runt hinted at much of what was to come in Rundgren’s future career (50 years and counting) — not least a sustained refusal of a formulaic approach to songwriting subject matter. “Hope I’m Around” wasn’t included on the initial pressing of the album, but was added to later versions. Hardly a throwaway track, it focuses on the messy/long goodbye phase of an apparently rocky relationship.
Starting in C major, the choruses throughout make ample use of a distinctive bVII – IV – I progression for the title line. That same bVII chord is the substrate for most of the bridge (2:56 – 3:09), ringing out on nearly every beat — oddly static in comparison with the balance of the tune. The piano-driven contemporary pop harmonies are clearly influenced by Rundgren’s Philly-centric youthful listening, as well as his newfound focus on the work of iconic singer / songwriter / pianist Laura Nyro. The country-tinged traditional ballad waltz feel provides an unexpected contrast to the broad harmonic vocabulary. 4:13 brings a vivid transition, lofting us all the way up into A major at 4:17 on our way to the closing measures.
AllMusic describes Little Feat as “long-running purveyors of funky southern boogie (by way of Los Angeles). Though they had all the trappings of a Southern-fried blues band, Little Feat were hardly conventional. Led by songwriter/guitarist Lowell George, Little Feat were a wildly eclectic band, bringing together strains of blues, R&B, country, and rock & roll. The band members were exceptionally gifted technically and their polished professionalism sat well with the slick sounds coming out of Southern California during the ’70s. However, Little Feat were hardly slick — they had a surreal sensibility, as evidenced by George‘s idiosyncratic songwriting, which helped them earn a cult following among critics and musicians.”
This live version of “Mercenary Territory” is from the 1978 live album Waiting for Columbus. Mostly in D major, the tune takes us through a brief but trippy key-of-the-moment patch from 1:18 – 1:25. We then embark on an extended D minor instrumental bridge from 1:55 – 3:36 featuring a boisterous romp of a sax solo, ending in stratospheric off-the-horn glissando fireworks (a horn section wasn’t a regular part of the instrumentation, but no less than the Tower of Power horns joined forces with Little Feat here). At 3:36, there’s a prominent shift back to D major.
Many thanks to recurrent contributor JB for this submission!
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