*This is the fourth installment of a week-long series featuring songs from the 1985 Off-Broadway musical Nunsense*
“I Could’ve Gone to Nashville” is the “11 o’clock number” in the show, during which Sister Amnesia remembers her real name. The tune has a laid-back country groove, reminiscent of the music to the 1978 musical The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. It alternates back and forth between Ab and B a few times, and at Amnesia’s point of revelation at modulates up to C at 2:54.
*This is the third installment of a week-long series featuring songs from the 1985 Off-Broadway musical Nunsense*
This duet comes halfway through Act 2, and pays homage to Jerry Herman with its old-fashioned “boom-chick” accompaniment and kick-line at the end. George Gershwin’s 1919 song “Swanee” is also quoted. The track is sprinkled with key changes throughout. Beginning in F, we transition to Bb for the first verse at 0:27, up a half step to B for the second verse at 0:53, and up again to C for the third verse at 1:46. Finally, the “Swanee” quote leads to a modulation down to A at 2:40 for the final verse.
*This is the second installment of a week-long series featuring songs from the 1985 Off-Broadway musical Nunsense*
“The Drive-In” comes towards the end of Act 2 in Dan Goggin’s Off-Broadway musical Nunsense. The number has an Andrews Sisters vibe with a swinging groove and tight, 3-part harmony. It starts in C minor and opens up into C major at 0:50.
*This is the first installment of a week-long series featuring songs from the 1985 Off-Broadway musical Nunsense*
Dan Goggin’s 1985 musical Nunsense is the second-longest-running Off-Broadway show ever, and led to six sequels and three spinoffs. “I Just Want To Be a Star” comes near the end of the second act, and is a big, brassy showtune number that recalls the style of Jerry Herman. Beginning in F, the song briefly detours into Gb at 1:24, then returns to F at 1:41 before a final modulation up to Ab at 2:16.
“According to David Byrne, who is the only writer credited on the track, this was written about a girl he knew who used to take LSD in a field next to the Yoo-Hoo drink factory in Baltimore,” (Songfacts). “‘Somehow that image seemed fitting, the junk food factory and this young girl tripping her brains out gazing at the sky,’ he told Q Magazine in 1992. ‘But it wasn’t a drugs song at all and I don’t think people took it that way. I think it gives the impression of a spiritual or emotional experience, instantaneous and unprovoked. The sublime can come out of the ridiculous.’ Talking Heads never performed this live: They stopped touring in 1984 after their Stop Making Sense concert film was released.”
The video was the first created by Jim Blashfield, who pioneered a collage-animation style with his short film, Suspicious Circumstances. That got the attention of Talking Heads, which wanted a similar motif for their ‘And She Was’ video. The resulting clip earned MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best Group Video and Best Concept Video. Blashfield was commissioned for more videos in this style; his work can be seen in ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ (Paul Simon) (and) ‘Sowing the Seeds of Love’ (Tears For Fears).”
After a start in E major, the pre-chorus shifts into F major (0:29 – 0:44) before a return to E major for the chorus. The bridge (1:53 – 2:08) drops into B minor before returning to the overall pattern.
“Back To The Future, the biggest hit at the 1985 box office, is a beautifully assembled Swiss watch of a movie, a perfect little machine full of subliminal clues that pay off much later,” (Stereogum). “Director Rob Zemeckis and his co-writer, producer Bob Gale, find small and clever little ways to convey information, and we get a lot of those in the film’s first few minutes. We also get the big, pumping jam that would become the first #1 hit for Huey Lewis And The News, a band that was already on fire …
‘The Power Of Love’ is a goofy song, but it’s a catchy one. Lewis mugs hard all through it, and he wails out nonsensical cocaine-logic philosophical nuggets about how love is tougher than diamonds, rich like cream, and stronger and harder than a bad girl’s dream. When you’re making good bubblegum, you can get away with refusing to make sense, and ‘The Power Of Love’ is good bubblegum. The track has hooks on hooks on hooks, with all the keyboard stabs and shiny-bluesy riffs in the exact right places.”
The verses are in C minor, but the choruses (first heard from 3:12 – 3:30) shift to C major. Between 4:11 – 4:33, the bridge transitions to Eb major. True to HL+TN’s trademark sound, there’s plentiful helpings of everything: the generous guitar solo, the wall-to-wall huskiness of Lewis’ lead vocal, the up-in-the-mix drums, and synth kicks just about everywhere. The band might have been somewhat less delicate than a Swiss watch, but it was nonetheless one of the most perfect pop machines of its era, scoring 19 top ten hits overall. “Power of Love” reached #1 for two weeks in August 1985 and was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
“Released in November 1986, the fully instrumental Jazz From Hell was technically the last studio album that Frank Zappa released in his lifetime, despite having finished two others,” (UDiscoverMusic) … “Fittingly, Jazz From Hell was every bit as uncompromising and groundbreaking as the composer’s best work, giving a tantalizing glimpse of how Zappa might’ve continued to harness cutting-edge technology were it not for his untimely death.
Zappa had been an early adopter of the Synclavier Digital Music System – one of the first digital samplers and synthesizers – using it throughout the mid-’80s” on several albums. “The equipment opened up a world of possibilities for Zappa, allowing him to push the boundaries of his music beyond the capabilities of human players, as he told Keyboardist magazine in 1987: ‘The moment you get your hands on a piece of equipment like this, where you can modify known instruments in ways that human beings just never do, such as add notes to the top and bottom of the range, or allow a piano to perform pitch-bends or vibrato, even basic things like that will cause you to rethink the existing musical universe. The other thing you get to do is invent sounds from scratch. Of course, that opens up a wide range.’
Jazz From Hell arrived at a time when Frank Zappa’s profile had rarely been higher, thanks to his ongoing battle against censorship in music and the Parents’ Music Resource Centre (PMRC) in particular. Hilariously, his efforts in advocating for free speech meant that Jazz From Hell – an instrumental album, lest we forget – was given a Parental Advisory – Explicit Content sticker on release.”
“Night School,” the album’s opening track, starts in C lydian, departing from and returning to it multiple times throughout (the first example: a shift to C# minor from 0:55 – 1:07). The multi-layered electronic groove is so dense and relentless that when it finally disappears during the outro (4:37), we’re left with a feeling of relative restfulness — even though the melody is a lone sustained siren of a #11 note, leaning hard into C lydian.
“A Change of Heart” is the title track of David Sanborn’s 1987 album, which “reached #74 on the Billboard 200, #43 on Billboard’s R&B Albums chart and #3 on the Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.” (SessionDays).
“By the mid 1980s, saxophonist Sanborn’s sound was dominated by the synthetic tinge of keyboards and synthesizers, falling in line with the slick, crossover jazz style of the era,” (JazzAtelier). “Change of Heart is emblematic of Sanborn’s direction at the time, and its eight tracks alternate between funky, danceable numbers and smooth ballads, all with a highly polished commercial veneer.” Crossover was something of a code word for the more frequently used term smooth jazz, a genre which peaked in the 80s and could easily be found on the FM dial in most major North American cities at that time. AllMusic describes the genre as “an outgrowth of fusion, one that emphasizes its polished side.”
The track begins with a melodically acrobatic intro led by a panpipe-like patch on a wind-controlled (“EWI”) synthesizer, a new development in synthesis. The EWI player was one of the instrument’s foremost players and boosters, tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker, who also used the instrument on some of his own material. The tune begins in earnest as a slow funk groove kicks in at the 0:50 mark, alternating between A minor and its relative C major. At 1:14 – 1:38, there’s a shift into Eb lydian mode and then a return to the original A minor/C major. A quick revisit to the intro’s territory from 2:25 – 2:50 brings a dialogue between Brecker’s birdsong-like EWI lines and Sanborn’s trademark jump-to-lightspeed sonic intensity. At 4:02, a late kitchen-sink bridge kicks in, led by Marcus Miller’s driven stepwise descending bass lines and a saturation of every possible square inch with multiple synth textures and compound harmonies. But at 4:24, the groove falls away and the intensity dissipates for the outro as Brecker’s darting EWI sound is once again the focus.
For the second and final installment of our series marking the closing of Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, we feature the title song. Immediately defined by the iconic descending chromatic scale on the organ at the beginning, the tune also has many key changes scattered throughout. Beginning in D minor, it moves to G minor at 1:08 for the second verse and E minor at 1:48 for the third. There is another shift to F# minor at 2:48, followed by G# minor at 3:04 where it remains till the end.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera ended its record-setting 35-year Broadway run at the Majestic Theatre this past weekend, so this week we are going to feature two songs from the score. “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” is sung by Christine in Act 2 at her father’s grave as she looks for solace and advice. The song passes between G minor and G major for the first two verses and choruses, and then modulates up to Bb for the last chorus at 2:36.
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