Tag: rock

Electric Light Orchestra | Mr. Blue Sky

Jeff Lynne, who essentially is Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), wrote and produced “Mr. Blue Sky,” which was recorded for the UK band’s Out of the Blue album in 1977. “The song forms the fourth and final track of the ‘Concerto for a Rainy Day’ suite, on side three of the original double album, and was later released as a standalone single,” (SmoothRadio.com). ELO’s mix of modern production, tips of the hat to Beatle-esque songwriting, and unapologetic earnestness was popular with the public: RockFandom.com reports that “from 1972 to 1986, ELO accumulated 27 Top-40 hit singles in both the UK and the US. The group also scored 20 Top 20 UK hit singles, as well as 15 Top-20 hit singles in the US . The band also holds the record for having the most Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 hits of any group in US chart history without ever having a number one single.”

“Lynne has said that he wrote ‘Mr Blue Sky’ after locking himself away in a Swiss chalet, and attempting to write ELO’s follow-up album to (the 1976 release) A New World Record (Smoothradio.com). ‘It was dark and misty for two weeks, and I didn’t come up with a thing,’ he told the BBC. ‘Suddenly the sun shone and it was, Wow, look at those beautiful Alps. I wrote it, and 13 other songs, in the next two weeks.'” The tune reached only #6 on the UK pop charts and only #35 in the US, but retroactively has become a classic: “it has since become ELO’s signature song, and has been one of the most downloaded and streamed songs of the 1970s” and has been featured in many TV and film productions, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Doctor Who.

Written mostly in an emphatic F major, 3:43 brings an extended instrumental outro. Starting in Db major, the outro heavily features two ELO signatures: choir and strings. At 4:24, a section in Eb major further demonstrates Lynne’s unique approach of adding classical music conventions to a rock/pop sound — the rock instrumentation falls away entirely. Many thanks to our our regular contributor JB for this submission!

Cats UK | Luton Airport

Luton, a borough of just over 200,000 less than 30 miles from London, made its name as a center of hat manufacturing. Its arts center, the Hat Factory, was exactly that during the industrial revolution. So its residents were probably a bit surprised when a single named after its airport, released by the all-female band Cats UK, reached #22 on the UK Singles Chart in 1977.

The tune was inspired by the 1977 Campari television commercial: a woman answers the pickup line “Were you truly wafted here from paradise?” by saying “Nahh, Luton Airport!” (The Scotsman).

There’s a whole-step modulation at 2:37.

Gogol Bordello | Trans-Continental Hustle

“Gogol Bordello is a spectacle,” (NPR). “The wildly exuberant, multi-ethnic group from New York City makes frenetic music that’s part punk rock, part Gypsy folk, part Cabaret. Led by Eugene Hütz, a Chernobyl survivor from Ukraine, the band is famous for its costumed live shows that often stretch for more than two explosive hours … ” The band, formed in 1999, has a focus of making “‘the contradictions of life sound harmonious,’ with a head-spinning mix of ska, punk, metal, rap, flamenco, roots reggae, dub and any other sounds they could think of.”

Pitchfork describes Gogol Bordello’s fifth studio album: “the aptly titled Trans-Continental Hustle is largely about the experience of being Gogol Bordello, about overcoming stigmas against immigrants and America’s tacit favoring of bland one-world homogenization in order to carve out a vibrant, warts-and-all space where life can be celebrated and differences cherished.”

The title track from the 2010 album starts with just an acoustic guitar, but soon more layers are added, building to the first chorus at 0:48, where the groove is fully in place. At 1:42, the key jumps up a major fourth; at 1:57, we skip up another full step, then returning to the original key at 2:27. Many thanks to our keen-eared mod scout JB for yet another wide-ranging submission!

Sanford Townsend Band | Smoke From a Distant Fire

The Sanford Townsend Band formed in Tuscaloosa, Alabama but later found great success on a national level and beyond on the strength of its 1977 single “Smoke from a Distant Fire,” which reached the top 10 in the US. Band member Johnny Townsend: “‘We had landed a publishing deal in 1974 and made demos with a lot of the great players of the day that again, caught the attention of another big time New York producer, Jerry Wexler” (Songfacts). “It was Wexler’s idea to take the band to (Muscle) Shoals to record … The experience was incredible … What can you say about Jerry Wexler (alias Tex Wex) that hasn’t been said. He discovered Ray Charles … He took Aretha from a so-so history at Columbia Records, signed her to Atlantic, and helped create some of the greatest popular music ever recorded … When the opportunity to work with him came up we didn’t bat an eye. He was a god to us.'”

Ritter Records reports that the band, unable to duplicate its 1977 success, broke up in 1980, returning to work as session musicians and songwriters. “Sanford went on to co-write Michael McDonald’s debut solo hit ‘I Keep Forgettin” in 1982, while Townsend also worked with Michael McDonald, Jackson Browne, and Gregg Allman (among others),” along with solo releases.

The shuffle-driven hit features stacked backing harmonies that locked from start to finish. The tune has funk feel and a saxophone hook but also features a southern rock sound around the edges. In A major overall, the bridge modulates to F major from 1:28 – 1:49.

Procol Harum | Repent Walpurgis

Best known for their hit “Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967), the UK-based prog rock band Procol Harum “developed a really new sound with two keyboards (piano and Hammond organ) and a guitarist extraordinaire called Robin Trower who was greatly influenced by Jimi Hendrix,” (ProgArchive). “They quickly became one of the precursors of progressive rock (along with the Moody Blues and the Nice), mixed in some classical influences, and sold millions of singles but also albums.” Anyone who’s heard “Whiter Shade,” which is likely a lot of people, would recognize the band’s sound immediately on “Repent Walpurgis,” the closing track on the band’s 1967 self-titled first album. The album also featured the track “Conquistador,” which became a hit single, albeit several years later).

JB, who contributed this tune, adds: “PH always managed to retain a rock sensibility, which kept them from crossing the line from melodrama into bombast, or even self-parody … one of the most under-rated bands of the 60s, in my opinion.  It’s at least as progressive (at least along certain dimensions) as Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper. But even though nearly every self-respecting hippie that I was exposed to during that period seemed to have a copy of this album in their collection, PH never really broke through to the same level of success as Yes, ELP, or other bands mining the same musical vein. My guess is that PH was about 3-4 years too early to really hit the sweet spot of Art/Prog Rock, although arguably they were one of the principal progenitors of that movement.”

Built primarily around C minor, a big transition at 2:15 leads us through a peaceful patch — a melody-less accompaniment for the Bach/Gounod version of “Ave Maria” in C major. At 2:59, we return to C minor.

Key + Peele | The Power of Wings

When it comes to comedy duo Key and Peele, “the title comedians are surprisingly good singers,” (Screenrant). The sketches on Comedy Central’s Key & Peele series “ran the gamut from touching on politics or race to skits on famous movies or TV shows. The pair also had some spot-on parodies of music artists, from the hilarious ‘Ray Parker Theme Songs’ – where the Ghostbusters singer reveals a catalog of horrible, unused themes for other movies – to ‘Outkast Reunion,’ where Andre 3000 and Big Boi awkwardly cross paths. Key & Peele remains a treasure trove of great sketches, with the show coming to an end back in 2015. While Keegan-Michael Key has continued to act, Jordan Peele has mostly retired from performing to step behind the camera, reinventing himself as a horror auteur with movies like Get Out.”

Wendell, a nerd and comic book fan of the highest order, is a recurring K+P character. But “Wings” took him to the next level of fantasy: If a Lord of the Rings Fandom Con had a baby with a power metal band, this video might be the result.

Unfortunately, the video’s modest budget is drained very visibly to zero dollars just before the bridge. Thereafter, even the half-step modulation at 1:53 and an “E for Effort” aren’t enough to save Wendell.

Jeff Beck | You Know, We Know

In its review of Jeff Beck’s Flash, Rolling Stone ranks it as “one of Beck’s best ever, a record of awesome guitar prowess and startling commercial daring. It is also irrefutable proof that his kind of flash never goes out of fashion.”

Trading on the huge cachet he’d built up during the 1960s and 1970s with garden variety music fans and tech-obsessed guitarists alike, Beck rested on his laurels a bit in the 80s: 1985’s Flash was his first release in five years. His work with The Yardbirds in the late 60s was legendary, but “while he was as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix,” explains AllMusic, “Jeff Beck never achieved the same commercial success as any of those contemporaries, primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career. After Rod Stewart left the Jeff Beck Group in 1971, Beck never worked with a charismatic lead singer who could have helped sell his music to a wide audience. Furthermore, he was simply too idiosyncratic, moving from heavy metal to jazz fusion within a blink of an eye … releasing only one album during the course of the ’90s. All the while, Beck retained the respect of fellow guitarists, who found his reclusiveness all the more alluring.”

“You Know, We Know,” the closing track of Flash, is based on a simple hook. After an intro in C major, the hook is first stated at 0:33, along with a rasping unprepared modulation to C# minor. Another jarring key change to D minor drops at 4:35. The mid-80s production fingerprint of Chic’s Nile Rogers, catching perhaps the most synth-centric sound of the entire decade, couldn’t be clearer on this track. Robert Christgau’s snarky review gave the album a B grade, opining that Beck “turns in the best LP of his pathologically spotty career by countenancing Rodgers’ production on five tracks. So what do we have here? We have half a good Nile Rodgers album, more or less.”

Talking Heads | Nothing But Flowers

After its initial waves of success in the late 70s and early 80s, the future of Talking Heads seemed more precarious. But you wouldn’t know it from the sound of “Nothing But Flowers,” a single from the 1988 album Naked, the band’s final release. The energetic, bouncy track bears the clear signature of several guest musicians from Africa. But Naked turned out to be the band’s final album. “It was touch-and-go for the band ever since their fourth album, Remain In Light, was released in 1980.” (Songfacts) “After that one, David Byrne embarked on various projects and it wasn’t always clear if or when he would re-convene Talking Heads.” The band broke up in 1991.

Songfacts contines: “The lyrics describe a post-apocalyptic world in which modern technology has been largely eliminated. Lead singer David Byrne, as the song’s protagonist, is torn between his appreciation for nature’s beauty and his dependency on such disappeared items as lawnmowers and fast food. It’s kind of the opposite of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ where they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Here, nature has re-claimed the land, and now the shopping malls are covered with flowers. Throughout the video, strong visual elements make the band’s origins at Rhode Island School of Design clear. The 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho opens with an epigraph quoting some lyrics from this song: And as things fell apart / Nobody paid much attention.”

Starting in C major, there’s a shift to D major partway through the chorus at 1:31, then a return to C major for another verse at 1:47. At 3:15, the second half of another split chorus is elevated up to D major, remaining there for the balance of the tune. Along the way, several short sections are propelled by the frisson of departures from the primary keys (for instance, 0:59 – 1:06).


Don Broco | One True Prince

UK rock band Don Broco‘s “One True Prince” is a single from its forthcoming album Amazing Things, scheduled for release in September 2021.

IndieIsNotAGenre details lead singer Rob Damiani’s thoughts on the track: “‘(it’s) about finding comfort in the fact that whatever you’re going through and however bad it may feel, nothing lasts forever. In these moments I try to remind myself how insignificant I am. Just one person amongst billions, on a rock orbiting a dying star, in a universe that will eventually implode on itself.’ … Amazing Things is the band’s fourth album, and follows the release of 2018’s Technology, which was a Top 5 album in the UK charts upon release … “

After starting in C major, the track dies down to a quiet grooveless interlude from 2:39 – 3:05, but then returns in the same key at full power at 3:12. The shift to a Db Lydian scale drops like a 10-ton anchor on dry land — in the middle of a phrase, no less — at 3:25.