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.
After the success of its second album, UK/US-hybrid rock/pop/reggae trio The Police were under orders from their record label to write a hit album (Zenyatta Mondatta). This focus was quite a change from the band’s earlier goals as they were defining their sound — but also different from its later days of almost total artistic freedom as a supergroup.
In a 1982 interview with Creemexcerpted on the band’s website, drummer Stewart Copeland recalls the challenges inherent in making the 1980 album: “‘We’ve got to do an album in four weeks we know we can do it, we’ve done it before. But this time it’s going to go straight to number one.’ Whilst we were in the studio, our sales figures were being discussed by people from the record company – and we hadn’t even got the thing on tape, let alone on vinyl. We were very acutely aware, that we were CreatingA Product For The Market-place. The market-place was there in the studio with us. It made it a very commercial album, a very slick, clean album that showed we can do that … It’s very difficult to make an album that’s tailor-made to go straight to the top of the charts.”
The frenetic album track “Man in a Suitcase” starts in F major, but after the bridge (1:14 – 1:28) there’s a jump to G major. Many thanks to our frequent contributor JB for this submission!
“With pianist/composer Tigran Hamasyan,” reports the artist’s own website, “potent jazz improvisation fuses with the rich folkloric music of his native Armenia … he’s one of the most remarkable and distinctive jazz-meets-rock pianists of his generation … Tigran’s career has included an impressive number of accolades, including top piano award at the 2013 Montreux Jazz Festival and the grand prize at the prestigious 2006 Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition … he was applauded by NPR Music: ‘With startling combinations of jazz, minimalist, electronic, folk and songwriterly elements … Hamasyan and his collaborators travel musical expanses marked with heavy grooves, ethereal voices, pristine piano playing and ancient melodies.'”
Our regular contributor Carlo Migliaccio has submitted Tigran’s tune “Drip,” performed here in 2018 with the Berklee College of Music Middle Eastern Fusion Ensemble. The tune combines elements of Middle Eastern music with metal — just for starters. Carlo hasn’t taken on the huge task of charting the tune out, but sends his initial findings: “The tune starts in B minor. The first modulation is at 5:03, which seems to ascend up a major third to D#, but it quickly drops down a half step in a modal shift. The tonal center definitely moves to D on a G harmonic minor scale … so is that D harmonic minor mixolydian(?) The second modulation is at 7:08 and travels briefly down a major third to Bb minor, a half step below the starting key. A few bars later, the final modulation takes it down another half step for an ending in A minor, a whole step below the starting key … I think. My ears are playing tricks on me with this one, but I’m now on a Tigran Hamasyan kick as a result of this tune.”
Maxime Cholley
Maxime Cholley, a French drummer and Berklee alum now based in New York City, has long been a proponent of Tigran’s work. Maxime performed on this track and recounts the session: “Working with Tigran Hamasyan was an incredible experience. He was very humble, patient, and thrilled to play with us and try new ideas on his own songs. At the end of a rehearsal, Tigran was working on a part and I joined him while the rest of the band packed up. As we played together, I clearly felt something that could be described as his ‘musical aura.’ His playing enhanced mine and both our sounds merged in the most satisfying way — as if each of his notes had some kind of sonic glue on it. His presence was absolutely mind blowing!”
The Arts Fuse describes The Bad Pilot, the 2019 album by John Powhida International Airport (winners of the 2011 Rock & Roll Rumble and multiple Boston Music Award nominees), as “clearly rooted in the 1970s — but that decade was nothing if not kaleidoscopic … the sound and feel of everything from Philly soul to new wave, hard rock, funk, and progressive rock.” JPIA’s recent release “Michael 3 O’Clock” continues that trend, incorporating kaleidoscopic effects on the video in addition to the melange of styles on the track.
Powhida relates some of the tune’s backstory: “I saw Michael Quercio and the 3 O’Clock Band open for REM. A direct quote from him to a heckler: ‘REM will be out in a second. Suck on this, honey.’ Trailblazers of the Paisley Underground scene with The Bangles and others … Prince was a fan and held his hand in a meeting, then signed them to Paisley Park.” AllMusic details that The 3 O’Clock “incorporated the chiming guitars of the Byrds and the Beatles into their pop songs with a psychedelic bent, and the clothes to match.” While this track centers the sheen of Philly Soul, it’s appropriately completed by a gilded paisley frame, including the filigree of Peter Moore’s artful backup vocal and string arrangement.
The ballads of the Philly Soul canon certainly never shied away from melancholy. Instead, they stared the emotion down bravely while featuring ecstatically gorgeous arrangements and harmonies — providing incentive for the listener to stick around instead of running back to bubble-gum pop. Meanwhile, Powhida has the guts to stare down his influences and a potentially pivotal missed connection while taking us along for the ride. A capsule review on Powhida’s Bandcamp page lauds the tune’s mix of “admiration, resentment, and a little heartbreak” — not bad for a four-minute narrative.
After the tune opens with a guitar hook over a mysterious suspended chord, the groove starts the track in earnest at 0:09 in an uncomplicated A major. The verse then shifts to a second section in C major at 0:37. The chorus, in E minor, admittedly owes a huge melodic debt to the chorus of The Stylistics’ “You Are Everything,” but mixes in plenty of Powhida’s trademark wit — so clever that Quercio reportedly couldn’t stay mad for long, even after being artfully skewered:
SuperCaliforniaFragileDiva what goes on inside your head? / PsychoRelicDandyLiar Michael 3 o’Clock it’s time for bed
Verse 2 and Chorus 2 continue the pattern, followed by a beautifully contrasting bridge, starting with a surprising palate-cleansing sidebar (C major) at 1:56, then a jump to C# minor at 1:59. At 2:44, JPo delivers one final double-sided homage before his pitch glissandos downward like an anchor falling to the bottom of a pond — making the modulation upward to E minor for the final wall-of-sound choruses all the more massive. After a minor-key echo of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” at the start of the outro, we somehow end this unlikely travelogue where we began, shifting back to A major and a reprise of the opening hook at 3:51.
“Charlie Daniels accomplished something few other musicians did: he made the leap from session musician to superstar,” AllMusic notes. “The song that made him famous was ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ a roaring country-disco fusion that became an international smash in 1979.” The tune “(introduced) him to millions of listeners and giving him a career that spanned decades. In its wake, Daniels quietly shifted his emphasis from Southern rock to country.” Earlier in his career, “his big breakthrough came when he played on Bob Dylan’s 1969 LP Nashville Skyline, a credit that opened the doors for the multi-instrumentalist to play with Leonard Cohen and Ringo Starr. Daniels parlayed this behind-the-scenes success into fronting his own band … Daniels weathered fashions, trends, and politics to become a beloved American music institution.” Daniels passed away in July 2020 in his mid-80s.
Rolling Stone Australia reviews “Drinking My Baby Goodbye,” Daniels’ 1985 release: “An outlier in a catalog more often associated with good-ole-white-boy anthems and Southern gothic story-songs, this 1985 Top 10 country hit is a dancing-all-over-your-troubles rave-up. It launches with an electric guitar part that, uh, tinkers with the one in Kenny Loggins’ ‘Footloose,’ but Daniels quickly commandeers the lick for himself … Daniels charges at his lines like he’s channeling Jerry Lee Lewis: ‘Pour me another one/I’m finished with the other one!’ But it’s Daniels’ delirious fiddle that moves the crowd and tips you off that this drinking cure might just work.”
This rollicking uptempo country/rockabilly dance hall track is fueled by Daniels’ vocal, which focuses on sung melody but adds a dash of the flow-state rap he made famous with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Daniels’ muscular yet agile double-stop fiddle technique is another central ingredient. A whole-step modulation cuts in at 2:56. Many thanks to Alex G. for yet another great tune!
The Hold Steady is “an acclaimed and respected Minneapolis-bred indie rockers who boast a melodic, contemporary take on mid-’70s classic rock,” reports AllMusic. “Craig Finn and Tad Kubler — two N.Y.C. transplants from Minneapolis — decided to blend their punk roots with album-oriented classicism and a frenetic literary sense, winding up with a careening, open-hearted rock & roll that seemed to exist just outside of time.”
TheAV Clubreviews 2006’s “Massive Nights” as “a hard-partying prom theme … one of The Hold Steady’s fastest and most celebratory-sounding songs … Both in the studio and in concert, that chorus gets an extra reprise with a frenzied key change in the final stretch … though the key changes generally aren’t go-to moves in The Hold Steady’s arsenal … a key change is basically the only thing it can do to kick itself into higher gear before its three minutes are up.”
Careen is exactly what this uptempo 12/8 rocker does, propelled by backing vocals that sound like a hyped-up live crowd proclaiming the hook — even on the studio track. A whole-step key change hits at 2:24.
Jack White’s Third Man Records provides an overview of The Fiery Furnaces, a duo comprised of siblings Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger. Forming in New York City in 2000, “their debut album Gallowsbird’s Bark was released to critical acclaim in 2003. In the following seven years, they released eight more albums and toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Japan.” The band was active during the 2000s, ceased operations during the 2010s, but apparently is staging a 2020 comeback. AllMusic describes the band’s focus as a “sprawling sound that draws on influences from indie rock to musical theater.” Read the entire AllMusic band bio — it definitely shatters the “quirky” meter!
Describing the sprawl is The AV Club‘s review of the 2009 track “Even In the Rain”: “The Fiery Furnaces’ albums are generally littered with idiosyncratic flourishes that sometimes seem directly designed to alienate the band’s less-patient listeners: backward tracking, tempo shifts, extended keyboard noise solos, and key changes, among others … on stretches of ‘Even In The Rain,’ the song sounds like a relatively straightforward ballad with a strong keyboard hook. But the chorus, which consists only of the words “even in the rain,” slides the song between keys several times, lending a lot of unpredictability to such a short, simple phrase.”
The key changes are unconventional and are wielded casually; the first one hits at 0:26, just before the vocal enters. There’s little sense of directionality or catharsis to the modulations; instead, each one is a page in a short and vivid animation flipbook which seems to advance or reverse the plotline at random.
“Strangers Like Me,” by English drummer and songwriter Phil Collins (best known for his work with the rock band Genesis), was originally featured in the 1999 Disney animated film Tarzan, and later included in a Broadway musical adaptation. Also popular as a pop song, the track reached the #10 spot on the US Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart. Straight-forward half-step modulation at 3:06.
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!
Bob Boilen wrote an NPR review of “I Wanna Be Sedated,” the 1978 punk single-turned-classic, to accompany the song’s inclusion in the NPR 100. “I love The Ramones. I think The Ramones took rock ‘n’ roll back to its soul. In the mid-’70s, rock had grown into something big, fat, bloated. Bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes and Kansas were touring huge arenas. Large truck convoys followed them, filled with light towers and smoke machines and other things that had little to do with music … Along came Joey, Johnny, Tommy and Dee Dee, four guys from Queens with a passion for short, loud and fast songs with great hooks … The Ramones’ music was a call to brandish guitars, shift music back to the clubs and sing from the heart and the gut. And don’t forget: This is supposed to be fun … The Ramones’ vision never changed: Make fast, loud, fun music. No solos. Keep it short. Play to your audience, not to each other.”
Time Magazine recognized the tune as part of its All-Time Best 100. “The Ramones’ buzz-saw bubblegum was a spitball of opposition to nearly everything else happening in pop in the mid-’70s … (it’s) hilarious where it could have been self-indulgent, mostly because nobody had ever sung so earnestly about longing for tranquilizers. And they were famously averse to rock-‘n’-roll frippery like guitar solos, so Johnny Ramone’s ultra-minimalist solo here is both an upraised middle finger and a brilliant show of compositional chutzpah.”
The band’s trademark three-chord harmonic vocabulary instantaneously doubled when a whole-step modulation hits at 1:11. The tune has become a persistent pop culture ingredient, including the 1980 movie Times Square; TV’s My So-Called Life, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Beavis + Butthead; the video games Guitar Hero, Jam Sessions, and Rock Band 3; and many others. Many thanks to MotD regular Rob Penttinen for this submission.
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