Tag: rock

Joe Perry Project | East Coast, West Coast

“As co-founding member, principal songwriter, electrifying lead guitarist and co-producer of Aerosmith … Joe Perry has achieved permanent iconic stature in the pantheon of rock,” (ArcadaLive). “He has helped to drive his band, over the course of three decades, to sales of more than 150 million albums, critical acclaim, four Grammy Awards … and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Perry’s work with Aerosmith has resulted in an unending array of accolades and honors. Beyond their Grammy Awards and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, other key milestones over the past 35 years include: 12 MTV Video Awards; two People’s Choice Awards; six Billboard Music Awards; eight American Music Awards; 23 Boston Music Awards; and an Academy Award nomination for Best Song, ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ (from the soundtrack to Armageddon).”

During a hiatus from Aerosmith, Perry explored different facets of his sound with a new band, the Joe Perry Project. Their uptempo 1981 single, “East Coast, West Coast,” shifts from E major downward to C major during an instrumental verse (1:51 – 2:33). Many thanks to our regular contributor Rob P. for sending us this tune!

Don Henley | Dirty Laundry

“’Dirty Laundry’ is one of Don Henley’s greatest hits—but it doesn’t come without controversy,” (American Songwriter). “The song, co-written by Henley and session musician Danny Kortchmar, was released in 1982 as the second single off his debut solo album, I Can’t Stand Still. The lyrics take aim at mass media, proclaiming how people love dirty laundry. But the second verse is particularly scathing, as Henley sings, We got the bubble-headed bleached-blonde / Comes on at five / She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye / It’s interesting when people die / Give us dirty laundry.

‘Dirty Laundry’ holds no punches when it comes to Henley’s opinion about sensationalism in news, especially. ‘I’m a news junkie, I watch the news a lot,’ the Eagles frontman said in a 1990 interview. ‘I got tired of seeing these talking heads up there stripping people of their dignity. I got tired of the sensationalism of the death of certain celebrities,’ he said, referencing the deaths of high-profile figures including Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, and Elvis Presley … ‘Dirty Laundry’ became Henley’s first #1 hit as a solo artist. It reached the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.”

The song featured a star-studded personnel list, including Henley’s Eagles bandmates Timothy B. Schmidt and Joe Walsh and Toto’s Steve Porcaro, Jeff Porcaro, and Steve Lukather. Given that the song is one of Henley’s most static in terms of repetition of melody and chord progression, the whole-step key change arrives with a bang at 3:39.

The Band | Stage Fright

After a wait of too many years, MotD is happy to finally feature a tune by a legendary band whose name likely created more than a few promotion challenges: “After many tours of duty backing the rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins and providing the muscle behind Bob Dylan’s move towards electric rock, the four Canadians and one Arkansan comprising the Band were pedigreed to a legendary extent even before making their first album,” (Pitchfork). “By the time they issued the twinned masterpieces Music From Big Pink in 1968 and The Band in 1969, their polymathic command of multiple genres, and self-conscious embrace of traditional American folk, country, bluegrass, and zydeco had established them as the thinking fan’s alternative to the diminishing returns of psychedelia and the counterculture … For critics, audiences and no-lesser peers than the Beatles, they had come to represent authenticity personified. So. How do you follow that up?

The answer came in the form of Stage Fright (1970), a charming, loose-limbed collection that elides the chore of living up to the previous records by basically not even trying. If their first two LPs inspired the Beatles and Stones to return to basics, Stage Fright connotes an entirely different sphere of influence: it’s a nonpareil boogie album, whose in-the-pocket playing establishes the Band as the equal of groovemaster peers like Booker T. and the Meters and sets a predicate for followers like Little Feat and NRBQ … What Stage Fright lacks in history lessons it makes up for in palpable joy. They would never seem so happy again.”

The album’s title track shows off the group’s unique songwriting sense; at times it’s often difficult to predict what might be coming next in terms of either overall form or harmonic progressions. G major holds sway overall, but between 1:47 and 2:41, there’s a clear shift in emphasis to the tune’s relative minor, E minor.

Humble Pie | Sweet Peace and Time

“There was a lot riding on this album (Smokin‘, 1972). After the general economical failure of (UK band Humble Pie’s) first two albums released in the States, Humble Pie and Rock On, their live album, Rockin’ the Filmore shot them up to top-billing across the country and into a major name,” (TheUncool). “So, when Smokin’ hit the racks it would provide exposure of the studio side to a band that became famous on their live side. The reception would be significant …

Actually there is nothing extremely original about the band. They play a brand of rock ‘n roll that is definitely not unique to them. So…just what is it about Humble Pie, or for that matter Smokin’, that in actuality puts them in a class above so many others? … Humble Pie is a confident band. They don’t bashfully kick around a number of styles and techniques … Humble Pie is a band that works with the bare essentials of rock ‘n roll. Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore proved them as a great live band. Smokin’ proves them as a great band. Anywhere.” (Courtesy of the Door [aka San Diego Door] – Cameron Crowe)

After beginning in A minor, “Sweet Peace and Time” shifts up to B minor at 0:45, then hangs out in E minor for an instrumental section from 1:09 – 1:39. At 1:39, the same A minor pattern from the intro and first verse is once again in effect. The pattern continues from there.

Bon Jovi | I’ll Be There For You

“I like the whole expansive vastness of the song — the rising drone on the intro, the whispery opening line, the way it builds to massed heartbroken shouting,” (Stereogum). “‘I’ll Be There For You’ (1989) isn’t as clean and sharp as Bon Jovi’s best songs, but it still has a chorus that lands like a grand piano falling off a sixth-floor roof. As a band, Bon Jovi’s single greatest strength is the power to trigger arena-wide communal yelling. From that perspective, ‘I’ll Be There For You’ is a roaring success. It’s over-the-top even before the key change comes screaming in at the end.

… ‘I’ll Be There For You’ does give Jon a chance to do some of his most effective vocal work. Jon Bon Jovi is a famously limited singer, but he puts a whole lot of force and emotion into everything. The chorus … is mostly half-drunk shouting, but if you’re trying to get a whole arena to sing along, then half-drunk shouting is a good means to that end … Bon Jovi weathered the grunge-era storm, shed their big-hair trappings, and became a venerated staple on the arena rock circuit. ‘I’ll Be There For You’ was Bon Jovi’s last #1 hit.”

You’d expect a key change as the guitar solo wraps up at 3:37, or perhaps as the bridge ends at 4:03. Nope! There’s yet another chorus before the whole-step modulation finally hits at 4:30. All in all, quite the power ballad stadium anthem specimen, with a total run time of close to six minutes.

Duane Eddy | Rebel Rouser

“Duane Eddy, a pioneering guitar hero whose reverberating electric sound on instrumentals such as ‘Rebel Rouser’ and ‘Peter Gunn’ helped put the twang in early rock ‘n’ roll and influenced George Harrison, Bruce Springsteen and countless other musicians,” died last month, (NPR). “With his raucous rhythms, and backing hollers and hand claps, Eddy sold more than 100 million records worldwide, and mastered a distinctive sound based on the premise that a guitar’s bass strings sounded better on tape than the high ones.

‘I had a distinctive sound that people could recognize and I stuck pretty much with that. I’m not one of the best technical players by any means; I just sell the best,’ he told The Associated Press in a 1986 interview. ‘A lot of guys are more skillful than I am with the guitar. A lot of it is over my head. But some of it is not what I want to hear out of the guitar.’ He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Eddy was not a vocalist, saying in 1986, ‘One of my biggest contributions to the music business is not singing.'”

“Rebel Rouser” (1958) rose to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, #8 on the Canadian pop chart, and #8 on the R+B Best Sellers chart. Starting in E major, the tune shifts up a half step at 1:01, 1:19, and 1:37.

The Box Tops | The Letter

(The Box Tops had) “never been in a studio before ‘The Letter,’ but they knocked it out,” (Stereogum). “Producer Dan Penn added in a plane-taking-off noise that he’d pulled from a sound-effects record that he’d checked out of the library. Given all that, ‘The Letter’ should be a sloppy and amateurish record, which wouldn’t necessarily prevent it from being great. But ‘The Letter’ is not that. It’s a two-minute epic.”

Despite being not even 20 years old at the time, frontman Alex Chilton “sounds weary and ravaged. He’s stuck somewhere far away from his baby, and he’s got to go see her right away. We don’t know where he is, why he’s separated from her, or what she wrote in her letter … But Chilton’s voice absolutely pops off of the record, and it’s all the band needs to tell the story. ‘The Letter’ is a tight, hard, compact piece of white-kid soul. (It’s the last #1 song ever to come in under the two-minute mark.) But it sounds big and cinematic anyway, with Chilton’s voice fighting its way through nervous organs and melodramatic strings and horn stabs … There’s nothing lo-fi about the record; even if it was recorded on a low budget, it’s got the sweep of a James Bond theme.”

The track sticks to A minor for most of its length, but jumps up to C# major at 1:33 for its tiny instrumental outro. The horns have made their exit, leaving the strings to lead the fast fade-out.

Owsley | Zavelow House

“Power pop. It’s the redheaded stepchild of rock,” (PopMatters). “It started as a quick fix description of those mid-’90s bands who turned their noses up at grunge and preferred the sunny melodies and crunchy guitars of such luminaries as the Beatles, Big Star, the Raspberries, Cheap Trick, and, last but certainly not least, Jellyfish, who may be the first band to be christened with the dreaded power pop moniker … In 1999, power pop very nearly broke into the mainstream, thanks to a number of strong outings from artists such as John Faye Power Trip (whose debut also turned out to be their swan song), Ben Folds Five’s dark but dazzling The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner … Even Nik Kershaw turned in the best record of his career with 15 Minutes, a near flawless guitar pop album, and XTC resurfaced after a self-imposed seven-year exile with the orchestral pop masterpiece Apple Venus Vol. I.

However, those albums all paled in comparison to the 1999 debut of one Will Owsley. After Owsley’s first attempt at rock stardom crashed and burned in the form of the infamously unreleased Semantics album Powerbill (now available as Japanese import), he went on tour supporting Amy Grant and Shania Twain, making enough money in the process to build his own recording studio. He then made an album with his own money and offered it to the labels as is. Eventually, Giant Records bit (and later, bit the dust) and released Owsley, a fantastic collection of new wave- and classic pop-fueled gems that heralded the arrival of a Major New Talent.”

“Zavelow House,” a track from that eponymous debut album, tells a story that’s likely familiar to North Americans who grew up in the suburbs: That One House(TM) — abandoned, growing weeds through cracks in the driveway, windows boarded up. Not surprisingly, the local kids are scared but intrigued, with imaginations working overtime. Built in E major overall, the groove-driven track shifts to A major for an instrumental bridge (2:02 – 2:24) before returning to E. At 3:16, A major returns and holds sway until the final chord drops back into E.

Led Zeppelin | The Wanton Song

“With Led Zeppelin, there was no break-in period, no ‘early phase’ where they figured out what kind of band they wanted to be,” (Pitchfork). “They were fully formed from the first repetition of the ‘Good Times Bad Times’ riff, and they powered along through their first half-dozen albums crushing everything in their path. Zep never had their Sgt. Pepper’s, their Exile, their Who’s Next, because every album was more or less that good — for a while, anyway.

This was a band that knew the music it wanted to make and executed it with ruthless precision … Physical Graffiti … found the band inhabiting what Neil Tennant once described (and Tom Ewing fleshed out) as their ‘imperial phase’ … everything they tried during these years somehow worked. Physical Graffiti … (is) Led Zeppelin’s White Album, the one they made when they were at their creative peak and had a million ideas, but were also under a tremendous amount of strain and saw the end starting to come into focus.”

After barreling along in G minor through the first verse, the Physical Graffiti track “The Wanton Song” (1975) next features a multi-key interlude (0:58 – 1:23) before returning to G minor. The surprisingly contrasting interlude is back at 2:03, but this time we land in an F major instrumental section at 2:28. At 3:03, we’re back on the express train of the G minor verse — with a quintessential Zeppelin guitar riff at its heart.

Loverboy | Working for the Weekend

“Working for the Weekend” is the lead track on the 1981 album Get Lucky by Canadian rockband Loverboy. Written by guitarist Paul Dean, vocalist Mike Reno, and drummer Matt Frenette, the track reached 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart; MTV had just gone on the air that year also.

In an interview with Songfacts, Dean described the genesis of the song: “I was walking down close to where I was living. It was a Wednesday afternoon, beautiful afternoon, and I’m walking in this heavily populated area, and it was deserted. Everybody was at work. And me being the musician, I’m out working and my work is, okay, what am I going to do for inspiration and where can I find it? So I’m out on the beach and wondering, ‘Where is everybody? Well, I guess they’re all waiting for the weekend.'” The video below starts with the band discussing the tune.

The key alternates between C minor for the verses and the relative Eb major for the choruses.