Given the chaos surrounding the election of a new Speaker, today we feature Randy Rainbow’s parody of “Master of the House” from the musical Les Miserables, released earlier this year.
The track begins in Ab minor and shifts to Ab major at 1:35. A quote of “Castle on a Cloud,” also from Les Mis, appears at 2:20 in A minor. After briefly reverting back to Ab minor at 2:32, there is a return to A at 2:42, and a final modulation up to Bb major at 3:20.
“The ’80s found Al Green again connecting to pop and R&B audiences with his brand of charming and sometimes erotic gospel,” (AllMusic). “After signing with the independent A&M in 1985, Green seemed to grow a little tired of straight-ahead gospel fare and satisfied his yen for pop by way of covers or songs with ambiguous meanings.” … on the 1989 release I Get Joy, “Green sings about everything from an indifferent landlord and returned money to sweating out employment woes, making you believe every syllable.”
“Vocally, Green’s a first cousin of Smokey Robinson, a Motown tenor with vocal cords more supple than rubber bands,” (Deseret News). “And listening to him bob and weave, listeners may feel deja vu for the heyday of The Temptations and the Four Tops … But Green has built on the groundwork such groups laid down and turns the tradition into his own. And that’s no easy trick … The man also has a knack for writing songs that are subtle enough to work on both romantic and religious levels.”
Green’s athletic performance of “The Message Is Love” is from the short-lived late night all-music program Night Music (1988-90, initially known as Sunday Night), hosted by saxophonist David Sanborn. “The show never became ‘popular’ per se, but it presented high quality and eclectic music on network TV … in a way that seems unfathomable …” (NoahJazz). Backed by the stellar house band with Hiram Bullock (guitar), Marcus Miller (bass) and Omar Hakim (drums) at its center, Green’s vocal fireworks fully ignite in the second half of the tune. The short bridge (2:50 – 3:08) shifts the tune from the original C major to Ab Lydian before leading us back to the original key for a romp of a solo by Sanborn. Effectively rehearsed tunes, always performed 100% live in the studio, were the stock and trade of the much-missed Night Music.
“In The Morrow” is the penultimate track on Brandi Carlile’s 2012 album Bear Creek. Produced by Grammy winner Trina Shoemaker, the record was Carlile’s first to debut in the top 10 on the Billboard 200.
The track, written by Carlyle and Tim Hanseroth, begins in D and modulates up to E at 2:14.
“… Philadelphia (1993) gives us some star performances and was one of the first mainstream movies to address HIV/AIDS and homophobia with nuance and sensitivity,” (Collider.com). “The film was written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme.” From a review from Dan DeNicola: “Graced with splendid performances, this often stirring drama not only has its heart in the right place; it delivers a strong, convincing portrait, as well as a lesson about decency in a story aptly set in the City of Brotherly Love.”
Spoiler alert …
The film’s main character, attorney Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) succumbs to HIV after a hard fight not only for his life, but also for his rights after his law firm fired him due to his medical condition. But in the days before the drug AZT became available in the late 90s, HIV was nearly always a deadly disease. The film was quite a breakthrough and earned Hanks his first Oscar. “‘More people have stopped me on the street or come up to me in airplanes or sidled up to me in restaurants to talk about this movie than any other job I’ve done, and almost all of them have said something like, Thank you for doing it,’” (MentalFloss).
The film’s closing theme, Neil Young’s “Philadelphia” and the opening theme “Streets of Philadelphia” (Bruce Springsteen) were both nominated for Best Song Academy Awards in 1994; Springsteen’s track was the category’s winner. The short melody of Young’s track is a gently off-kilter seven measures of 4/4 featuring plenty of leisurely quarter-note triplets. The first and last iterations are in the same key, but there are many modulations among the repeated iterations in between.
“The Playmates, an American rock and roll vocal group formed in the late 1950s, gained immense popularity during the rock and roll era,” (OldTimeMusic). The group mixed doo-wop and rock and roll styles at a time when the pop charts were starting to feel the purchasing power of a new teenaged audience. In 1954, the very first tune on the pop charts from the rock genre, Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” set the stage for the genre’s ongoing popularity.
The songwriters of this 1959 release, Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance, also wrote “(Alone) In My Room,” sung by Verdelle Smith, the subject of an earlier post. “What is Love” reached #15 on the US pop charts. During a run time of just over two minutes, the track’s tonality travels up by half-step from F# major up to A major, with the first modulation hitting at only 0:12!
Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for this submission!
Boyce Avenue, an American cover band based in Sarasota, FL, is comprised of three brothers — Alejandro, Fabian, and Daniel Manzano. The group formed in 2004, has released three studio albums, an boasts 16.4 million YouTube subscribers, making them the most viewed independent band in the world.
Their cover of Whitney Houston’s classic hit features Jennel Garcia on vocals. It begins in Gb and modulates up a half step to G at 2:12.
“One could argue that Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods were not a not a one hit wonder band because of the song “Who Do You Think You Are,” (ClassicRockHistory.com). “The song became the band’s second top 20 hit of their career, thereby kicking them out of the one-hit wonder category. (The track) reached all the way up to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974. Its chart success was fueled by their previous hit “Billy Don’t Be A Hero.” The song was written by Des Dyer and Clive Scott. It was originally recorded by the group Candlewick Green in 1973.”
On balance, “WDYTYA” generated a much more positive reaction for the Cincinnati-based band than “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” did. Rolling Stone reports in its 2011 Readers’ Poll “10 Worst Songs of the 1970s” that “U.K. pop group Paper Lace wrote ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ at the tail end of the Vietnam War, but it’s actually about the American Civil War. But much like M*A*S*H was about the Korean War but really about Vietnam, people will forever associate ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ with Vietnam. They’ll also associate it with insipid 1970s drivel. Paper Lace were planning on releasing the song in America, but Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods beat them to it.” Was the tune’s fife-and-drum intro also a tip of the hat towards the growing US Bicentennial history trend? Anyone’s guess.
In any case, it’s not hard to consider Donaldson’s second hit as a bit of a step up from the band’s first hit — and quite a bit easier on the ears. Starting in G Dorian, the tune shifts to C# major at 1:01. Led by a sitar-centric hook, it’s back to the original key for the next verse at 1:23.
“Look For The Light” was written by Sara Bareilles, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for the third season of the acclaimed Hulu series Only Murders In The Building, which premiered in August. The show stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, and added Meryl Streep (who performs this song with Ashley Park) as a guest star this year.
The track begins in G minor and shifts up to Db at 1:33.
Booker T. and the M.G.’s arranged songs like mathematicians construct proofs: just enough to get the desired result, and nothing more. As the house band for Stax Records in the 1960s, the group appeared on dozens of hit recordings for acts like Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Wilson Picket, and Otis Redding. They also had a number of instrumental hits on their own, including “Green Onions,” “Time is Tight,” a cover of the Rascals’ song “Groovin’,” and “Hang ‘Em High.” Their classic lineup consisted of Booker T. Jones, usually playing the Hammond B-3 and occasionally on piano, drummer Al Jackson, Jr., bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, and guitarist Steve Cropper.
Perhaps the group’s grandest recorded moment came in 1969, when they released the album McLemore Avenue, their reinterpretation of the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
“Hang ‘Em High” (1968) was composed by Dominic Frontiere for the Western of the same name, a vehicle for Clint Eastwood. The first cover of the soundtrack theme was released by Hugo Montenegro; the Booker T. version came out a bit later. Frontiere was responsible for the music for many television shows from the 1960s through the 1980s, such as The Fugitive and The Flying Nun (!). He also composed soundtracks for a number of movies during that period. Just before “Hang ‘Em High”, he wrote the music for the cult classic goth-horror movie Incubus, whose dialog is entirely in Esperanto, and which starred a pre-Star Trek William Shatner.
There are half-steps up at 1:15. 2:11, and 2:39. The tune stays in that key from there on, including during the spartan-even-for-the-MG’s coda that begins at 3:08.
Closer Than Ever, a musical revue by Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire, opened Off-Broadway in 1989. The sung-through shows features songs about aging, midlife crises, second marriages and unrequited love, and many of them are based on the authors’ real-life experiences.
“She Loves Me Not,” the second song in the show, depicts a love triangle of two men and one woman. It begins in C major, shifts down to Bb at 1:05, and returns to C at 2:04.
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