From 1967, please try to enjoy barely second tier Summer of Love San Francisco band The Sons of Champlin and their, er, interestingly over the top version of Brill Building auteurs Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill's wise and haunting "Shades of Grey."
The song is, deservedly, better known from the beautifully arranged chamber-rock take on The Monkees' Headquarters album the same year,,,
...but the Champlins' everything but the folk-rock kitchen sink production has a certain goofy period feel that charmed me when I first discovered it last week. As for SOC in general, their titular front-man Bill Champlin went on to play with Chicago, so the less said about him and them the better.
But now, on to business. To wit:
...and your favorite post-Elvis song in which the words black or white figure prominently in the title or lyrics is...?
Hey -- i actually got paid to watch the films these two trailers are from.
From Entertainment Weekly:
Two ''lambada'' movies dance onto home video -- A quick guide to the schlockiest moments of this embarrassment of kitsch riches
By Steve Simels Updated June 08, 1990 at 04:00 AM EDT
Years from now, when scholars reflect on the 1990s, they’ll probably find much of humanity’s behavior inexplicable. Why, for example, did we allow nuclear weapons? Racial bigotry? The destruction of the environment? And why did we stand for two simultaneous lambada movies?
For connoisseurs of schlock such questions are irrelevant. What matters is that Lambada and The Forbidden Dance are now in video stores and viewers who avoided their brief runs in movie theaters can check them out, remote control in hand. Which of the flicks is the biggest hoot? Which really delivers the exploitation goods? Does either give the real lowdown on this lambada business?
Nobody should have to watch both, so here’s a handy guide comparing these state-of-the-art examples of Le Bad Cinema.
Best Attempt at Redeeming Social Value: Both Lambada and The Forbidden Dance are message pictures of a sort. In the former, schoolteacher J. Eddie Peck flashes the slickest lambada moves in town in hopes of motivating inner-city kids to study math. In the latter, Brazilian princess Laura Herring uses her dance skills to agitate against the destruction of the Amazon jungle. The winner: Forbidden Dance, for its hilariously cynical end credit reading ”This picture is dedicated to the preservation of the rain forests.”
Most Gratuitous Tush Shots:Lambada director Joel Silberg, apparently an aging ’70s disco kid, often aims his camera at his dancers’ behinds. Forbidden Dance auteur Greydon Clark, perhaps cognizant of the lambada’s erotic origins, concentrates instead on other areas of the body. The winner (no contest): Lambada.
Most Soft-Core Sex Scenes: Notwithstanding Melora Hardin’s constant attempts to seduce her math teacher, Lambada is remarkably chaste for an exploitation picture. The Forbidden Dance, however, serves up attempted rape, lots of implied lesbianism, and a subplot set in a Sunset Strip brothel. The winner: The Forbidden Dance.
Most Lambada Per Minute: Neither picture bothers with more than 10 minutes of anything resembling authentic Brazilian dancing. But Lambada choreographer Shabba-Doo, who recycles the moves from the various Lionel Richie videos he also choreographed, at least offers a bit more motion. The winner: Lambada.
Most Ridiculous Ending: In The Forbidden Dance, the heroine spreads her message via a national TV show starring Kid Creole and the Coconuts.(Kid Creole fans can save time by fast-forwarding directly to this short scene.) In Lambada, rival gangs rumble in what may be the screen’s first trigonometry contest. The winner: The Forbidden Dance, for the scene in which a Latino housemaid runs off with a giant, bald voodoo priest.
The grade for each picture:D-
Like I said, I got paid. Is this a great country or what?
From their just released Everything Harmony, please enjoy The Lemon Twigs and their jangle-fest for the ages "Ghost Run Free."
That's my favorite from the album at the moment, but frankly that choice changes every fifteen minutes or so; the whole thing is just so damn great that you can't go wrong with any of it. That said, "Ghosts" (which is kind of an outlier, sylistically, among the album's 13 tracks) was clearly designed with my mind in mind, as the Firesign Theatre put it, and I frankly swoon the minute I hear those guitars and vocals echoing the Byrds, Big Star, Hollies, and about a zillion other archtypal power pop auteurs. Oh hell, if you're reading this here blog I don't have to tell you.
I should add that the other day, over at Sal's Burning Wood, I suggested -- in what I meant as a tongue-in-cheek way -- that an apt alternate title for the record might be The Great Lost Nazz Album.
On sober reflection, however, I'm not so sure I was kidding. In any event, go get the album immediately, lest your life be the poorer for it.
It is, shall we say, hardly a state secret that I am a passionate fan of Procol Harum (or, as we refer to them around Casa Simels, The Only Prog Band That Matters).
Hell, I quite literally owe what I laughingly refer to as my career to Procol, which is a story that will open my forthcoming book of literary greatest hits...
...and which you can read over at the link HERE in advance. You're welcome.
In any case, if you're a Procol fan too, you are probably aware that the credits to their debut album make the perhaps intriguing assertion that side two's "Salad Days (Are Here Again)"...
...is "From the film 'Separation.'"
Exsqueeze me? The film Separation? What in the wide, wide world of sports is the film Separation?
In point of fact, said film did not to our knowledge screen in the USA back in the day (it was released in the UK in '68), and most of us fledgling Procol fans probably assumed (after listening to "Salad Days," which is one of my favorite things on the record, and the one I can actually still play the piano part to) that it was one of those angsty, dark side of Swinging London existential art house flicks in the model of Antonioni's Blow-Up.
This impression was re-inforced in 1973, when Procol's Matthew Fisher included his all-intrumental "Theme From Separation"...
...on his splendid debut solo album; the song was as moody and dark as we all assumed the film to be, but as there was as yet no home video of it (or any film) to be had, we PH fans on this side of the pond simply figured it was a mystery that would never be solved.
Anyway, to make a long story etc., unbeknownst to me, a couple of DVD and Blu-ray versions of Separation were in fact finally released in the States early this century. Here's a clip from one of them, which features "Salad Days" and looks exactly like I had pictured the film in my head for lo these many years...
...down to the obligatory in-color-psychedelic nude scene.
And to my futher delight, it turns out my brother Drew had actually seen one of them recently.
The main character, Jane, has separated from her husband and is trying to figure out what to do with her life. She seems to be using a drug, judging by the way she expresses herself.
There may have been an outline of a script that the director used in shooting the movie. Many of the scenes look improvised.
Fisher's Separation theme is used many times throughout the movie. The song "Salad Days" is used sparingly, and it sounds like another version, i.e. not the one on the album.
The movie drags way too long. You're not missing anything by not watching this.
Thanks, Drew. In any case, there's an inexpensive Blu-ray of Separation at Amazon -- only one copy left, as of today -- and I may snag it just to satisfy a lingering curiosity. You should get the Fisher solo album over there in any case.
And in the meantime, if you're of a mind, you can watch, for free, an absolutely terrific widescreen print of Separation over at the invaluable Internet Archive HERE.
Real life concerns intruded over the weekend, so rather than inflict my poor scribblings on you guys today, you can laugh your ass off over the clip below instead while I regroup.
You're welcome. Regular music posting resumes on the morrow.
[I first wrote and posted this back in 2010, when the blog and the world were young. I was gonna add at least one new artist to the list, just to prove that I'm not the slacker that everybody (with justification) thinks I am, but for the life of me, I couldn't think of a single recent act who I thought was either innovative or annoying enough to make the cut. That's probably a function of my current extreme old age more than anything esthetic, but what the hell. Obviously, I'll be curious to hear what your feelings are on the subject. -- S.S.]
Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental nocturnal emissions specialist Fah Lo Suee and I will be taking an exploratory meeting with Harlan Crow, billionaire Hitler merch collector and real estate partner of SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas, who has promised to cut me a deal on rent for the back room of his mom's house.
In any event, further posting by moi will have to be sporadic for a day or two.
In the meantime, then, here's a hopefully fun little project for us all:
Post-Elvis Pop/Rock Singer or Group Who Most Influenced (For Good or Ill) the Art of Pop/Rock Singing!!!
No arbitrary rules here whatsoever. I should also add that my song selections do not necessarily represent the singer or group's most influential work. They're just things I like, or that perhaps immediately sprung to mind.
And my totally top of my head Top Seven is:
7. Bob Dylan -- Percy's Song
Believe it or not, there are still people who think Dylan couldn't sing. Heh heh. In any case, Dylan's phrasing and charmingly nasal tones have influenced countless singer/songwriters over the years, few of whom would have likely been granted artistic license without his example.
6. The Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger)-- Good Times, Bad Times
Snotty white boy sings the blues and quite convincingly -- this despite the fact that he doesn't really sound all that black, although everybody thinks he does at the time. An amazing accomplishment, when you think of it, and the template for decades of snotty white boy vocalists who probably never even heard of Muddy Waters.
5. Vanilla Fudge -- You Keep Me Hanging On
If truth be told, it wasn't the faux classical instrumental overkill that made The Fudge influential (that stuff is as dead as the papal penis, actually). No, it was their vocal approach. The notion, in rock, that you can simulate soul with pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling begins here, and legions of bad bands and singers -- mostly from Long Island, for some reason -- have made that appalling innovation part of their gestalt.
4. David Bowie -- Young Americans
The aforementioned pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling overlaid with an affectless Anthony Newley impression. Influential? Essentially, every unbearable singer out of England between 1971 and the late 80s -- Bryan Ferry, Martin Fry of ABC, The Thompson Twins, that clown in Spandau Ballet -- copped their vocal shtick from Bowie. Hey, thanks for nothing, Dave.
3. Patti LaBelle -- Over the Rainbow
Over-souling: A vocal style in which the singer throws some poor song onto the floor, writhing in pain and gasping for breath, and then wrestles it into submission until it simply expires. The late great Jerry Wexler, of Atlantic Records, named it, but it was Patti LaBelle who brought it to the mainstream, and just about every successful r&b singer since -- black or white, male or female -- has emulated it at some point. I should add, of course, that Patti's 1985 "Over the Rainbow," as heard above, would be considered a laughable model of subtlety and restraint by most contemporary artistes of the American Idol/The Voice school.
2. The Doobie Brothers (Michael McDonald) -- What a Fool Believes
Okay, there's no real name for what McDonald does, but it's a style in which the singer's beard does all the work, and for a period in the 80s, it was the dominant male vocal sound of pop music worldwide.
And the numero uno most influential post-Elvis vocalist actually turns out to be...
1. Cher -- Believe
Well, Cher via the dreaded AutoTune, that is. I'm guessing the list of irredeemably crappy hit records featuring robo-vocals in the wake of 100-percent-recycled-plastic-based-life-form Cher's "Believe" now numbers in the thousands. In any case, the single most insufferable pop music trend of the last several decades, unless as I suggested in the intro, I've somehow missed one.
From 1986, and their MTV-generated comeback tour, please enjoy Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork (doing business as The Monkees) and their deseved hit single "That was Then, This is Now."
I bring this up for two reasons. A) Because it's a terrific power pop tune by any standard, written by Vance Brescia, of 80s NYC club faves The Mosquitos...
...who just about everybody who is anybody (me too) avers should have been commercially huge but who-knows-why-they-weren't.
And more important, and B) coincidentally enough, because indie record mogul and friend of PowerPop Ray Gianchetti at Kool Kat Musik is now offering a new 2 CD Mosquitos anthology...
...that includes just about every original song they ever played, plus a handful of covers, both live and in the studio, with absolutely fabulous remastered sound.
Obviously, you can, and should, order This Then Are the Mosquitos over at Kool Kat HERE.
From some time in the late 80s or early 90s, please enjoy The Souvenirs -- with some schmuck whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels on keyboards -- and their spirited live version of "She May Call You Up Tonight," my other 3rd or 4th favorite song from The Left Banke debut album that I didn't post yesterday in a live clip from The Lemon Twigs. And how's THAT for a mouthful?
The Souvenirs were essentially the five-piece latter day version of The Floor Models, and that clip was shot at the late lamented Kenny's Castaways in Greenwich Village, which was essentially our home base over the years. I particularly enjoyed playing that Left Banke cover, not of the least of reasons being that we used to go directly into Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Him or Me" at its conclusion. Ah, those were the days.
Less self-indulgent posting, featuring music by people I don't know personally, resumes on the morrow.
From just the other week, please enjoy friends of powerpop The Lemon Twigs -- recorded live at the Troubadour in L.A. -- and an absolutely splendid cover of The Left Banke's lovely "I've Got Something On My Mind."
Man, those kids have really got it.
I should add that the above song is my third or fourth favorite from the Banke's classic 1967 debut album. My first and second favorites, of course, are "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina."
Coming tomorrow: A live performance of my other third or fourth favorite from the Banke LP, as rendered by another band whose members I know personally.
So over the weekend, Turner Classic Movies (god bless 'em) happened to show Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983), which is one of the most magical movies ever made, IMHO, and one which I hadn't seen since I last wrote about it (for reasons that will become clear shortly) in these precincts back in 2012.
I bring it up now (as I had back in the day) because -- aside from being blown away by the film as a whole once again -- I had forgotten about the sheer level of gorgeousness of Mark Knopfler's score.
Seriously -- f**k Dire Straits. If for nothing else than the closing credit music below -- "Going Home: The Song of the Local Hero" -- Knopfler deserves to be be an immortal.
Please -- take five minutes and listen to it, in case you've never heard it before.
Okay, here's my two cents.
That happens to be classical music, and it deserves to be treated as such, i.e. it should be played at Philharmonic concerts just like any great opera overture/prelude/curtain raiser you could mention.
In fact, as far as I'm concerned, what Knopfler did there is akin to what George Gershwin (yes him) did some decades earlier, which is to say, he took pop/folk/vernacular music -- in this case, Celtic airs and the rock/r&b urban street-corner romanticism of Phil Spector and Bruce Springsteen records -- and made something utterly sui generis and grand and universal from them.
I have one cavil, however; the drum and synth sounds on the Local Hero soundtrack album are a little dated; if there's a brilliant young orchestral composer out there, please score this for traditional symphonic ensemble (plus guitar) and soon.
Arthur Fiedler really should have lived to conduct this, is what I'm saying.
POSTSCRIPT:
And to further illustrate my point, here are two five minute classical pieces (and by five minutes, I'm talking about the length of all sorts of great pop records) that I think are in the same ballpark melodically and harmonically.
From 1597(!) and arranged by Leopold Stokowski, who knew something about pop stardom, here's Renaissance proto-rocker Giovanni Gabrielli's all horn "Sonata Pian e Forte." You may notice that Gabrielli is doing the whole soft/loud thing that people thought was totally innovative when Kurt Cobain did it several centuries later.
And, a little closer to the idiom that Knopfler was working in, here's unjustly obscure (outside of his home country) Austrian late Romantic Franz Schmidt's 1914 intermezzo from his opera Notre Dame.
As in The Hunchback of...
Both of those are gorgeous, but no less so than the Local Hero music, I think. In any case, you get my meaning.
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