Guilty Pleasures Music.

[reTrEaD]

This will be one of those idle chatter thread. And a confessional, if you're so inclined.

Let's talk about those Genres, Groups, Songs, or Instruments you're slightly (or greatly) embarrassed about liking. Everyone has those. What are yours?

I'll kick this of with a little story. Back in the early days of Disco, a pr0n star (Andrea True) released a song, appropriately named More More More. The vocals were shoddy and her intonation was poor. Other than being easy to dance to, there was really nothing likeable about it. Except for a four measure bridge complete with cowbell. And who doesn't like cowbell?



Fast-forward nearly twenty years later. A brother-sister duo named Len releases Steal My Sunshine. Unsophisticated pop swill but I like it! They lifted the bridge from More More More and built a song around it.



To this day, I still get a smile on my face, every time I hear it.

[gumbo]

...a smile like the one on your avatar ?

[blademaster2]

I am not embarrassed to say that I enjoy pop music from the 70's and 80's, and even the 90's.

Sometimes the lyrics were just a little to "syroppy" (sp?), but would would still resonate. Even seriously uncool bands like The Osmonds, Monkees, even Partridge Family and Bay City Rollers had great moments. Many US pop music was played by The Wrecking Crew, who were top-notch studio musicians, and the songs of, say, Boyce and Hart were well-crafted.

I still get into the Osmonds' "Hold Her Tight" as a pretty good rock song (very Zeppelin-esque) with great vocals. David Cassidy was a really good singer. I will always love the music of LA's Ambrosia ("How Much I Feel" was a huge hit that has beautiful chords and melody and the vocals of David Pack and Joe Puerta together were incredible).

Into the 80's the pickin's were a little slimmer for me, but Gene Loves Jezebel had pretty heavy guitar lines and vocals to match. Yaz was as "non-guitar" as it got but I liked them, too.

Even into the 90's we had the very-listenable two albums by Jellyfish, a very skilled power pop band. Then there is PJ Harvey, who is very fresh and heavy and is still around.

I do draw my own limits, however, with bands like Air Supply.  Yeah ....... nuff said on that.

[newey]

When we would have those late-night bull sessions in the dorm rooms back in my college years (and, no, you don't want to know how long ago it was), the subject would invariably turn to music criticism. And all sorts of opinions flowed freely, on topics from the merits of Springsteen's "The River" versus "Darkness At The Edge Of Town", or early Syd-era Pink Floyd versus the later. Sometimes the discussions got heated.

But we had A Rule, sorta like the Prime Directive: Any of us was entitled to "like" 3 bands of our choosing, and we could not be forced to offer any critical justification whatsoever for those choices. If they were one of our three, then that was all that one need say. Beyond those three, however, one had better be able to defend one's choices.

My three were AC/DC, which by any objective measure is pretty much mindless ck Rock. But I liked them, no justification needed.

Also on my list of three was The Monkees, a commercial construct before they were a band, but again, no reasons necessary. Boyce and Hart were a big part of that, those two could write a damned pop song. Lately in my guitar lesson, we've been playing Boyce and Hart's/Monkees "She", which as far as I am concerned, should be covered by every bar band in the land.

Third on my list was a Canadian band (who I am sure nobody remembers) called Chilliwack, with whom I was very enamored at the time, for reasons obscured to me now. . .

I have the first Ambrosia LP on vinyl. Notable not only for "Holdin' On To Yesterday" but also for the lifted-from-Kurt-Vonnegut lyrics of "Nce, Nice, Very Nice". I had pretty much tuned out by the late '70s, though, around the time of "How Much You Feel" they became more soft-rock and I had moved on.

[blademaster2]

Well, I was playing Chilliwack just last week. Brian "Too Loud" McCleod was amazing (also played with Headpins) - no embarrassment there.

[newey]

Cool, I never dreamed I'd run into another Chilliwack fan.

[reTrEaD]

Sometimes the lyrics were just a little to "syroppy" (sp?), but would would still resonate. Even seriously uncool bands like The Osmonds, Monkees, even Partridge Family and Bay City Rollers had great moments. Many US pop music was played by The Wrecking Crew, who were top-notch studio musicians, and the songs of, say, Boyce and Hart were well-crafted.

Not totally sure about the spelling. I've said it before but not written it. I suppose since the root word is Syrup, it's probably spelled syruppy. Looks strange, though.

That little trip down memory lane made me think of Rick Derringer.
Before he worked with Steely Dan,
before he released a solo album,
before he worked with Edgar Winter,

he released a song with The McCoys.

[newey]

We here in Ohio remember. The McCoys' "Hang on Sloopy" has been designated by the Ohio Legislature as the "official State Rock 'n Roll Song". 'Course, we already had an official State song, "Beautiful Ohio", which no one would ever mistake for rock 'n roll . . .

[reTrEaD]

Ohio still has B.O.

... as their official state song.
Hang on Sloopy is their official state Rock song.

Other fun facts:
Washington's unofficial Rock song is Louie Louie.

Tennessee never met a song it didn't like.
State songs:
"My Homeland, Tennessee"
"When It's Iris Time in Tennessee"
"My Tennessee"
"Tennessee Waltz"
"Rocky Top"
"Tennessee"
"The Pride of Tennessee"
"A Tennessee Bicentennial Rap: 1796-1996"
"Smoky Mountain Rain"
"Tennessee"

New Jersey is the only US state with no state song.

[newey]

For NJ, Springsteen's "Atlantic City" would be appropriate, but perhaps too depressing . . .

Sent from my SM-G928V using proboards

[sumgai]

Fun trivia question:

What line or phrase in Louie Louie caused such an uproar that parents mounted a complaint to the FBI, and had the song investigated?

Bonus question:

What was the end result of all the hubbub?

Answers tomorrow, stay tuned.....

[reTrEaD]

Jan 25, 2018 11:06:01 GMT -5 sumgai said:

Fun trivia question:

What line or phrase in Louie Louie caused such an uproar that parents mounted a complaint to the FBI, and had the song investigated?

Bonus question:

What was the end result of all the hubbub?

Answers tomorrow, stay tuned.....

SPOILER: Click to show

Answers

1 - Pretty much every one of them. The words were mumbled so people heard them however they chose to imagine. For instance the first line of the second verse was "Three nights and days, I sailed the sea" Commonly heard as "Each night at ten, I lay her again.


2 - After thirty-one months of trying to unravel the mysteries of “Louie Louie,” the FBI could conclude only that they were “unable to interpret any of the wording in the record.”

[b4nj0]

"Stoney End" by Laura Nyro, but I'm gonna have to go for Babs' cut. No peakin' at 1:58...



"Nothing Ever Happens" by Del Amitri.



"Rainy Days and Mondays" as performed by Richard and Karen Carpenter.



How did that girl sing like an angel while beating at skins?








e&oe...

[newey]

un trivia question:

What line or phrase in Louie Louie caused such an uproar that parents mounted a complaint to the FBI, and had the song investigated?


Bonus question:

What was the end result of all the hubbub?

Answers tomorrow, stay tuned.....

Dave Marsh"s book "Louie, Louie", the only scholarly exegesis of a single rock song, has the whole story of the FBI investigation, which was started by a single mother from rural Indiana who found a copy of the supposed obscene lyrics in possession of her JHS aged sons, and forwarded it to the FCC.

The unreal part of the whole thing was that the G-men investigated for months, listening to the record, speeding it up, slowing it down. But they never bothered to phone Jack Ely, the lead singer for the Kingsmen, to ask what the heck he was singing. They also apparently never bought the sheet music of the original song.

[newey]

Two more of my guilty pleasures.





I saw Pablo Cruise live and they put on a very good live show, although "syruppy" on some levels. But the band was tight.

[sumgai]

Answer: There was in fact a short, nearly indecipherable utterance by the drummer of a four-letter word.  So many parents were sure that it was an obscenity.  The rest of the lyrics were indeed hard to understand on the record, but in point of fact, they were not nearly so insidious as parents perceived them.

For more, try these links:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingsmen  (good lineage/timeline of how the song progressed into a rock legend)

reverbcentral.com  (bottom-most link on the left-side menu)

louielouie.net

louielouie.org

www.eskimo.com/~craigb/history.html  (other links at the page bottom, don't press "HOME" link)

Nearly all of these accounts differ in one or two small respects.  The better ones get it right, that Richard Berry was the original author and performer.  As usual, YMMV as to which account is most closely aligned with your version of history.

Sad fact:  I was there, at the time.  Some of my friends' parents went ballistic when we played the record.  Not fun times, believe me.

Disclaimer: I know, and over the years I have played at jam sessions with, different members of the Kingsmen.  Fun times, to be sure.

sumgai

[newey]

There is no question that Richard Berry is the original songwriter. Per Dave Marsh, he stole the riff from a Pete Fountain song called "El Loco Cha-Cha". In the original Berry version, however, the riff is four beats, then two: da-da-da-da DA DA. When the song became a standard for bands in the Pacific Northwest (well before the Kingsmen), somewhere along the line a beat was dropped, so it's 3 beats, then two.

Berry sold the rights off back in the '50s for $700 and change, to buy his girl an engagement ring. Back then, the rule among black songwriters was "get what you can up front" for a song, since they knew the record labels would rip them off on royalties by undercounting sales and overstating promotional expenses. So whatever $$ you saw up front was likely all you were going to get anyways.

Years later, Berry recovered a portion of the royalties via a lawsuit. There is an organization in LA that will file suit on behalf of old songwriters who got played, and they helped Berry. The group succeeds because many of those deals were poorly written and are not enforceable, or because the writers were not of legal age when they signed. Berry died a while back.

Fun Fact: One week before the Kingman's version of "Louie" was recorded, another version was recorded in the same recording studio, by a much better known band.

SPOILER: Click to show

Paul Revere and the Raiders

(I know sg already knows this . . . but for the rest of y'all)

This earlier version became a minor regional hit along the West Coast, and the Kingsmen version was forgotten for some months. The Kingsmen version broke out in the Boston market with a late night DJ who used to run a "Worst Song of the Week"- he'd ask one of the A&R men who came through the station to give him the worst piece of dreck they had. One of them gave him "Louie, Louie", he featured it as the worst song of the week, but to his surprise the phones lit up with people wanting to hear it again. The rest, as they say, is history . . .