Some days there are just some songs you have to hear...

As I've no doubt said here before, I love lists.

When The Book of Lists, by David Wllechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace, came out in 1977, I was in bliss. I'd been making lists of my own - favorite movies, favorite books, favorite tv shows, favorite songs and albums - for a long time by that time, and I was so happy to see that someone else enjoyed making them.

Granted, some of the lists in the book and those that followed it were, um, unusual, and some of those lists got the book banned from some libraries. They also produced something called The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People, that I imagine also produced some complaints. That was a book that was essentially a list in and of itself, broken into several different categores.

All of which has very little to do with today's post, except that I've been list making-making again and decided that, to make sure that it wasn't a complete waste of time, I would share with all of you. I was going to call the list "My Favorite Songs...Today", but that isn't quite accurate, so instead I'm going to call it "The Songs I Really, Really, Really Need to Hear Today". Which means that some of them might be repeats, because I've got several songs in my life right now that I've been needing to hear on a fairly regular basis.

That is certainly true of "Forever", by The Beach Boys. Yes, I know, I've been obsessed with the band for the past few weeks. But this song has struck me in the most forceful way, and it amazes me that although it was on the band's album "Sunflower", which was recorded in early 1969 and released in 1970, I did not discover it until, what, three weeks ago or so. It was written by Dennis Wilson and Gregg Jakobson. The song has been called "timeless" and compared to some of the best of Elton John and Bernie Taupin's ballads, which isn't exactly faint praise.

This is a mostly a capella version of the song, on which Dennis Wilson sings lead. Right at the end, someone gets really silly (and I've seen people debate online whether that last note is Brian Wilson or Carl Wilson getting creative), but this is really a lovely, lovely performance of the song, which is quickly becoming my favorite song:



Love songs come in all moods and flavors. Another one of my favorite love songs, and favorite songs without qualification, has a completely different mood than "Forever", which is quiet and sweet and meditative. The Turtles' "Happy Together" (which I'm sure I also must have shared at some point, possibly not very long ago), which is just plain, well, happy. This is another song that I really need to hear today, and on as many days as possible, really. This song is deeply embedded in popular culture, having appeared in at least 20 films over the years, as well as in a number of television episodes. It has been covered by many other artists (including by Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, performing later as Flo and Eddie) and is the 44th most performed song in the US in the 20th century

This lip-synched performance, from "The Ed Sullivan Show", is really badly synched, but I like this particular video for its excellent example of the by-play between Volman and lead singer Kaylan, which was sort of a trademark of Turtles' performances:



And there is "Love Hurts", which could have equally well been called "Love Sucks". But, since just about everybody goes through a "love sucks" sort of experience at least once in their lives, this could be considered the universal love song. It has been covered by just about everybody, it seems, since Boudleaux Bryan wrote it. It was first recorded by The Everly Brothers in 1960 (and released in 1961). The list of cover versions on the song's entry on Wikipedia runs to over fifty, starting with Roy Orbison (in March 1961), and including The Who, Nazarath (which was the first version I ever heard), Cher (twice), Journey, Heart, Don McLean, and Rod Stewart, to name just a few.

This is my favorite version of the song, recorded by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris for Parsons' album "Grievous Angel" in 1974. Parsons had just the right voice to convey the pain and ache of love gone wrong:



Another favorite love song of the melancholy variety is "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away". This song, which appeared in the movie "Help!" and on the soundtrack album in 1965, was credited as a Lennon/McCartney composition but was actually written by John Lennon alone. Like "Love Hurts" it deals with love gone wrong, but takes a more bitter tone. And Lennon's rendition of his song is brilliant, but my favorite version comes from The Beach Boys. Their cover appeared on the 1965 album "Beach Boys Party!", which was released late in the year as a collection mostly of covers meant for Christmas. Again, as with "Forever", the band's drummer, Dennis Wilson, sings lead, lending just the right inflections in his voice to make you believe what he is singing. Basically, on this song Wilson out-Lennon's Lennon, which is quite an accomplishment.

This is not the album version of The Beach Boys' cover of the song, but the audio of a live performance at Michigan State on October 22, 1966:



Speaking of John Lennon (and getting away from love songs), I also have a huge need to hear "Working Class Hero" today. This song is on Lennon's first album after The Beatles broke up, "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band", recorded in 1970 and released in the US in 1971 but not in the UK until 1975. It is a very stripped down song, just Lennon's voice and his guitar. It's the first song I ever heard with the word "fuck" (well, "fucking", actually) in it, and for that reason it was banned by some radio stations and the manager of one station that did play it was charged and faced prison time for letting it on the air, but the charges were ultimately dropped. In Australia, the offending word was cut from the version of the album marketed there and from the lyrics sheet that came with the album. But it's a good song, and here it is, obscenities intact:



But, it seems like I can't get away from the love songs today, and especially the melancholy ones. Like this one,, "Spanish Moss", by Gordon Lightfoot. I love Lightfoot's music, and this may well be my favorite of his love ballads, if not his whole catalog of songs. It appears on his album "Summertime Dream", from 1976. It's a very cinematic song, and I've always been able to feel a whole story in there that goes beyond the actual lyrics. And speaking of lyrics, this song has one of my favorite lines in all of popular music. I mean really, "...kisses mixed with moonshine and red clay" is just, well, really sexy (which is a word I don't like because it is overused and misused so much, but it is the only word I can find that is appropriate to how I think of this line):



I can only introduce the next song I needed to hear today by saying that the first time I ever heard it, on the radio, back in 1987, when it first came out, I was speechless for about 10 minutes. It's that good, lyrically and musically. By Gary Moore, it is from the album "Wild Frontier". I didn't catch the name of the song or artist that day, and I spent a good two or three days listening to the radio whenever I could, hoping they would play it again and actually say who it was or what the name of the song was...in those pre-google and pre-YouTube days, that's what you had to do sometimes, to find out enough about a song to get your hands on it. And, in fact, I guess I should say that this is "Over the Hills and Far Away", not to be confused by the song of the same title by Led Zeppelin. Because it is totally not the same song:



There are more on the list of songs that I need to hear today, but this has gone one long enough for one post, so I'll stop at one more. It's a love song, too, of the "I love you but I can never have you because somebody else got there first" variety. This was my favorite song when I was in the 8th grade, and I still love it now, all these years later, as much as I did then. This is The Grass Roots and "Midnight Confessions". I suppose it should be one of my guilty pleasures, but I feel no guilt about it at all:



As I said, I could go on doing this, probably all night. But I have other things I should be doing. The amazing thing is that I haven't fallen down the rabbit hole I could have, going through and listening to everything I found along the way while I was putting this together, other songs, some of which I haven't thought about in a long time, that made me think, "Oh, I need to hear that, too." Sometimes my willpower amazes me. Other times, it just fails me, but it's working at the moment.

Found a new creature? Name it after a rock star...

Those of you who follow along here know that I write a lot about music here, and a pretty fair amount about science.
Cruising the Internet today, I stumbled across a story that touches on both topics.

It seems that the fossils of a previously unknown species have been found at a remote site in Egypt. An article at Science Daily says that the animal was about the size of a small deer. The fossils found included fragments of jawbones that had a series of small holes on each side of its jaws that held nerves providing feeling to its chin and lower lip. The large number of nerves probably involved led to the conclusion that the animal had a sensitive snout and mobile lower lip that were likely used to forage along moist river banks. The area where the fossils were found is now desert, but evidence suggests that at the time the animal lived there, 19 million years ago or so, it was a lush tropical delta.

Because the animal looks to have had large, mobile lips, the discoverers of the fossils named the new species Jaggermeryx naida, which means "Jagger's water nymph", after Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger. Needless to say, Ellen Miller and Gregg Gunnell, co-authors of the report and who named the species, are big Rolling Stones fans.

However, I have not been able to find out what Jagger thinks about having an animal that was described as probably looking like "a cross between a slender hippo and a long-legged pig" that lived in a swamp named after him.

Being the curious person that I am, I started wondering if there were any other animal species, living or extinct, named after musical celebrities. It didn't take much Googling to find that the answer to this question is, "Well, of course," according to at article at Music Times It turns out that there is a large iguana-like creature named Barbaturex morrisoni, after Jim Morrison who was after all the self-proclaimed Lizard King. By "large", I mean that B. morrisoni was about six feet long and around 60 pounds. I suspect that Morrison would have loved that.



U2 singer Bono has a spider named after him. Aptostichus bonoi. A. bonoi lives only in one part of Joshua Tree National Park, in Southern California, and so presumably the spider was named after the singer in honor of the fact that U2's best-known album was called "The Joshua Tree". Another species of spider from the same genus, this one living in several counties in Northern California, was named Aptostichus barackobamai in honor of US President Barack Obama, incidentally.



Bono isn't the only musician who has a spider named after him. In fact, Lou Reed has an entire genus of spiders named after him, Loureedia, although it must be noted that this genus is made up of only one known species, Loureedia annulipes. It is a velvet spider that lives underground, so the naming makes sense. David Bowie also has a spider, Heteropoda davidbowie, named after him. Bowie's spider namesake has been described as "large, yellow, and hairy." Singer and songwriter Neil Young is another musician who has a spider, Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi, which is found mostly in Alabama, named after him.







A species of wood roach, a type of cockroach, is named Cryptocercus garciai after Grateful Dead icon Jerry Garcia. Think about it.

The thing is, the recent fossil named after Mick Jagger isn't the only fossil that was named in his honor. There is a trilobite called Aegrotocatellus jaggeri, after him. At the same time the other half of the Glimmer Twins, Keith Richards, also had a trilobite named in his honor, Perirehadulus richardsi. Yet another trilobite was named for the Rolling Stones as a group, Aegrotocatellus nankerpheigorum, which only makes sense if you know that Nanker Phelge was the pseudonym used for several songs that were written by the entire band between 1963 and 1965. Probably the best known of these songs is "Play With Fire", from early 1965. Jagger also has a snail named after him.



An isopod, Cirolana mercuryi, found on coral reefs offshore from Zanzibar, was named after Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar (which is now Tanzania). Isopods are crustaceans that can live in the sea, in fresh water, or on land. Bob Marley also has a crustacean, Gnathia marleyi, named after him.



Among others in the music world who have living organisms named after them is Frank Zappa, who has at least a snail, a jellyfish, and a bacterium named after him. The man who named the jelly fish after Zappa admitted that he did it in hopes that he would be able to meet the musician.

Henry Rollins has a jellyfish named after him, while Carole King and James Taylor both have stoneflies named after them. Both Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, both Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr all have trilobites named after them. There are a lot of species of trilobites. Each one of The Ramones also has a trilobite named after him.
Sting has a Columbian tree frog, Hyla stingi, named after him. Masiakasaurus knopfleri, a small theropod dinosaur (although small is a relative thing; M. knopfleri was around 5.9 to 6.6 feet in length), in named after Dire Straits sing, songwriter, and guitarist Mark Knopfler.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of musical celebrities who have had organisms named after them. So far as I could tell from my research, only one person who named a species after a musician admitted that they did so to meet the musician. The thing I'm left wondering is, how many others chose to name a plant or an animal for a musician also really did it so they could meet that musician. I'd be willing to bet that the number is more than one.

I wish I could attach some music for each of the artists included in this post, but that would make it way, way too long to be manageable. But you get the idea. There are music fans everywhere, even in the world of science, and the people who get to name newly discovered species have a habit of naming their discoveries after the singers and musicians that they love.

Paper cuts, paper cutting, and music that is louder than necessary...

Yeah. I intended to be back on a more regular basis. Really.

But, you see, I got this paper cut on my finger...

No, it isn't the beginning of a joke. I really did have the paper cut from hell. Right on the tip of that most useful of fingers (that would be the one in the middle). And, even with a Band-Aid on it, keyboarding was, well, uncomfortable. And, I don't know why, but my paper cuts always take forever to heal. Other stuff - my cuts, scrapes, bruises - always heal really fast, but not the paper cuts.

But now I think I'm all healed. At least, I hope so.

Now, this is funny. Just for the shits and giggles, I searched "paper cuts" in Bing images. I do these things sometimes when I'm bored. And there were a couple of people displaying actual cuts from paper. But mostly what appeared were things like this:

And this:

Both very pretty, and both things I'd never be able to do - I didn't get the graphic arts gene - but very much not what I was expecting to see. But I thought I'd share.

The things I do to amuse myself on a Saturday night. Then again, I have to do something to distract myself from the local neighborhood noise polluter. For the past three hours or so, there has been what sounds like live music blasting from somewhere in the neighborhood. It wouldn't be so bad if it was good music. Alas, it is not. It's probably a good thing I had a long nap this afternoon, because I'd hate to try to go to sleep with that going on.

Ah, well. Because I try to find the silver lining in every situation, I can say that it least the music is better than the joker who was setting off firecrackers last night. Sounded like a cannon going off. Repeatedly.

Hope you all are having, or have had, a Saturday night that is as exciting - or not - as you want it to be.

Music Sunday: The "I've been off reading music books" edition

So.

Due to unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances, I was mostly away from Music Sunday for a couple of weeks. But, I'm back, and in the meantime I've been reading books about music.

No, really. Since the middle of January I've read four music-related books and am now working my way through the fifth. The ones I've finished reading are:

1) 27: A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, by Howard Sounes (2013, Da Capo Press; 359 pages)
2) Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life, by Tim Riley (2011, Hyperion; 765 pages)
3) Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles 1965 Tour that Changed the World, by Larry Kane (2003, Running Press; 272 pages)
4) Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, by Eric Burdon with J. Marshall Craig (2001, Thunder's Mouth Press; 326 pages)

And right now I'm reading Beatles vs. Stones, by John McMillian (2013, Simon and Schuster; 304 pages).

These are all good books, although I suspect that Sounes just wrote 27 so that he could write about Amy Winehouse. Still, he does a good job covering the lives and deaths of the other 27 Club members that he highlights. Riley's book is long, but it is comprehensive, perhaps a little too comprehensive in its detail about recording sessions, but that is a minor quibble. I very much liked the way that Riley seemed to go out of his way to not forgive the times that Lennon acted like an ass, but also gave context as to why he might have been acting that way and also related that Lennon also had times when he was kind and generous and thoughtful. I've read other biographies of Lennon and have found that some writers either try to make him a saint or make him a demon when in fact he seems to have been a very complicated man. Kane's book was more historical in nature and, despite the title, covers both the 1964 and 1965 American tours (he was the only American journalist who traveled with the band the full length of both tours). He also goes out of his way to show that the members of the Beatles were full human beings rather than cutout cardboard figures. He didn't try to whitewash flaws out of existence, but he didn't try to portray any of them, or the support staff who toured with them, as completely flawed. And Burdon's memoir...well, it must have been good, because I more or less read it in one sitting. It seems to jump around in time a lot, but that is a minor quibble. I like that he doesn't approach his life the way some rock stars do, trying to play down the adventures and misadventures of their lives, but plainly says, "these are the things I did, and I might regret some of them now but I'm not going to deny them at this point."

The book I'm reading now, Beatles vs. Stones, is more academic in tone, but that's to be expected since McMillian is an historian and an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University. So far (and I'm on page 109 at the moment) it seems to me he's leaning more toward being as Stones fan than a Beatles fan even though he declines in his introduction to say which band he favors although he admits that he does have "a preference for one group over the other" (p. 5).

At any rate, these books highlight the lives of people who have made some classic music, and since it is Music Sunday, of course I'm going to share some if it with you. I will say that I have probably shared some of these songs before, but all these people have made music that stands up (I think) to repeated listenings.

But, I'm going to start out with something I know I haven't share before, because I didn't know it existed until a couple of days ago. Anyone who grew up in the 1970s probably knows the Three Dog Night version of Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not To Come". That 1970 cover went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. But the first recording of the song was by Eric Burdon and the Animals in 1966, although it was never released as a single and ended up on the 1967 album "Eric is Here", and the band playing behind Burdon is not the Animals, but the Horace Ott Orchestra. This original version is edgier than the more commercial-sounding Three Dog Night version:



Here's a live performance of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" from Burdon and the Animals at Wembley Empire Pool at the New Musical Express poll winners' concert on April 11, 1965:



I found a clip of the Beatles singing "All My Loving" at the Hollywood Bowl concert on their 1964 tour of the United States. This show took place on my 8th birthday, I lived in Southern California at the time, and even at the age of 8 I was very bitter that I didn't get to go to the concert:



One of the notable details in this early clip of a live Rolling Stones performance of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is that there look to have been a lot more males in the audience than in audiences for the Beatles' shows. And, if that young gentleman in the audience shown near the end of the song is any indication, some of them were as emotional about their favorite band as the girls were. This was the first single by the Rolling stones to go to number 1 in the United States:



Jim Morrison was not only a singer, but a poet as well. His poetry has gotten mixed reviews over the years, but I quite like some of the things he wrote. A few years after Morrison's death, the rest of the Doors got together and put some of his recorded poetry on record along with music. This cut from the resulting album, "American Prayer" (released 1978, with the spoken word parts recorded in 1969 and 1970), called "Stoned Immaculate", shows a crossover between what the Doors recorded as a band and what Morrison was doing with the written word:



Since I'm running out of room for today's post, I'll just end with this, my favorite Janis Joplin song. Don't get me wrong; I like all of her work. However, this song just seems...perfect. So, here is Janis, and "Mercedes Benz", from the album "Pearl" (1971):

Some thoughts on current reading and current events...

As I mentioned here on Sunday in my Music Sunday post, I am currently reading - plowing my way through, really - a biography of John Lennon (Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life, by Tim Riley [2011, Hyperion; 765 pages]). It's an interesting and well-written book, but it's long. Very, very long. And, because I'm emotionally invested in it - I've been a Beatles fan for decades and, for all his flaws as a human being, a fan of Lennon and his work, I sometimes have to just stop reading for a while and digest what I've read and prepare myself to go back for the next bit - it is taking me some time to get through the thing.

Earlier this morning, I was reading a portion of the book where the author was writing about the time right after the Beatles broke up, about how the band had become by then a symbol of something larger than just a collection of four very talented musicians, and about how fans at the time were so unwilling to let go of the possibility of a reunion. If you were around during those years, between the break-up and when John Lennon was murdered, you know that there was always some rumor or another that the Beatles were going to get back together, either for the long term or for at least a one-off show. Of course, the reunion never came, despite occasional offers of huge amounts of money to do so. There were a number of collaborations by various configurations of the band's members through the years. The closest any kind of reunion ever came to happening, however, was on Ringo Starr's third solo album, "Ringo" (1973), on which the other three Beatles appear in various places, but never all together on the same song.

Even as a fan of the band, I never was really that enthusiastic about a reunion. It always seemed to me that it just wouldn't be the same as it had been, and it seemed kind of pointless. There had been the Beatles, and then there wasn't any more, and that was okay because all four men were doing other things. That's just the way the world works. It would have been nice if the band had stayed together, but since they didn't, I thought, it was time for everybody, fans included, to move on to the new reality.

Except maybe not so much.

I saw an item online a couple of days ago which said that the two remaining Beatles will be performing on the Grammy awards show, which will be broadcast on January 26. The occasion is the awarding of the Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award to The Beatles. None of the items I've seen - and I checked around the Internet to make sure I wasn't imagining that first item and that it wasn't just a rumor - have even said whether Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will be performing together, just that they will both be performing. Still, when I saw the notice, I went from zero to "Oh, my god, I have to watch that" in about a nanosecond. This, even though I hadn't previously given a thought to watching the show at all. The Grammys, to be honest, have not been a viewing priority for me in years.

Apparently, a reunion of the remaining Beatles is something I've wanted to see more than I realized.

Or, maybe, I'm just getting old and nostalgic. I'm not really sure what the deal is. All I know is, I do want to see that. That, and I hope that the people who put on the Grammys show don't screw it up.

Music Sunday: The White Album Edition

I've been spending time lately reading a biography of John Lennon ("Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life", by Tim Riley [2011, Hyperion; 765 pages]). One of the interesting things about the book is that Riley goes into considerable detail regarding the recording process for each album The Beatles recorded. Last night, I reached the part of the book where he writes about the recording of "The Beatles", usually called the White Album.

I have interesting memories of the time the White Album came out. It was 1968, and I was in junior high. I had a quite permissive gym teacher, and she allowed us to bring records from home and play them during PE class whenever we had class in the gym (which seemed like it was most of the time), and one of my friends in the class always brought the White Album, and we listened to it a lot. But I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with that album - I love some of the songs, and I really dislike some of the others. The less said about the songs I don't like, the better, but I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the songs I really like from the album for today's Music Sunday.

The White Album was the ninth studio album the band produced, and things were beginning to fray a bit at the edges. The members of the band were not necessarily getting along very well; in fact Ringo Starr left for awhile, there was a certain amount of bickering over what would and would not be included on the album, and many of the songs did not include participation by all the members of the band. Additionally, producer George Martin took a vacation during the middle of recording, leaving a young and inexperienced record company employee with a note to "feel free to attend" the band's recording sessions if he wanted to. That turned out not to be a bad thing, however, and in the end Lennon insisted that the young producer get a credit on the album.

Critical reaction was mixed when the White Album first came out. Some critics were not happy with the band's use of satire and parody in the songs, while others pointed out where Lennon's and McCartney's songwriting had improved and approved of their "back to basics" approach rather than the technical pyrotechnics they used on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The band took it's lumps politically, from both ends of the political spectrum. The right wing accused the band of being "pro-Soviet" because of their inclusion of "Back in the USSR", while the left derided "Revolution 1" as a "betrayal", although by the time the band recorded the single version of the song, Lennon seemed to have altered his position about using violence as a tactic and changed the lyric to say "but when you talk about destruction you can count me out" with an addition of "in" at the end of the line after "out". In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine much later, Lennon explained that while his own personal preference was to not use violence, in some cases he didn't really know what he'd do.

Personally, I like the single version of "Revolution" to "Revolution 1" on the album. The album version is slower, sort of lazy and loopy and not really sounding like anyone wants to get up long enough to revolt against anything:



The single version, however, is faster, more energetic, and sounds like the band might actually be planning to participate in a revolution of some kind, even though they're still not sure if they want it to be a violent revolt:



I believe, but am not absolutely sure, that the clip above is the promotional clip recorded by the band in September 1968 and seen first in the United States on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" on October 13, 1968.

"Blackbird" is an example of how the members of the band were, in some cases doing their own things on the White Album. This song is just McCartney, his guitar, and an overdub of birdsong:



I like this version of "Blackbird", of course, but one of the loveliest things I have ever heard is a live a capella version by Crosby, Stills and Nash when I saw them in concert once.

One of the simplest songs on the White Album is "Mother Nature's Son", another McCartney composition. He has been quoted as saying that it was inspired by the time he spent in India with the other Beatles:



Something that always takes me by surprise is that "Helter Skelter" is also a McCartney composition, and that it is considered to be an early manifestation of heavy metal music. Well, yes, it sounds like it. But, from McCartney? That's surprising to me for some reason:



Personally, I've always been fond of this cover of "Helter Skelter", by U2, which appears at the beginning of their concert film, "Rattle and Hum":



Much quieter is George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". This song is notable in that it isn't any one of the Beatles who plays lead guitar on the song, but by Eric Clapton:

Music Sunday: The "One-Hit Wonders of the 80s" Edition, Part II

Last week, I had to leave a lot of songs that I like out of my review of one-hit wonders of the 1980s. But this is another Music Sunday, and I couldn't see any reason not to do Part II of that post today, rather than some other Sunday.

In 1981, Soft Cell recorded "Tainted Love", a cover of a song recorded by Gloria Jones in 1965. The song didn't chart for her then, or when she re-recorded it in 1976. However, when Soft Cell released the song it eventually (after looking like it wasn't going to go much of anywhere) topped out at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1982, also going to number 4 on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play list and to number 12 on the trade magazine's Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart:



It also took a long time for "Come on Eileen", by Dexy's Midnight Runners to chart in the US. It was released in June 1982 bud did not reach number 1 on the Hot 100 until April of 1983. It also hit number 6 on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and it made it as far as number 31 on the Got Adult Contemporary chart. Additionally, on VH-1's list of One-Hit Wonders of the 80s, "Come on Eileen" took the number one spot:



Big Country's "In a Big Country" was released in mid-1983 and by December it had peaked at number 17 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. This was actually one of my favorite songs at the time it came out:



"99 Luftballons", by the German band Nena became the highest-charting German song ever on US charts. In it's German version - there is also an English version - the anti-nuclear protest song peaked at number 2 on the Hot 100 in 1984:



Oddly enough, the English version did not chart in the US, although it went to number 1 in the UK, Ireland, and Canada. The lyrics in the English version are not an exact translation of the German lyrics:



Another one-hit wonder in the 80s was Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax". It's frankly sexual lyrics (although the band denied that for a while) got the single, released in late 1993, banned from the BBC for most of 1984 although other UK outlets were playing it. The ban didn't hurt sales of the single there, where it became the seventh-best selling single in UK charts history. In the United States, "Relax" peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100:

Music Sunday: The "One-Hit Wonders of the 1980s" Edition, probably Part I

After writing recently about one-hit wonders from the 1960s and 1970s, I got really curious about the one-hit wonders of the 1980s. And so I did a little research.

Turns out that I've never heard of a lot of the songs on the 1980s list. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that by the 1980s I had mostly quit listening to Top 40 radio, to the extent that it still existed. I could be wrong, but it seems that by that time music radio had splintered into stations that mostly only played specific genres of music - New Wave or Hard Rock or Classic Rock or whatever. Still, I managed to find a good list of music I knew and liked in the 1980s on the list.

Just to review, a one-hit wonder is an artist or group that has just one hit that reached the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States just once in their career in that formulation. An artist can have had other Top 40 hits with a group, for example, and still be a one-hit wonder as a solo act. Other charts in other countries also produce one-hit wonders, but as with my other surveys of one-hit wonders, I'm sticking to hits in the US.

The first thing that struck me on this list was that 1985 was the year of the charity (or consciousness-raising) one-hit wonder. There were three of those that hit the Top 40 that year.

The first of those, in chronological order, was "Do They Know It's Christmas?", by Band Aid. The song was written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, and was released in late 1984 as a way to raise money for famine victims in Ethiopia. The record quickly went to number one on the UK charts, staying there for five weeks, but in the US it made it to number 13 on the Hot 100 in January 1985. As you can see in the video made of the recording session, Geldof managed to convince a number of the top UK recording artists of the time to participate:



Following in April, "We Are The World" by USA for Africa went to number 1 in the United States on April 13. It also went to number on Billboard's Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart, and Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles chart, and it reached 27 on the industry magazine's Hot Mainstream Rock tracks chart and number 76 on it's Country Singles chart. The idea for the single was proposed by singer and activist Harry Belafonte and was taken up by producer Quincy Jones and by Michael Jackson, who co-wrote the song with Lionel Richie. Again, a long list of top recording artists was recruited. The resulting record won three Grammy Awards and by some estimates sold over 20 million copies worldwide. It also managed to raise over $63 million for humanitarian relief:



And then the consciousness-raising turned specifically political as a group called Artists United Against Apartheid got together and recorded "Sun City", written by Steven Van Zandt. The point of the exercise was to call down artists who had performed at Sun City, a resort within Bophuthatswana, one of several supposedly independent states within South Africa, which had been created by the South African government for the forcible relocation of the black population of that country. Again, a list of internationally recognized artists participated. The song did not get nearly as much airplay in the United States as had "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and "We Are The World" because as many as half of the radio stations in the US would not play the single because the management did not like that some of the lyrics were explicitly critical of then-president Ronald Reagan's South Africa policy of "constructive engagement" rather than boycott of the white government South Africa. In addition, the song was banned in South Africa itself. In consequence, "Sun City" only reached #38 on the Hot 100 in December of 1985. The record was more successful in other parts of the world, including reaching number 21 in the UK and number 4 in Australia:



"Sun City" was not the only politically-tinged one-hit wonder in the 1980s. In 1988, Australian band Midnight Oil released "Beds are Burning", which took up the subject of returning lands to back to the Pintupi people, one of the last native Australian peoples to be contacted by westerners and who were forcibly relocated from their native lands during the 1950s and 1960s. It shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone that Midnight Oil would release such a political song, considering that the band's lead singer, Peter Garret was a lawyer and activist, who subsequently held several ministerial positions in the Australian government and was a Member of Parliament there from 2004 to 2013. The song reached number 17 on the Hot 100 in the US:



Another much less political song from another Australian band became a one-hit wonder in the United States in 1988. This was "Under the Milky Way", by The Church:



I want to end today's post with a very American band, and a very well-known band, who had their only Top 40 hit in 1987. The closest the Grateful Dead had come previously to the Top 40 was in 1970 with "Truckin'", which got to number 64 on the Hot 100. But in 1987 the by-then aging band recorded and released "Touch of Grey", which made it all the way to number 9:



There's quite a few other songs I had hoped to share today, but if I do, I won't get anything else done today. Sharing more would also leave fewer good songs to share next year here on Music Sunday.

Music Sunday: The "My How Things Have Changed" Edition

I've been doing some research into popular music recently in connection with the book I'm writing about the Baby Boom generation, and I'm finding it interesting to watch how music changed from the beginning of the Boom in 1946 through the 1950s and 1960s and then on. It is especially interesting to look at the biggest hit singles from each year, not only to see what those songs were but how widely music was distributed. For example, in 1946, the first year of the Boom, popular music in the United States more or less stayed in the United States. By 1956, the reach of US popular music had extended to Europe, by the evidence of the charts that are reported. By 1966, not only had American pop extended its reach, the British Invasion had made more overseas groups popular in the United States.

Basically, the list of top five biggest hit singles in 1946 doesn't look anything like the list in 1956, which doesn't look anything like the list in 1966. Well, with one exception: in 1946, Frank Sinatra had the second biggest hit of the year with something called "Five Minutes More". Fast forward to 1966, when Sinatra had the biggest hit of the year with "Strangers in the Night".

I can't recall ever hearing "Five Minutes More", and on the chance that you haven't heard it either, here it is. It isn't a bad song at all:



And, because "Strangers in the Night" is a classic:



The lists of top singles for 1956 and 1966 have one thing in common - dominance by one artist or group. In 1956 this artist was Elvis Presley, who had three of the top five hits of the year, Besides those three songs - "Hound Dog" in third place, "Heartbreak Hotel" in fourth place, and "Don't Be Cruel" in fifth place - Elvis had two other songs go to number one in '56: "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" and "Love Me Tender". In 1966 the dominant group was, of course, The Beatles, also with three of the top five singles '66. Only they topped Elvis in one way, having all three places taken with singles that were two-sided hits. The took second place with "We Can Work It Out" and "Day Tripper", third place with "Yellow Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby" and fifth place with "Paperback Writer" and "Rain".

I've already revealed what the biggest hit was in 1966, but what was the top hit single of the year in 1956, even more popular than Elvis's songs? Well, that spot was taken by Doris Day, with "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" from, of all places, the Alfred Hitchcock film "The Man Who Knew Too Much", which starred Day and James Stewart. Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song that year, so it isn't surprising that it became very popular. Here is how it appears in the film:



Now, that's how you integrate a song into a non-musical movie.

The thing that's interesting to me about the comparison of the top hits in 1946, 1956, and 1966 is that in 1946 there is little sign of the rock and roll revolution yet to come. Besides Sinatra, the artists producing the biggest hits of the year were Perry Como, Vaughn Monroe, Nat King Cole, and The Ink Spots. The only glimmer of what is to come, musically speaking, is the presence of The Ink Spots, a vocal group that is considered to be a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. The Ink Spots were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. Still, their song "To Each His Own", which was the fifth biggest single in 1946, is still very much in the mainstream of traditional popular music:



By 1956, though, rock and roll (or at least rockabilly, depending on who is classifying Presley's music) had arrived. My favorite of the three Presley songs among the top five hits of the year is "Heartbreak Hotel", which not only made number one on the pop chart but also scored on the R&B and country-western charts. This performance is from the Milton Berle television show on April 3, 1956, and is the TV performance that got him in trouble (not the Ed Sullivan appearance that has gone down in legend as the one that was so disturbing to some viewers):



Besides the Sinatra song and the three Presley songs among the top five hits of 1956, Fats Domino's version of "Blueberry Hill" was ranked the second most popular song of that year:



In 1966, besides Sinatra and The Beatles, The Beach Boys also ranked one of their songs, "Good Vibrations" among the top five hits of '66, which was the fourth biggest single of the year. This video includes not only the song itself, but footage of the band in the studio recording the song:



But, The Beatles did dominate the top hits in 1966, I've always been fond of "Paperback Writer", which was the fifth biggest single that year:



"Eleanor Rigby" was, along with "Yellow Submarine", the third biggest single of 1966. "Eleanor Rigby is, simply, a lovely song:



I'd like to share all the songs that I've written about in this post, but this has already gotten awfully long and we've covered an awful lot of territory, and so I'll leave it at this for this week, although I was very tempted to get into the changes between 1966 and 1976, when popular music had gone through yet another revolution. Maybe another time.

Music Sunday: The One-Hit Wonders of the 1970s Edition

Last month, I shared some one-hit wonders from the 1960s. So, I thought it was only fair to give the 1970s equal time this month.

What seem to be novelty songs tend to make up more than a few songs on the list of one-hit wonders, which, if you didn't see the post last month, are songs by an artist or group that are the only one by that person or group in that configuration to crack the Top 40, in this case in the United States. This does not mean that the group in another configuration, or someone from the group, or a solo artist with others, did not have other hits. In fact, as I noted in that previous post, there are often some very familiar names on the list of one-hit wonders. Janis Joplin, for example, or Jimi Hendrix. Others score that one hit and are never heard from again.

For example, there is Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Yeah, the band produced a list of albums and more than a few singles, but only "Hot Rod Lincoln" his the Top 40, rising to number 9 in 1972. Other than that, the band never had a single go higher than number 56 on the charts. The highest any of the band's albums ever reached on the US charts was number 82 on the main charts, although one of their albums managed to hit number 47 on the US country charts. Still, "Hot Rod Lincoln" is a staple on classic rock radio stations (or at least the ones I listen to). It's a silly song about a guy and his car. The thing that endears the song to me so much is it's line about "Grapevine Hill", which is a real stretch of road between Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley in California, one that I've driven too many times to count:



And speaking of novelty songs, Loudon Wainwright III had a hit with "Dead Skunk" in 1973. The song was actually released in late 1972, but didn't manage to catch on until spring 1973, when it reached number 16 on the US charts. Some say that the song was actually aimed at then-president Richard Nixon, whose administration many people thought "stunk to high heaven", but Wainwright has apparently never either confirmed or denied that rumor. On the literal level, it is a song about a skunk that gets hit by a station wagon, and it is an odd little song:



Despite his lack of chart success aside from this song, Wainwright remains active in the music industry. He's released 22 studio albums and three live albums. He's also an actor, having appeared in a number of films. For those of you who are fans of Rufus Wainwright, Loudon is his father.

John Sebastian had early success as a member of The Lovin' Spoonful, but has had only one Top 40 hit as a solo artist. In 1976, he had a number 1 hit with "Welcome Back", the theme song to the TV series "Welcome Back, Kotter":



Sometimes, artists with only one hit are quite well-respected among fans and other musicians despite their dearth of commercial success. Warren Zevon, for example, only had one Top 40 hit, but is widely known and was quite influential in the industry. That hit was "Werewolves of London", released in 1978, and it only went to number 21 on the US charts, although the album it was on, "Excitable Boy", managed to go to number 8 on US album charts. He only ever had one other single that charted, and it only went to number 57 in the US. "Werewolves of London" showcases Zevon's dark sense of humor, which I like to think he developed at least in part as a reaction to the period of time he spent living in Fresno, California:



And then there's "Spirit in the Sky", by Norman Greenbaum. The song was released in late 1969, but reached number 3 on the US charts in 1970. It is kind of an enigmatic song. At the time it was released (and still today, probably) it was taken as a statement of religious devotion, although Greenbaum is a Jew who describes himself as "never real religious". Greenbaum himself has been quoted as saying that his inspiration for writing the song was the Western films he watched as a child and that the Christian component to the song was just the vehicle he used to get at the spirituality he saw in the films, because he saw the films' characters' desire to "die with their boots on" as a spiritual thing. Whatever, I love the guitar in this song:



Maybe next month, I'll share some one-hit wonders from the 1980s.

Music Sunday: The "The Day the Music Died" Edition

Back in 1971, Don McLean wrote and recorded "American Pie", the centerpiece of which was "the day the music died", the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson (aka "The Big Bopper") in a plane crash in Iowa on February 3, 1959. The three were on their way from one show to another and died in a way all too many rockers have passed too soon.

But, for many in my generation, the day the music died came on December 8, 1980, when John Lennon was gunned down in front of his apartment building in New York City, the city Lennon had loved and had fought to remain in when Richard Nixon tried to have him thrown out of the country a few years earlier. Nixon was afraid that Lennon's anti-war activism could cost him the election in 1972, and so sought to have Lennon deported on the basis of a misdemeanor marijuana conviction in London in 1968. For an examination of this attempted deportation, go watch the documentary film "The U. S. vs. John Lennon". It is an interesting and thorough look at the whole campaign against Lennon by the government.

But I'm not here to be all political today. What I want to do is to just share some of the music that John Lennon made in his short lifetime - he was just 40 when he was murdered - that so influenced the world that the most powerful government in the United States (mistakenly, I think) was afraid his fans would try to overthrow the government, just on his say-so. By all accounts, that wasn't even really on Lennon's radar. He just had this revolutionary idea that, after all the wars, it might be a good idea to give peace a chance and try loving one another a little bit more and hating each other a little bit less.

Of course, some of Lennon's detractors have made a point of insisting that he was not that nice a person and, indeed, various accounts have shown that he could be mean and petty and pretty damn snarky. You know, like most humans can be from time to time. As far as I can tell, John Lennon never claimed to be a saint. But he did work harder to get a little peace, personally and for the world, than most people do, and I don't think that pointing out that he wasn't nice all the time should minimize that at all.

At any rate, Lennon wasn't just a musician. He was also a writer, a film-maker, an actor, and a graphic artist. His first book, "In His Own Write", was published in 1964, and his second, "A Spaniard in the Works", was released the next year, when the world was still in the first blush of Beatlemania. Both of those books were largely made up of drawings, short stories, and nonsense verse that nevertheless showed that he was a genius at wordplay and at surrealism.

I'm only leaving three songs here. The first is "Help", the song when John Lennon first started getting real, as far as I can tell. This, of course, was still when The Beatles were going strong, from their second film. But in it, Lennon departed from the band's signature love songs to write this. I like this performance of the song, a live performance in Blackpool at the time the song first came out. They way you can tell that it really was a live performance is that there are a couple of points where Lennon loses his words. Even so, it remains a good performance that I like a lot:



The second song I'm leaving here is "Working Class Hero", which I've shared on this blog before. It is, I thing, another song in which Lennon gets real, addressing his childhood and adolescence, the class system in the UK, and how difficult it is for some people to fit in - and that perhaps it isn't always worth the trying. Or, at least, that's my interpretation of this song, that means a whole lot to me:



And I'm leaving "Watching the Wheels", from Lennon's final album, "Double Fantasy". In this song, Lennon addresses the issue of his years out of the limelight and away from the music industry before he went back into the studio to record "Double Fantasy". It seems written by the Lennon of "Working Class Hero", only several years on and a bit more mature in his outlook, but still going his own way:



It's been 33 years now. If he had lived, John Lennon would be 73 years old now. Who knows if he would still be making music, or what he would be doing. But, honestly, it pisses me off greatly that one lone nut decided that he would take it upon himself to remove Lennon from the world. This still, 33 years later, irritates the hell out of me.

Music Sunday: The "The Doors" Edition

I've been looking for a reason to do a Music Sunday post featuring The Doors for a long time. I could have done it on the anniversary of Jim Morrison's death, but that didn't seem quite right. I could have done it earlier this year, when Ray Manzarek died in May of this year, but that didn't seem quite the right time to do it either.

This, I think, is a good day to do it. Today is John Densmore's birthday. He was the drummer for The Doors. I like birthdays to hang these posts on much more than I like anniversaries of deaths or band break-up for that purpose. It makes it easier to dwell on the good music that an artist or a band made.

I've been a Doors fan, well, ever since I first heard the band's music. That would have been in 1967, probably when the band's second single, "Light My Fire" came out. At any rate, that's the first song of theirs that I remember hearing; their first single, "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" never made it past number 126 on the US charts, which means that at the time it was probably too obscure for me to have heard, since I pretty much only heard Top 40 radio in those days. That would also mean that I was ten years old at the time and in the fifth grade, probably rather younger than The Doors' target demographic. But, I was a little ahead of the curve in matters regarding music.

The thing was, The Doors' music was just so...different. No one, no band, before or since has sounded anything like the sounds they created in the six years between the band's formation and Morrison's death in 1971. And few bands created music that sounds as contemporary today as it did when it was first heard in the late '60s and early '70s. Usually, Morrison gets most or all of the credit for that, but in truth, the sound was created by the entire band and they should all get credit for that.

One of the most remarkable things about the longevity of The Doors' music is the fact that they really had only two number one hits in the United States - "Light My Fire", in 1967, and "Hello, I Love You", in 1968. Their only other Top Ten single was "Touch Me", also in 1968. "Love Her Madly", in 1971, reached number 11 in the US, "People Are Strange" got to number 12 in 1967, and "Riders on the Storm" reached as high as number 14 in 1971. Other than that, the band never charted higher than number 25, with "Love Me Two Times" in 1967. The band's 1970 album, "Morrison Hotel", which is my favorite, and which I have had a working copy of since it was first released, only produced one single, "Roadhouse Blues", which peaked at number 50 on the US charts.

Yet, love them or hate them (and some people do) The Doors are still, all these years later, pretty much universally known, over 40 years after Morrison died, ending the band for all practical purposes, although there were releases, usually of material recorded before Morrison's death, after that.

These are some of my favorites, starting with "Light My Fire", which originally appeared on the band's self-titled first album:



And then there is "The Unknown Soldier", the first single from "Waiting for the Sun", released in 1968. I will warn you that this promotional film for the song, made at the time of it's release, has graphic scenes, including authentic footage from the Vietnam War:



This performance of "Touch Me" comes from The Doors' infamous appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour:



This is "The Spy", from 1970's "Morrison Hotel". When you listen to the lyrics, it becomes apparent that the song could probably be about a stalker, which is kind of creepy. But the sound of the song - of the instruments and of Morrison's voice - makes it into something that goes beyond that possibility and into a masterpiece of paranoia. It makes for a brilliant song, in my opinion, something gothic and sinuous and sinister:



Okay. One more. "Riders on the Storm", from the album "L.A. Woman". It is said to be the last song the band recorded together. Again, it has a gothic, sinister aspect to it, but it also has one of the best lyrics ever in rock music..."There's a killer on the road/his brain is squirmin' like a toad", which is exactly how I would imagine a killer's brain to act:



Since it is John Densmore's birthday, I thought I'd include this clip from an interview earlier this year on the CBS early morning show on the occasion of the release of his second book about his experience in The Doors, "The Doors Unhinged" (the first was "Riders on the Storm", in 1990). He talks about conflicts in the band, both when they were together and afterward:

Music Sunday: The Rock Doc Edition

Today, I'm thinking about rock documentaries. This probably is because about a week or so ago I watched a great documentary about Jimi Hendrix, called "Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A'Comin'", that was part of the American Masters Series on PBS here in the States. It was two hours long, and followed Hendrix's entire life, from his birth in Seattle, Washington, in 1942, to his untimely death in London in 1970 at the age of 27. It is a good look at his career, from playing with the Isley Brothers and Little Richard to his biggest successes, first in England and then in the United States and around the world. Here is a trailer for the film, which includes commentary from not only Hendrix's friends, but from musicians such as Paul McCartney and Steve Winwood:



You probably know, if you've been following along here for very long, that I love documentary films in general. One of my favorite sub-genres with documentary film-making is rock docs, as they get called sometimes. One of the first, and one of the best, is "Monterey Pop", directed by D. A. Pennebaker, that chronicles the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, held in Monterey, California. The festival was organized by music promoter Lou Adler, singer John Phillips (of The Mamas and The Papas), producer Alan Pariser, and publicist Derek Taylor. Because of Taylor's work with The Beatles, it was widely believed that The Beatles would perform at the festival, but that did not happen, although Paul McCartney recommended both Jimi Hendrix and The Who for the festival, and their appearances at the festival their first major performances in the United States. It was also Janis Joplin's first large-scale performance, although her performance (and Hendrix's) did make it into the original cut of the film. You can find footage of their performances, though, on YouTube. One performance that did make it into the film was that of Otis Redding, in his first major appearance in front of a largely white audience.

I don't think this clip made it into the first cut of the film, but it is a good clip, so I'm including it anyway. It is The Buffalo Springfield, with David Crosby guesting (in a sign of things to come), singing "For What It's Worth" (yes, I think I did share this song last week, too), introduced by Peter Tork, of The Monkees. This was a key feature of Monterey Pop, acts being introduced by other musicians, who didn't necessarily perform at the festival:



The year 1970 saw the release of three rock documentaries, all of which are good (although at least one of them got lukewarm reviews when it was released) and all of which are still worth viewing today. In order of their release, these are "Woodstock", "Let It Be", and "Gimme Shelter".

I've written about the Woodstock festival here before, and probably about the film, directed by Michael Wadleigh (one of the editors was Martin Scorsese), as well. It documents, of course, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, which has become legendary in the history of music festivals and of the history of rock and roll. Coming in at about three hours long, the film does not feature performances by everyone who played at the festival, but it comes pretty close. Those whose performances appear in the film include, among others, Crosby, Stills, Nash, (and Young, in one song), The Who, The Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Arlo Guthrie, and famously (or perhaps infamously), Country Joe & the Fish. Among those who didn't make it into the original cut of the film include The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and the Grateful Dead. There are a couple of later versions of the film that are also floating around. One is the director's cut, which was released in 1994, and a 40th Anniversary edition, from 2009.

This did make it into the film. It is Country Joe & the Fish's performance of "Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag". It figures that there would be some anti-war music at the festival. After all, it was 1969, during the height of the protests against the war in Vietnam. And so this band obliged, with a fairly clever protest song. Alas, the Fish cheer, which came right before they sang this song (and is what really makes the band's Woodstock performance infamous in some circles), is not included in this clip:



"Let It Be" was a whole different kettle of fish from "Woodstock". This film documents the recording of The Beatles' album of the same name, right about the time the band began to fall apart. In fact the film, which is a bit difficult to find these days, includes the last public performance of all four Beatles together. This was the much talked-about and written-about rooftop concert in the middle of London that ended up being shut down by the police because it was disrupting business in the area. The film didn't really get wonderful reviews when it was released in May 1970, but it was and remains an interesting look at a rock band in the final stages of its career. Here is the original theatrical trailer from the film:



And then, in December 1970, "Gimme Shelter" was released. It chronicled the Altamont Free Concert that turned into such a disaster for The Rolling Stones. As the film shows, the concert started out as a nice gesture by the Stones but due to lack of planning, poor choices, and just general bad luck, the event turned into a disaster. In the event, one concert-goer was stabbed to death by security - which was being provided by the Hell's Angels, a choice that no one seemed to be willing to own up to later. The fact that the man who was killed, Meredith Hunter, was carrying a gun, was just one in the whole constellation of things that went wrong. He shouldn't have been carrying a gun, but professional security might have been able to handle the problem by other means. The film shows not only the planning for the show and some of the show itself, but the aftermath, which seemed to shock the members of the band as much as it did everyone else. Here is the original trailer for the film:



And here is the part of the film when Mick Jagger is looking at the footage from the concert where the killing of Hunter is shown, and the aftermath of that:



Certainly, this isn't what the Stones set out to do when they proposed the concert, and it isn't what the filmmakers had in mind in documenting it. But, sometimes, it feels when watching the film like it is a precursor of things to come as American society has gotten more violent and developed more of a gun culture. It's a frightening thing to watch, but I think this is an important film because it documents this and also shows what can go wrong even when most of the parties have the best of intentions.

Because I don't want to end on such a depressing note, I'm going to close with mention of one of my favorite rock docs of all, the 1978 film "The Last Waltz", which documents the farewell concert of The Band, held at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco California, on November 25, 1976, Thanksgiving Day. I've written about The Band and "The Last Waltz" here before, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, other than to say that the film was directed by Martin Scorsese, and to post a clip that I haven't posted before here, as far as I can recall. It is from some songs recorded in the studio a few days after the concert but included in the film. This is "Evangeline", with The Band and Emmylou Harris. You might notice that a couple of band members have switched instruments, with Richard Manuel on drums and Levon Helm playing mandolin:



These are, of course, only a few of the many rock documentaries out there. Go find one and watch it. And, if you will, leave me the titles of a few of your own favorites in the comments.

Music Sunday: The "One Hit Wonders" Edition, Sixties Style

People tend to laugh at "one hit wonders". They even made a movie about these songs by singers or bands who are never heard from again, "That Thing You Do". Great movie.

But the truth is, some artists with these single hits are actually heard from again, in other guises, or in other bands, or all on their own. Some of them are even known before having that one hit for other things they do. And sometimes, they do only have one hit, but that one song makes an impression that lasts through the decades.

A surprising case in point: The Jimi Hendrix Experience was a one-hit wonder by the criteria generally used to determine hits. Only one single by Jimi Hendrix, no matter who he was working with, broke into the Top 40 in the United States. That was "All Along the Watchtower", which was written and performed by Bob Dylan, but is probably most identified with the cover on the Jimi Hendrix Experience album "Electric Ladyland", from 1968. It only hit number 20 on the US charts, but it was his highest charting single. The highest one of his singles charted otherwise in the US was when "Crosstown Traffic" rose to number 52, also in 1968.



Overall, Janis Joplin was not a one-hit wonder. On the other hand, she only had a part in two singles that hit the Top 40 in her short but illustrious career. In 1971, her cover of "Me and Bobby McGee" hit number one - and that was her only Top 40 hit as a solo artist. But before that, in 1968, she was part of the one hit Big Brother and the Holding Company had, "Piece of My Heart", which went to number 12. Here is a live performance of "Piece of My Heart":



The Buffalo Springfield is considered to have been a hugely influential band in the 60s and beyond, despite the fact that they were only together initially from 1966 to 1968, and only had one Top 40 hit. "For What It's Worth", written by Stephen Stills and released in late 1966, hit number 7 in the US in 1967. The closest the band ever came again to the Top 40 was when, later in 1967, "Rock'n'Roll Woman" went as high as number 44. But both Stills and Neil Young were part of the band, and both went on to have both solo hits and hits with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Still, "For What It's Worth" has remained in the public consciousness despite being the only hit The Buffalo Springfield ever had. This performance is from the old Smother Brothers Comedy Hour, and features bonus silliness from Tommy Smothers:



Another one-hit wonder that reflected the upheaval of the Sixties was "Eve of Destruction", performed by Barry McGuire, which reached number 1 in 1965. I believe I've shared this particular performance of the song here before. It's still odd, and I still haven't quite figured out what the choreographer and set designer were thinking. It probably has something to do with the fact that this was on the television show "Hullabaloo" in 1965:



But, one-hit wonder or not, some songs take on a life of their own and, as shown in this live clip from 2001, Barry McGuire is still performing "Eve of Destruction" and still keeping it relevant:



On the other hand, some one-hit wonders weren't really relevant even when they were a hit. A case in point is Richard Harris's recording of "MacArthur Park" (1968) which reached number 2 on the US Top 40 charts. Yes, the actor, who concluded a long, successful career playing Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films. Well, back in the Sixties he, like a lot of actors, harbored ambitions to be a pop singer. His only hit was "MacArthur Park", written by Jimmy Webb:



This version of "MacArthur Park" has been called the worst song ever recorded and, honestly, it isn't really very good. However, I can't in all good conscience call it the worst. I have, after all, heard Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", which, for my money, is much, much worse. Here is a performance of the song on "The Tonight Show" in 1968, the year it hit number 17 on the Top 40 in the United States:



Yikes. And apologies to my friend Terrance, who is a Tiny Tim fan. But, just...Yikes!

Music Sunday: The Work in Music Edition

I've been thinking about work a lot lately. This probably has to do with the fact that I don't have a job, want one badly, and can't find one to save my life. It's really frustrating. It's stressful. And, lately, many people seem to be under the impression that the only reason people don't have work is because they don't want to work. Apparently, these folks don't know much about the economy and the unemployment rate, which is still a lot higher than it should be.

I could rant about the lack of work and the attitudes of people who have work and who don't have work from here until next Sunday. But I won't.

However, since I've been thinking about work so much, I thought I'd look around to see what kind of songs about work and workers are available. Turns out there are a lot of them. It also turns out that there aren't all that many songs that have a positive attitude about work, or at least about working conditions. I suppose that some people would read these songs as being by spoiled musicians who would rather fart around all day than actually work. But I don't read them all that way. I see them more as documenting all the crap that most working men and women have to put up with on a daily basis in order to keep their jobs so that they'll have a paycheck to take home every week or every month.

This is pretty plain in this song by Huey Lewis and the News, "Workin' for a Livin'" (1982):



The song doesn't say that the protagonist doesn't want to work, just that being an actual working person (as opposed to the bosses, who get paid more and get to decide how the workers are treated) can be a struggle on a day-to-day basis.

"Manic Monday" (1986), performed by The Bangles but written by Prince, is a song in the same vein. Yeah, there are other things the protagonist would rather be doing, but work is necessary. It's just that the realities of the workaday world are frustrating sometimes. Getting up early, maybe missing the bus or the train before even getting to work, knowing that if you're late you might get yelled at or get your pay docked...this is all stressful before you even get to the stress of the actual work day:



"Wichita Lineman" was written by Jimmy Webb and first recorded by Glen Campbell in 1968. It is a song that celebrates the worker who is out there when needed, sometimes lonely and working for long hours in all kinds of conditions. Personally, I like this cover, from R.E.M. best:



Other songs about work are more directly snarky. One of the best of these is Dolly Parton's Grammy Award winning and Academy Award nominated "9 to 5" (1980) from the film of the same name. She wrote the song as well as singing it in the film:



Another song in the same vein and even more direct, although it is only partly about work (it skewers family life pretty strongly, as well, and has some deeper philosophical ambitions as well) is The Police's "Synchronicity II", which was released in 1983, talks about the humiliations that sometimes come along with working for a living:



I'm tempted to end this edition of Music Sunday with Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It", but I don't want to do that. I know that it is a common sentiment. I've had that sentiment about a couple of the jobs I've had. But work isn't a bad thing. Work is a good thing. I am in absolute earnest about wanting a job, and it irritates me when people bitch and moan about their jobs when they should be glad, in this economy especially, that they have one. Yes, there are irritations. Yes, there are frustrations. And, yes, in some jobs the expectations are ridiculous and occasionally humiliating. But those are not the fault of the job. They are the fault of the culture, both in the workplace and in the culture, and of those who have the inclination to make things difficult for those they work with.

That is what these songs do, I think. They complain about working conditions, not about working itself.

And, with that, I'll get off my soapbox and let you enjoy the rest of your Music Sunday.

Music Sunday: The "Acting Singers" Edition

Still recovering from a very long Saturday (I had another SCA event to attend), so Music Sunday is going to be short and sweet today, and with a little help from Wikipedia in the for of birthdays for the day.

As it turns out, the singer of one of my favorite movie songs was born on this day in 1948. Lulu sang the title song from "To Sir, With Love" (1967), as well as playing a featured role in the film as Barbara Pegg, a student in a class of working-class kids in one of the poorer parts of London. The film starred Sidney Poitier and was one of the top money-makers 0f 1967. Here is how the song appears in the film:



It is also the birthday today of Adam Ant, another British singer who has dabbled in acting as well as music. Hew as born on November 3, 1954, and was at his most popular in the early 1980s, first with Adam and the Ants and then as a solo act. "Goody Two Shoes" (1982) was his first solo single, and a hit. It is an interesting song, upbeat and trendy for the time while it contained some pointed social commentary about the press and its intrusion on and speculation about the lives of celebrities:



Don Henley covered pretty much the same territory the same year in a song that was more serious and maybe more cynical, but which I like a lot better, "Dirty Laundry". This song tackles the whole issue of how the news media seem to have turned into one big tabloid and, by extension, it's intrusion into the lives of the rich and famous. The song was a solo hit for Henley, but in this clip he performs it with the Eagles in a live show earlier this year:



And, pulling back from that tangent...

Other British singers have dabbled in acting. One of the most notable is Sting. Besides being quite successful both as a member of The Police and as a solo act, he has appeared in several films. But, since this is Music Sunday and not Movie Monday, here is a clip of the video for "We'll Be Together" (1987), from his album "...Nothing Like the Sun". In the video, he calls on his acting as well as his musical abilities, playing two characters:



There are many more musicians who have appeared in films, sometimes as themselves, sometimes in smaller or larger roles and portraying others. Which, of course, means that there could be a second installment of "Acting Singers" in Music Sunday's future.

Lou Reed: 1942 - 2013

I was trying to figure out what I was going to do for today's Music Sunday post when I came across the news, reported by CNN here, that Lou Reed has died at the age of 71. Apparently, there was a hoax death report regarding him a day or two ago, but it appears that since the news is now coming from his publicist, the new report is true.

I'll be honest. I don't know Reed's music well. But I do know what an influence he has been on the music world. And I do know that when I first heard "Walk on the Wild Side", when it came out when I was in high school, I was astonished. I had no idea that anyone could say things like that on a song on the radio. On AM radio, even.

Certainly, "Walk on the Wild Side" is not a "pretty" song, either in sound or in subject matter. But it is a singular song, and amazing in its own way. And so I will leave this here and leave it at that for Music Sunday this week:

Music Sunday: The Tom Petty Birthday Edition

Today, according to Wikipedia anyway, is Tom Petty's birthday. So, in recognition of the day, I thought I'd share a little bit of his music - by himself, with the Heartbreakers, and in association with other musicians.

First up is "Free Fallin'" (1989). I like the song, and I also like this video, which is very San Fernando Valley - part of my own stomping grounds when I was growing up:



And this is "Runnin' Down a Dream", also from 1989, another song I like a lot. I don't think I've ever seen this video for it, though. It's intereting, and a little strange (like a lot of Petty's videos, actually):



Petty did a duet with Stevie Nicks in 1981, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around". Here's a live version of that, with a bonus song, "I Need to Know" at the end of the clip:



Tom Petty was also a Traveling Wilbury, along with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne. Among the songs they did was this one "Handle With Care" (1988):



Finally, here is a fairly early song from Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Refugee", from 1980:

Music Sunday: The "The Beatles Go Their Separate Ways" Edition

1969 ended on a down note, as I've written about before here, with the disastrous December 6 free concert headlined by the Rolling Stones at Altamont Speedway in California.

Things didn't get any better in 1970, which was the year the Beatles broke up. Actually, John Lennon had told the group he was leaving in late 1969, but agreed to keep his departure quiet until after "Abbey Road" was released so as not to hurt sales of the record. The first public announcement that the band was breaking up came on April 10, 1970, from Paul McCartney, ten days before he released his first solo album, "McCartney", which he had started working on after Lennon made his announcement.

"McCartney" was truly a solo album, with every instrument on the record played by McCartney. The only contribution from anyone other than McCartney himself were some background vocals and sound effects by his wife, Linda. The most memorable song from that album was "Maybe I'm Amazed". It got considerable radio airplay in the US when the album came out despite the fact that it was not released as a single at the time:



The Beatles' last studio album, "Let It Be" was released on May 8, 1970, followed on May 20 by the release of the documentary film "Let It Be". The documentary is interesting in that it shows the band in the process of breaking up. The film didn't get very good reviews, but it managed to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score, and is remarkable for the rooftop concert that the band gave, the last time all four members of the band played in public together. This clip is "Get Back" from that performance:



It wasn't just Paul McCartney who released a solo album that year. In fact, Ringo Starr released two solo albums in 1970. The first, "Sentimental Journey", had come out on March 27, 1970 in the UK. It was a collection of old standards, and was a project that the rest of the band members are reported to have encouraged him to do. Later in the year, on September 25, he released "Beaucoups of Blues", with more of a country-music flavor. Here is the title song of that album:



George Harrison released "All Things Must Pass" on November 20, 1970, but it was not his first solo effort. It was his third solo album, after 1968's "Wonderwall Music", the soundtrack from the film "Wonderwall", which was mostly instrumental in nature, and 1969's "Electronic Sound", which consisted of two long tracks featuring the use of a Moog synthesizer.

Harrison's 1970 effort was ambitious, with three discs and 23 songs, including "My Sweet Lord" and "What is Life". The album did very well both critically and popularly, reaching number 1 on both the US and UK album charts. "What is Life" wasn't as popular as "My Sweet Lord" (it only reached number 10 on the Billboard singles chart, while "My Sweet Lord" hit number 1), but I like it better:



Despite being the first of the Beatles to say he was leaving, John Lennon was the last of the four to release a solo album, with "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" coming out on December 11, 1970. It was well-received critically at the time it was released and has been named to several "best album of all time" lists, including placing at number 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2006, Time magazine rated it one of the 100 Best Albums of All Time. It is a remarkable album. My favorite song on the album, and one of my favorite songs of all time, is "Working Class Hero":



All of the members of the Beatles went on to make interesting music, although John Lennon and George Harrison left the world way too soon. Paul McCartney is still recording and touring; in fact, he has a new album, "New", set to be released tomorrow (which I just found out as I was researching this post). Ringo Starr last released a new album in 2012 called, appropriately enough, "Ringo 2012", and he and his band, the All Starr Band, toured the Pacific Rim earlier this year.

Still, it's sometimes difficult to fathom that it has been 43 years since the rock band that changed the world broke up, and a bit longer than that since all four were in a recording studio together.

Music Sunday: The "Year Before 1969" Edition

It occurs to me that a lot gets said and written about 1969 and the music it produced. It was a landmark year, after all, with Woodstock and Altamont, and all the hoopla that surrounded those events. But what about the year before? How was 1968, musically speaking?

Well, Led Zeppelin performed in public for the first time, as The New Yardbirds (just two months after The Yardbirds had disbanded). Calling themselves The New Yardbirds made some sense, as Jimmy Page had played with The Yardbirds. Other bands starting up during the year included Yes, Rush, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath (as Earth). Cream disbanded, and so did the Buffalo Springfield. Before Cream broke up, the band played a farewell performance at Royal Albert Hall, the last time Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker performed together until 1993, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Here is "White Room", from Cream's farewell concert. I'm not sure what the narration at the beginning of the clip is about:



And this is the band's performance of "Sunshine of Your Love" from the Rock and Roll Induction ceremony in 1993:



While not an immediate break-up, The Monkees ended the run of their television series, for which the band had been created in 1966. The show ran for 58 episodes. I've written here before about my belief that, especially once allowed to record their own music and have some creative input into what they were doing, The Monkees weren't really that bad a band. The movie they made, also in 1968, was not nearly as well-received as their TV series, but the band soldiered on, with some defections (Peter Tork left in 1969 and Michael Nesmith left in 1970) until 1971. There were reunions later on, of course, but very rarely did all four members of the band get back together for very long at a time.

The songs that were popular in 1968 ran a wide range of genres and styles. The biggest song of the year was The Beatles' "Hey Jude", and "Lady Madonna was also a big hit for the band that year as a single, although it did not make it onto one of their albums until 1970. "Lady Madonna" was the last Beatles' single released on the Parlophone label, with all subsequent recording coming out on the Beatles' own Apple Records:



And then there was this, "I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", by a band called The First Edition. It's hard to tell whether this song was advocating for better living through chemicals or warning against that way of life, but it's an interesting song of its time. And, yes, that is Kenny Rogers singing lead:



From the film "The Graduate", Simon and Garfunkel had a hit in 1968 with "Mrs. Robinson". Here is a live performance of the song from that year:



"The Weight" one of The Band's best-known songs, also was released in 1968. This performance is from their appearance at Woodstock in 1969:



Of course, there was music in 1968 that protested the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. One of the best of those was this song, "Sky Pilot", by Eric Burdon and the Animals:



So, there's a little taste of the music of 1968. As always, I encourage you to go find more on your own, because there is never enough time or room here to share everything I would like to share.