Music and Musical Gear

Last week on Glee, the ‘Abstinence Club’ wanted to provide counterpoint to the raw sexuality of Gwenyth Paltrow’s Holly Holiday character, and chose the song ‘Afternoon Delight’ by the Starland Vocal Band. If you are old enough to remember the song, you know that it is amongst the most bright & cheery songs of the 70’s … and also blatantly sexual as it describes grabbing an afternoon ‘quickie’ rather than waiting until the night time. It is a classic representation of a song that sounds upbeat but is really very different, masking a message with an innocent harmony and innuendo….

When you look at the history of jazz drumming, there are many towering figures with names like Williams, DeJohnette, (Jo) Jones, (Philly Joe) Jones, (Elvin) Jones … and a guy from Springfield, Massachusetts names Joe Morello. Morello was a gifted drummer who had a great sense of time and adding appropriate color. His longest gig was with Marian McPartland’s band … But he is best known as the drummer laying down the tight beats on Dave Brubeck’s Time Out recording. The song Take Five was generally used as a solo vehicle for Morello in live performances, such as the Carnegie…

If you watched the Grammy Awards and saw the segment featuring Eminem, you might have noticed that Rihanna was terrible ‘singing’ Love the Way You Lie. In fact that whole song was pretty lousy, and it only got better when it transitioned into Dr Dre’s section. And even then for me the highlight was the haunting voice of Skylar Grey. She had some feeling reminiscent of Sinead O’Connor tied in with her own haunting and fragile sensibilities. Since then I was sent a link to a YouTube video of the original demo for the song by Skylar Grey who actually…

Until relatively recently, so-called ‘cover songs’ were a staple of every artist’s repertoire. Whether it was classical artists playing compositions of folks like Bach or Mozart or singers doing the ‘great American songbook’, historically artists have established themselves by working through the existing tradition. Not any longer – now the great songs of the past are merely another source of familiarity to be bought and sampled to give your new song a familiar tune to differentiate it from the other similar sounding club dreck. This came up as we were watching ‘Don’t forget the lyrics’ and the song Savin’ All…

Phil Collins is an interesting figure in popular music – he began as the talented drummer of the progressive rock group Genesis, then suddenly became the frontman when Peter Gabriel left in 1975, leaving the drummer’s throne for the microphone as Bill Bruford and later Chester Thompson filled his former role. As Genesis vaulted from experimental rock to pop superstars, Collins simultaneously launched a massively successful career as a solo artist. At times it became hard to separate Collins from Genesis, and as his pop ballads became more and more overplayed on radio his core fans started to desert him….

Billie Holiday is famous for two things: her amazing vocal talents, and her tragic downward spiral due to drugs and alcohol. Lester Young was a famous swing-era tenor saxophone player who never quite adapted to the new bebop and other post-war jazz stylings, yet had his best commercial successes in the late 1940’s before beginning his own alcohol fueled spiral in the 50’s. Billie & Lester began working together in 1939 and made a series of wonderful recordings together before all recording was stopped for a number of reasons for a few years. Those records are at the pinnacle of…

For more than 50 years the Billboard Hot 100 has tracked the most popular songs in the country. Of course, for nearly that any years there have been payola scams, chart manipulation and other industry shenanigans that have tainted the songs that appear on the list. But make no mistake – whatever means are used to get a song to #1, the result is a lot of recognition and sales. Last week on Buzzfeed a user had compiled in two segments five seconds of EVERY #1 song from the inception of the Hot 100 until 1992. Over the weekend someone…

After starting my ‘Music Diary Songs of Note’ I quickly realized that I wanted to look at both pop music for the music video trends, and also at some of the great jazz and other recordings I hoped to feature. So I’m going to use the ‘Music Diary Songs of Note’ label for the times I want to focus on the MUSIC, and now I’ll use “Pop Goes the Music Diary” when I am looking at the music industry. In case you didn’t know, Britney Spears has a new song out called ‘Hold it against me’. It sort of reminds…

Throughout the 1970’s Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock were two of the leading figures in jazz fusion, Corea with the bombastic Return to Forever and Hancock with his funky Headhunters group. Each had a critical part in Miles Davis groups of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, which Hancock a pivotal member of the ‘second great quintet’ and Corea joining on electric piano and leading into the epic Bitches Brew. Both played on the transition records ‘Filles de Kilimanjaro’ and ‘In A Silent Way’, with Corea staying with Davis through On the Corner in 1972. However, in 1978 the two fusion…

I had never been one to peruse YouTube for songs and music video clips … until I decided to start including them with my music reviews as a simple way for folks to get a sample of an artist’s sound. Then I found myself hooked! Now I will regularly check out artists of interest on YouTube to see their songs performed in a number of settings, and also use it to check out full versions of songs when the measly iTunes / Amazon sample just isn’t enough – or if I get a desire to listen to a song while…

Given how much I talked about Jason Parker since discovering his music & intriguing business model early in 2010, it is not surprising that I’ve been eagerly anticipating more news on his Nick Drake project. Well, now we have more … but it wasn’t what I expected! Jason works with a rapper/remixer named Spekulation, and as he notes here had sent him early cuts of stuff from the upcoming Nick Drake project for feedback. Spekulation, as Parker says: cut up our take of “Day Is Done” with Jay-Z’s “Can’t Knock The Hustle”, and lo and behold it was magic! Spek…

Photo courtesy of JAE C. HONG of the Associated Press The Grammy Awards, like most self-congratulatory industry events across the various media, are an interesting study in how they like to ‘tell a story’ framed by performances, themes, and the awards they give out. There is a mix of artists having major sweeps of categories, some years the awards are spread around, and there is even the occasional ‘surprise’ – which generally means the difference between two similar sounding pop stars from the same label and management team. Make no mistake on my opinion – I believe the ‘Awards’ at…