Voices Without Peer, Vol. 1

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

I grew up in the late '60s and '70s, when distinctive voices were the norm on the radio.  Let me hear one note sung by Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Alice Cooper, or Bruce Springsteen and I could tell right away.  There was experimentation going on because the art form was still in its infancy (less than 15 years old even in the early '70s).

As time went on, voices started to sound more alike.  Part of that was the production values-as synthesizers became more prominen--vocals took a back seat to the aural gymnastics going on in the foreground.  But even in that mishmash there were voices that stood out-you could tell they were something special.  This week I'm going to highlight those later voices that were so unique, so powerful, they made listening more enjoyable by their mere presence.

Today's Voice might not be familiar to everyone but I was an instant fan and remain one to this day.  His name is Peter Cox, and with his sidekick Richard Drummie formed a band called Go West in the mid-'80s.  They actually had a couple of hits, not the least of which was "King of Wishful Thinking" that was part of the Pretty Woman soundtrack.  I heard that song the other day at the WalMart, underscoring its permanent place in American Culture.

But I want to go back to the beginning.  The very first song from the very first album in 1984.  It showcases Peter Cox' amazing soulful voice.  And the high energy of the tune makes it another one of those "driving songs" I touched on last week.  So, here's our first exposure to Go West, and to Peter Cox, my first Voice Without Peer:

It's a crappy video, but who cares?  I'm just listneing anyway.  Oh, and there's a remix also.  Check out the first 20 seconds of this video where the VINYL is put on the TURNTABLE.

Another Voice Without Peer tomorrow...


Pete

The Greatest Cut-out of All Time

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

Back in the day, record companies sold overstocks and under-performing albums at a cut rate.  They were called "cut-outs" because typically there was a punch mark in the album sleeve, or a hole drilled in the CD jewel case.  This identified the record as something of a "bargain basement" sort of thing, often by artists you've never heard of or artists you have heard of making terrible music.

I perused the cut-out racks religiously because sometimes you can find something in it that's worth investing (at the time) $2.99 or so.  Often times it was a pure crapshoot, with no idea whether you will get something worth your time and money, or if you get zonked.  It was sorta like Let's Make A Deal for music lovers.

Anyway, I came across a CD one day and I knew nothing about the band--nothing was familiar except for the producer of the record--Gary Katz.  Some of you may know that Gary Katz was the producer for all of the Steely Dan albums from the beginning up to and including Gaucho and had a reputation of creating unique sound from the artists he worked with.

So, I plunked down my 3 bucks solely on the strength of Gary Katz' reputation.   Certainly he wouldn't work with a crappy band, right?  At least SOMETHING on this CD would justify my faith.  And so I bought A Strange Kind of Love by a Scottish band called Love and Money.  To this day it remains the single greatest "cut-out" I ever bought.  It had whispers of Steely Dan, plus a strong vocalist telling stories about love and loss.

Today's selection from the Time Machine is the title track to that fabulous diamond in the rough.  The production is pristine, building from a single drumbeat to a more involved arrangement of guitars and keyboards.  You can almost hear Steely Dan if you listen close enough.  The band never attained the level of sales of this record either in Europe or here in the States.  But for a minute, with Gary Katz' help, they caught lightning in a bottle.  Experience "A Strange Kind of Love" for yourself...

Heading home from the IMA Summit in Orlando.  See you tomorrow...


Pete

A song to drive home with...

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

Missed a couple of days as I was making my way to Orlando by car.  But I'm going home tomorrow and thought I'd put up another great driving song.  This one is yet another instrumental, but of a completely different flavor than the Joe Satriani tune I posted last week.  This one circles back to band (Project?) that began in the '70s and continues to this day.

While a college student, I read Billboard magazine religiously.  Until I went to college I hadn't even heard of it--a sequestered upbringing, I guess--but once I got to dig into the charts and see who was moving up and who was moving out I was hooked.  And it was always cool to see advertisements from the record labels for upcoming releases.  I would know 2-3 weeks out when something was coming.  In the fall of 1976 a series of ads ran that showed a person mummified in recording tape.  The tagline was "All Wrapped Up In The Project".

What on Earth was that all about?  "The Project"?  Didn't sound like anybody I recognized.  As it turns out, the ads heralded the coming of The Alan Parsons Project, and its take on Edgar Allan Poe's works called Tales of Mystery and Imagination.   For the next 10 years The Project released an album a year, always on some general theme and always including instrumentals (usually 2, sometimes just one).

The ninth album from The Project was named Stereotomy, and the second instrumental is today's destination for the Time Machine (which, by the way, was also an album title by The Project that included a very good instrumental to open up the album.  I'll get to that somewhere down the line).  "Where's the Walrus" was one of those songs that caught you early and hung on for the rest of the song.  It had a driving beat, a great set of synthesizers, and a fabulous sax solo in the middle that led to a chaotic finish.  It's definitely top 10 in my Project favorites, and worth a listen (with the caveat that it may cause dizziness and difficulty driving or operating heavy machinery).  Enjoy...

Safe travels.  See you tomorrow...


Pete

Drive on...

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

There is nothing like a great driving song.  Something to stir the insides and make the right foot more active.  They're best listened to late at night, when traffic is lighter and there are fewer, ahem, obstacles, to the ride.  We're driving on Sunday, but there will be no speed racing from us.

I recall a drive one night where for some ungodly reason I heard a remixed version of Brooks and Dunn's "Boot Scoot Boogie".  It had all sorts of studio tricks in it and I damned near hit the century mark as it went on.  If you've never heard it, it's worth your time:

But that's not the Driving Song I'm thinking about.  This one has no vocal, no studio tricks, and it wasn't played on the radio much.  But this song is dangerous to play while facing a long stretch of pavement with no "obstacles" in front of you.  It's by my favorite "shred" guitar player of all time, an artist who should always be considered when listing the best players of all time.  Listen, but don't drive or operate heavy machinery until you understand its effects on you.

There is a live version and it's just about the same.  The man can play.  Enjoy the weekend.


Pete

1+1=3 (or more)

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

I am unapologetic in my love of dance music.  In the '70s, I loved the best of Disco, especially the graceful and flowing instrumentation (strings, choirs, etc.) that bands like Chic were so good at.  In the '80s, the music became more synthesizer-driven, but make no mistake--the core of dance music (a driving beat, a strong bass line, a killer chord progression) remained.

The '90s versions were more "aggressive" (due in no small part to the advances in drum machines, sampling, and recording technologies).  Artists like Madonna used these tools to create memorable songs that not only got you up off your chair but remain solid pop tunes 20+ years later ("Into the Groove" might have the greatest bass line of any dance tune, ever).

Even back in the Jurassic Period, the remix was part of any DJ's arsenal.  Back when, remixes were studio-produced, and were basically just longer versions of the original song.  Perhaps a verse would be added, or instruments changed (I have a 6 minute, 14-second version of Foreigner's "That Was Yesterday" that remains my favorite Foreigner tune ever).  As technology allowed, remixes became more sophisticated, as a song could be deconstructed and reconstructed as the remixer chose, retaining parts of the original, discarding others.

In the 21st Century no self-respecting pop star would just release a single without also creating (or encouraging others to create) alternative dance/club versions of the same work.  Remix artists have followings of their own these days, and artists actively seek them out to take a song and re-imagine it.  My personal favorite of these new Alchemists call themselves Cahill.

Let me demonstrate.  One of the world's biggest pop stars in the early 2000s was a guy almost no American could pick out of a lineup--Robbie Williams.  Williams was part of a UK "boy band" called Take That, then went out on his own.  Hit after hit, tour after tour, Robbie was The Man.  But like all artists (and all boy bands), Williams' popularity has waned (he even went back to Take That).  But nothing that has happened in the last 3 years will dim how big a star he was--except here in the USA.

In 2009, he released a single called "Bodies".  It "only" went to #2 in the UK (as opposed to his 7 #1 singles there).  It was actually #4 here, but by 2009 pop radio was not the superstar-making venue it was in the past.  Anyway, here's the song.  Feel free to cut out early if you wish-it's sorta "limp" compared to what follows:

Now, here's what Cahill did to it.  Same vocal, but with a completely different take.  It's an unabashed dance track that just obliterates the original in terms of energy and power.

Wowzer.  Here's an even more incredible example.  Before Taylor Swift became a true Pop Star (or Pop Tart, depending on your perspective), she was a "country" singer.  Here's her version of "Tears On My Guitar", a VERY "country" song:

Here's how Cahill re-invented it.  Give it a minute or two to get through the introduction and hear the strings and the accentuation of the chord structure leading into a ProTools compression of the pauses from the original vocal.  And there is a vocal ornament there that almost nobody can interpret, but it's a part of the chorus, the line is "Don't know why I do".  All they took was the end of "why" and looped it.  I consider this the most radical product of the remixer's art:

Cahill rules!

See you tomorrow...


Pete

Everyone needs a vacation...

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

During my formative years, pop music was overtaken by "soft" music--less beat, less guitar, more vocal stylings, as they say.  One of the songs I couldn't escape was "I'm Not in Love" by a British band called 10cc.  It was languid (to say the least), and told the story of a man trying to convince himself he wasn't in love.

I knew practically nothing of 10cc, as their popularity was practically 100% across the pond.  Later, I was subjected to an earworm of a song called "The Things We Do For Love" (you remember--like walking in the rain and the snow/and there's nowhere to go/and you're feeling like a part of you is dying--that one).  What I missed because all of my exposure was from AM radio was some of their cheekier stuff.  Like today's nugget from the Time Machine.

The song tells the tale of a man on vacation in the Caribbean, and the characters and experiences he encounters along the way.  It was unique in that reggae wasn't much of a genre in the mid-70s, and while this song wasn't pure reggae it was flavored enough to be exotic.  I didn't hear it until I was a senior in college, and it went out of my awareness until just recently, when I heard it more than once on SiriusXM.

Anyway, enjoy your vacation--or, as the Brits say it--your "holiday".

Two of 10cc's members--Kevin Godley and Lol Creme--attained fame in the '80s as music video directors, turning out classic videos like "Every Breath You Take" for the Police" and the legendary (and now extremely dated) "Rockit" for Herbie Hancock.  They also released a song called "Cry" that was the ancestor of the face-morphing technique Michael Jackson used in "Black or White", but without the computers.

See you tomorrow...


Pete

Who Did it Better? Round 3 (three)

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

I wanted to close out my "Who Did it Better?" arc with a three-fer.  It's rare that three different artists, with very different styles, cover the same song.  And all three are just about perfect.  OK, first up is the original, sung by the man who wrote it.  How does one improve on this?

Check out those suits!

But artists are brave, and although perfection is hard to improve on, Johnny Rivers gave it a whirl.  And man, did he hit it out of the park!

Anybody who can sing "Secret Agent Man" gets to take a swing at just about anything in my view.

But there was another version, this time done by a woman.  Plaintive, emotional, Linda Ronstadt brought just about everything the other two did, and added something they couldn't--a touch of twang.    Amazing.

So, there you have it.  Three artists, three interpretations, three classics.  Hard to choose, but the good news is that we don't have to!  We can enjoy all three.  I'll come back to Linda covering somebody else's song some other time.  I have a specific one in mind.  Think hard enough and you'll probably guess it.  But not now...

See you tomorrow...


Pete

Who did it better? Round 2

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

Thought I'd begin the week with another two-fer, where co-songwriters performed their song.  So much of what a song sounds like depends on the producer, who structures the instruments, the tempo, and the general "vibe" of the song.  So, even if the two singers were similar in range and/or vocal quality the outcome  could be very different.

But if the two singers ARE different, the producer's input is magnified, and that brings us to today's Time Machine entry.  I chronicled the career of Kenny Loggins earlier in this space, as he was the "King of Soundtracks" in the mid-to-late '80s.  He had a writing relationship with Michael McDonald that produced "What a Fool Believes" in the late '70s.  In 1985 they had another collaboration, this time performed by both writers.

Kenny's version was self-produced, with help from David Foster (he was the guy who wrote the Canadian song for Africa, along with music for the 1988 Olympics and so much more) and Michael Omartian, who's best known for producing Christopher Cross, the multi-platinum debut album that spawned "Ride Like the Wind" and "Sailing".

Michael also self-produced, but got help from Ted Templeman, who did most of the Doobie Brothers' records, along with Van Halen's debut.  Michael's charted better.  Kenny's version was "different", mostly because it didn't have Michael McDonald.  Any song with Michael McDonald is better for it.  Anybody singing a song that Michael McDonald sang comes in second pretty much every time.

So, here's Kenny's version:

And here's the superior, in my view, version from Michael McDonald.  Because it has Michael McDonald.  Enough said.

Notice the subtle difference in how the song is structured.  That's the producer.  Notice the incredibly soulful vocal.  That's Michael McDonald, something no producer can add, unless the producer is Michael McDonald.  As Sam Mussabini said in Chariots of Fire "There's a saying in my game, son.  'You can't put in what God's left out.'"

See you tomorrow...


Pete

Who did it better? Round 1

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

Let's go back (yet again) to the notion of cover songs.  Sometimes, a writer comes up with something that just isn't quite "right" for the particular album they're working on.  Or, they make friends with another artist and the two of them put something together.

There are dozens of examples of this, but today I'm going to put both versions up for your perusal.  Most of you know Bruce Hornsby as a soft rock specialist that writes semi-autobiographical songs about the Tidelands area of Virginia, especially Norfolk and Newport News.  People living in that area would scour lyrics of Hornsby's songs to figure out just who Bruce was singing about.

Bruce was "discovered" by Huey Lewis, and it was Lewis that helped Hornsby get a record deal.  I'm always flabbergasted when I hear that band X was turned down by every record company in town when they were starting out.

Even the Beatles ran the gamut and got turned down before Brian Epstein got them a "trial".  Regarding Hornsby, I would have signed him 3 bars into "The Way It Is", but somehow he sat waiting.  Huey helped and the rest is history, as they say.

Today's Time Machine is running the "local" route--we'll make two stops:  First, we'll hear Bruce's version of a song he wrote, then hear Huey's version.  There are similarities, and which one you like probably depends on how you like your mid-tempo tunes.  First up, here's Bruce:

A bit twangy, a bit more languid.  But bear in mind Bruce wrote it, so this is his vision.  Next, we hear Huey Lewis' version.  More in line with Lewis' other songs of this time, a bit punchier,   Your turn, Huey:

I like both of them, but then again I love Hornsby singing just about anything.  I give it to Huey by a nose, just because the arrangement was so upbeat.  Tough call.  We'll visit this "who did it better?" thing from time to time because there are examples where the original is better, others where the second time is better.  It's fun.

Enjoy the weekend.  See you Monday (17).


Pete

Well, it's about time...

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

I managed to get 21 posts in before I selected a single song from my favorite band of all time (besides The Beatles, who retired all the trophies).  I will come back to them many times over the course of the blog's tenure because, well, because they are unrivaled instrumentalists that took the best parts of rock, pop, so-called "prog" rock (short for "progressive", usually reserved for bands like Yes, King Crimson, and the like), and even jazz.

No, this band was a bunch of Southern California kids who grew up around each other.  they weren't without pedigree-one's father was a well-known arranger.  Two of them were brothers (joined later by a third brother after tragedy struck the eldest).  Like so many bands from the '70s, they built their sound around a distinctive vocalist, a high tenor who had soul oozing from every pore.

Even after that guy left, they found another childhood friend, this one had a very famous father who wrote soundtracks for a living.  You may have seen some of the movies he scored--"Jaws".  "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".  "Star Wars".  "Superman".  "Schindler's List".  the "Harry Potter" movies.

When they lost their first singer, they had a one-off album with a replacement who didn't pan out.  Then the famous composer's son joined the band, and their sound changed radically.  Less Pop and more Jazz.  More Soul (if that was possible).  And while they didn't sell as many records as their biggest album (which won 6 Grammys), the later sound was just as good if not better.

Most people never heard anything from them that wasn't on the radio.  And while some of those songs were multi-platinum, there was so much more to them than that.  I'm unsure where to even start, but I've made up my mind that I'll start at the end and move backwards.

Here's that band, with their SIXTY YEAR OLD lead singer.  From their 15th album, creatively titled XV with a song I'm just about 100% sure you've never heard before, but if it doesn't take you back to the band's heyday you need to re-listen.  Joseph Williams (son of John) testifies about how much he'd sacrifice for love.

By the way, Toto isn't named after the dog, nor is it about the bathroom fixtures company based in Japan.  It's from the Latin, meaning "all", since they had established themselves as studio musicians before they formed as a band.  The keyboard player (and son of that famous arranger, Marty), David Paich, essentially wrote and/or arranged most of Boz Scaggs' breakout album Silk Degrees.  You can hear the lead guitarist (Steve Lukather) playing the main riff for Michael Jackson's "Beat it" (before the bombastic Eddie VanHalen solo in the middle).  And on dozens of other songs from that era.

See you tomorrow...


Pete

Rock for the Jazz enthusiast

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

I was 16 when I got a cassette of Steely Dan's Can't Buy a Thrill.  I bought it (from Columbia House, that fabulous membership club where you got 11 records or cassettes for a dollar, provided you bought two more at an incredibly high price.  I was interested in the stuff I heard on the radio--"Reelin' in the Years", "Do It Again"--but the more I heard the other cuts, the more I liked them.

Steely Dan isn't for everybody.  Their lyrics range from the mildly depressing to the extremely depressing.  They paint pictures of losers, criminals, and the underside of human existence.  But it's done so well, with such intricate musical structure, that you ignore the downer lyrics and feel the vibe.  They combined rock with jazz and baked a new pie that required a bit of time to acquire the taste, but it was all you wanted after you did.

A lot of their songs made the Radio ("Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "Aja", "Hey Nineteen", etc.), but like so many bands I love, the deeper cuts provide the best experience.  That's especially true of today's Time Machine offering.  It's from waaaaay back, and tells yet another story of someone gone bad or had something bad befall them.  But the upbeat tune masks it so well you willingly sing the lyrics anyway.  So I'll gladly get on the Wolverine heading for Annandale.  Come with me...

I'm not fond of their past couple of albums, but their output from 1973-1980 is top-tier.  See you tomorrow...


Pete

Aaaa-OOOOO...!

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

In the late '70s, Rock was emerging from a period of softness, with singer-songwriters like Jim Croce, Cat Stevens, and Elton John were dominating radio.  Punk hadn't gotten widespread exposure yet, and hard rock (sometimes called Heavy Metal) was a niche product that didn't get played much.

But occasionally an artist would sneak subversive stuff past the long line of Pop songs and strike a chord.  In 1978, that artist was Warren Zevon.  Backed by a band of All-Stars (Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Glen Frey, and others), he burst on the scene with Excitable Boy, a rocking album with some truly disturbing lyrical content (a headless assassin coming back from the dead?  A line "then he raped her and killed her and then took her home"?

But that music!  It was juuuust accessible enough to be played on AM (and FM, at that time the destination for people seeking non-Top 40 stuff).  And it all started with "Werewolves in London", a tune about a dapper werewolf tearing up the English countryside (sample line:  "You better stay away from him/He'll rip your lungs out, Jim/Ha! I'd like to meet his tailor") .

A deep dive into Excitable Boy reveals a diverse range--from upbeat rockers ("Nighttime In the Switching Yard) to ballads ("Tenderness on the Block"), and today's mind-warper from the Time Machine.  Travel with us as we follow our intrepid hero, up to his eyeballs in trouble and seeking help from Dear Old Dad (or the Department of Defense, depending on your interpretation).  As he says it himself:  "So I'm hiding in Honduras/I'm a desperate man/Send Lawyers, guns, and money/the shit has hit the fan".

More from Warren down the line.  But we can't leave without recalling his philosophy on life.  When asked once by David Letterman what he was learning as he fought cancer (unfortunately, cancer won), Zevon said "Enjoy every sandwich".  Sage advice, indeed...

See you tomorrow...


Pete

'S'cuse me, blood...

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

In the '70s and '80s a variant of pop music called Southern Rock (sometimes called Southern Fried Rock, Dixie Rock, and so forth) came into prominence.  One of the most popular bands of this era was 38 Special.  Combining a rock sound with radio-friendly themes (and a fabulous lead singer, Don Barnes, who brought their love songs to life), 38 Special racked up a whole gaggle of top 40 songs, like

"Fantasy Girl"
"Chain Lightning"
"Hold on Loosely"
"Caught up in You"
"Somebody Like You"

Man, did they have a run.  Then, Barnes went off the radar.  I always thought it was drugs, but it was more that Don wanted to do something besides 38 Special.  I was always reading Billboard or other trade magazines to find out when the band would get Don into rehab and then back to the studio.  It never happened (at least, not until way after the window of opportunity for the band had passed).

But they decided to go on without Barnes, and enlisted Max Carl as their lead singer for 3-4 years.  Most of their music was forgettable, but one single ("Second Chance") did well.  But today's Time Machine trip is another Max Carl vocal that might be my favorite 38 Special song ever.  It paints a story about Man's Favorite Sport--ogling women.  Sorry--it may be a bit misogynistic, but let's not let political correctness (31 years after the fact) detract from a fabulous tune.

So, let's all go to that Holiday Inn in Florida and put our money down 9 to 1 (like everyone else did) for our local favorite

Any song that includes the quintessential Southern phrase "'S'cuse me, blood" is a winner in my book.  And Don came back in 1992 and is still with the band, doing State Fairs, Casinos, and so forth.

See you tomorrow...


Pete

"I Have Seen the Future of Rock and Roll..."

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

I was a college freshman in the fall of 1975.  There were new experiences everywhere (get your mind out of the gutter, you reprobate).  Saturday Night Live premiered that season, and I watched the notorious "Bass-O-Matic" skit on a snowy 17-inch black-and-white TV.

Another cultural phenomenon occurred that fall--a rock star was on the cover of both Time and Newsweek (those were newsmagazines, for the younger crowd.  They came in the mail once a week and reviewed the past week's events.  They're mostly gone now).  One of the articles quoted a writer for Rolling Stone who famously said "I have seen the future of rock and roll".

All this praise for a little-known singer from New Jersey who had released his third album only weeks before.  But the product lived up to the hype, and all of us ran out to buy that third record.  We hadn't heard anything like it--raw, fingers on the pulse for young people, more poetry than what we were listening to at the time.

43 years later, Born to Run still resonates.  And today's destination for the Time Machine is the opening track from that record.  "Thunder Road" set us up for the rest of the album, with imagery of Saturday nights cruising small-town streets, and the pursuit of love.  Take a ride...

That rock critic who was so effusive in his praise of Springsteen?  Jon Landau, who became Springsteen's manager.  Perhaps he was a bit self-promoting?  Just a thought...

See you Monday (9)...


Pete

What? They don't sing?

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

It's difficult to imagine, but there was a time when instrumentals were actually popular music.  Not just popular, but chart-topping popular.  Movie themes (especially in the '60s), takeoffs on movie themes (a disco version of Star Wars, anyone?), TV shows ("Theme from SWAT", for example), or just instrumentals for their own sake.  It was a golden age for musicians without vocals.

Rock music had its own instrumental age.  Remember "Funeral For a Friend" by Elton John?  I saw him live once and he actually BEGAN the concert with that piece.  ELO made its mark with a song called "Fire On High" that was used by CBS for its sports programming for 3 years.  Ah yes--the Jurassic Period.

Today's trip in the Time Machine is from a master of instrumentals, Alan Parsons.  Back in the '70s and early '80s, each Alan Parsons Project album had not one but TWO instrumentals, one on each side of the vinyl/cassette.  Typically, one was at the beginning of the record, the other just before the end.  They were often short--under 3 minutes--but a couple were quite long ("I Robot was just over seven minutes).

Most of them are known only to Parsonsphiles (I just made that up), but one is known by almost every sports fan.  It's a piece called "Sirius", and it opens the album Eye in the Sky.  The Chicago Bulls appropriated the tune for their starting lineup introductions in the '90s.  I'm sure Alan enjoyed the royalties.

I always considered the Parsons instrumentals to be more like movements in a symphonic work, as the tone and instruments used set the table for the rest of the record.  And no work expressed that better than "Lucifer", the lead track from Eve.  Moody, with a high-energy orchestration those drums!) prepared us for the album's take on beauty and the pursuit of it.  It's instantly recognizable as a Parsons song and has always been one of my favorites.  Enjoy...

See you tomorrow...


Pete

Sage Advice From a Midwest Poet

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

Yesterday we followed Bob Seger as he and his generation were Makin Thunderbirds.  Today, let's listen as another Midwest Icon delivers sage advice on how to be attractive to women.

I used to watch/listen to John Mellencamp for free.  He would perform in a grassy area near the Indiana University Student Union (known as Dunn Meadow).  He called himself Johnny Cougar then, and to be honest he wasn't all that good.  But like all successful rock stars, he honed his craft, found the pulse of Middle America, and made it big.

Back then, he was singing cover songs and some original compositions.  His first big break was "I need a Lover", which featured a great instrumental opening followed by the plaintive voice of John Cougar Mellencamp (his new iteration) saying "Some girl who knows the meaning of, uh 'Hey hit the highway'".

Later on, he became the Voice of the Midwest, with "Jack and Diane, "Small Town", and other songs that touched people of a certain age in a certain economic stratum.  He then became an artiste, taking up causes like small farms and became a painter.

But today's trip in the Time Machine is from an earlier time, the album Uh Huh, which still had some Johnny Cougar anger in it.  He gives a simple path to getting girls.  In particular, stay for the last line of the last verse, which pretty much says it all.  I dedicate this entry to my dear friend Phil Sullivan, who lied to some women we met at IU that he could play guitar, then spent three days locked in his room trying to learn...

See you tomorrow...


Pete

When in the course of human events...

Welcome to thatwasrockandroll.

It's July 4th weekend, when we celebrate those brave souls who stood up to the King of England (arguably the most powerful man on Earth at the time) and demanded their independence.  It was a noble effort that began the "great experiment" that became the United States.

For those of us who came later, being American has evolved somewhat.  And one of the ways it's evolved is in the musical artists we worship and believe have their fingers on the pulse of what it means to be American.

It's a regional thing, however.  We don't have a single band or singer that we place above all others.  If you're a Northeasterner, you gravitate to Bruce Springsteen, or Bon Jovi. Southerners look at the Allman Brothers, or Lynyrd Skynyrd (or perhaps Toby Keith).  Texans have ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughan.  West Coasters have Nirvana, or Fleetwood Mac, or the Beach Boys.

I grew up in Indiana (after being born and living 10 years in southwest West Virginia, what I learned later was called "oppressed Appalachia".  When I moved to a small town north of Fort Wayne I latched on to the Midwest icons--John Mellencamp, Chicago, etc.).  But the guy who really spoke for the industrial heartland--the place where small towns had factories that built parts for Detroit--was Bob Seger.

One of my true regrets was that I never got to see Bob Seger during one of those 7-night, sold-out runs he'd do at Pine Knob (the outdoor amphitheater north of Detroit), or, in the winter, a week's worth of concerts at Joe Louis Arena downtown.  I've heard the live recordings, but it must have been amazing to be there.

Which brings me to today's Time Machine entry.  A song about Detroit and what it did for the United States.  A lifestyle that we all aspired to have one day, but now see it only as a memory.  Americans are nothing if not resilient, and while Detroit lies in ruins it may return someday.  Until then, we have Bob Seger telling us what was and what might be again by saluting an American original...

Happy 4th, everyone.  Recall the wise words of Benjamin Franklin, who said of the Declaration "We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately"...


Pete