Male soul singers came in basically two stripes in the ’80s. Either you were a high-pitched bundle of energy like Michael Jackson, or you were a neo-Mathis style crooner, like Luther Vandross or Freddie Jackson. Some guys, like Prince and El DeBarge, split the difference. However, one archetype that faded from view pretty quickly in the decade was the old-school soul shouter. Think Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett or, for a more recent example, Teddy Pendergrass. Remember the part in Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious” where he quoted TP’s “Only You” and said that Teddy would “scare the (women) into liking him”?

Well, if you are going to call any singer from the Eighties a worthy successor to TP (whose sex symbol status was compromised by a 1982 car crash that left him paralyzed,) then it would probably be Alexander O’Neal. Born in Mississippi, Alexander moved to Minneapolis and very quickly enmeshed himself into the local music scene, eventually becoming the lead singer of an outfit called Flyte Tyme. That band eventually morphed into The Time, and they parlayed their association with Prince into a series of successful singles and albums. However, O’Neal was bounced from the band before recording their first album. Various reasons for Alex getting the boot have been floated, ranging from O’Neal requesting too much money to Alexander being “too black” for Prince’s liking. Either way, while his old band (with drummer Morris Day now installed as lead singer) toured the country, Alexander stayed in Minneapolis. However, when Time members Jimmy “Jam” Harris and Terry Lewis were fired from the band (and wound up becoming hit producers,) they came calling, and Alexander found himself signed to Tabu Records, who released his self-titled debut album in 1985.

A funk jam called “Innocent” was the first single, but the album’s best known track is probably the tender ballad “If You Were Here Tonight.” The song hit the Top 20 on Billboard’s R&B chart and the resulting video showed off Alexander’s acting skills. Or maybe not.

I could go on and on about Alexander’s ridiculously emotive facial expressions in this clip, but it’s best that you watch for yourself. Extra points if you can make it through his pained writhing on the bed with a straight face. He’s trying to sell it hard, though. You’ve gotta give him credit for that.

This might have marked both the peak and the nadir of Alexander’s video career, but musically, he was far from done. 1987′s Hearsay went platinum, and songs like “Fake” and “Criticize” (both of which found Alexander sweating like Whitney Houston during one of her crack-era live performances) became dance floor classics. However, a growing drug problem would soon prove to be his undoing. It was three years before he made another album, 1990′s All True Man, and by his fourth album, Love Makes No Sense, Jam & Lewis were pretty much out of the picture, and the magic was gone.

Alexander continues to record and release music, and his next project is rumored to be a duets album with long-time singing partner Cherrelle. He recently showed up on an episode of TVOne’s “Unsung” (the #1 television series at Jheri Curl Fridays HQ), and tours the world, where he retains a healthy following, especially in the U.K., where it has been scientifically proven that over 60% of the ’80s worst videos originated. Let’s hope Alex didn’t have aspirations for an acting career…

I was going over the songs for The Breakdown of a Breakup with my executive producer David Barratt, and he felt as though the story was incomplete; that I hadn’t quite given a proper breakdown to the emotions that I was feeling. The song where I got down and dirty and told on myself. I balked a bit at first, but I realized he was right — and for the next few weeks, I walked around wondering what that song would sound like. I didn’t want to pick up a guitar until I’d gone through the thinking to the feeling part. When I did sit down to write the tune, it pretty much came out in one shot. I was actually a bit horrified at some of those feelings and very ambivalent about fessing up to ever having them.

I was working on a verse and had the lyric: “I tell myself that I’ll be fine, even better all on my own, but those words fall hard round midnight when you’re all alone.”

I sang those lines a few times, and I knew that I could go deeper with the thought. The emotion. I wasn’t quite telling on myself — not really.

I sang it until I did.

Then the lyric was: “I tell myself that I’ll be fine, even better all on my own, like I was when I was younger…but younger has come and gone.”

I have to say that while that was the exact thought I’d had many times, I was reluctant to admit that I’d had that feeling, even for a moment. In the end the songwriter in me won out, and I realized I’d have to be “okay” with having written a song where I’d admitted to myself — and anyone who listens — that I wasn’t “fine” and “confident” and “strong” 24 / 7.

When I finished “The Truth,” I felt as though I’d really given a true breakdown of the breakup.

Terry Radigan‘s next album, The Breakdown of a Breakup, will be released February 14. Sample a few songs below, then watch Terry’s video for the IndieGoGo campaign in support of the record.

Occasionally, the gods send down missives to give me sustenance; they make me happier than Newtus Gingricheus at one of Narcissus’ Studio 54 parties. Through them, I worship like Bachelor No. 2 at the Temple of Low Men, sucking spilt milk through my summerteeth with fellow sister lovers, praying for my rubber soul (I could do this all day, people). Why, just recently, Schotticus Brandonus (who goes by Brandon Schott in the space outside my Greeked-out imagination) swooped down in my path, happy as Pegasus at a stud farm, and presented me with his latest testament to the masses, 13 Satellites.

And lo, the gods did smile upon me, for I have looked upon 13 Satellites, and have verily listened to it, and I doth tell y’uns the truth—it is good. Very good. I swear by the sword of Damocles and the shield of Nick Fury, if you have a pop-lovin’ dendrite in your cortexus cerebrus, you will dig this thing. True, Schott has been through some trials and tribulations in recent years (cancer diagnosis and treatment) and some pleasant, if not joyful experiences (daddyhood, collaboratin’, and conversatin’ with esteemed journalistic types [y'all]). Dude poured a bunch of that stuff into his new record, and wound up with something special.

Clocking in a tad under 37 minutes (another great example of the positive aspects of brevity in pop records), 13 Satellites won’t take you long to get through the first time; it’s during the 14, 15, or 16 other times you’ll listen to it that you’ll realize just how much time you’ve sunk into the thing. Schott breaks the three-plus-minute threshold just once—the gorgeous tabla-and-sitar-spiked ballad “Flowers Fading” clocks in at an epic 4:34—and the result is like the coolest AM radio popfest ever broadcast from Olympus.

My ankles sprouted wings when I heard “Full Circle Round” the first time, and as I soared over Krisa, the capitol of Phokis (not to be confused with its sister city, Mutha), I swear I heard “the sound of the rain with the turntable on” that Schott so sweetly describes—a vinyl-lover’s daydream, and a smile-worthy sentiment. “Exploding Angel” is another such moment, even though instead of lovingly describing a spinning black circle, Schott is dressing down an unpleasant sub-deity, whose “halo’s on fire” and “burning up with rage.” The Wilsony harmonies in the breakdown, though, are what sell the song—I’m a sucker for that stuff, and Schott delivers.

I love the acoustic paean to domestic bliss “This Is Home”—the singer’s house sounds like a very, very, very fine house, indeed, and the sweet little keyboard fills would make any power pop aficionado wanna cuddle up the nearest mini-Moog. “Satellite” is a knockout trip down Abbey Road, via Penny Lane, with what I think is a kazoo break in the middle, but rather than being confusing, to the listener, it gently guides the lucky guy or gal around its little turns and twists. The ukulele gets a nice strummin’ in “Building a Boat,” as the foundation for a pretty interlude that floats in and out in 1:09 (eat your heart out, Pollardus Robertae). And if I’m gushing, it’s not just the mead talking; what I feel as I hear these songs, when I engage in a tug-and-pull with an honest-to-gods album—particularly over the course of repeated listenings—is something akin to elation.

And sadness. When I hear Schott’s voice in 13 Satellites, it makes me think of Elliott Smith, who ascended to Olympus in 1994 and who sups with the gods to this day, even as he is absented from this physical plane. I think of XO—Smith’s major label debut, a record I have been unable to get out of my system for nearly 15 years—and how very cool it would be to hear a record that good, in that vein, again, albeit from someone else. And though 13 Satellites is pop of super-fine quality, it’s not that record. But for the first time in a while, I think I hear someone who could ascend to that peak, and I’m hopeful that as Schott progresses in his journey, he continues to grow and his muse takes him to places that challenge him, so that, if he does indeed have that record in him, he’s able to get it down and get it out.

The gods and I will be listening.

1. Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You) – Kelly Clarkson

2. Set Fire To The Rain – Adele

3. Good Feeling – Flo Rida

4. We Found Love – Rihanna Featuring Calvin Harris

5. Turn Me On – David Guetta Featuring Nicki Minaj

6. Domino – Jessie J

7. Rack City [Explicit] – Tyga

8. Young, Wild & Free – Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa Featuring Bruno Mars

9. Sexy And I Know It – LMFAO

10. It Will Rain – Bruno Mars

Heatseekers

Glass: Symphony No. 9 – Bruckner Orchester Linz Conducted By Dennis Russell Davies
The Head And The Heart – The Head And The Heart
Into The Woods (EP) – Of Monsters And Men
Ten$ion – Die Antwoord
Out of Frequency – The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
Let It Burn – Ruthie Foster
Something Almost Being Said… – Simone Dinnerstein
EP++(EP) – +++
Awake & Alive (EP) – Jordan/Murray
Beyond Hell / Above Heaven – Volbeat

The Push Stars are the perfect example of a band that could/would/should have been huge.  Their debut album, After the Party, was full of radio friendly pop-rock hits. They easily could have been just as successful as Matchbox Twenty, or at worst, have better name recognition than Eve 6. But as we all know, the music industry is cruel and heartless and the best bands are not always the biggest.

Fast forward 15 years and we find Push Stars lead singer Chris Trapper releasing his sixth solo record. However, The Few & the Far Between is almost a Push Stars reunion record. Almost. It was produced, recorded and mixed by Dan McLoughlin (Push Stars bassist) and features Ryan MacMillan (Current Matchbox Twenty and former Push Stars drummer) on drums.

The Few & the Far Between is Chris Trapper’s most consistent album to date and he brings in a couple heavy hitters to help out. Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty sings backup vocals on the opening track and Colin Hay sings and plays slide guitar on the boisterous “The More I Think,” which finds Trapper lamenting the sad state of our country, “Everybody is here, still there is no one around, this is the way the world is now.”

His humble sense of humility is what makes Trapper’s songs so strong. It’s never more apparent the on the drum-less title track “Few and Far Between,” which is about a night on the town from the non-douchebag perspective. Whether his character is saying to a girl at the bar “I walk up to her and say the nights’ still young, breakfast is on me and your friends can all come” or “I drop you home, you ask me up to your room, then we make love but it’s over too soon, my concession prize is I get to hold you,” I found myself either relating to that guy or wishing I used that line back when I was single. He’s the anti-LMFAO; they’re talking about being sexy and knowing it, and Mr. Trapper is talking about being a two-minute hero.

Musically, the album is the Chris Trapper acoustic/pop vein from his earlier works. Chris Trapper’s strong suit has always been his ability to write songs that the listener connects and relates to on a certain level. He makes you feel like you are the person he’s singing about.  The Few & the Far Between is another strong addition to the Chris Trapper/Push Stars catalog.

Bonus: We have a copy of The Few & the Far Between to giveaway! How to win: Simply RT this post on Twitter or Share it on Facebook and you’ll be entered to win.

Listen to his song with Rob Thomas:

And listen to more tracks on Amazon:

Tracklist:
1. Here All Along (featuring Rob Thomas)
2. Long Goodbye
3. The More I Think (featuring Colin Hay)
4. Skin
5. Ghost In Your Arms (featuring Kristin Cifelli)
6. Easy Flyer
7. Few And Far Between
8. Still In Me
9. Eyes Twice The Size
10. Not Normal
11. Search Inside
12. Wake Me With Your Kiss
13. Lonesome Parade (for Phyllis Malloy and Juri Bunetta)
14. Home

In the murky days before cable TV and cheap digital video equipment, the music documentary was still a fairly exotic beast. There had been D.A. Pennebaker’s pioneering Dont Look Back in 1965, and then Gimme Shelter, Let It Be, The Kids are Alright, This Is Elvis. You actually had to traipse down to your local multiplex to see these movies, stand in line for tickets, buy popcorn, the whole bit. What you saw tended to be a mix of vintage performances, newsreel-style clips, talking-head interviews and even, in the case of This Is Elvis, staged reenactments in which actors are called in to provide footage for key missing chapters in the story. You saw rock stars drunk, peevish, aloof or just not giving a damn. Gimme Shelter shows a guy getting killed — actually stabbed to death, right there on the screen — and This Is Elvis includes the famous scene of Presley dropping a hotel bellhop with a karate chop to the throat, although in fairness I probably just made that up.

In that context, the most surprising thing about The Compleat Beatles is how sedate and proper it is — a harbinger of the careful stage management of the Beatles’ reputation that has been ongoing ever since. This is not fly-on-the-wall drama, not that it ever could have been, given that the Beatles had been broken up for more than 10 years. We’d had our helping of dirty Beatle laundry with Let It Be a decade earlier, and no one wanted to sit through another movie like that. What we got instead was a studious effort to fix the Beatles’ story in the popular mind, to coalesce the memories of a generation of Baby Boomers, still distantly reeling from John Lennon’s murder (the film was released in 1982), around a narrative that showed the group both steering and reflecting their times. The Compleat Beatles established the narrative shorthand that would define the Beatles from then on, a tidy story of hard work, early success, artistic triumph and a final, dispiriting slide into bitterness and disillusionment, all in the space of a single decade.

While it may lack fireworks or a great many surprises, what The Compleat Beatles does have are performances that had rarely been seen before, interviews with some key players in the Beatles’ early years (along with a people who don’t seem to belong there at all — more on that anon) and, in what would now be an impossibility for a third-party production, actual Beatles music, chosen with a surprisingly acute and sympathetic ear. And it has Malcolm McDowell, who provides the closest thing the movie has to a unifying mood. Sounding serious and slightly morose, as if the whole story kind of gets him down, McDowell bestows on The Compleat Beatles a sense of gravitas befitting its generation-defining subject while establishing kinship with the viewer. There were any number of older, pompous-sounding Brits the producers could have tapped for a narrator, but McDowell is a cohort of the Beatles and their audience, as well as a product of the liberating effect they had on the British cultural scene. And if on the off chance you got bored, you could always shout “Me glazzies!” at the screen.

I like that the film takes the time for a close look at the musical scene in which the Beatles grew up, when their adolescent ears were filled with early pioneers of rock n’ roll and its gawky, knobby-kneed British counterpart, skiffle. Soon we meet our guides to the Liverpool beat music scene: Gerry Marsden, Allan Williams, Bill Harry, Billy J. Kramer and Tony Sheridan. In contrast to much of the later portions of the film, these interviewees knew the Beatles personally and have good stories to tell. I love Marsden’s brief lesson in turning a Cajun folk song into an R&B tune worthy of a Liverpool dance hall, and especially his contemptuous imitation of Cliff Richard:

The Compleat Beatles: Gerry Marsden on Cliff Richard

The biggest hurdle the filmmakers needed to overcome was the lack of participation by the Beatles themselves, and without George Martin, The Compleat Beatles would have been doomed. Martin is our guide through most of the middle part of the story, commenting on the relentless pressures of Beatlemania as well as the group’s increasing songwriting and recording prowess. I’m guessing many a fan got their first glimpse of Martin through seeing this film, and his reputation for gentlemanliness is well-earned: he’s thoughtful and generous, with a rebellious streak lying not too far beneath that placid surface. Everyone knows the story of how “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” was created, but watch Martin’s self-conscious giggle as he relates the story:

The Compleat Beatles: George Martin on “Mr. Kite”

I have no beef with the first half of The Compleat Beatles. We’ve gotten a good look at where the Beatles came from. We’ve heard some nice tunes — is there a better accompaniment to a Beatlemania montage than “It Won’t Be Long”? — and seen things both familiar (I think even in 1982 the “people in the cheaper seats” bit had been shown to death) and off-beat, including this interview with a young artist and Beatles fan, who is so cute it almost makes me explode:

The Compleat Beatles: “The Sprout of a New Generation”

Then we get to Revolver, and here I have issues.

First of all, this is a major milestone in the Beatles’ artistic development and in popular music in general, and it is given tragically short shrift here. (The film adds insult to injury by showing the sleeve of the Capitol pressing, with three of John’s songs omitted.) “Tomorrow Never Knows” was like nothing any pop group had even conceived before. So what does George Martin have to say about this, or about “Eleanor Rigby” or “Love You To” or “Got to Get You into My Life”? Curiously nothing. Instead, we have Nicholas Schaffner reciting critical boilerplate, followed by a spinning album cover that smacks of an end-of-semester, forgot-we-had-a-term-paper-due rush job. Seriously, this was the best the filmmakers could come up with? Hell, put Wilfred Mellers on the screen to talk about pan-diatonic clusters (or was that William Mann?), or even Billy J. Kramer to talk about whatever he can talk about — just don’t give us a 30-second student film.

The Compleat Beatles: Revolver

And that leads to my next beef, one that I might sum up as “Who are these people?” The Liverpool contingent leaves the story at this point, and we can’t expect George Martin to carry the entire movie himself, and so we meet a new cast of regulars, including the aforementioned Nicholas Schaffner, Marianne Faithfull, Billy Preston and Lenny Kaye. While Preston has every right to be there, there is a serious lack of firsthand insight on offer from most of these experts. Faithfull’s relationship with the Beatles was largely of the friend-of-a-friend type, Schaffner was an author who doesn’t have anything to say that wouldn’t fit as well in McDowell’s narration and Lenny Kaye … well, to this day I don’t know why Lenny Kaye is in this film. The filmmakers could have asked Glyn Johns, Geoff Emerick, Chris Thomas or even Alan Parsons to provide insight into the Beatles’ latter-day recording process; instead we hear from Patti Smith’s guitar player. I don’t get it.

This being said, the film does a good job with very limited means of depicting the fractiousness of the Beatles’ final days. Check out this sequence on Let It Be, in which some George Martin narration and a few choice photographs tell a story of four people driving each other crazy:

The Compleat Beatles: Let It Be

That last photo, in which Paul McCartney appears to be lunging at Ringo Starr while George Martin glumly wishes he were somewhere else, is priceless.

I mentioned earlier that the music is generally well chosen. This is one area in which I think The Compleat Beatles has it all over its officially sanctioned successor, The Beatles Anthology, which suffered from having to pimp the off-cuts and outtakes offered in the CD sets. In addition to the aforementioned “It Won’t Be Long,” I like the way “Norwegian Wood” is used to introduce the more mature and introspective Beatles of late ’65; I find “Mother Nature’s Son” an oddly unsettling choice to set up the White Album sessions; and “I’ve Got a Feeling” in the above clip sounds a lot more desperate and unhinged when shown against a backdrop of disaffected Beatles working in a gloomy film studio. Lastly, there is no song more sweetly appropriate to end on than “Blackbird,” with its contrasting images of renewal and dark, black nights.

So despite some unfortunate choices in its interview subjects, The Compleat Beatles holds up very well for a 30-year-old effort. I think it’s a shame that it’s been banished to a permanent copyright purgatory, because it’s still probably the best overview of the Beatles’ career you can get in one sitting. At the very least, it would have made a great bonus feature on the Anthology DVD set.

Next month: A review of Recording the Beatles, for those of you who have somehow managed to live without it thus far.

Hat-tip to RandomVHSRippedStuff for the original YouTube uploads.

This week’s title is just a little bit misleading. While I have undying love for the Four Tops, and while “Bernadette” is my favorite single of theirs and in my Top Ten overall, this week’s column is about James Jamerson.

As you know, Jamerson was the bass player in the Funk Brothers, the studio hit machine behind all of the great Motown records. Those great musicians toiled in anonymity and certainly never reaped the financial benefits of Motown’s massive success. Their names never even appeared on a Motown record until Marvin Gaye gave them a shout out in 1971 on What’s Going On (“the incomparable James Jamerson” his credit read), and it wasn’t until the 2002 film Standing in the Shadows of Motown chronicled their history that the Funk Brothers finally received a little bit of the acclaim that they so richly deserved.

While the public may have been unaware of the Funk Brothers, musicians knew. And one thing that they knew was the James Jamerson was quite possibly the greatest bass player that popular music has ever known. He played, without credit, on all of the great Motown records of the ’60s and into the ’70s.

Here’s one of my favorite examples of his work:

Jamerson was born in South Carolina in 1938 and moved to Detroit in 1954. He started playing in local clubs and began to find work on recording sessions. He finally touched down at Hitsville USA, home of all the great Motown recordings, in 1959. The work was steady, very steady. I could list the Motown hits that Jamerson played on, but the list of hits that he didn’t play on would be a lot shorter.

Motown left a lot of people in the lurch when Gordy Berry moved the company to Los Angeles in 1972. A few of the Funk Brothers followed, hoping to maintain their connection. Jamerson was one of them. He found some work there, but it didn’t last. By the following year, his relationship with Motown was over. He continued to be an integral part of hit records though. That’s Jamerson on “Rock the Boat” by the Hues Corporation, “Boogie Fever” by the Sylvers, and “You Don’t Have To Be A Star (To Be In My Show)” by Marily McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr.

In 2000 Jamerson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, part of the first class of sidemen to be inducted. Four years later the Funk Brothers received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. But the accolades came too late for James Jamerson. He had a long-term problem with alcohol, and it had finally killed him in 1983.

Ask any bass player, any musician at all for that matter, to name the greatest bass player of all time. The response is likely to come quickly, and the answer will be James Jamerson.

By 1988 Simon was far removed from hits like “Nobody Does it Better,” “Mockingbird,” and “Warren Beatty is a Dick.” Her last platinum album had been 1978’s Boys in the Trees, and her sole hit since 1980 was “Coming Around Again,” a #18 hit from the soundtrack to Heartburn. So it looked for Simon that if she wanted to stay relevant, she’d have to make movie songs, hanging around all day with Stephen Bishop and Kenny Loggins. She was then hired to write and perform the central and closing song for the 1988 Melanie Griffith movie Working Girl. The song was “Let the River Run.”

This should have been a huge comeback hit for Janice the Muppet Simon, especially after it won the Oscar for Best Original Song. And the Golden Globe for a movie song. And the Grammy for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television (now called Best Song Written for Visual Media). That’s little-known award trifecta has only been repeated twice by a non-Disney animate movie: Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” from Philadelphia and Annie Lennox’s “Into the West” from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Also acting in favor of the song was that every other Best Song Oscar winner in the ‘80s had become a smash hit: “Fame” from Fame (#4, 1980), “The Best That You Can Do” from Arthur (#1, 1981), “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman (#1, 1982), “Flashdance…What a Feeling” from Flashdance (#1, 1983), “I Just Called to Say I Love You” from The Woman in Red (#1, 1984), “Say You Say Me” from White Nights (1985), “Take My Breath Away” from Top Gun (#1, 1986), and “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing (#1, 1987).

Simon’s “Let the River Run,” sputtered out at #49 on the Hot 100. Also nominated for the Best Song award at the Oscars that year: Phil Collin’s “Two Hearts” from Buster, a #1 hit, which would have kept that streak alive, but I am not advocating that we should give awards to or encourage Phil Collins in any way. “Let the River Run” is an interesting if weird song, playing on tribal rhythms, poetry, and an almost meditative mantra. It’s not the usual Carly Simon fare, and heavy stuff for a comedy about a promiscuous secretary.

Two members of the band-bassist Marley D. Williams and drummer Wesley Finley-took a break from a national headlining tour to dish about their Desert Island Discs, a diverse array of music that goes from gangsta rap to Canadian indie rock.

Marley D Williams:

Bob Marley and The Wailers Legend
If I was stuck on a deserted island with a dope sound system, I would be just fine if I had these five albums.

Legend by Bob Marley and The Wailers is a must. This album is packed with his top hits and besides being island music, it is life music. His message and sound is universal and positive. I grew up on Bob Marley and my mom even named me after him. I owe so much to what he has done with his music and could listen to him anytime.

Dr. Dre Chronic 2001
Next up is Chronic 2001 by Dr. Dre. This album you can play the whole way through at a party and people can’t help but dance and put a few drinks back. Dr. Dre is my favorite producer of all time and his formula to separating the highs, mids and lows is uncanny. His beats and hooks are catchy yet still hard. It takes a lot of talent to do this and because of it, you are left bobbing your head every time.

Sublime Sublime
Sublime’s self-titled album is one of those albums that only comes out rarely. It is a complete mixture of so many genres. I would say it is the 7 iron of golf when it comes to music and you could arguably say that all 5 of the albums on my list are mixed into it. From the first track to the last track you are enjoying it’s diversity and originality. So many great memories while listening to this album.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chili Peppers is one of the first albums that I listened to over and over again. I appreciate how funky it is while still incorporating rock. So many great songs on this album!

A Tribe Called Quest Midnight Marauders
Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest serves as my Hip Hop side of the bunch. This album is full of catchy punch lines and awesome old school horn samples. Q Tip and Phife Dawg bounce of each other greatly with their poetic rhymes and shine with their original voices and style.

Wesley Finley:

Dredg El Cielo
My favorite album of all time. An opus from beginning to end, the album is conceptually based on sleep paralysis and dreams. Surrealism is subsequently tied into the dream imagery, and a nod to Dali can be seen in the first track’s title – “Brushstroke: dcbtfoabaaposba”, which is an acronym for Dali’s famous painting “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening”. I always feel like I’ve gone on a long journey after listening to it, which is what conceptual albums are meant to express.

Some weeks there are multiple tracks from our AM Gold series deemed good enough to make the all-important Spotify playlist. Oh sure, there may be a few dissenting opinions about some songs. That’s kind of what this ongoing discussion is all about. This week one track gets in, and it wasn’t even close for the other five. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.

(Spotify users, you can subscribe to our Best of AM Gold playlist, which is updated regularly.)

#11: Dionne Warwick, “This Girl’s In Love With You” – #7 U.K.

David Lifton - It’s strange that they went with Dionne’s version instead of Herb Alpert’s more famous original take from a year earlier. This is OK but I prefer Alpert’s. It’s cheesy as hell but I love the crescendoes and the crashing piano part.

Jack Feerick – More musical pointillism from Burt ‘n’ Hal, this time with a country-shuffle beat, complete with fake Floyd Cramer piano runs. As with “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” it’s funny to hear Bacharach and David doing a pop pastiche, because they’re usually out in front of the curve. It’s like hearing Stravinsky doing hank Williams.

Say, d’you figure that’s a real kazoo, or a $500-an-hour session horn player mimicking a kazoo?

Jon Cummings - Of all the BachaCrap we’ve covered, this must be the nadir. Herb Alpert’s original version — recorded after Herb asked Burt whether he had any unused songs sitting around (which might lead one to believe that Burt wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about “This Guy’s” himself) — was an inexplicable #1. Herb’s singing is just amateurish, though I suppose it matched the comatose tune and banal lyrics. But Dionne, who probably intended the song as album filler (since it had already been a hit), simply sounds bored on her version. And why not? It’s dreadful. I’m going to stop bashing on this song now, lest I get too worked up, but not before I note that our extended Bacharach-fest in this column has made me renege on my long-held certainty that Jim Morrison was the most overrated musical artist of the ’60s.

#12: Oliver, “Good Morning Starshine” – #3 U.S.

Lifton - Regardless of my feelings about Hair (especially this song), it was definitely a great business decision to allow pop singers to record covers. The songs are capturing a moment rather than advancing the story, so they don’t need the context of the show to stand on their own (as opposed to, say, “Send In The Clowns”). Without these songs being as successful as they were, I doubt the show could have lasted as long as it did on Broadway.

Feerick – Roma, roma ma, Ga ga, ooh la la…

I’d forgotten the African feel of this arrangement — all the percussion and Zulu guitars, and is that a thumb piano I hear? Steel drums, maybe? It’s slower than I remember, too — with a kind of lazy, post-coital bliss. Which is appropriate, I guess.

You know that feeling, though — when it’s too late to sleep, maybe even into the wee hours of the morning, and maybe you have to work in a few hours and maybe you don’t, but you’ve been up all night and not thinking about the morning, thinking only about each other, and it’s afterward and you’re warm and happy, physically exhausted but not sleepy, not yet, and everything is so quiet, so quiet; the trains that run by all the time have stopped, and there is no sound of traffic, and you get up and stretch and stand at the window and there’s a pale radiance of pre-dawn, and your lover’s skin looks like mother-of-pearl in the light of the dying moon coming through the glass, and you look away and look down and there’s a deer as God is my witness, a deer come from who knows where, grazing at the bushes outside your building, so unlikely that it may as well be a unicorn, and you call your lover from the bed to come and see, and for a long moment it’s just the two of you in the pallid light in the presence of a private miracle.

You know that feeling, right? That’s the feeling that “Good Morning Starshine” utterly fails to capture. Note to Rado and Ragni: “lazy and stupid” is not the same as “innocent.” And Oliver, God bless him, sings it way too hard.

Cummings - The song is a trifle, built almost entirely on two nice bars of melody and a lot of lyrical mumbo-jumbo; and Oliver’s performance is massively overblown — particularly those ridiculously extended background notes. Yet somehow it’s easy to understand the appeal of “Good Morning Starshine,” simply because its message is so facile and positive. Those commenters on YouTube who reminisce about singing the song to their newborns can’t be denied their sentimentality, and it would be rude for us to try. (BTW, Jack, I don’t hear anything African in it — except, perhaps, a dippy hippy’s not-close approximation of what an African chant sounds like. But Hair was billed as “a tribal rock musical,” wasn’t it? Why were both Hair and Woodstock able to get away with use of the word ”tribe”? No wonder Russell Means and Leonard Peltier got so pissed off during the early ’70s…)

#13: Jay & The Americans, “This Magic Moment” – #6 U.S.

Lifton - I can never hear anything by Jay & The Americans without thinking of the stories about when Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were in their touring band before forming Steely Dan. They’d take bets nightly on whether or not Jay would hit the high note on “Cara Mia.” Other times, just for fun, they’d play the song down half a step without telling the guitarist so Jay would get mad at him for being out of tune.

Feerick - “This Magic Moment” passed, for Jay and the Americans, in about 1958, never to return.

Cummings - The Drifters’ original hit really should have been enough. It’s a great song to hear on the radio, or as a sock-hop cliche in American Graffiti or Grease. But in comparison with the original, J&tA’s version sounds (at best) like a Johnny Rivers knockoff — and (at worst) like one of those anonymous cover versions that appeared on sub-K-Tel hits anthologies (Adam VIII, anyone?). The fact that J&tA’s charted higher with the song (in 1969!) than the Drifters did takes the crime into Pat Boone territory.

#14: The 5th Dimension, “Wedding Bell Blues” – #1 U.S., #16 U.K.

Lifton - Well, at least there are no sassafras and moonbeams in this one.

Cummings - My favorite 5th Dimension track, and an irresistible backstory. We talked back in 1968 (when dealing with the 5D’s “Stoned Soul Picnic”) about the mystery of Laura Nyro’s longstanding cult appeal, and while I’m not as much a naysayer as some of you guys, I’ve never been entranced by much of her music (or any of her albums). However, the melody line behind the phrase “But am I ever gonna see my wedding day?” is perfect in its plaintiveness, and Marilyn McCoo’s voice has never been on better display than it is here. PLUS, there’s that backstory: Nyro wrote the song back in ’66, and threw the name “Bill” in there for no particular reason. Then, a couple years later, the 5D’s producer suggested they record the song – at a time when McCoo and Billy Davis had become engaged, but hadn’t gotten around to setting a date. I’m a huge sucker for serendipity like that — not to mention the bookend that “Wedding Bell Blues” provides to “You Don’t Have to Be a Star,” which I adored when I was 11.

And yet … if we’ve already got the Cowsills’ “Hair,” Three Dog Night’s “Easy to Be Hard,” and “Good Morning Starshine” on this edition of AM Gold, why did the bozos at Time-Life not just go ahead and put “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In” on here as well, instead of saving it for the “’60s Generation” set that we’ll probably never get around to covering while I’m alive? Ah, marketing…

Feerick - In other woids, just from waiting around for that plain little band of gold, a poy-son can develop a cold.

#15: Junior Walker & The All Stars, “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)” – #4 U.S., #13 U.K.

Lifton - A brief respite from the detritus in this installment. Yeah, it lacks the intensity of “Shotgun” and “Roadrunner” but it still sounds pretty good.

Feerick - It seems like a long way from “Shotgun” to this, but really, both of them are less songs per se than chants on which to hang sax solos. “What Does It Take” just happens to have a couple more chords.

Cummings - Isn’t this song heard much more frequently as an instrumental these days? I hadn’t heard the lead vocals from this track in years, but I’ll be damned if I can remember the context in which the instrumental hook is (or was) heard all the time, pretty recently. Somebody help me out. In any case, the vocals are kind of a mess, but that hook is a classic right up there with “Tighten Up” or ”Soulful Strut” (or “Shotgun,” for that matter).

#16: Mercy, “Love (Can Make You Happy)” – #2 U.S.

Lifton - It’s been a while since we’ve had a song that I had never heard before. Or maybe I had, and I fell asleep after about a minute of this piece of crap.

Feerick - For me, this song succeeds (where, say, ”Good Morning Starshine” fails) in capturing the honey-drenched daze of new romance. Simplicity doesn’t have to be simplistic, and “Love” manages to be plain-spoken without being insulting — all while the gender ambiguity of the lead voice adds a little shading; maybe “Love,” like love itself, isn’t so simple after all.

Cummings - The first minute of this song features the words “sunshine,” “flowers” and “love,” which made it suitable for pop radio in 1969, in a monkeys-with-typewriters sort of way. Musically, it’s kind of like “Crimson and Clover” after a lobotomy. This song (and the group) were featured in a B movie called “Fireball Jungle” — which, if you think about it, doesn’t seem like a very good idea at all … a fireball in a jungle? Anyway, an interesting little twist to Mercy’s one-hit-wonder status: Wikipedia says that following the initial success of “Love” on an indie label, an LP emerged featuring the original single along with a batch of other songs by a quickly formed act called “the Mercy.” A lawsuit pulled that record off the shelves, and the original Mercy got a Warner Bros. contract and a one-way ticket to chart oblivion. Though the band’s leader, Jack Sigler, continued to trot out a version of the group as a touring act as recently as 2005.