Folks, I’ll be the first to tell you that our last CHART ATTACK! was just a little depressing. Marky Mark? Ugh! Color Me Badd? Ugggggh! Bryan Adams? Uggggggghhhh! Good news, though: I’m pleased to report that this week’s Top 10 is much, much better — sure, there are some mild clunkers, but the majority of these songs are absolutely fantastic. See if you agree as we attack November 3, 1973!
10. All I Know — Garfunkel
9. Space Race — Billy Preston 8. Let’s Get It On — Marvin Gaye 7. Ramblin’ Man — The Allman Brothers Band 6. Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat — The DeFranco Family Featuring Tony DeFranco
5. Paper Roses — Marie Osmond 4. Half-Breed — Cher 3. Keep On Truckin’ (Part 1) — Eddie Kendricks 2. Angie — The Rolling Stones 1. Midnight Train to Georgia — Gladys Knight & the Pips
Following the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel in 1970, Art Garfunkel removed his focus from the music business; for three years, he focused on his acting career, appearing in Mike Nichols movies such as Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, taught mathematics at a private school in Connecticut, and studied classical music in Europe. Finally, in 1973, he assembled a group of songwriters (what, you thought he was going to write songs himself?) and recorded songs for a new album, entitled Angel Clare. The first single, “All I Know,” was written by Jimmy Webb (the first of many Garfunkel/Webb collaborations) and was his first solo entry on the Top 10 — and by “first,” I mean “only,” though he did have three #1 hits on the Adult Contemporary charts. The song is exactly what you’d expect: musically, it’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” minus the bridge or troubled water, and lyrically, it’s deep into Mellow Gold territory. Art’s voice sounds a touch creepy here on the original, especially any time he gets near a low note. Still, it’s quite pretty, and you really can’t go wrong with songs like these, especially ones that feature Webb’s beautiful piano. The only thing I don’t understand is why, for his first few albums, Art was only billed as “Garfunkel.” Was he concerned that if he added the “Art,” people wouldn’t know who he was? How many Garfunkels are out there, really? If he wanted to capitalize on familiarity, perhaps he should have billed himself as “& Garfunkel.”
I found a nice video of Art Garfunkel performing “All I Know” on Saturday Night Live, but it’s on a Chinese website and I can’t figure out how to embed it. Still, it’s worth a watch; the song is much more effective in this stripped-down incarnation.
9. Space Race — Billy Preston
I personally had never heard “Space Race” before this week, but if you watched American Bandstand regularly, chances are you’ll recognize it as the music played during the mid-show commercial break, from 1974 until the show’s end. It worked great for that purpose, too — a sequel of sorts to 1972’s “Outa-Space,” “Space Race” is a thick slab of instrumental funk with a fantastic groove. But here’s the thing: on American Bandstand, you never got to hear more than a few seconds of the song. At around a minute and a half, it becomes pretty clear that a better title would have been “Holy Crap You Guys, I Just Got a New Keyboard and Look at All the Cool Sounds I Can Make, Wah Wah Wah Wah!” I can’t help but wonder if this song is what inspired Daryl Dragon to buy a Casio, and that just breaks my heart. Still, I can’t give Billy Preston too much grief. Apart from having theworld’sgreatestafro, the man was an unbelievable talent. And who doesn’t love the hell out of “Nothing From Nothing”?
One of the many things I love about Popdose is our collective freedom to write different kinds of posts: Sometimes you gets yourself a Cold Shot related to some bit of blues news, or sometimes we reach back into the archives to espouse the greatness of an evergreen-but-bona-fide classic.
And still other times, such as this week, we share discoveries that might not be new—but they’re new to us.
Not long ago, cruising Bomp’s spam of the week, this tasty little CD came up for grabs: Bo Diddley’s Drive By: Tales From the Funk Dimension 1970-73, compiling tracks from four lost classic Chess albums issued in the early 1970sand available on—get this—Australian import.
Are you kidding me? After buying roughly 8,000 albums and being graced by probably as many promo copies, record titles alone rarely—if ever—sway an album purchase. But with a name like that, even in these cash-strapped days, it sounded just too good to pass up. Blues-funk of the early 1970s can be fantastic, as the old guard like Bo Diddley, Albert King, and Buddy Guy latched on to the urban sounds coming out of Chicago blues clubs and the second wave of the Memphis Stax soul sound led by Black Moses himself. So Mojo laid his money down. (more…)
“In the style of the boy-band vocal bands of the time, Human Nature became Australia’s most successful pop group of the ’90s and beyond,” according to their Allmusic.com biography, “outselling their international contemporaries Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and Boyzone.”
Up until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of these guys. Then again, what I don’t know could fill a warehouse.
And after listening to Reach Out (Sony/RED), I could swear that the vocal group’s introduction to American audiences will be filling warehouses for months to come, but Human Nature are multiplatinum artists Down Under — they transitioned from boys to men in the past decade by ditching dance-pop and embracing, well, dance-pop from an earlier era. In 2005 they released Reach Out: The Motown Album, followed by Dancing in the Street: The Songs of Motown II in ‘06, and by the time of 2007’s Get Ready, they were enlisting guest appearances by the Temptations, the Supremes’ Mary Wilson, and Smokey Robinson, who’s “presenting” their current “Ultimate Celebration of Motown” stage show at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas. The back cover of the Reach Out CD booklet even advertises the show, which I have to assume, based on the contents of the album, is the main event.
The American version of Reach Out takes songs from all three of Human Nature’s Motown albums and erases any telltale copyright dates from the liner notes. In other words, “it’s new to you!” And if you’ve never heard the originals that are being covered by the Aussie quartet (brothers Michael and Andrew Tierney, Toby Allen, and Phil Burton, all of whom have been singing together since high school in the ’80s, when Motown nostalgia was first becoming a booming business), you might think the melodies are pretty catchy, with a good beat you can dance to. In other words, if you’re under ten years old, this is a serviceable introduction to Motown, but if you’re in double digits, Reach Out comes across as professional karaoke — the only acknowledgment of any Fauxtown backing band is “the gifted musicians who helped create this record.” Might one of those musicians be named Mac, and is it possible another one goes by the initials “PC”? (Allmusic.com does in fact list the musicians who worked on the threeAustralianreleases, but their instruments still sound canned either way.)
Welcome to the third installment of a continuing series exploring some of the best – and some of the most egregiously wronged – hits of the rock era. A whole lot of hits that only reached pop’s runner-up slot have been largely forgotten; for example, oldies radio seems to have little use for the Poppy Family’s “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” or BT Express’ “Do It Til You’re Satisfied.” But at least, as I looked back at the 1950s and ’60s, it seemed a healthy proportion of the #2 hits were terrific, or truly important songs that were justifiably blocked by other great singles … or at least got the shaft from idiotic trifles whose momentary appeal was understandable.
But then there was the ’70s – when, as it turned out, most of the hits that broke down during the 199th lap were just as silly and insubstantial as the ones that took the checkered flag. (See how the euphemisms keep on comin’? It remains to be seen whether I can maintain this level of cleverness straight through the Oughts, or whether I’ll pull up lame in the final stretch. See – another one!) Anyway, here we go with 10 good ones from the Me Decade. As always, I’ll list some more #2s at the end, and we can debate their merits in the comments.
10. “YMCA,” the Village People. Be honest: Who would you rather have coming after your children – the innocuous, mustachioed and very gay Village People, or “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”-era Rod Stewart? Well, if you answered Rod, you got your wish in the winter of ’79, as he pulled a Kris Allen on everyone’s favorite bunch of costumed Adam Lamberts and bogarted #1 for four weeks. As for the other 99.9 percent of us, we can take delight in the fact that the last time we heard “Do Ya Think,” we were able to fast-forward through it on the TiVo during the American Idol finale – while you get to dance along to “YMCA” (though not this remix) during every single professional baseball game ever. So there.
9. “Live and Let Die,” Wings. Why did Paul McCartney’s Bond theme fail to reach the pinnacle? Maybe because it’s mostly an instrumental? Nah… (Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” had topped the chart just a couple months earlier.) Perhaps because nobody cared much about its host film? As if! (Live and Let Die topped the box office through much of June and July 1973, and was the 10th-biggest film of the year.) Perchance were there simply better songs out at the time? Well, the three (three!) songs that leaped over Roger Moore’s speedboat were Maureen McGovern’s “The Morning After,” fresh off its Poseidon Adventure Oscar victory; Diana Ross’ diva anthem “Touch Me in the Morning”; and Stories’ cover of Hot Chocolate’s “Brother Louie.” So I’d argue, no, that wasn’t it either. (Here’s the original version of the last song, which far less obviously references the Kingsmen.) Personally, I’d like to think that radio still had Macca in the penalty box for turning out so much crap over the past two years, up to and including his previous single “My Love” – one of the Worst #1 Songs of the ’70s. (more…)
In an ongoing series, Dw. Dunphy takes an occasional look back at Christian contemporary music (CCM) of the past and makes the case for a new audience to rediscover the best of it as great, lost pop music.
Next year marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Adam Again’s Gene Eugene. Born Gene Andrusco, he found fame at an early age as a child actor, most memorably as the young Darren Stevens on the TV series Bewitched. Later in life he was able to combine full-blooded funk, rock chops, a love of classic R&B from the likes of Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye, and the lyrics of Leonard Cohen and make it all stick in his version of CCM, probably the most unique and underrated in all of that subgenre’s history.
The band’s second album, Ten Songs by Adam Again (1988), was a bullhorn to staid and button-down listeners that this probably wasn’t their dad’s idea of Christian rock. If the cover of Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” wasn’t an indicator, the groove of “Tree House” and the sheer mournful weight of the closing “The Tenth Song” certainly was. Homeboys (1990) went even farther in describing through song some of the city’s dark side as the title cut detailed memories of a relatively happy childhood, even in the worst of landscapes. Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” gets a respectful but certainly not pedestrian run-through. The funk of “The Fine Line” tends to deceive. Listen to the lyrics about a man trapped inside his drug addiction and you get a vastly different impression than the fat party groove might impart.
As mayor of Bootleg City, I’ve decided to make some changes around these parts. You see, recently I noticed that our fair city really is fair. In fact it’s downright pale. We need to diversify, fellow Bootleggers! To paraphrase a pioneering African-American American of the 1870s: “Where all the black women at?”
Last week I asked Jeff Giles, the man behind the curtain who funds this puppet government, if he had any R&B he could send my way. He delivered, so today I give you one of the greats, Marvin Gaye, performing at Budokan in Tokyo on November 13, 1979. (See? I brought in Japanese people too. Bootleg City is diversifying so quickly!) Jeff posted this bootleg at Jefitoblog in January 2006 under the name “Immortality of the Soul,” but I can’t find that title anywhere else on Google, so Jeff must’ve been drunk. But so was the person who incorrectly listed “After the Dance” as “When I First Saw You,” which is the opening line of the first verse, and, in another instance, “I Want You” — that sentiment is expressed in “After the Dance,” but “I Want You” is another song altogether by the Motown legend. However, my favorite “Too Busy Thinking About My Budweiser” track listing was the one for “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” whose name had been changed by another stubborn kind of fellow to “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” which is probably the response he gave to anyone who tried to correct him.
In 1979 Gaye was two years removed from his most recent pop and R&B smash, “Got to Give It Up,” and still three years away from his comeback hit, “Sexual Healing.” When he divorced Anna Gordy, Berry’s sister, in ‘77, the settlement required that he give her all the proceeds from his next album, hence the name Here, My Dear (1978). Gaye also owed millions in back taxes to the IRS and was battling depression and drug addiction as the ’70s came to a close. Shortly after he returned to the top of the charts, his cross-dressing father, a conservative minister, shot and killed him on April 1, 1984, the day before his 45th birthday. Jesse L. Martin (Law & Order, Rent) and James Gandolfini (The Sopranos, Romance & Cigarettes) are set to star in a film about Gaye’s final years; it’s unlikely that writer-director Lauren Goodman will need to manufacture any extra drama.
I love soul music in each and every one of its glorious permutations, so it’s been gratifying for me to listen as a new generation of soul masters has taken the spotlight in the last few years. For me it seemed to start with that first Joss Stone album, but then she seemed to lose the thread as she moved forward. Into her place stepped artists like Sharon Jones, Ryan Shaw, and Eli “Paperboy” Reed, among others. Meanwhile, the great Al Green kept the fire burning, and Raphael Saadiq provided a new soundtrack for the soul revolution. For years I feared that soul music as I knew it was dead, only to have it come roaring back to life.
Let’s define terms. Soul music doesn’t employ auto-tuned vocals, electronic beats, or sampled music. It’s played by real singers backed by live bands. It’s not hip-hop, it’s not rap, and it’s not rock. It’s not black, and it’s not white. It’s whatever it is that Marvin Gaye, or the Temptations, or Otis Redding had, and Aretha Franklin still has.
Imagine someone gave you the opportunity to create the ultimate soul band. First, you’d get a great singer like Tre Williams, a guy who will remind you of David Ruffin without remotely copping his style. It’s something about that gravel in the throat. Then you have to be sure to have a great songwriter and backup singer like Rell to write the songs and sing them with Williams. Of course you’d need a band, and you’d get someone like Wes Mingus on guitar, and keyboard player Borahm Lee. You’re going to need a great rhythm section, and bassist Josh Werner, and drummer Gintas Janusonis fill that bill.
So now that you’ve got your singers, and you’ve got your band, what’s it going to sound like? Well suppose you could create an amalgam of Motown propulsion, the rawness of Stax, and just a touch of the balladry magic of Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International sound? That would be the ultimate, wouldn’t it?
The results of this brew, the seven-track Deep Soul ep, is just about as perfect as it gets. When it’s over you want more, even as you’re astonished by just how right the Revelations got it. But since you don’t want it to end, they give it to you, in the form of instrumental versions of the seven tracks. Think that’s redundant and you don’t need to hear them? Just wait.
While this ep will remind you of another era, there’s nothing retro about it. This is forward looking contemporary music. The Brooklyn-based Revelations featuring Tre Williams have created something rare that needs to be nurtured so that it can thrive. Tell everyone you know – this is a new soul classic for our time.
Welcome back to CHART ATTACK!, all new for 2009! This year we’ll be doing much like we’ve done in the past: ripping apart Billboard Top 10 charts for years ranging from the early ’70s to the early ’90s. You know the drill: some of ‘em are going to be great; some will be abysmal; some will feature way too many appearances by stupid Andy Gibb. (Not this week — just his brothers.)
This week, we’re looking at early 1983, a fairly diverse week featuring punk, pop, R&B, adult contemporary and whatever category you want to stick “Dirty Laundry” into. Also, here are a few of the odd words you’ll find in this week’s chart: Sharif, Serengeti, she-cat, and Vegemite. We’re also featuring three songs that, in some way or another, essentially were given a second chance on the charts this week. Which ones? Stay tuned as we attack January 15, 1983!
“Africa” holds my spot for the best song on this relatively solid Top 10, but “Heartbreaker” is in second place. It has very little to do with Dionne Warwick; while her vocal is fine, I think I’d also be okay with a number of other female vocalists singing. It’s more about the chorus, which is not only unmistakably catchy but contains just the right amount of Bee Gees — the fantastic backing vocals with none of the ridiculous falsetto wailing that Barry prefers to use at every turn. And once again we have to give credit to Mr. Gibb for wisely handing out his songs to other vocalists at a time when the Bee Gees were certainly less welcome on the charts. This one wasn’t initially his idea, though: in ‘82, Barry had planned on collaborating with a few different female vocalists for an album he was working on, but Clive Davis asked him if he’d write an album of material for Warwick. He did so, and though Warwick didn’t really care for “Heartbreaker,” she recorded it anyway — and it wound up being her biggest solo hit of the decade. I can’t believe I love “Heartbreaker” more than Dionne Warwick. Anyway, the Bee Gees eventually recorded their own version in 2002:
The original demo can also be found on YouTube (or on iTunes). Beware, though: Barry sings the whole thing utilizing the aforementioned falsetto wailing.
9. Rock the Casbah — The Clash
One can only imagine what Joe Strummer thought about spending time in the Top 10 next to Dionne Warwick. Even worse, only a few weeks later he’d wind up stuck next to Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle. The Clash’s Top 40 singles were far and few between — we’re talking this one and “Train in Vain (Stand By Me).” (”Should I Stay or Should I Go” reached #45.)
“Rock the Casbah” was born out of a piano part composed by drummer Topper Headon, and it’s Headon who plays bass, drums and piano on the track. The origins of the lyrics have been disputed, but the story I’ve heard the most is that Strummer was inspired by a news report of Iranians being flogged for owning disco music. I don’t see why that’s so wrong.
Today is a very important day in the history of popular music. It was on this day in 1959 that Motown was born. An auto worker by the name of Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his father to start the company, and to create a headquarters at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. The sign over the door said “Hitsville USA,” and that was no idle boast. The building is a museum today. Motown left Detroit in 1972, leaving behind a city that is still struggling economically.
You’ve no doubt heard the story many times, but here are some of the names; The Temptation, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, The Marvelettes, Smokey and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells. The producers were equally legendary, including the team of Holland, Dozier and Holland, and Norman Whitfield.
The musicians who played on the records were known as the Funk Brothers. They were largely forgotten until the wonderful documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown was released a few years back, giving wonderful musicians like James Jamerson, Benny Benjamin, Joe Hunter, Earl Van Dyke, and Richard “Pistol” Allen, the recognition that they have deserved for so long.
So if you’ve ever danced to a Motown song, or if hearing one of the songs on the radio takes you back to another time in your life, today is a day to celebrate this great American institution.
It’s impossible to choose one song to represent the incredible heritage of Motown Records. So I decided to choose something that I like, that you might not have heard recently. Enjoy:
Mainstream Rock: Asia, “Heat of the Moment” (1982)
Vrabel: I have a buddy who’s a big Asia fan. And every single time my buddy who’s an Asia fan tells me he’s an Asia fan, I bring up “Heat of the Moment,” and he calls me a dirty name, and we stare at each other in strained silence for 15 minutes. “Heat of the Moment” is like Kryptonite to prog fans. I call it the “57 Channels and Nothin’ On” Theory.
Ken: I don’t like prog. I don’t like ’80s music (what on earth am I doing at Popdose?). From a brief look at the video, no one in the band has a mullet. I’m willing to give them points for that, and only that.
Beau: Funny, I just covered this one. Basically, it’s terrific prog-rock playing distilled into a palatable pop-rock song. But oy, those lyrics. John, when her looks have gone and she’s alone, she’s still going to be blocking your calls.
Zack: It seems like something of a guilty pleasure, but I actually can’t resist the epic quality of this song’s opening. The video, on the other hand, sucks. Aside from using the same damn effect for the entire video, couldn’t they at least have changed the direction of the screen transitions? Once we get away from the intro, I find the song fair to middling. Nothing special, and it looks like we’re in for some much worse “music” this week. (more…)
One of the many things I love about Popdose is our collective freedom to write different kinds of posts: Sometimes you gets yourself a Cold Shot related to some bit of blues news, or sometimes we reach back into the archives to espouse the greatness of an evergreen-but-bona-fide classic.
“In the style of the boy-band vocal bands of the time, Human Nature became Australia’s most successful pop group of the ’90s and beyond,” according to their 
In an ongoing series, Dw. Dunphy takes an occasional look back at Christian contemporary music (CCM) of the past and makes the case for a new audience to rediscover the best of it as great, lost pop music.
The band’s second album, Ten Songs by Adam Again (1988), was a bullhorn to staid and button-down listeners that this probably wasn’t their dad’s idea of Christian rock. If the cover of Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” wasn’t an indicator, the groove of 
Last week I asked Jeff Giles, the man behind the curtain who funds this puppet government, if he had any R&B he could send my way. He delivered, so today I give you one of the greats, Marvin Gaye, performing at Budokan in Tokyo on November 13, 1979. (See? I brought in Japanese people too. Bootleg City is diversifying so quickly!) Jeff posted this bootleg at Jefitoblog in January 2006 under the name 
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Today is a very important day in the history of popular music. It was on this day in 1959 that Motown was born. An auto worker by the name of Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his father to start the company, and to create a headquarters at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. The sign over the door said “Hitsville USA,” and that was no idle boast. The building is a museum today. Motown left Detroit in 1972, leaving behind a city that is still struggling economically.
