Paul McCartney’s timeless ”Yesterday” was literally discovered, revealed to him in a dream, rather than composed or created from scratch.
Which is not surprising, I guess, because it has that rare quality of great music: a feeling or sense in the listener that this melody has always existed, timeless and eternal, and only needed to be revealed at some point in its full and perfect form.
He woke up one morning in 1964 with the melody in his head and immediately got up to play it on piano so he wouldn’t forget it. He called it “Scrambled Eggs” just to have something to sing — the real words would come later.
McCartney’s legacy as a creator of deeply original music with wonderful melodies is clearly legendary — you could even make the case that he belongs in the Songwriters Hall of Fame twice, both for his Beatles era and then his Wings era. No arguments here.
But “Yesterday” is on another level, a rare height that few songwriters ever see let alone reach.
My dad was a big White Sox fan and used to tell me about this series so it always makes me think about him—plus this was the year of my birth so that was a very big year for him personally.
Using engineering genius the Venetians — refugees from nearby towns seeking shelter from Visigoths and later Attila the Hun around 500-550 AD — turned a series of swampy islands into a real city and then into the global center of commerce by the 9th century, well before the time of Marco Polo in the late 13th century.
As the population grew they encountered the usual problems with growing cities — fresh water and waste disposal — and once again employed engineering genius to solve them in simple, effective and efficient ways.
Venice was the capitol of the Republic of Venice, for 1100 years a global power until conquered by Napoleon in 1797.
The Great Slave Lake in Canada, in the Northwest Territories, is over 2,000 feet deep, deepest in North America.
I have never heard of it. Learn something new every day!
And yes, the name seems a little odd but it’s named after a family named “Slavey”. Also kinda odd, but then lots of names are odd when you really think about it …
Raise your hand if you too had no idea that the drummer sang lead vocals on the verses, not Frankie Valli…
That drummer is Gerry Polci and he is a fine singer.
That’s not Valli on the falsetto, either — it’s bassist Don Ciccone. Wikipedia says that music executives came up with the idea to have Polci sing lead and bass player Don Ciccone to sing the falsetto with Valli handling the choruses.
Didn’t know that either!
Imagine a band with such strong singers — your drummer and bass player, no less — that you can make a hit song using legend Frankie Valli as the third featured singer, the equivalent of a hired background singer.
Just an amazing song and it always sounds fresh. Turn it up!
Two thumbs up on both the title tune and the movie, and this video gives you a good taste of how it all goes down.
He drives around rural California fighting various dumbasses and losers, along with chasing his girlfriend around. An orangutan named Clyde is his partner and gets some of the biggest laughs in the movie, along with Ruth Gordon who is always a little cranky and not taking any bullshit from anyone.
Highly original and memorable. It’s been literally decades since I’ve seen it, but I plan to watch soon. It’s funny and filled with great music and is just a good time.
In 1963 the Kingsmen released their version of Richard Berry’s “Louie Louie” — and hoo boy did people lose their mind over what they thought were dirty lyrics.
Letters were written, investigative task forces created, all because of this silly and indecipherable 2:48 of fun, recorded in a single take at a cost of $50.
Never once in my life have I understood any of it, but hey, it’s catchy and fun.
Over the course of the next two years, the FBI gathered many versions of the putative lyrics to Louie Louie. They interviewed the man who wrote the song and officials of the record label that released the Kingsmen’s smash-hit single. They turned the record over to the audio experts in the FBI laboratory, who played and re-played “Louie Louie” at 78 rpm, 45 rpm, 33 1/3 rpm and even slower speeds in an effort to determine whether it was pornographic and, therefore, whether its sale was a violation of the federal Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material law.
Finally to everyone’s relief on May 17, 1965 they announced their dramatic conclusion: the lyrics were “unintelligible at any speed”.
Good to know. Nice work, everyone.
The original by Richard Berry was recorded in 1957 in a totally different tempo and style with a Carribean, almost “ska” style:
The song has been recorded over 1,000 times. However, Berry received little financial reward for its success for many years, having sold the copyright for $750 in 1959 to pay for his wedding. Berry said in 1993 "Everybody sold their songs in those days. I never was bitter with the record companies. They provided a vehicle for five young black dudes to make a record."
But then 30 years after he wrote it …
In the mid-1980s, Berry was living on welfare at his mother's house in South Central Los Angeles. Drinks company California Cooler wanted to use "Louie Louie" in a commercial, but discovered it needed Berry's signature to use the song. The company asked the Artists Rights Society to locate him, and a lawyer visited Berry. The lawyer mentioned the possibility of Berry's taking action to gain the rights to his song. The publishers settled out of court, making Berry a millionaire.
And hoo boy is that history complicated — feel free to read about it in detail above — but here is a summary from that page:
Constantine reigned during the 4th century CE and is known for attempting to Christianize the Roman Empire. He made the persecution of Christians illegal by signing the Edict of Milan in 313 and helped spread the religion by bankrolling church-building projects, commissioning new copies of the Bible, and summoning councils of theologians to hammer out the religion’s doctrinal kinks.
The Edict of Milan mandated religious tolerance via legal rights — seems that this too should be more well-known than it is:
... granted all persons freedom to worship whatever deity they pleased, assured Christians of legal rights (including the right to organize churches), and directed the prompt return to Christians of confiscated property.
“Granted all persons freedom to worship watever deity they pleased”. This is full-on frredom of religion, 1446 years prior to 1776, when it seemed like a revolutionary idea mainly because for several hundred years the entire world had been unable to avoid killing each other over religion, not because nobody ever thought of it before.
It goes on to say this ponderous bit: “Previous edicts of toleration had been as short-lived as the regimes that sanctioned them, but this time the edict effectively established religious toleration.”
“This time”? Why did it work better this time? We are left to surmise that it was because of Constantine’s own conversion and strong leadership, although he died in 337, just 7 years later. Of course the Roman Empire fell in 476, so all of this “freedom” silliness died off with it, ushering in the Dark Ages and Vikings and Crusades and nearly endless war and plunder for over a thousand years.
While listening to a Spotify 60s Country playlist last week — an undertaking that I can recommend without reservation — the theme of going back home surfaced in two different songs, with two completely different takes on that idea.
“Homecoming” by Tom T. Hall tells the tale of his own distant relationship with his widower father.
I’ve been gone so many years I didn’t realize you had a phone
He pops in unannounced, has to explain what his musician life is like to a father who does not understand it at all, apologizes for missing his mother’s funeral, and then has to leave for a gig later that night.
The whole experience is short, awkward, and unsatisfying. It’s clear that he cannnot wait to get out of there.
Contrast that with “Back Home Again” in which John Denver writes a more romanticized version of the ways one might enjoy coming back home.
There’s a fire softly burning Supper’s on the stove It’s the light in your eyes that makes him warm.
The name “Orleans” might not sound familiar but their first big hit surely does.
From 1975, “Dance With Me” — again from the Midnight Special.
Orleans was formed in 1972 by John Hall, Larry Hoppen, and Wells Kelly in Woodstock, New York. Larry’s brother Lance joined a short time later.
The video above shows the three original members sharing vocals — Hall on guitar, Larry Hoppen on keys and lead vocal, Kelly on drums, and Lance Hoppen on bass.
Larry Hoppen and Wells Kelly, as it turns out, were members of King Harvest whose big hit “Dancing in the Moonlight” was written by Kelly’s brother Sherman (also a member of King Harvest for a short time).
Orleans used a lot of unusual instruments in their songs, and on this track, Larry Hoppen played a melodica in the break. Also called a "hooter," the instrument looks like a small keyboard with a mouthpiece attached. It is played by blowing through the reed and controlling the notes with the keyboard.
“Dance With Me” became a big hit which proved once again that record label suits are often clueless:
Orleans recorded this song for their second album, Orleans II, which was given limited international release in 1974 but withheld in the US by their label, ABC, which didn't hear a hit single on the album. The group left the label and joined Elektra-Asylum. Their first release on that label was Let There Be Music in 1975, which included a re-recorded "Dance With Me."
The ABC suits wouldn't even release the album in the U.S. because they didn’t hear a hit single on it!
A rare live version of “Dancing in the Moonlight” via the indispensable Midnight Special channel…
The tune was written several years earlier by a guy named Sherman Kelly — and the story behind it is more than a little bit strange:
On a trip to St. Croix in 1969, I was the first victim of a vicious St. Croix gang who eventually murdered 8 American tourists. At that time, I suffered multiple facial fractures and wounds and was left for dead. While I was recovering, I wrote "Dancin in the Moonlight" in which I envisioned an alternate reality, the dream of a peaceful and joyful celebration of life. The song became a huge hit and was recorded by many musicians worldwide. "Dancin In The Moonlight" continues to be popular to this day.
Well, now I’m going to have *that* picture in my head every time I hear it for the rest of my life.
It topped out at #13 in America during February-March of 1973, just before I turned 14.
As it turns out this big hit led indirectly to the formation of the band Orleans — more on that soon.
Steven Kotler says that we are all capable of so much more than we know, by adopting simple habits that rewire our mindset and tame anxiety and depression by leveraging our natural ability to produce “feel good” chemicals like endorphins and serotonin.
Gratitude. Mindfulness. Walk, bike, or run, outside.
Between social media and “the news” we are bombarded every day with social anxiety and fear, which can be difficult to overcome and is bad for all of us.
Of course you can reduce the role of those things in your life, which is always a good idea, but completely independent from that you have the ability to counteract those negatives by focusing on what you *can* control.
Gratitude. Mindfulness. Walk, bike, or run, outside.
In 1966 an amazing TV show called “The !!!! Beat” debuted featuring a wide array of live R&B music by black artists like Freddie King, Lou Rawls, Esther Phillips, Etta James, Otis Redding and so many more.
Hosted by legendary Nashville DJ “Hoss” Allen, who was immersed in black culture and music as a kid and played blues, R&B and gospel on his WLAC Nashville radio show in the 50s, “The !!!! Beat” featured an amazing list of guests:
Guests included: Otis Redding, who hosted the final episode, Little Milton, Esther Phillips, Joe Tex, Etta James, Lattimore Brown, Roscoe Shelton, Carla Thomas, Freddie King, Barbara Lynn, Johnny Taylor, The Radiants, Louis Jordan, The Mighty Hannibal, Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, Robert Parker, Joe Simon, Mitty Collier, Jamo Thomas, Z. Z. Hill, Lou Rawls, Bobby Hebb, Willie Mitchell, Don Bryant, The Ovations, The Bar-Kays, Percy Sledge, Garnet Mimms, and Sam & Dave all appeared.
That is quite the list. This is just one season of the show!
Sadly it lasted just that one season, which is unsurprising considering the race climate at the time — but due to the magic of Youtube, DVDs, and devoted fans, nearly all the episodes are available to watch today. For now.
Recently I featured a Freddie King video from the show — here’s one more.
“I'm Torn Down”
Esther Phillips, “I Could Have Told You”
There’s so much more, and I encourage all to investigate this YouTube channel.
Really like this just-discovered channelMy Analog Journal which features various DJs spinning a wide variety of music from around the world, one theme per video, which are about an hour or so.
Fantastic variety, from salsa to relaxing jazz to reggae to Japanese R&B from the 70s and 80s, and all kinds of other varieties, like this one, “Hawaiian Grooves”.
One of the most popular videos features a Brazilian Samba theme.
I’ve listened to parts of about 7-8 of these videos — the music is all new to me, but very high quality and I like it.
And while I actually like watching DJs doing their thing, these videos are ideally suited for background music while working, at a party, doing chores, relaxing with coffee in the morning, or whenever you want to hear good, fun, “new to you” music.