You think you are cool, but really, you are not as cool as this guy
http://www.bravewords.com/news/169185
you are just not.
I wanted to put this here because they guy changed his name to Led Zeppelin II. To be that changed by an album is something pretty cool frankly. Am I weird to think that?
So if you could live with changing your name to an album what would it be?
I think as a joke it would be funny to be called Paranoid. Because it would be like this.
' Hi I am Sam'
Hi Sam i'm Paranoid'
Or, Hello, it says on your CV that you are Paranoid? That would make me chuckle every time it came up.
What would Beatles fans do? Hi, I am The White Album . . . . that's just weird.
I wrote before about the albums that had a very big impact on my life here , I think if I was honest about it I would have to call myself Appetite For Destruction. Then people would say, So your name is Appetite Destruction, and I would then have to go,
'Yes, For is my middle name. . . '
Ok , maybe not such a good idea.
What would you call yourself
Here is my favourite song from Led Zep II in tribute to a man brave and stupid enough to do this.
So where do you go after The Beatles in pop music? I do not share some people's obsession with them, but I do recognize that they were a very good pop band. OK, will concede the best Pop band. Although it must be said i usually reserve the word pop in music conversations for various other derogatory terms I use in other conversations.
Where do you go? you follow the muse out to the west coast of the US. Jump into the troubadour scene and inadvertently stumble into the biggest issue that pop music faces. Do all pop songs have to be cheerful? I know that all pop songs are not cheerful, but if they aren't cheerful are they then a pop song? I wrote in my post Pop the Bitter sweetness how much I enjoy the fact that some writers are able to convey the concept of sweet sorrow.
It is extremely hard when you mention the pop scene of the West Coast in the early 70s not to talk about Crosby , Nash Stills and Young. Here is a great song
As you can see, that song is from Deja Vu and I would get it. Every house should have that album in it. The vocal harmonies on it are simply amazing. is it a pop record and indeed is our house a pop song? it is often labelled, because music geeks have to label everything, as folk rock. I don't really see the rock element. So it is Folk Pop. I just decided this. Please let everyone know. if this appeals, then there are a whole bunch of extremely good similar type artists out there. Neil Young , of course, James Taylor, Carole King, a bit more country but The Flying Burrito Brothers, and of course The Eagles.
I inadvertently grew up with The Eagles. I say inadvertently because my parents were not big fans, at all. They do not own an Eagles record. We did however spend a lot of time travelling in cars when i was growing up. Often at night travelling back home. A two hour trip where I come from is not a massive deal. My father often had some terrible radio station on, well it seemed like it to me as I was growing up, and these stations would play a lot of Eagles songs. It is dry and quite country where we would be driving and so the music fit in to the scenery. It took me a long time to come around to The Eagles though. A long time. I think I was about 30 when I re-discovered them and suddenly I had a band with a huge catalogue I actually knew, and it reminded me of home. Weird to say the least.
During this time and also during the 60s a huge amount of the most fantastic pop music came from the Motown label. Seriously, so much of it is so good. I know I spoke about Ray Charles in the first installment of this series, but he was really the cherry on the top of what was some breathtakingly good music. Think Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Jackson Five, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Roberta Flack, and of course perhaps the man who was more equal to Ray Charles than anyone else, the simply unbelievably good Stevie Wonder. I love this song.
That is from Songs in the key of Life. Another album that you should own, simple. It also has songs such as this one it.
Isn't that just a beautiful song? It has such a warm feel to the music. I think my view of the 70s is very much shaded by this type of music. Honestly I was born in the early(ish) 70s and so do have some musical memory of it. I would have like to think that it was hot summers days filled with this kind of music. I doubt very much it was. but listening to it now, I can pretend that the frankly, pretty cool childhood also had this very cool soundtrack. Unfortunately it was a little more like this
Oh well. It was country Australia. A side point, that is a very unattractive group of men in a single place at a single time.
Thinking about the 70s and some of the great music that came out of it, one of the things that becomes clear is that the lines between popular music and more experimental different forms of musical expression start to become much more apparent. This is the decade that spawned, Punk, Metal, Disco, Prog Rock, Glam Rock, the beginnings of Rap, and while much of this music was to become mainstream, at the time it was very much underground.
With that in mind I would like to give an honorable mention to David Bowie. Bowie sits astride the 70s as a sort of anomaly. Yes there was a lot of glam rock and glam pop. mainly coming out of the UK with bands such as T-Rex. (give Metal guru and telegram Sam a listen) , but Bowie sort of invented it and turned his back on it and became this uber cool icon who wrote this song
Music videos hadn't really taken off yet. But that is a brilliant song.
I am only going to go to one more place on this small little trip. New Wave. Punk can't really be considered pop in any way. Although The Ramones music isn't actually very far away at times. New Wave was a watered down version of it, and in one of those weird twists of fate, the band most associated with New Wave, were very much at the forefront of the American Punk Scene. Blondie. Ah, Debbie Harry. Debbie Harry was my first real crush I think.
hard to see isn't it . . . Blondie were about the biggest band in the world at their peak. They made a lot of very good music. Is it pop? Ok possibly not. Well, it wasn't pop at the time. Viewed now through the spyglass of time though I think we can just squeeze them in. Really, listen to this now
Sorry that is not meant to be an order. More, listen to it with the musical sensibilities of today. It is a pop song. We had a copy of Autoamerican at home growing up. It was definitely a favourite and to be honest still is in many ways. I think that Debbie Harry has an amazing voice and there is something about the way the guitar and the drums chug along that make the songs very catchy, very memorable as well.
That is it, I am done with the 70s. I know that again there is so much music out there that I didn't even touch on. But these are some of my favourites and so that will have to do for now.
I realise that over the past few weeks I have taken more than a few swipes at popular music. I feel fairly justified in this because most pop music is trash. We all know it, but some people love it regardless. Not me, I like my music to mean something, or at least have some emotion higher than 'look at me I am having fun.'
In my little experiment against Justin Bieber a friend commented and asked what she should play to her sons instead. This is actually a subject very close to my heart. I often think what I should be playing to my son, what my niece and nephew should listen to and what I would recommend. It is in fact a very interesting experience introducing young children to music. Incredibly rewarding when you get some feedback. At times the faintest bit of a connection over the music can be enough to bring a tear to the eye. I read a book by Nick Hornby, the writer of High Fidelity, called 31 songs. In this book he talks about the same topic and says that all he hope for is that his son will appreciate music. Not in an obsessive way, but in a way that allows them to talk about it. That is a close approximation I think to what I want.
Before this turns into a therapy session for me, time to get back on topic. What are good songs that fit into the criteria of ' the demographic that is sensitive but smart ...good role models for this delicate age group'. Firstly, there is no such thing as a good role model in entertainment, this is very important. What we look for are people that can convey emotion and meaningful lyrics in a tune that connects to us in some way. How they live their lives is not important when it comes to the music. Think Michael Jackson. Is Billy Jean less of a song because MJ's life was so removed from anything like normality. Not to me. So, what to recommend??
It is extremely tempting to jump in at the top into the complicated music and try to make it sink in. I think this temptation needs to be avoided a bit. Start with melodic great songs and work from there. The beginning of Rock and roll is a great place to start. Catchy, fun and very well written in most cases.
How good is that? A good place to start, at genius level song writing. I also love this song at the moment
I tested the Everly brothers on two four year olds and they both danced around the room to it. I could go one for the entire post about how much good music there is from this period. Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and of course Elvis. The music is great and although I know it is dated by now, it is well structured and as pop it stands up so well because it is so very well crafted. I think that also, as time passes it seems that music that once was considered subversive becomes quaint to us. Allowing us to appreciate it more for the melody and the structure rather than the social commentary.
My personal opinion is that the greatest pop songs were written by The Beach Boys. Forget Kocomo, please forget it. However songs such as this next one have amazing melodies and in reality are no different in lyrical content from Baby baby baby oh by Justin Bieber, just written a lot better.
OK, so I think I broke my own rule and went for the very best of music. perhaps try this one instead.
Happy joyous pop music. So good and catchy it just puts you into a good mood.
of course you can not talk about pop music and not mention the Beatles. The Beatles wrote so many good pop songs it is extremely hard to know where to start. I know The Beatles purists will be very unhappy with me, i will live with that. Start with the first album, Please Please me. There is a reason they exploded onto the pop scene. This album is the main reason.
So I realise these are all songs that are now 50 years or older. However to the ears of the young they are always new.
I am going to leave it there on this first post. i will however try to put together another couple of pieces on this huge subject in order to try to provide some great music for the little ones.
If you have comments on this topic then please feel free. For this post let's talk about pop music of the 50s and 60s. There will be 70s 80s 90s and modern posts as well for you all to add your greater knowledge on the topic.
You may have noticed from my other 100 posts that I am not into mainstream music very much. Into mainstream pop a lot less. Because of this I have heard of the pop 'sensation' that is Justin Bieber, but I have not ever heard any of his songs. I have smiled and even raised a chuckle at the pranks that have been played on him and his followers, getting every clip taken off of You Tube because it was labelled as porn is creative and funny.
It does seem though that his followers hold this little guy up on a higher level than some gods. This seems mainly to be the female population from the ages of about 9 to 14-maybe 15. What is it with the age group and their obsessions? I do not pretend to ever be able to understand this, but I do realise that it is an all encompassing love. One that involves a huge amount of screaming and staring at pictures and posters and dreaming of doing god only knows what to the object of their affection.
I have seen this first hand a few times. The most memorable was in the early mid 80s. A family friend who I had grown up with, was at our house. We were watching video clips. (Somethings never change) The band Bros came on with what I imagine must have been When Will I Be Famous,and this girl, who up until that moment I had considered to be intelligent and not a little bit attractive, just lost it. She became transfixed to the TV. I made some joke, and she screamed, screamed at me to shut up. Burst into tears and turned the volume up so loud that it was painful (well it was Bros so it was pretty damn painful anyway). As you can imagine I was a little taken aback by this turn of events. When the video finished she went into a 25 minute, 25 minute!, monologue about how cool and beautiful etc etc they were.
This is the same thing as happens with our little Canadian friend Justin Beiber.The fans have mobbed places, broken things in their desire to get to him. When I say broken things, I don't mean the odd barrier. I mean Shopping centres. So what I thought I would do is a little experiment. I thought I would look up the you tube clip with the most hits post and listen to it and write what i actually think of it. I know you know where this is going, I do to, but I will do my best to be as fair as I can.
This clip has had 615 million hits... damn that is a lot of hits
Well . . .right . . ah . I can see that the video clip is aimed very much at the teen and pre-teen female market. Lots of pointing at the camera and singing about being together forever. It seems that he is having a great time bowling and that seems to be important in getting the girl. Who apparently isn't actually that impressed because she can also get a strike.
Seriously 615 million hits on that song? That is not a good song. It just isn't . It is well written and is showing him off well, but the voice is put through the machines to give that warble. and the beats are just the same sort of rubbish that is rolled out on every Ludacris track. In fact almost every single modern R&B track. It is just terrible terrible and I simply don't get it. is it because he is non threatening and so is an acceptable face of little girls' obsessions? It just isn't music. God I want to punch him in the face.
OK sorry, I guess that last part isn't impartial really. If you are a fan of Bieber I would appreciate if you wrote in and told me why, why you would waste your time on this? I will be happy to let you know about real pop music and actual attitude and maybe we can both learn something . . .
