The nominations for the 86th Academy Awards were announced yesterday. Who will take home the statuette for Best Original Song? Will it be U2 for “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom? No. Will it be Pharrell for “Happy” from Despicable Me 2? No. Will it be someone or another for “Let It Go” from Frozen? No. Will it be that song that nobody’s ever heard from that movie that nobody’s ever seen? Hell no. Will it be Karen O. and Spike Jonze for “The Moon Song’” from Her? Yes. Yes it will.
How many of you know all five nominated songs? How many of you know any of the nominated songs? What happened to the days when the general public knew the songs that were nominated?
Today’s dance playlist is built around two Oscar winners – “Last Dance” and “Flashdance…What a Feeling.” That’s right – Thank God It’s Friday and Flashdance are Academy Award winning films. Thank God It’s Friday won more Oscars than North By Northwest, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Clockwork Orange, Psycho, Singin’ in the Rain, Rebel Without a Cause, Taxi Driver and 12 Angry Men put together. Ah, but nobody ever said life was fair, Tina.
I can’t find my Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam promotional athletic socks. I know they’re in my home somewhere. I wanted to post a photo of them on my blog today, Lisa Lisa’s birthday, but I can’t find them anywhere. I found my Tenacious D socks, but they do me no good.
Over the years, while at my various record company jobs, I’ve collected promotional tchotchkes. You’d be surprised what were manufactured. Madonna lollipops, a Rolling Stones matchbook, a Terence Trent D’Arby electric toothbrush. I have all of those at my fingertips. I have an Aerosmith thermos and an Eazy-E thermos at my disposal. I can find my Kiss lunchbox and my Aaron Carter lunchbox (autographed!), my Babyface clock and my Prong clock (I can’t name a single song or album by Prong), my Gloria Estefan CD wallet and my Toto CD wallet, my Bruce Springsteen wallet and my Pras wallet. Pras! The member of the Fugees you never hear about these days. I know exactly where to find my Eminem bobble-head, my Michael Jackson paperweight, my Ricky Martin diary, my Nas inflatable globe, my NSYNC make-up case, my Cher paper fan, my Dead Milkmen flipbook, my Jamiroquai flag, my Nick Heyward kite, my Aerosmith handkerchief, my Pearl Jam doormat, my Michael Jackson duffle bag, my George Michael oversize paper clip, my Alice Cooper water gun and my Poi Dog Pondering whistle. Who the hell are Poi Dog Pondering? Where are my Lisa Lisa promotional athletic socks? I know where my Sophie B. Hawkins “As I Lay Me Down” hammock is – it’s hard to lose that! I remember giving away my Celine Dion luggage. The line had to be drawn somewhere. But for the life of me, I have no idea where my Lisa Lisa promotional athletic socks could be.
When I find my Lisa Lisa promotional athletic socks, I’ll post a photo of them. For now, here is Ringo with my Pras wallet.
Enjoy Lisa Lisa’s birthday (she’s 48!). Here is a mini-playlist of her best tracks.
Note to my future exes – when it comes time for you to break up with me, blast some old school Philly soul-disco from Gamble and Huff as you start your speech with “I don’t love you anymore – it’s just that simple.” I want horns and strings playing off each other when you say “We can’t work it out, no, not this time.” Give me plenty of percussion when you tell me “We can’t be together, we can only be friends.” Use your baritone growl to make it clear you “tried doing everything that I can but we can’t make it.” Bring in backup singers to emphasize it’s not like before. If I must go through the end of another relationship I want to enjoy it. It’s just that simple.
Today’s playlist kicks off with “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” in remembrance of Teddy Pendergrass, lead singer of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, who died on this date in 2010.
In 1957, Elvis Presley took “Jailhouse Rock” to #1. Not only was it one of the best hits of the year, it was the gayest. Even gayer than “The Banana Boat Song.” Even gayer than “Short Fat Fannie.” Even gayer than “Bi Bi Love.”
You may be saying “What can be gay about this song? It takes place in a prison, for crying out loud.”
The song tells of a special party the warden threw in the all-male penitentiary, an affair that had most of the men feeling, shall we say, amorous. Prisoner #47 was particularly sweet on prisoner #3, telling him ““You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see / I sure would be delighted with your company / Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.”
Number 47 wasn’t the only one feeling frisky. Everybody in the whole cell block was (excuse my vulgarity) dancing to the jailhouse rock. Everybody. Everybody.
Well, not everybody. A poor sad sack felt left out. He was in the corner crying because nobody would rock him. The warden told him to stop being a square. “If you can’t find a partner, use a wooden chair.” Why a wooden chair? Because it rhymes with square. Leiber and Stoller, the song’s writers, admittedly did not spend a long time on this one.
A prisoner named Shifty realized that then was a good time to escape. The warden was preoccupied watching the prisoners rocking each other. Shifty told his idea to Bugsy, but Bugsy didn’t want to leave, telling Shifty he’d prefer to “stick around awhile and get my kicks.” Maybe Bugsy had nobody waiting for him on the outside. Maybe he wasn’t ready to cope with the real world. Maybe the warden knows how to throw a party.
Then there’s Little Joe, who was blowin’ on the slide trombone. Is that what they called it in 1957?
Happy Elvis’ birthday! Here are some of the king’s best.
I bought David Bowie’s Young Americans album on cassette on 1975. It was my first Bowie purchase. The album reflected Bowie’s then–obsession with American soul music and was much different than his prior releases, which made him a sensation in the U.K. but not in the U.S.
Most of it was recorded in Philadelphia at Sigma Sound Studios, American’s most successful black-owned music company after Motown. In 1974 alone 24 r&b/pop crossover hits were recorded there.
A 23 year-old pre-fame Luther Vandross sang and arranged the backing vocals.
David Bowie performing “Young Americans on The Dick Cavett Show, with Luther Vandross singing backup
Bowie didn’t start recording his vocals until 2 or 3 in the morning, as he heard Frank Sinatra didn’t record vocals for his records until after midnight and he is an icon, something Bowie aspired to be.
On his Diamond Dogs tour Bowie performed a song by The Flares called “Foot Stomping.” He rearranged the music from that tune to make it more r&b-sounding. John Lennon, who Bowie met the year before at a party thrown by Elizabeth Taylor, was in the studio and played a riff on the guitar from a then current disco hit by an artist named Shirley (And Company) called “Shame, Shame, Shame.” Bowie changed Shame to Fame and wrote the lyrics. They recorded “Fame” together with Lennon singing the falsetto backup. They also collaborated on a cover of The Beatles’ “Across the Universe,” also on the Young Americans album. A third nod to Lennon is on the song “Young Americans,” which samples a lyric from The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” (“I heard the news today, oh boy”).
Performing “Fame” on Cher’s variety show
After the full album was recorded Bowie played it for invited guests, including Lennon, Paul & Linda McCartney, Bette Midler, Manhattan Transfer and Bob Dylan. Dylan told him he thought it was terrible.
The American public felt differently. In early 1975 the title track hit the US top thirty, something Bowie managed to do only once before with “Space Oddity” in 1973. The next single, “Fame,” went to #1 on the pop charts and hit the top 30 on the soul chart, earning him a guest appearance on Soul Train.
Young Americans was the album that made Bowie a star in America.
Tuesday’s Tunes du Jour playlist is dedicated to David Bowie, who turns 67 the next day. Among the Bowie tracks, collaborations, covers and tributes are Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes,” the hit Bowie wrote for them after they rejected his offer of recording his “Suffragette City,” which Bowie then recorded himself, and Iggy Pop’s version of “China Girl,” a song the two co-wrote and Pop released six years before Bowie did his version.
In 1974, the year my grandfather gave me a radio and in doing so gave me something about which I’d be passionate, Linda Ronstadt released her cover of Betty Everett’s “You’re No Good.” It became Ronstadt’s first top ten single.
Her next single was her version of The Everly Brothers’ “When Will I Be Loved,” on which the duo sang back-up. I was familiar with a few of the brothers’ hits – “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Bye Bye Love” – probably from Happy Days or the oldies radio station my parents played in the car. I liked those and I was curious to hear the original recording of the Ronstadt hit, so I ordered an Everly hits collection from the Columbia House Record Club.
I liked their version of “When Will I Be Loved.” There were other songs on the album I enjoyed as well – “Bird Dog,” “Devoted to You” (which Carly Simon later covered) and “Let It Be Me” among them. The record included all of their hits on Cadence Records.
In 1960 the duo singed with Warner Brothers in what was reportedly a multi-million dollar deal. The hits continued – “Cathy’s Clown” and “Walk Right Back” being two of the best-known ones.
They had their last top 40 hit in 1967, a forgotten track called “Bowling Green.” They wouldn’t hit the Billboard Hot 100 again until 1984, when a fan named Paul McCartney penned “On the Wings of a Nightingale” for them. (Paul also mentioned the brothers, Phil and Don, in his hit “Let ‘Em In.”) In total they had 26 top 40 singles and 35 Hot 100 singles, the most of any duo in rock history.
Phil Everly, the younger of the two brothers, died this past Friday, two weeks before his 75th birthday. Today’s playlist is in remembrance of one of pioneers of rock and roll.
In October 1998, as a member of their fan club and a New York resident, R.E.M. invited me to the taping of their Storytellers episode for VH-1. My friend Kathy, a fellow R.E.M. fan, was my +1.
We got on the line with the other invitees and their guests. People were shown to their seats by ushers in what appeared to be a first come first served basis, an organized general admission.
When Kathy and I got to the front of the line an employee at the studio asked us to step to the side. We watched as the ushers seated all the people who got on line after us. I was getting annoyed.
Then that employee asked us to follow him. He seated us in the front row. We must have looked extra cool that day.
While performing, the band’s lead singer, Michael Stipe, often looked at papers on a music stand to his right. He explained that he doesn’t remember the lyrics to all his songs, so he went on the Internet earlier and printed them out from random lyric sites, apologizing if he sang the wrong words. After each song he’d drop the lyric sheet to the floor. After the show I collected two of them – “Fall on Me” and “Daysleeper.”
Today Michael Stipe turns 54. Get to know his music a little more with today’s playlist.
“Today is Grandmaster Flash’s birthday and schools are closed. Thank you, President Obama.”
– Chris Rock
My plan was to write a post about how great “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” is, but the website Songfacts expressed it perfectly, so I’ll reprint what they wrote:
Folks born after the dawn of Hip-Hop will probably read about this song, listen to it, and wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, it’s just a bunch of dance songs mixed together, and it’s kind of a harsh mix. The big deal is that it was the first song ever made by chopping up pieces of other songs and connecting them in a way to create a new track. It introduced sampling, and spotlighted the cutting and scratching techniques that were the hallmarks of early Hip Hop. Today, any kid can easily make something like this with software that probably came preloaded on his computer, but in 1981, it required 2 turntables and some serious beatmixing skills. Grandmaster Flash was a DJ, not a rapper, and he had been performing in New York city since 1976, often as the entertainment at parties. His art was in figuring out how to mix songs together using their breakbeats, so the music would keep going. He was also one of the first to do scratching, which was moving the record back and forth on the turntable, which made the transitions a lot easier.
There was no editing on this track – Grandmaster Flash did it live in the studio after mapping out his cuts. He would put marks on the labels of his records so he would know when to bring the next one in, which is something he learned playing years of parties. It took him a few takes to get all his cues in the right place, but the end result at the time sounded like perfection. In the era of remixing and editing, every beat can be scrutinized and altered, but considering what Flash accomplished with what he had to work with, it was remarkable and extraordinary. It also demonstrated what you would hear at one of his live performances.
Today’s playlist is inspired by this old school hip-hop classic.
