The Young Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere was born on this date in 1942. A few of his band’s tunes are included on today’s playlist.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6icgYsLWcFdCmZ6QAVPeo9?si=9a63899c125246c3
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Today’s playlist celebrates the August 29 birthday of The Jackson ‘s Michael Jackson, Charlie Parker, Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser, Dinah Washington, Johnny & the Hurricanes’ Johnny Paris, Pebbles, Fairground Attraction’s Eddi Reader, MeShell NdegeOcello, Kevie Kev, and Galantis’s Style of Eye; the August 30 birthdays of The Mamas & The Papas’ John Phillips, Kitty Wells, Hurts’s Theo Huthcraft, Paul Oakenfold, and D:Ream’s Peter Cunnah; and the August 31 birthdays of Van Morrison, Battles’ Ian Williams, Squeeze’s Glenn Tillbrook, The Vines’ Craig Nichols, Tony DeFranco, Bobby Parker, Debbie Gibson, Ivan, Bob Welch, Broadway lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, Richard Gere, and Julie Brown.
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Inspired by the season and the December 14 birthdays of Charlie Rich, Spike Jones, The Searchers’ Frank Allen, The Waterboys’ Mike Scott, Beth Orton, Jane Birkin, The Big Pink’s Robbie Furze and The Beatnuts’ Juju.
Inspired by the August 12 birthdays of Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, Kid Creole, Sparks’ Ron Mael, Buck Owens, Porter Wagoner, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Tanita Tikaram, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Joe Jones, Pat Metheny, Infernal’s Lina Rafn, and Michael Ian Black.
I’m experimenting here at Tunes du Jour. Yesterday I started including multiple songs by the birthday performers who inspired that day’s playlist. As of today I’m not limiting myself to twenty songs. My thinking is that by removing that restriction I can posts playlists (almost) dailier and you get a deeper dive into some of the artists. I’m living on the edge!
Today’s playlist is inspired by the February 18 birthdays of Regina Spektor, Yoko Ono, Styx’s Dennis DeYoung, John Travolta, Randy Crawford, Juelz Santana, Irma Thomas, Juice Newton, and Space’s Tommy Scott.
(I meant to post this yesterday, but I entered the wrong date on the schedule. Oopsie!)
Before founding Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, who turns 72 years old today, was an in-demand musician. Here are twenty pre-Zeppelin tracks on which he played:
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In 1967 Van Morrison hit with his first solo single, “Brown Eyed Girl.” He had hit the top 40 twice before as the lead singer of Them, first with 1965’s “Here Comes the Night,” which peaked at #24. That song’s writer/producer, Bert Berns, produced “Brown Eyed Girl,” a Morrison composition. The song hit the top ten, which didn’t make Morrison happy. “I never wanted to be commercial, and suddenly ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ was making me even more commercial,” he complained.
The relationship deteriorated between Morrison and Berns, who besides being a songwriter and producer ran Bang Records, the record company to which Morrison was signed. Morrison’s next album would be on Warner Bros. Records.
Released in 1968, Astral Weeks produced no top ten singles. As a matter of fact, it didn’t produce any charting singles. The album failed to chart as well. Morrison was following his musical muse.
These days Astral Weeks is considered Morrison’s best work and is a rock era classic.
Today Morrison turns 70 years old. Here are twenty career highlights, including “Brown Eyed Girl” and a healthy lot of songs from Astral Weeks.
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Patti Smith was born in Chicago on December 30, 1946.
She co-wrote a play called Cotton Mouth with Sam Shepard, which she performed once, in 1971.
She wrote lyrics for several Blue Öyster Cult songs. For a while she was under consideration to be the band’s lead singer.
The Patti Smith Group released their first record in 1974, a single featuring the songs “Hey Joe” and “Piss Factory.”
ALBUMS
Patti Smith has released eleven studio albums to date: Horses, Radio Ethiopia, Easter, Wave, Dream of Life, Gone Again, Peace and Noise, Gung Ho, Trampin’, Twelve and Banga.
The Patti Smith Group’s debut album, 1975’s Horses, was listed at #1 on NME’s list of “20 Near-as-Damn-It Perfect Initial Efforts.” It was #44 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time” and #49 in Out magazine’s “100 Greatest, Gayest Albums of All Time” list.
Easter also made the Out magazine list, coming in at #64.
David Keenan of the Sunday Herald placed Radio Ethiopia on his list of “The 103 Best Albums Ever, Honest .”
Rolling Stone called Gone Again one of the “Essential Recordings of the Nineties.”
FANS
Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Carcass” was inspired by Smith’s Horses.
About Horses, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe said it “tore my limbs off and put them back on in a whole different order.” In 1996 Smith contributed vocals to R.E.M.’s “E-bow the Letter.”
Patti Smith was not a member of the band The Smiths. However, the group’s Morrissey and Johnny Marr said that their song “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” is a reworking of “Kimberly” from Patti’s Horses. Morrissey later released a single with a cover of that album’s “Redondo Beach.”
Sammy Hagar covered Horses’ “Free Money” on his self-titled album.
Courtney Love said Smith’s Horses album helped inspire her to become a rock star.
U2 covered Smith’s “Dancing Barefoot” for the b-side of their “When Loves Comes to Town” single. Smith later covered U2’s “Until the End of the World” for a U2 tribute compilation.
HONORS
In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
In 2010 she won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids, which documents her romantic relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe as the couple were struggling artists and Mapplethorpe was struggling with his homosexuality. Mapplethorpe, whose photographs of Smith covered her albums Horses, Wave and Dream of Life, died from AIDS-related illness in 1989. Smith donated the royalties for her 1996 book The Coral Sea to the Robert Mapplethorpe Laboratory for AIDS Research at Boston’s Deaconess Hospital/Harvard Medical School.
SONGS
Smith’s sole top 40 pop hit was 1978’s “Because the Night.” The song’s music and chorus were written by Bruce Springsteen. He had trouble writing verses to it as it was a love song and at that time he wasn’t writing straightforward love songs. He gave what he had done to Patti Smith, who was recording an album in the studio next to where he was recording Darkness in the Edge of Town. Her record, which reached #13, was the first hit for producer Jimmy Iovine, who later co-founded Interscope Records and Beats by Dr. Dre.
“Gloria” was written by Van Morrison for his band Them. It peaked at #93 in 1965. Smith covered the song using the title of the Catholic hymn “Gloria: in Excelsis Deo,” adding her own lyrics.
About how “People Have the Power” came to be, Patti told UK music mag NME “I was in the kitchen. My late husband was writing music, and he was a great songwriter, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, and we were writing some songs together. And I was peeling potatoes, and I remember I was in a bad mood because I had, you know, I was making dinner and washing the clothes and peeling potatoes. And in the middle of it, Fred came in and said, ‘Tricia, people have the power, write it.’ And I was standing there with a potato peeler thinking I’d like to have the power to make him peel these potatoes, that’s what I’d like… but I kept him. So for the next few nights, I really contemplated – because Fred was very political, and we talked about it, what we wanted to do with this line, which was Fred’s. And what we wanted to do was remind the listener of their individual power but also of the collective power of the people, how we can do anything. That’s why at the end it goes, ‘I believe everything we dream can come to pass, through our union we can turn the world around, we can turn the earth’s revolution.’ We wrote it consciously together to inspire people, to inspire people to come together.”
Smith’s “About a Boy” was written about Kurt Cobain. She told the Seattle Weekly “I was heartbroken when he committed suicide. I loved Nirvana … [My husband and I] felt so badly. We just wished that we would have known him, and been able to talk to him, and had some positive effect on him.” She covered Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on her album Twelve.
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