music

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After the Beatles


This past week people having been giving homage to the Beatles and all they did for music.  They were the beginning of what was known as “The British Invasion.”  That invasion included groups like The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Who and others.  The Beatles deserve a lot of credit for helping to define music as we know it today.  Other artists, however, had been defining the new rock & role for some time.  Artists such as Bob Dylan , Carole King, Sam Cook, Ray Charles and others also greatly influenced the direction of popular music.

I want to add 10 artists who I think made huge contributions but who many people today have never heard of even though their music lives on.  The following list along with links to youtube are presented in no particular order.  I hope that some of the music will inspire those who have not heard it before to seek it out.

1. Steely Dan “Do It Again” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgYuLsudaJQ

2. Blood, Sweat & Tears “And When I Die” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu7XWgczC7o

3. Carol King “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOyvYnkdEcc

4. Bill Withers “Ain’t No Sunshine” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdIqbv7SPo

5.  Bob Seger “Old Time Rock & Roll” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQswfILThsY

6.  Jethro Tull “Aqualung” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8ZZ8QnUFVM

7. Stevie Ray Vaughn “Pride and Joy” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU0MF8pwktg

8. Eric Clapton “Layla” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX5USg8_1gA

9. Freddie Mercury (Queen) “Bohemian Rhapsody” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p4MZJsexEs

10. Gladys Knight “Midnight Train” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meaVNHch96o

11. John Lennon “Imagine” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLgYAHHkPFs

I put John Lennon at 11 because he was, of course, part of the original Beatles but this particular song he wrote after their demise and I consider this to be his greatest piece.  He was also the musical genius behind the group and wrote much more on his own.

I hope you enjoy my choices but please know, this is just an ad hoc list that could easily be expanded.

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Did 70s Music Really Suck More Than 80s Music?


All right, I know, who cares?!?  But it is a Friday night, I just got done watching a SNL rerun from 1977, and the thought came to mind.  Mind you (pun), the particular episode had Leon Redbone as its musical artist and I think he certainly did not typify the 70s.  But then I thought of Wendy O. Wiliams, lead singer of The Plasmatics, and the debate was on.

Early 70s music was actually pretty good with groups like Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Santana, Blood Sweat & Tears, headling.  But there was also The Archies (Yuck!), the Bee Gees, Abba, and Barry Manilow.  The 70s were closed out with Disco music which supposedly died in 1979 in spite of New Yorkers trying to keep it alive for the next decade.

In its defense, the 70s also produced Elvis Costello, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, most of the great punk rockers, the B-52s, Talking Heads, and the Clash.  I loved those groups, still do.  There is truly a timelessness about their music.

The 80s produced grunge rock, which for me a hard rocker, was difficult to understand.  While people were raving about Def Leppard, I was saying, “really?”  It was also the era of Boy George.  His music was a little fruity for me.  Then there were The Go Go’s, the water skiing girl group.  Lots of glitz, not a lot of talent, but they sold a lot.

But the 80s also produced Pat Benatar, Blondie, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Billy Idol, Heart, the Eurythmics, and The Pretenders.  Great rock by Van Halen, INXS, Joan Jett, and Joe Jackson.  It was also the beginning of Rap music, which, although I do not care for it, I look at it like Blue Grass, I don’t understand either and that is my shortcoming, not the music’s.  I bring up Rap because I really thought it would run its course by the mid-90s.  Obviously I was seriously wrong.

I think the biggest turn-off of the 1970s is how it was so totally taken over by Disco.  Now at the time, I liked Disco, I admit it.  But when it was done, so was I!  The first time I heard Punk Rock I loved it.  It was edgy which is something I’ve always liked in music.  But it also harkened back to the Bob Dylan style protest music of the 60s.  That was music that made a difference, I thought, and I believed the same to be true of Punk.  Eddie Van Halen brought back hard rock and that was terrific.  But there was the mid-80s gap when Punk was fading and the hard rockers had yet to take hold.  It seemed like only Dire Straits and Duran Duran were defending us against the likes of Wham, A-ha, Huey Lewis, and Billy Ocean.  Those groups I dislike seemed to produce music that was nice to hear for about a week.  Then it got overplayed which made you want to turn it off.  But even hearing it again after years, it just does not seem to cut it.  It doesn’t have staying power.

Staying power is like the open rip of ZZ Top’s “La Grange “, Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” and Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.”  Those openings draw you in and keep you.  There is not a bad song on Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album.  Anything done by Steely Dan, Blood Sweat & Tears, and Santana seem to survive the test of time.  Eric Clapton, who actually started in the mid-60s, re-invented himself in the 2000s when he brought out his album “Me and Mr. Johnson” where he played Robert Johnson’s blues songs from the 193os.  One of the cuts made it to the top of the pop charts!

I bring up some of these groups because they spanned the 70s and the 80s, and you cannot tie them to any single decade.  Mark Knopfler, of the 80s Dire Straits, went off on his own in the 2000s and continued to succeed.  That means when I am considering throwing the 70s under the bus as the worst decade I have to consider that these great groups started there.  Others started in the 60s, the Rolling Stones, for example, and are still going today.  Do I dismiss them from 70s consideration?

All that said, I am still going to throw the 70s under the bus.  There was just too much sugary, air-headed music to ignore.  The 80s did have its share but I feel like it was to a lesser extent.  The 80s also had a lot of really good female artists who held things up, like Patty Smyth, Pat Benatar, Sinead O’Connor, Stevie, Nicks, Kate Bush, Rickie Lee Jones, and Melissa Etheridge.  The 70s lacked for such artists of either gender so my vote makes 70s music as considerably worse than the 80s.

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Ten of the 20th Century’s Best Musicians


I am not an expert in music in any sense of the word.  I know what I like and I feel I have a fairly eclectic taste in music.  The following list, in no particular order, is of ten people I consider to be the creative geniuses of the 20th Century.

1. Sergei Rachmaninoff — (1873 – 1928) Rachmaninoff is considered to be a romantic classicist.  He is best known for his piano concertos, although he certain wrote many other forms of music.  A friend of mine, who was once part of the Cleveland Philharmonic, said Rachmaninoff’s pieces can be extremely difficult to perform not only because of the complexity, but because the pianist involved is required to make reaches designed for Rachmaninoff’s large hands.  If you have not, or do not know, if you have ever heard anything by him, I recommend you find his Piano concerto number 1 or his Piano rhapsody of a theme of Paganini.  His pieces are frequently used in movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5bP1CdfM-8

2.  George Gershwin — (1898 – 1937) George Gershwin, and his brother Ira, are responsible for some of the most appealing early 20th century American music.  Gershwin fancied himself a classical author although his music was much more suited for the Broadway play for which he wrote a number of scores.  In the early 1930s Gershwin fulfilled his lifetime dream of writing an opera when he wrote “Porgy and Bess.”  Rather than write in the classical form like Puccini and Mozart, Gershwin drew from early 20th century folk music of the south.  Porgy and Bess, an American opera to be sure, is filled with a Delta Blues style of music.  He also wrote a piano piece that is exception, A Rhapsody in Blue.  If you listen to either of these piece I believe you will see what I found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U40xBSz6Dc

3.  Eric Satie — (1866 – 1925)  Eric Satie is a Frenchman who grew up in Normandy near the French coast.  His music, primarily piano pieces, take on a beautiful haunting quality to them.  His pieces are often used in movies when a pedantic or lonely mood needs to be set.  Two of his most famous pieces are Gymnopedies no. 1 and Gnossienne no. 1.  They are short but enormously beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU

4.   Aaron Copeland — (1900 – 1990) Aaron Copeland is known as the dean of American Music.  His music takes on a particularly American quality that has become to define a particular style of American Folk Music.  His piece Appalachian Spring and Fanfare to the Common Man are known around the world, and frequently played at 4th of July celebrations, and other such gatherings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NjssV8UuVA&feature=related

5.  John Philip Sousa — (1854 – 1932)  Sousa is known for his patriotic marches.  In the 1880s he lead the Marine Corps Band.  Afterward he found he had an aptitude for composition and set about to write such well-known pieces as The Washington Post March, Stars and Stripes Forever, and other Patriotic pieces.  He also invented an instrument called the Sousaphone, frequently mistaken as a tuba, an entirely different instrument.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6R7bCSUhjI

6.  Scott Joplin — (1867 – 1917)  Scott Joplin helped create a new genre of music called “Ragtime.”  The music is a takeoff of southern jazz.  Joplin’s music was hugely popular in the first 20 years of the 20th Century and was the choice of music for the movie “The Sting.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQNo1feJCNg

7.  Jon Lennon — (1940 – 1980) Jon Lennon probably did more for rock and roll than any other single artist of the 20th Century.  While other remarkable artists of the day, Elvis and his contemporaries, drew largely from other composers, Lennon almost exclusively wrote all the music he performed, both for himself and the Beatles.  Lennon created a style and form that musicians have followed ever since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLgYAHHkPFs

8.  Dave Brubeck (1920 – )  Brubeck is one of the 20th century’s best known jazz composers.  Brubeck’s compositions proved so popular the one piece in particular, Take Five, was a hit on the pop charts.  Brubeck himself was an accomplished pianist which set him apart from other jazz artists who were known from their abilities on the trumpet, drums, and trombone.  One of his best compositions, in my opinion, is Blue Rondo a la Turk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc34Uj8wlmE

9.  Hank Williams — (1923 – 1953) In his short life Hank Williams was known both for his composition and performance of country music.  The Williams’ style has been on of the most often copied over the decades by such greats at Waylon Jennings, Charlie Rich, Tammy Wynette and other country greats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtGM6WBcsX0&feature=related

10.  Robert Johnson — (1911 – 1938)  Robert Johnson could easily be my favorite of all these composers.  Johnson is one of blues music favorite composers, who, if you are not a fan of the blues, you probably never heard of.  Johnson compiled a total of 29 pieces in his short life, but his style is oft copied.  To get a good sampling of Johnson’s music I highly recommend Eric Clapton’s recording, “Me and Mr. Johnson.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82yNxiF-T4A&feature=related

11.  Bob Dylan — (1941 –  )  I know, I said a list of ten but a friend of mine has correctly pointed out that Dylan richly deserves to be in this list and I cannot disagree, so here he is.  Dylan was the iconoclasts of musicians starting in the early 1960s.  He wrote not only for himself but for other artists.  His songs were embraced by a generation of anti-war people which Dylan states were not written as such, at least at first.  His folk songs are ver different from any other written at the time. Songs such as Blowing in the Wind, Times They Are A-Changing, Positively 4th Street, Just Like a Woman, and many many other songs speak to his enormous talent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk3mAX5xdxo