For those that don’t know, Eddie Money is the guy who sang all the songs you hear and wonder,”Who sang this song?” But the man has hits: Shakin’, Two Tickets to Paradise, Baby Hold On, Think I’m in Love, and Take Me Home Tonight. If you wanted, you could call Eddie Money a five-hit wonder, and five hits in the late 70s and early 80s make you an immortal of Classic Rock.
The Eddie Money concert is like being lost in the desert, hoping to find a landmark or oasis, something familiar to set your barrings. He opens with Two Tickets to Paradise, arguably his biggest hit, and I nearly miss it filing into the infield of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That’s the beginning of the show; Independence, Missouri. And now we’re all pioneers lost in the Great Plains of Eddie Money’s B catalog.
Now having five major rock hits is an amazing achievement. The only problem is Eddie does an hour and a half set and I have no idea what he’s singing anymore. Luckily Eddie does shtick between songs.
“Hey ladies and gentlemen, we’re Eddie Money and the Betty Ford All-Stars!”
“I’ve been making rock and roll hits since the 1970s. You’d think I’d have saved my money better.”
All-in-all, decent show. The show couldn’t hold a candle to the previous year’s Poll Day concert, George Clinton. Even though George Clinton maybe performed half the show, he had gymnasts and dancers in purple furry outfits, and funky white girl in a large top hat singing and dancing; it was a circus! One of the best live shows I had ever seen. Rumor has it, Parliament’s mothership is located somewhere in downtown Indianapolis.
The best part of the Eddie Money concert was telling people about it afterward. I told a girl at a bar I had just seen Eddie Money at the track. She had no idea who Eddie Money is. I started singing Two Tickets to Paradise, and her eyes lit up making the connection. The concert was awesome just for that.
I’ve never been able to tell if George Thorogood’s songs were serious or not. I never know if I am supposed to think they are funny or if I am supposed to be intimidated. Looking at the man’s career, I think this confusion played to his advantage. There is always the fanbase that takes everything at face value who hear “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” and think, “Shit-yeah, I love this song cuz it reminds me of drinkin’ and gittin’ drunk!” Then the other interpretation hears the music as being so over the top it’s almost cutesy. Cutesy enough to even sell diapers.
Only in the magical world of classic rock can a man’s music bridge a chasm so wide you’d struggle to see the other side.
George Thorogood is from Delaware, arguably the nation’s most irrelevant state. Delaware’s claim to fame is being the first state admitted to the Union, and two Joes, Biden and Flacco. All that pretty much pales in comparison to Thorogood, of course. A placid, Chesapeake lifestyle was of no interest to Thorogood, who like those in small states and quiet towns before him, just wanted to ROCK!!!
And rock he did, all the way to the tops of the charts. Thorogood rocked it simple, bluesy. His music took roots in rock’s origins. Yet came out overdriven, blowing out your speakers. Thorogood himself had the perfect voice for the music: a phlegmy baritone that sounded like a hotrod off a drag strip. If Fonzie had the option, he would have Thorogood play his theme music.
Thorogood’s voice and sound brought the traditional bluesy rock to a point it began to sound like a caricature, and that’s where the questions begin. Is Thorogood’s music a parody? I don’t know. It’s difficult to take Bad to the Bone seriously. As shown earlier, it’s been used to sell diapers.
Ultimately, like all great art, the music of George Thorogood remains wide open to interpretation. Was the Mona Lisa a self portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci? What happened to Dave at the end of 2001: Space Odyssey? Are George Thorogood’s songs parodies of rock and roll? Some questons may never be answered.
Hundreds of dads will agree: Rush is their favorite band. I’ve met many different dads in my time, and a narrow majority of your dads choose Rush as their favorite band. My dad’s favorite band is Rush. So is my friend’s dad. And when I mention that Rush is my dad’s favorite band, many people mention a dad they know with that same musical preference.
Hundreds of dads will agree.
Sure, there are many of your dads who will say the Beatles are their favorite band, or Journey, or even Jimmy Buffet; and that’s to be expected. But for such a large number of your dads to choose a band like Rush, an Prog Rock band that experiments with different time signatures and synthesizer heavy instrumentals, is interesting. You don’t hear about many of your dads lauding bands like Yes or Jethro Tull, but Rush is different.
Some dads, like my dad, genuinely enjoy the musical complexity of Rush. This is understandable, but cannot explain the band having such a mass appeal amongst your dads. Your dads of my generation did their partying in the 70s and 80s, and party they did on a myriad of substance. Some of your dads from this time enjoyed Rush because of the appreciation of the band though these substances. The curiosity still grows because your dads that appreciated Rush on substance could have appreciated Jimmy Buffet on the same substance, yet still prefer Rush.
Dads who like Rush are a varied lot. Different regions of the country and different socio-economical upbringings do not change your dads’ affinity for Rush. From the backwoods to the boardroom, dads love Rush.
If your dad is from Canada, forget it: Rush will be his favorite band by default. Canada has the highest concentration of dads whose favorite band is Rush, more than any other country. As was observed during the Olympics Canadian cultural pride is strong and unwavering. Canada would be the only country proudly exhibiting the fact that Nickelback are native sons. But when a country lauds a talented and adventurous band like Rush the Maple Leaf glows a little brighter.
I am left to conclude that Rush is a prefect accident in the world of classic rock, a combination of extremes combined to conjure a formula for classic rock success that creates some unexplainable force that can only be understood if you happened to be alive during this unique time period. The way music is presented today, only getting new music from popular incumbents and game show winners, we will never see another Rush, and future dads will suffer.
I don’t know where the first one begins and the last one ends. I made mention in a previous blog about a Two for Tuesday trouble a few months ago where they played songs by Journey and Foreigner in succession. Four songs in a row and I had no idea what band started and finished. The fact that I cannot tell Journey or Foreigner apart says much about me not being an expert on Classic Rock. The only way to tell the two bands apart is through rigorous study and repeat listenings. You have to know which song is by which band.
Though Journey assembled and released an album first, Foreigner had the biggest influence after releasing their eponymous album in 1977 featuring the classic rock staples Feels Like the First Time and Cold as Ice. The album was mammoth, and with bands like Boston ushered in a new classic rock flavor of passionate tenors and slow chugging rock rhythms. After a decade of rock and roll recklessness America was ready for…a nap.
But Journey was not to be denied entry into this new rock Xanadu, and quickly utilized the talents of Steve Perry to take the band onto a path of fearless artistic uniformity. And the hits came at America like they were from a Filipino welterweight: Lights, Wheel in the Sky, Any Way You Want It, Lovin’…Touchin’…Squee-e-eee-e-zin’. America was so overwhelmed with mediocrity they couldn’t buy records fast enough.
In the 80s these two bands soared to the tops. Jukebox Hero comes at you from one side, Don’t Stop Believing from another. Most Classic Rock stations preserve similar playlists, making it feel like you never left 1982. Areans across the country crammed tens of thousands to watch these bands get paid. Journey and Foreigner were blazing the trail into the new frontier for Classic Rock in the 1980s inspiring other similar sounding bands along the way.
But the ride came to a halt in the last 80s, as all performing Classic Rock musicians began singing their death ballads. Foreigner released songs like “I Don’t Want to Live without You” and “I Want to Know What Love Is” which are pretty much the same song. Steve Perry became bigger than Journey and broke away from the band like an electron possessed, and like that same electron, fizzled out in a little spark.
Some 20 years later it would appear that Journey has retained the most relevance in popular culture. Though for people like me and a silent majority of people my age, without proper education, Journey and Foreigner became Journeyforeigner because never growing up with the music, we cannot tell the two bands apart. They sound exactly the same! Give me the Pepsi challenge all day, you’ll get results. But if you challenge me to identify which B-side song belongs to which band, I’ll be lucky to go .500.
The legacy these two Classic Rock bands left behind is undeniable. At least 20% of Classic Rock station playlists is Journeyforeigner. You play these songs on Guitar Hero, you sing them in karaoke, and your mom probably lost her virginity to either of these bands. But beyond all else these two bands taught a very valuable lesson to all aspiring musicians: If you want make it big, sound like everyone else.
If you go an entire hour listening to a classic rock station and you don’t hear Bob Seger check your pulse and ask someone what country you are in. In the United States there was an FCC regulation passed in 1983 that mandated Bob Seger music be played at least once an hour if a radio station plays music produced during or before 1980. This may answer many of your questions why you seem to hear Bob Seger all the time, because you do.
Bob Seger stumbled upon a golden formula for songwriting, especially for success if you are from the Midwest. Make songs about how great things were in the past.
Old Time Rock and Roll is a prime example. Seger doesn’t want to listen to your modern music. Take those old records off the self cuz he’ll sit and listen to them by himself. FUCK-YOU sez him. Seger never even gives examples of what he means be old time rock and roll. Beatles? Chuck Berry? Led Zeppelin? who knows? Just as long as it’s not the shit they’re playing right now.
Night Moves is another one. Sex was so much better when we were 14 years old. All the awkward fumbling, jizzing in your jeans once her thigh graces your crotch, not having sex for ten years after she tells everyone in school about your amateur love-making talents; good times. That would be the first thought I’d remember being covered in nubile San Diego groupies after the sell-out show, is how much better sex was when I was 14.
That makes the transition into Turn the Page, a song about how much is sucks being a rockstar. This was an incredibly bold move by Seger, and he achieved a rare feat that has backfired on many other artists who’ve tried before. Seger successfully convinced his audience that being a rockstar sucks. The Grunge movement never fully achieved this; the same people who were swayed by Turn the Page were not the same people who were swayed by Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Other rockstars who have complained have been thrown under their proverbial tour buses where Seger evoked the rare sympathy for his millionaire plight.
Seger hates the way things are in the present so much he even wrote a song about moving to Nepal. Does this man find no contentment? I don’t know if he was still living in Ann Arbor at the time of this song’s writing, but come on, Kathmandu? The only reason I can figure from the song why he wants to go to Kathmandu is for the mountains. We have mountains in this country, and stable, functioning governments. But I wanna go to Kathmandu, hang out with Sherpas and catch a Maoist rebel uprising. That’s what I’m gonna do.
But these are only four out of the 4,000 Bob Seger songs they play on the radio. Perhaps only AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, or Lynard Skynard have a comparable range of their catalouges played on the radio, but I think Seger beats them all. Though today’s artists still employ the tactic of songwriting about how much better things were in the past, I believe no modern artist or even an artist in the future will ever be able to achieve the audience Seger did complaining about how hard it was being a rockstar. For that, Seger remains a legand.
Donovan’s “Hail Atlantis” is a strange song in its own right. The first part of the song is a spoken poem about the fall of the mythical city of Atlantis. Then the song becomes a catchy ballad pining for an antediluvian love submerged way down below the ocean. When I hear this song all I can think of is Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro beating the life out of Billy Bats with a .38 on the floor of The Suite.
Goodfellas was the Scorsese movie that should have won the Oscar. The frantic, disjointed, yet engaging epic is the peak of Scorsese’s cinematic vision. Many have tried to replicate it; even borrowing small partitions of its dense scope and having it unfurl into entire movies.
Every time I stumble upon Goodfellas on TV I have to watch the entire thing. Even TV censored Goodfellas is compelling. I have probably seen the whole movie, front to back, ten times, but I have seen the movie from Henry’s wedding 15 times, seen it from the whacking of Billy Bats 30 times, seen it from the Lufthansa heist 40 times, and so on. Seeing segments of this movie so many times has corrupted my recollections, and the artists intended meanings of the soundtrack’s canon of classic rock songs.
Eric Clapton features two of his classics in the movie; two staples of the 60s that will forever remind me of mob violence. The lumbering guitar intro to Sunshine for Your Love accompanies Robert DeNiro smoking a cigarette while murdering his associates in the Lufthansa heist with his eyes. But Sunshine for Your Love isn’t as altered as the piano coda of Layla, a montage of smooth camera movements perfectly complimented by the rolling, seamless piano showing the bodies of all everyone involved in the Lufthansa heist from a couple’s lifeless faces frozen in freight in their new pink Cadillac to Frankie Carbone hanging in a meat truck frozen stiff. Everytime I hear the end of Layla this is what I think about, not Pattie Boyd like I’m supposed to. Dead mobsters.
There are even situations in my daily life that conjure Goodfellas music. Driving to work, if I see a helicopter in the sky I start thinking about Henry Hill watching the helicopter watching him, then what pops into my head? Magic Bus by the Who, and it’s only a portion of it; the “Iwaaaant-itIwaaaant-itIwaaaant-it” right before he nearly gets into the accident. This goes the same if I ever hear Magic Bus on the radio, I start thinking about Henry Hill’s coked-out helicopter panic. Magic Bus is the only song that gets a roundabout association where a helicopter goes to the movie clip as does the song. The Rolling Stone’s Monkey Man one refers me back to the movie clip when I hear it on the radio.
Though the process has been copied throughout movies since, Goodfellas is the most prominent example of taking well-known classic music, throwing it around in situations where the songs’ lyrics and theme don’t apply with what happening on screen, and somehow everything making sense in the end. Somehow Hail Atlantis is the perfect song for beating the life out of Billy Bats, I can’t imagine another in its place.
Yeah, you heard it here first: The music of Queen will bring democracy to Iran. After years of being one of the country’s most popular underground bootlegs, the government of Iran, which strictly censors western music, has allowed for the sales of Queen albums in the country. Much of the reason for Queen’s popularity in Iran and the eventual relaxing of their forbidden status has much to do with Freddie Mercury’s Zoroastrian upbringing and Iranian ancestry.
The young Farrokh Bulsara was born in Zanzibar to Parsi parents. The Parsis are a group of Zoroastrians from Iran that predominately migrated to India once religious persecution from Muslims began. Freddie attended school near Bombay in India, and eventually lived his life in England after his family fled from Zanzibar in the 60s.
Expect this statue erected in Tehran upon the success of the revolution.
Of course the ironic fact of Iran allowing the sales of Queen albums is that a government trying to stifle the decadence of western civilization by preventing their countrymen from its exposure allow the sales of albums from one of history’s most decadent bands. This brings to realization a not so well known fact: Iranians love to party.
Away from the prying eyes in the streets a thriving counterculture exists behind closed doors. Burkas fall to the floor and gorgeous, olive-skinned women emerge while drugs and liquor are plentiful. Iranians party as hard as any American, maybe even a little harder since they party in protest.
And it’s not about the partying, it’s about having the right to party or make your life how you see fit. Evident in the Green Revolution where thousands of protesters emerged from closed doors and took to the streets to tell the government the time had come for their voices to be heard. Unfortunately a fearful and paranoid Iranian government retaliated in truly godless, deplorable ways (These accounts are extremely graphic: Iranian Imam – Islam allows torture, raping prisoners, another account of Iranian prison tactics, a CNN video about Neda Agha Soltan).
A government can only stifle its people for so long. Someday the Green Revolution will overtake the Ayatollah and I have a feeling Queen may be the soundtrack to the revolution. Don’t think it such a ridiculous theory. 20 years ago the Berlin Wall fell, and David Hasselhoff, of all people, provided the soundtrack. Whoever provides the soundtrack I wish the most success for the people of Iran to have the opportunities and freedom to live their lives without oppression.
I’ve lived to see yet another Two for Tuesday, happy-happy. They threw a curveball at me today with a double shot of Uriah Heep while cruising to work. Uriah Heep is very DeepPurplesque and therefore amazing. Q95 is smart enough to ease into this exhibition by playing Stealin’ first. I mean, lets be reasonable. Can you imagine the car wrecks caused if Q95 just jumped right into this madness with Easy Livin’ (all Uriah Heep songs must end with an apostrophe).
Ultimately I think the order of how they played the songs was irrelevant. I blew through a school zone doing a cool 85 during Easy Livin’ and some punkass cop caught me. I pulled over. When I saw the cop come out of his car, I’ve never seen a man angrier, like I’d ran over his dog or something. He pounded on my window demanding I roll it down with emphatic gesticulations. As you wish, officer. Once I rolled those windows down that cop got knocked backwards with some Easy Livin’ blasting out of my car like a neutron bomb – put his lights out.
I don’t know what the laws are on assaulting an officer with Uriah Heep, but I didn’t stick around to find out.
T’is the season for horror stories, and nothing sends me into a panic like a creeping Freebird. Classic rock is great, but there are a few songs so ubiquitous and overplayed that even though they are universally celebrated I must switch the station when they come on.
Freebird attacks you in a very unassuming way like the little compsognathus dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that bite with a numbing venom and devour their pray without the pray noticing. The euphoric introduction to the song lulls you into a sense of comfort, and if you are not immediately paying attention, you will not notice you are entering the Freebird trap for the next ten minutes.
Since Freebird is so ubiquitous, everyone knows the song – all the words and everything. Its almost instinctual to know Freebird at this point in human history. After listening to the beginning of the song you’re already in the Freebird stupor, and don’t even realize you’re singing the first lines.
“Eh-if I-hiiiiiiiiii leeeeeeeeave here to-mooooooooooooorooooooooooooooooow.”
It is not uncommon in most Freebird Creeps to sing the entire lyrical portion of the song. You don’t realize you’re singing Freebird until you actually sing:
“Won’t you flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh, freeeeeeeeeeeeeeebiiiiiiiird. Holy shit! It’s Freebird!”
Then you begin to hastily scurry through the cars radio stations because you’re embarassed you’ve been Freebird Creeped once again. The problem is, once again, the ubiquity of the song and the fact that every other radio station is playing Freebird at a different part of the epic ten minutes, even the rap stations. The only way out is tuning to NPR, where they are probably having an in depth intellectual discussion about Freebird.
First off, happy Two for Tuesday. I am always greatful that Q95 provides this wonderful service for one of the more meaningless days of the week. Whether it was inspiration or alliteration, maybe even both, Tuesdays have special meaning because of Two for Tuesday.
I’m driving into work this morning when the radio starts playing a Lynard Skynard song. Skynard songs are so ubiquitous and entrenched into commercial soundtracks that when you hear their songs on the radio you barely notice. Knowing it was Two for Tuesday I was anticipating what they would play next. The two Skynard songs I like are “Three Steps” and “Mr. Saturday Night Special”, which is rarely played. When the song ended, Q95 went right into a new Skynard song, which of course was awful.
Luckily it wasn’t the song about how terrible people were who didn’t agree with George W. Bush. The new song was about how much they used to rock and all they stuff they used to sing songs about. What’s the point? You already sang songs about the Southland. You don’t need to write a song about how you used to write songs about the Southland.
Of course they don’t, and of course it’s old band paycheck rock. You could tell by their new sound, which is Nickelback-esque, that incredibly generic sound all the most popular modern rock bands use. The sound of paycheck rock.
And since the music in the new song sounds like Nickelback, and it’s new, it’s not classic rock! It’s a new song performed by an old band, and should not be on the classic rock station. A rock song has to age around 15 years before it is classic rock. An old band shouldn’t get grandfathered into a rotation because they had some good tunes back in the day, especially if they have nothing better to sing songs about than the songs they used to sing. Come on!
Another Two for Tuesday incident happened last night when I was driving home. As I’ve mentioned before and will continue to mention, I am no expert on classic rock and will never pretend to know everything about it. I’m just an enthusiastic fan. With that said, I have never been able to tell the difference between Journey and Foreigner. Last night they had a Two for Tuesday with Journey and Foreigner together, four songs without interruption, and I have no idea who started or ended it. There will be future blogs about both Synard and JourneyForeigner to come.
