Today was a really productive day It was very very cold, but I got out and did several errands.
Completed one project and made headway on others.
Got my new little vacuum cleaner to work, despite the lack of an instruction booklet.
Then I read online about a blasphemous display of “art” in a museum in Vienna. At this holy time of year, of course. I will not describe any of the so-called “art”. Suffice it to say it was atrocious. A group of Christian protesters were outside of the museum–praying, saying the rosary, singing hymns to protest and make reparation. I will not describe any of the “art”. And this at the holiest season of the year, no less. That left a really bad taste in my mouth, but I have to keep reminding myself -we win in the end.
God bless everybody
Patty
I just looked up that art display. Things sure have changed. Insult God and the Christ at your own peril.
It is truly disgusting.
I suspect that it’s intended to offend.
Of course. Hence the timing.
The intolerance of the “tolerant” Left.
You’ve got that right. By the way, my brain must have gone on vacation when we were talking about Johnny Rivers–Secret Agent, Walk Don’t Run and a host of others. I knew those songs well and really liked them. I think it is called “grief brain” and thank the good Lord, it is temporary.
Johnny Rivers is an artist who never went for the flamboyant. He was a great songwriter and performer, but he sort of just there, and didn’t have a huge public image. But he sure had some great songs. Slow Dancing wasn’t actually written by him, but it turned into a great hit, renamed as Swayin’ to the Music, to avoid confusion with another song.
I’ve never performed that song, but if I find myself in another band situation, I’ll remedy that. It’s a great tune, and Rivers really brought it to life.
I will check that one out too.
It’s one of his best.
Your interest in Bobby Caldwell’s What We Won’t Do For Love inspired one of Lee’s columns and served to remind me of a truly great song I had all but forgotten. There’s a lot of late ‘70s music I truly love.
Maybe my all time favorite popular song.
It’s a good choice. In the seventies, there was a lot of Soul music that crossed over into the Hot 100 charts. I remember listening to the youth-market stations in Denver, circa the early ‘70s, and there was a lot of Soul: excellent Soul, enjoyed by people of all ethnicities, and performed by all ethnicities.
As the decade progressed, it grew. I usually didn’t know the ethnic origin of the artists involved, and I didn’t care. Melvin and Blue Notes (If You Don’t Know Me By Now), The Stylistics (“You Are Everything”, “Betcha by Golly, Wow”, “I’m Stone in Love with You”, “Break Up to Make Up”, and “You Make Me Feel Brand New”), The Temptations (Just My Imagination), Daryl Hall and John Oates (She’s Gone, Sara Smile), Tavares (It Only Takes A Minute), Boz Skaggs (Lowdown, We’re All Alone), a band of Native Americans called Redbone (Come and Get Your Love), Robert Palmer (Every Kind Of People); to be honest I didn’t know much of anything about the artists. I’ve only learned the ethnicity of most of these artists in decades since. Bobby Caldwell absolutely nailed it. IMHO, he wasn’t imitating anyone, he simply nailed the style, of his own. It was a great song, and it demonstrated that music is universal. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Bobby Caldwell was the best Soul song, but it was definitely a high point.
About the time that What You Won’t Do For Love came along, Disco was at its peak, and this replaced much of what came before. Disco was also a melding, a melding of Pop, Soul, R&B and even Funk, and it was a massive musical force in the late seventies. While Disco catches a lot of shade, some of it was excellent, music. (True, much of it was garbage, but the same can be said of any genre, including even Classical music.)
One thing I love about playing music, is that when the dialogue ends and the instruments are taken up, the only thing that matters is your ability to play musically, and play well. When the instruments are out of their cases, no one cares about the ethnicity of the players. No demographic, no ethnic group, has a monopoly on any type of music. It chagrins me when I hear people say that only certain ethnicities can play certain musical genres. In the times of shameful segregation, the music world was one of the first places where these boundaries were challenged.
I have personally observed Native American bands playing Polkas, and playing them well. It’s called Waila (why-luh) music, but it wouldn’t sound out of place at a dance in Minot North Dakota, even though it was being performed by Native Americans from the desert southwest. Blues came from the Black community, based upon the chants of slaves, and certainly that ethnic group has every right to claim Blues as their own. But suffering and injustice has happened to a lot of people and every one of us can appreciate the Blues, even if our own ancestors didn’t suffer the indignities of a shameful practice that has long since been outlawed.
We don’t all share ancestry from Appalachia, but the music of Appalachian people morphed into what we now know as Country, and the last time I watched a Grand Ole Opry podcast, I saw a healthy mix of artists, proving that Country music is something we can all share.
So Bobby Caldwell stands out; an artist with blue eyes, who had a massive Soul hit. Music should bring us together, not separate us.
You absolutely said it all. I loved disco (some of it) because it did introduce the full orchestra to a lot of young people who only knew electric guitars, drums and keyboards. Sometime if you can catch a tune called “Salsoul Hustle” a full orchestra at its finest.
That’s interesting, because I noticed something similar. The ‘70s was an era of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. A lot of that music was pretty basic, three or four “power chords”, a screeching, highly distorted guitar solo and vocals which deliberately sounded rough. While there were some gems among these productions, they were fairly rare.
There is a mythology in Pop and Rock music, that these songs were all the product of small ensembles, of untrained young musicians. While that was true in some cases, a great deal of what we heard in the ‘60s and ‘70s came from the Hollywood recording studios, and in many cases, the musicians were members of “The Wrecking Crew”; in informal name for the cream of the crop session musicians in LA.
These were not youths, for the most part, but were adults, many of whom had at least a degree of Jazz experience and could improvise great music off the top of their heads. A young artist, or artists might have a promising song to record, and if a record company was willing to invest in that artist and/or song, a studio date would be chosen and the artist would come in with what they had, a “lead sheet”, chord chart, a hastily recorded rough “demo”, or maybe they would just play their song for the assembled session players, but in any event, the Wrecking Crew would forge it into a finished product; a GOOD finished product, and the artist would add the vocals. We’d hear the finished product on the radio and if it became a hit, a touring band would be assembled and the artist would tour with “their band”, actually an assembly of hired guns, and the audience would get to see their favorite song performed live, albeit by different musicians than had performed on the original recordings.
Any skilled, experienced musician could probably function in one of these touring bands, because they had the luxury of time on their side to learn their part, as opposed to The Wrecking Crew, who would deliver a suitable backing track in three hours or less; usually much less.
There was no membership role for The Wrecking Crew, but everyone knew who was reliable and who would be the best choice for a certain type of song. Glen Campbell, for instance, was a Wrecking Crew musician, when he wasn’t touring with the Beach Boys, up until he became a star in his own right. Hal Blaine (Drums), Carol Kaye (Bass), Tommy Tedesco (Guitar), Larry Knechtel (Keyboards), are some of the better known members, but there were dozens, and a full orchestra could be had, provided that the money was there. These people earned union scale, or perhaps 2-3 times scale. A well reputed session player could have earned a six-figure, back in the ‘60s.
The Salsoul Orchestra was an east coast assemblage, which recorded under its own name, but was comprised of New York session players. In that era, LA, New York and Nashville (with its “A Team”) were where many recordings happened. But composing such a song, then making it into an orchestral arrangement was no minor feat. Once you get to the level of orchestras, you can’t just wing it, the way a small ensemble can, but the parts pretty much have to be notated, and played precisely, as they are scored. As you can hear from this song, the results are worth the effort.
While it’s fashionable among musicians to disparage Disco, some of it was pretty good music. It brought complex harmonies back to the charts and is wasn’t a slam-dunk to play, especially for musicians whose experience was limited to the earlier mentioned 3 and 4 chord songs. So, while I didn’t appreciate the fact that Disco was supplanting live music, I admired that is tended to be well composed music, and required skill to play.
I also think that some of the audience got to hear violins for the first time in their lives.
Probably true.