Today in 1967 was the Monterey International Pop Festival:
Happy birthday first to Paul McCartney:
Jerome Smith played guitar for KC and the Sunshine Band:
Tom Bailey was one of the Thompson Twins (which were, of course, an unrelated trio):
Darren “Dizzy” Reid of Guns N Roses:
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The number five song today in 1967 …
… was 27 spots higher than this song reached in 1978:
Birthdays start with Jerry Fielding, who composed the theme music to …
Barry Manilow, who writes the songs that make the whole world, uh …
Kevin Thornton sang for Color Me Badd:
Dueling ex-Beatles today: In 1978, one year after the play “Beatlemania” opened on Broadway, Ringo Starr released his “Bad Boy” album, while Paul McCartney and Wings released “I’ve Had Enough”:
The number six song one year later (with no known connection to Mr. Spock):
The number eight single today in 1990 …
… bears an interesting resemblance to an earlier song:
Put the two together, and you get …
Birthdays today start with Billy “Crash” Craddock, who asks you to …
Eddie Levert of the O’Jays:
James Smith of the Stylistics:
Gino Vannelli:
Today is also the anniversary of the death of guitarist John Honeyman-Scott of the Pretenders:
One of the good things about being in southwest Wisconsin is getting to listen to maybe the finest morning radio show for a market of this size.
WGLR-FM in Lancaster (for which I have done games and endured jokes about the disaster area that is my golf game) does an excellent job of informing listeners of what is going on in Wisconsin and the Tri-States every morning. (I saw WGLR’s morning host earlier this week, and I told him I wake up with him every morning, and to stop snoring and hogging the covers.) Between 6:30 and 6:45 I hear the important local news, the weather, local sports and even the farm markets. From the farmer’s perspective, of course, higher prices are good, lower prices are not.
WGLR calls itself “97-7 Country.” Back when I was doing games for WGLR, their slogan was “We Cover the Country,” which was preceded by “Music Country.” (In doing a résumé CD for a job I didn’t get — hint: they’re in Minnesota this weekend — I found a copy of WGLR’s old weather sounder that sounds like, and may have been called, fairy dust. It’s one of my ringtones.)
(Sad side note: One of WGLR’s account representatives, Tom Greenwood, died early this week. His funeral is this morning. Tom was known locally for his coverage of car racing. I worked with him on a football playoff game in 1999. The death of someone as close to my age as Tom was and the fact that Tom is, I think, the first person I’ve done games with to pass on is not pleasant to contemplate.)
WGLR does what every radio station really needs to do — be live and local. Those stations that are voice-tracked for hours and hours, and the stations that carry whatever programming the satellite provides (although I do like Tom Kent and Nights with Alice Cooper) are not really serving their listeners.
Regular readers over the past four years know I am a fan of rock music and not country music, although you know I have a favorite country song:
I first moved to southwest Wisconsin in 1988, and appalled my mother by being able to recite most of the words to this:
It blew my mind when a 1990s high school reunion of mine featured line dancing. Independent of the fact that line dancing didn’t exist when we graduated, I doubt you could have found one member of the Madison La Follette Class of 1983 to have admitted listening to country music in the early 1980s.
Of course, rock music owes a lot to country given that rock is an amalgam of country, blues and jazz. Many of the biggest country acts of the ’50s and ’60s spent a lot of time on the pop music charts too:
I got the idea many years ago to take one of the stations that WGLR’s owner now owns and make it a country/rock station. That wouldn’t be that hard, particularly if you pick from ’70s Southern rock:
Readers know that my first criterion for music is how the music sounds. (Which is one reason why I’m not a fan of The Eagles, much of whose ’70s music belongs on country stations, not rock stations.) Five musical ingredients of country that turn me off are twangy guitars, pedal steel guitar, banjos, violins and harmonicas, all of which I prefer in limited quantities. (I’m not a fan of bluegrass.)
The other thing that turns me off is those songs that adhere to the country stereotype of my-girl-left-me my-dog-died my-truck-blew-up let’s-go-get-drunk. (Isn’t there a Cousins Subs commercial with that theme?) There is a country-ish — more appropriately termed rural — dialect in Wisconsin that sounds sort of like a drawl than the speech of, say, someone from Madison. It sounds as if you have to sound like that to be a country act, and I don’t prefer that.
On the other hand, country love songs seem more respectful than, say, your typical Nickelback song. I have never heard a patriotic rock song; I assume it’s more cool for rock singers to rip on their country (for instance, “Born in the USA”) than praise it. There have been country acts that beat on the country that gives them the freedom to beat on their country, but Steve Earle isn’t considered a country act anymore, and Natalie Maines’ mouth torched the Dixie Chicks as a country act forever. (The First Amendment does not include immunity from the consequences of your free expression.)
Having listened to more country music as part of the aforementioned morning show in the past month than in the past few years, the first thing that comes to mind is that country of the last 35 or so years — essentially country from around the time the movie “Urban Cowboy” came out — meets the old standards of pop music: three or so minutes of actual melody. (The more I listen to contemporary hits radio, the more it strikes me as unlistenable, with limited exceptions, given pop’s current veering between pseudorap and songs that sound as if they’re sung by 15-year-old girls or for 15-year-old girls.)
I guess my challenge is to introduce a new genre to country music similar to brass rock: Brass country, something like …
Today in 1956, 15-year-old John Lennon met 13-year-old Paul McCartney when Lennon’s band, the Quarrymen, played at a church dinner.
Birthdays today start with David Rose, the composer of a song many high school bands have played (really):
Nigel Pickering, guitarist of Spanky and Our Gang:
Ruby Nash, the lead of Ruby and the Romantics:
Harry Nilsson:
Michael Lutz, bass player for one-hit-wonder Brownsville Station:
Noddy Holder of Slade:
One-hit (but on country and pop charts) wonder Terri Gibbs:
Singer and guitarist Brad Gillis of Night Ranger:
Drummer Scott Rockenfield of Queensryche:
Today in 1965, the Beatles released “Beatles VI,” their seventh U.S. album:
Twenty-five years later, Frank Sinatra reached number 32, but probably number one in New York:
Nine years and a different coast later, Carole King got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame:
Birthdays today include Muff Winwood, older brother of Steve, both of whom were part of the Spencer Davis Group:
Rod Argent sang for the Zombies before starting his own eponymous group:
Alan White played drums for Yes:
Jimmy Lea played bass for Slade:
Brian David Willis played drums for Quarterflash, a group that appears to have really enjoyed the key of B minor:
Only because I’m from the ’80s, I will add that today is Boy George’s birthday:
Chris DeGarmo played guitar for Queensryche:
Today is also the anniversary of the death of Henry Mancini:
This was a good day for the Beatles in 1970 … even though they were breaking up.
Their “Let It Be” album was at number one, as was this single off the album:
Don’t criticize the number one album today in 1980, lest you be criticized for living in “Glass Houses”:
An interesting juxtaposition of 45 years for these two songs:
The number six single today in 1948:
Then, the number 17 song today in 1993 by Green Jellÿ (which began life as Green Jellö — and we have the CD to prove it — until the makers of Jell-O objected):
Birthdays begin with jazz pianist Chick Corea, with whom we sang at a concert at Lawrence University (really) several years ago:
Reg Presley sang for the Troggs:
Barry Bailey of the Atlanta Rhythm Section:
Who is Brad Carlson? You may know him as Bun E. Carlos, drummer of Cheap Trick …
… born the same day as Brad Delp of Boston:
Drummer Michael Hausman of ‘Til Tuesday (which happens to be today):
Today in 1964, one day after the Rolling Stones recorded their “12×5” album in Chicago, Chicago police broke up their news conference. (Perhaps foreshadowing four years later when the Democratic Party came to town?)
The Stones could look back at that and laugh two years later when “Paint It Black” hit number one:
One year later, David Bowie released “Space Oddity” …
… on the same day that this reached number one in Great Britain:
Today in 1964, the Rolling Stones recorded their “12×5” album at Chess Studios in Chicago:
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Today in 1972, Elvis Presley recorded a live album at Madison Square Garden in New York:
Birthdays today start with Shirley Owens Alston of the Shirelles …
… born the same day as Mickey Jones, drummer for the First Edition:
Matthew Fisher, keyboardist for Procol Harum:
Max Elliott, better known in the ’80s and ’90s as Maxi Priest:
Bass player Dan Lavery of Tonic:
Two deaths of note: Fellow Shirelle Addie “Micki” Harris, who died at 42 …
… and the great Ray Charles:
Charles is my father’s brush with greatness story, by the way: After playing in southern Wisconsin’s first rock and roll band (which once got to play backup for Bobby Darin at a concert in Madison) as its first piano player, he worked for a music store in Madison and was asked to deliver and set up a Hammond organ for Charles and his band, who were playing the first concert at the new Dane County Coliseum in Madison. After he finished, the organist invited him to watch the concert backstage. While enjoying the concert, suddenly between songs he heard Charles thanking him for his work and asking him to come onstage and play a song with them. He thinks he did, but cannot be sure because he remembers nothing of the experience. In comparison, I have seen my favorite band, Chicago, three times, and in none of the three have they asked me to come onstage and play.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 