Bruce Rutherford, an Alabama lover who lives in Texas, last week or so, sent me a YouTube video of himself performing a song he wrote about Alabama. I dismissed the song called The Bigger Moon of Alabama, at first, but then the little tune kind of stuck in my head. My motto is you have to pay attention to ear worms.
What if a great singer and full band did this song. Well, haven’t heard from Jason Isbell or Wet Willie.
But Rutherford tipped me off that his Birmingham friend and colleague in the singer-songwriter world on YouTube, has already done a cover like in the last 48 hours (video below).
The singer’s name is Janet Chitty and I think her version demonstrates what I’m talking about. And that is, this can be sung many ways. Her version is slowed down. Rutherford’s is faster. But at least one commenter said it should be faster than Rutherford’s version (a speed metal version?) Nevertheless, the song is versatile, catchy and as I said yesterday rhymes Montgomery with succumbing — how can you not appreciate that?
So now we know at least two versions exist. Listen to them and see what you think. Newer version first of The Bigger Moon in Alabama.
OK, those who were teens in the 1970s, get out of your La-Z-Boys and find the vinyl collection (warped and mildewed) you have stashed in the garage or basement closet.
Pull out your ‘Frampton Comes Alive.’ I’m talking mostly to white boys here because High School musical tastes were as segregated as church. Except for the back parking lot crowd, where integrated groups would be listening to Rick James AND Led Zeppelin. Or Emerson Lake and Palmer AND George Clinton. But it seemed every white kid 15 to 18 years-old had Frampton Comes Alive in 1976. I’m basing my anecdotal recollections on my own high school in Athens, Ga. And there is obvious hyperbole here, but do you know how many records he sold?
Frampton Comes Alive! sold 11 million worldwide and was the best-selling album of 1976 in the US, with 8 million copies sold. It’s been called the biggest selling live album of all time.
Frampton wasn’t particularly innovative, But he was good at what he he was doing — playing rocking guitar and looking good in an unbuttoned shirt.
The former Humble Pie guitar player on this album shared to the wider world a vocorder which allows you to sing with the guitar. It sounded a little like a robot as Peter would sing: Do you feel like we do?
My theory on how Frampton Comes Alive became one of the best selling albums of all time is the tremendous crossover with females and males. Not sure how to explain that.
This was an album I purchased on the virtue of one song: Hocus Pocus, a much peculiar song that actually charted high in the early 1970s.
The six-minute ‘album’ version will be sure to get you a speeding ticket if driving, as the crunchy riffs bang out a head bobbing heavy metal hook. Kind of like ‘Radar Love’ only harder.
And weirder. Almost weird enough to call it a novelty song.
Why? Because sprinkled in between the wall of metal come pit stops in which the instruments quiet down (except drums) and somebody yodels, I mean full out yodeling like Dutch mountain music, if there was such a thing. That yodeling rondo-ing back and forth with the guitar riff happens a couple of pit stops. Then at the next (third?) pit stop there’s a Jethro Tull-like flute solo followed by scat singing, and finally what I can only describe as helium-laced nonsense vocals and blazing guitars. There you go.
If you don’t think you know this song, give it a listen, you might have heard it. Since buying it in a bargain bin for the song, I almost never much listened to the entire album.
There is a shorter version radio single of Hocus Pocus, which besides being shorter, opens with a funky riff, turns into the guitar solo and then it’s yodel time again.)(
The rest of the album is sometimes good in a progressive rock sort of way (such as the obligatory 20-minute album side length song.) Kind of like ELP or Genesis. Not my particular cup of tea. But Hocus Pocus is pretty cool on a listen many years later. That songs takes the ELP and puts a little Grand Funk Railroad and Beat Farmers silliness into it. (The Farmers’ semi-famously had a song, ‘Happy Boy,’ featuring gargling, kazoos and ‘hubba hubba hubba’ in it.
Some critics liked it, others didn’t.
Benjamin Ray at Daily Vault Reviews gave it a C- and said: You know how sometimes you hear a hit song and then pick up the album, hoping the rest of it is just as good? This is not one of the times where that happened.
Meanwhile, AllMusic gave ‘The Best of Focus’ four-and-a-half stars and said it could have used a little more “Moving Ways.”
Go figure, one person’s ‘more cowbell’ is another’s ‘less cowbell.’
Great harmonies good, tasteful but forceful guitar and just a pinch of psychedelia circa 1960s music. Throw that in the mix with a healthy slice of power pop and BAM Birmingham.
Brummies is slang for a Birmingham resident, that’s Birmingham, England. It’s a name that reflects the bands British influence, especially the flood of music during Beatlemania and the British Invasion.
Eternal Reach is a great mix of genres creating a sweet sound full of harmonies and chorus. They cite the Beatles, Elton John, ELO, Blitzen Trapper and My Morning Jacket as being among among their influences.
On the album there are a number of standouts. I like ‘Norway’ which starts with ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come home for your birthday.’ In a few words it sets the tone magnificently.
‘Set You Free’ opens with crunching guitar and is like much of the album, multi-layered . ”Haunted” is possibly my favorite piece on the album, with wide dynamic range, shown off on the opening three or so lines. The radio-friendly, ‘Drive , Away’ includes titillating vocal help from recent Grammy winner, Kasey Musgrave, and is probably most likely a hit.
The whole album is seductive, atmospheric, with just enough lyrical intrigue and musical crunch to sweep you in. It sounds like a long-lost classic, with modern accents.
There seems to be a lot of songs on the album — almost like they had a ‘hidden’ song or something.
A poignant line in his 1988 album ‘Streets of this Town’ digs at the heart of Forbert’s pathos.
I used to to think this was guilty pleasure music. But after re-listening to Forbert I can throw the guilty out. This is just a pleasure — and part of that is because of his pain. Forbert suffered early from Dylan comparisons like all those at that time with a guitar and a catchy songs that paint a picture. He suffered because of the high expecations, early success and youth. Look at the cover of ‘Alive on Arrival.’ He’s a baby-faced kid, albeit with a 50-year-old Rod Stewart/ Dylan-esque voice.
Forbert isn’t Dylan. He’s a pop-folk singer who slung his guitar over his back and left his crappy-but-it’s-mine Mississippi town for NewYork city. His first album ‘Alive on Arrival’ was, at least side one, a slam dunk. He opened the album shutting a door on his past by calling Laurel, Miss., a ‘dirty stinking town.’
Forbert was from Meridian, which was near Laurel (can you smell it from there?)
Steve Forbert
For an in-depth Rolling Stone piece at the height of his initial success, go here.
That debut set up the expectations. He came out next with an album that had a blockbuster single ‘Romeo’s Tune,’ a momentary brush in 1979 with the stratosphere. I saw him on the heels of that second album and remember a great show in Atlanta at a small venue.
But alas, like many, the follow-up pressure seemed to have gotten the better of him for a while and he made the scene in New York but watched his creative space get smaller.
From ‘I Blinked Once, 10 years after Romeo:
The nineteen seventies was ten long years,
was ten long years to sing a song
It kicked off madly with a New Year’s cheer
I blinked once and it was gone
Gone, gone I blinked once and it was gone
Looking from present, he has a strong body of work and has had excellent musicians behind him on various albums including Wilco and Nils Lofgren. In addition to these vinyl records, I have about three other Forbert CD’s,each good in their own way.
Favorite line from a good song called, January 23 – 30, 1978: “Some say life is strange, but compared to what, yeah.”
Foley went from Night Court to the Clash to Meatloaf.
She was an actor on the popular American comedy show Night Court and has done other TV and Broadway.. She later became an item with Clash band member Mick Jones and provided vocal back-up on the album Sandinista (Hitsville UK was one)>
Jones wrote ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go.’ about Ellen.
She put out a couple of her own albums including this one I have on vinyl. It’s an oddball assortment of pleasant sounding songs with avant garde touches such as those in the Salvador Dali song. All Clash band members play on this but are so unobtrusive you can’t barely tell. (Maybe they should have intruded more).
Far and away the best song on this albums is ‘The Shuttered Palace.’ which opens the album flush with innuendo.
To the sons of Europe: won’t you come inside
My shuttered palace and I am the bride
Now I’m a woman, I walk past your café
To the sons of Europe, I call out and say
<Check video below.>
‘Torchlight’ backed by the Clash was also good.
She later became known for her duet (with the innuendo stripped off) on Meatloaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Light.’
If you can find this one in a used or bargain bin setting it’s worth at least $5.
Sorry but if you are going to put funk in your name, you better be Funkadelic. Otherwise, it’s like leading with your chin. This is nice folky, poppy, singer-songwriter-y music. But no funk in sight.
The Funky Kings were a super group of sorts. Too often they seemed under the influence of Kryptonite.
They started in 1976, a bunch of guys for whom there were high expectations. But the album — the one album — was like a feather in a gust of wind., spinning, floating, oops where did it go?
They don’t even have a Wikipedia page for chrissakes.
There was Jack Tempchin, Jules Shear, Richard Stekol, Bill Bodine, Frank Cotinol and Greg Leisz. It was SoCal easy swinging soft rock.
Tempchin was a prolific songwriter with the Eagles’ ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ and ‘Already Gone’ under his songwriting belt. Jules Shear went on to form Jules and Polar Bears which met with minor success.
The biggest hit on this Funky Kings album was “Slow Dancing’ a piece written byTempchin that is so soft and catchy, it made the Easy Listening charts. It took Johnny Rivers to cover it with a little more ooomph to put it high on the Billboard charts.
Don’t get me wrong there are nice songs on this, just not enough apparently to fuel a Wikipedia page 40 years later. Check out ‘My Old Pals.’
ALBUMS: Feliciano! (1968); Freddy Fender, The Story of an Overnight Sensation (1978)
No, I didn’t put these two together because they both speak Spanish. Jose Feliciano is from Puerto Rico. Fender is a Texan of Mexican heritage.
I’m looking to double up on occasion and these guys happened to be in the alphabetical line-up, side-by-side.
Feliciano
One of my all time favorite singing performances is Marvin Gay,e’s rendition of the National Anthem at an NBA all-star game in 1982. Gaye turned the Star Spangled banner inside out with beautiful singing a light beat and left it folded properly like a flag. It was greeted with strong strong feelings on both sides, fans either loved it or hated it
That was kind of a barrier breaker leading to more stylistic interpretations of the song, the vast majority in a loving way (Roseanne Barr being the most memorable exception.)
Gaye was lambasted in some quarters for defaming the National Anthem.
And before Gaye there was Feliciano with his Latin tingd version filled with Spanish guitar flurriesl at tje 1968. World Series. He was riding high on his big selling Feliciano! record, an album of acoustic covers of popular songs, with probably the Doors’ ‘Light My Fire’ being his biggest hit.
The New York Times, looking back at that performance wrote:
“In an era when pop stars try lots of different styles with the anthem, it’s hard to fathom that Feliciano, the blind Puerto Rican singer and guitarist known for “Feliz Navidad” at Christmastime, could stir anger with his rendition.
And at a time when the nation is sharply divided over athletes’ body language during the anthem, it is a reminder that the song that has an unusual ability to provoke.”
On his other songs, Feliciano enjoyed international fame. ‘Light my Fire’ is a good example of his style, bluesy Spanish music,, with jazz-like singing. To many strings, though.
Freddy Fender
Fender’s album title is an ironic play on the fact that one o f his biggest hits, ‘Wasted Days and Wasted Nights’ was recorded and published in 1959 but didn’t become a hit until the 1970s. Between those time periods Fender battled the bottle while in the Marines, and was arrested for pot possession in Louisiana. He served three years in prison for that.
He is also known for ”Before the Next Teardrop Falls’ which is not on this album. The album is fun though as re-listening to the ‘King of Tex-Mex.’ a golden country voice, proves. His producer described his voice as being very honest like Hank Williams.
After his solo success, Fender joined the Texas Tornadoes, which I have on CD and highly recommend. One TT album won a Grammy. in 1991 Fender described the group to the Chicago Tribune : “You’ve heard of New Kids on the Block? Well, we’re the Old Guys in the Street.”
Dance. That’s what Cajun music is about. I also get hungry for some of the best food in the world when I hear the music.
The group is named after a spice used in Cajun cooking:
Mix the ingredients: Cajun French singing, gumbo cooking, creole, zydeco, fiddles, accordions, foot stomping, and hand clapping. That’s what’s cooking by this band which was around for about two decades before clocking out in 2002.
It’s a party record and it makes you feel good. File it next to Dr. John’s ‘Gumbo.’
Certainly there’s a time and a place, but when there’s a certain energy in the air, I could listen to this album 10 times in a row.
Soundtrack album I bought in a bargain bin to pluck songs for mixed tapes.
This was one of those where they had a beach-y type movie with Matt Dillon, early career, and needed some feel-good, finger-popping songs. So with Motown you can’t go wrong, right? Well.
These are tried and true, mostly great songs: ‘Heat Wave’ by Martha and the Vandellas, ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ by Little Richard, ‘It’s All Right’ by the Impressions (my favorite).
And there’s also ‘MySweet Lord’ oh I mean ‘She’s so Fine’ by the Chiffons. But there’s a little trick they play by dropping in a song or two that were actually new amid the time tested Top Motown Hits listed above.. With hopes of making it big as if the magic would transfer by being on the same disc.
On this album, that song is the lead song, , ‘Breakaway’ by Jesse Frederick. Never heard of it? Nor have many people. But there’s Dion chasing Runaround Sue.
Summed up, lots of good songs, but songs that are available on myriad compilations.
