Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 11 to 16 of 16

Thread: Over and Over

  1. #11
    [QUOTE=Flem;663583]I don't want things to go to your head./QUOTE]

    Ah, I omitted "but ladies of a certain age with a blue rinse eager to recapture their adolescent years" but otherwise, as someone you may have heard of sings: It's Too Late To Stop Now.
    Last edited by Graham Breeze; 07-07-2020 at 06:53 AM.
    "...as dry as the Atacama desert".

  2. #12
    Rock Groups - All Human Life

    The Byrds were the most important and influential American rock band of the 20th Century, not least because they included three outstanding composer/musicians: Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark - the Beatles were almost as well endowed. But the more talented any group’s members, the sooner the inevitable schism. Brian Jones was ousted from the Rolling Stones, deluded George Harrison spent years begrudging that his more talented partners grabbed most of the song writing cash for themselves, and so on.

    At the ending of the Byrds only Roger McGuinn was left standing, supervising a revolving door of lesser talents. The most famous founder member, David Crosby, had long gone to find even more fame in fractious ”super group” Crosby, Stills and Nash (& sometimes Young) but not before he had forced out the most talented Byrds member, Gene Clark, who then embarked on a downward career of alcohol and drug abuse interspersed with creating the occasional brilliant, but generally uneven, albums including No Other which one commentator has rightly called “among the greatest and most underrated ever released” . A record so outstandingly brilliant it, not surprisingly, sold very few copies to America’s adolescents.

    Yet a glance at the Byrds’ first three albums indicates that, whilst McGuinn may have brought the jingle-jangle of his 12 string Rickenbacker to the Mr Tambourine Man party, it was Clark who was the outstanding song writer with a gift for both melodic and lyrical composition - including writing one song, Eight Miles High, that changed the direction of popular music. Clark died in 1991 aged 46 since when his growing musical status has been recognised with a biography or two, reissues and remixes of his every outtake and more charitable recognition of his personal demons - including mental illness.

    The traditional cliché accompanying group breakups has been “musical differences”- perhaps it still is - a shallow euphemism for greed, jealousy, envy, loathing,.. the usual human characteristics. And it may not have helped Clark’s cause that he bought a Ferrari with his songwriter royalties when the rest of the Byrds were still travelling by bus - but hey! if you are young, handsome and rich why wouldn’t you flaunt it? The fat poisonous dwarf Crosby later spent much of his wealth freebasing and eventually adopting someone else’s liver and even amongst the egotistical narcissists of Laurel Canyon: Stephen Stills, Joni Mitchell,…Crosby stood proudest.

    Crosby having got rid of the more talented Clark decided he could also dispose of other people who had guided the Byrds to worldwide fame and so record producer Terry Melcher was given the boot. Some years later Melcher was asked by the Byrds to help rekindle their failing careers, which he did, after which with rock star sensitivity the group sacked him again.

    Schubert died at 31, James Dean at 24, Rupert Brooke at 27: counter factual “what ifs” serve little purpose. If only Crosby had shown more humanity towards a troubled Clark and he had stayed with the Byrds, etc. is pointless. Nevertheless the story of the Byrds is a rich one and provides one famous anecdote first told by Van Dyke Parks, writer of the best and most profound Beach Boys songs that went far beyond the sun, cars and girls songs sung to ripped-off Chuck Berry riffs that were the speciality of the, some might argue, overrated Brian Wilson.

    Terry Melcher, the Byrds first record producer who had always lived in Los Angeles, in interview was asked who was the most obnoxious character he had ever met in Hollywood and Melcher replied in an instant “that’s easy. Without question it was David Crosby”. The startled and embarrassed interviewer then hurriedly asked “Oh! Well who ranks second?” and Melcher replied, “That would be Charles Manson.”
    Last edited by Graham Breeze; 08-07-2020 at 06:18 PM.
    "...as dry as the Atacama desert".

  3. #13
    Master Dave_Mole's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    the Moon
    Posts
    1,287
    "With Tomorrow" on White Light is one of my favorite songs.
    ....it's all downhill from here.

  4. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave_Mole View Post
    "With Tomorrow" on White Light is one of my favorite songs.
    Yes. Very nice.

    I think I have everything (and for the Byrds) except opportunistic and money-grabbing, recorded from the toilet in a night club, stuff.

    Graham
    "...as dry as the Atacama desert".

  5. #15
    Anachronistic?

    The National Theatre, because of Covid-19, has made available the recording of the 2016 Carrie Cracknell production of Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea starring Helen McCory - and a very fine version it is.

    The play is set quite specifically in Ladbroke Grove in 1952 - it cannot be readily updated because of plot elements, so it was slightly odd that the background music included repeated playing of the Flamingo's 1959 recording, on the infamous George Goldner's End label, of I Only Have Eyes For You. The Flamingos were a black group from Chicago who enjoyed a longer career than most doo wop groups with 11 Billboard Hot 100 entries and, more significantly, 9 songs listed on the R & B charts starting with I'll be Home ( better known as by Pat Boone) in 1955 on Checker.

    One authority has described the Flamingos as "producing the tightest and most gorgeous harmonies of the rock 'n' roll era" . Billboard wrote “universally hailed as one of the finest and most influential vocal groups in pop music history, the Flamingos defined doo wop at its most elegant and sophisticated”. Billboard is correct.

    It has been reported that much of the magic of the recording was that it was one of the first to be recorded with a 2/3 second electronic, rather than natural, echo. Whatever. ..the record has been reissued on innumerable compilation doo wop albums over the last 60 years as the master has passed from End to Roulette to Rhino and now resides with Warner Music Group. Since Carrie Cracknell was born in 1980 obviously she cannot remember the original release.

    The Flamingos were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame in 2001. There are various versions on youtube, some corny miming to the original but the most emotional is a version of four members before a live audience at an awards ceremony, although these are not all original group members. Most black vocal groups of the late 50s had but a brief moment, if at all, of fame but the Flamingos really were the exception that tested that rule.

    Of course its only background music to a play and so what? But given that the song was originally a huge hit in 1934 (which even I do not remember) one might have thought Ms Cracknell could have identified something less anachronistic than music from the Chicago ghetto as background to Ladbroke Grove, West London angst.
    Last edited by Graham Breeze; 11-07-2020 at 05:29 PM.
    "...as dry as the Atacama desert".

  6. #16
    Banned
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Leeds. Capital of Gods Own.
    Posts
    11,176
    oh sit down. James

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •