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Saturday Night Stolen
This one’s heavy on video, yo. But it’s smooth.
In 1978, the Doobie Brothers released their album Minute By Minute, containing the song “What A Fool Believes”….
…and, of course, it became a hit. So smooth.
Comare and contrast with Robbie Dupree’s 1980 single titled “Steal Away”…
…which seems to be exactly what happened here. Very suspiciously similar.
According to this site, Dupree’s song also was, uh, inspired by Eddie Money’s 1977 song “Baby Hold On.” I can kind of hear it.
Doobie Bro Michael McDonald had this happen with another song, 1982’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” –
The song was sampled in 1994 by Warren G and Nate Dogg in “Regulate” [mildly NSFW]-
A completely and totally 100% absolutely true and smooth account of how this came about was related on the internet series Yacht Rock [also a bit NSFW]. And “Hollywood Steve,” the host of the show, is a real life music critic.
However, “I Keep Forgettin'” itself is heavily inspired by Chuck Jackson’s 1963 song titled, amazingly, “I Keep Forgettin'” –
McDonald’s version is sometimes listed as a cover of Jackson’s song, but there are differences. Although sharing credit with the writers of Jackson’s song, McDonald does get a songwriting credit on his version.
Michael’s old friends in Steely Dan had their own run-in with this sort of thing. From 1977, their song “Black Cow” –
…which got sampled in 1997 by Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz for their single “Uptown Baby” [you know it’s NSFW]-
The opening of the song features another sample, Amores Como El Nuestro by Jerry Rivera.
Turns out The Dan weren’t happy with Tariq and Gunz sampling the song and causing Walter and Donald some difficulties. Peter Gunz discusses it here (a little NSFW language in there).
Not long after that, Tatyana Ali released her 1998 single “Daydreamin'” (lots of apostrophes in music, apparently), where Tariq and Gunz sampled themselves sampling “Black Cow” in some kind of recursive loop and rapped on it –
“I heard Steely Dan “Black Cow” and went wild!”
Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen completes and reverses the Mobius Circuit by sampling “Uptown Baby” over “Black Cow” –
Rocktober – Monster Mashup
Some truly monster-ous mashups for your Halloween.
One of the first mashups to go big was Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” crossed with Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” circa 1983 –
By the 90s, mashups were becoming quite the thing, and during the 2000s (especially with everyone having a computer and YouTube coming online), mashups exploded. Most are crap, but some are really good, such as this Daft Punk/Adele mix –
DJs and home remixers began digging up old classics to mix with more modern songs –
Nirvana is one of the more popular bands for mashups…. consider this mix with Amy Winehouse or this even better mix with No Doubt, both based around Nirvana’s “About A Girl.”
A Korn song was massively improved by combining it with a Cure song –
There was a real video for that song, but it’s gone now. Had a neat Escher ending, not to mention Robert Smith getting slowly eaten by the Spider Man (no, not that Spider-Man).
Disco is a prime fountain of pure unrefined mashup material. Especially when mixed with the most incongruous types of music –
Speaking of incongruities, this takes the cake right out of the rain –
It works so well!
Dance music goes well with more classically-influenced works –
Who knew Enya could spit rhymes like that?
If you feel like your childhood has been violated, your teen years touched inappropriately, your college years…. well, something involving microaggressions and a rape hoax, I’m sure… then this song is dedicated to you.
Rockitober!
Back around 1984, I used to watch a lot of MTV (which likely explains a lot about me). I also watched other music programs like Night Tracks, Friday Night Videos, and Night Flight. So I was often viewing strange music videos at 2 in the morning or later (Night Flight was especially damaging… they would show experimental movie shorts and bizarre comedy skits and who knows what other surreal stuff. It’s also where I first saw “Bambi vs. Godzilla.” I loved Night Flight!).
One such bizarreness was Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit!” –
Imagine being 14 years old in the 80s, when MTV and all this stuff was still kind of new, and seeing that at 4 in the morning.
The song was awesome, though – Herbie totally nailed the vibe of the time with the record scratching and synth sound. So awesome that he was nominated for a Grammy award, where he performed “Rockit!” live. I believe I saw it when it originally aired. Pay attention to this one –
Didn’t see that coming.
Also, watch after the song to see Michael McDonald announce the nominations for Best R&B Performance and see who Herbie was up against. Nice remix of the winning song (Spoiler: it wasn’t Michael Jackson) at the end.
Rocktober Saturday Night Studio – DOLBY!
Everyone knows Thomas Dolby’s classic song, “She Blinded Me With Science!” But he’s had quite a career since that song. A couple of his songs appeared in last weekend’s “No Static At All” post, “Radio Silence” and a live version of “Commercial Breakup.” Go give them a listen.
Before releasing his first album, The Golden Age Of Wireless, Dolby did synthesizer arrangements on Foreigner’s songs”Waiting for a Girl Like You” and “Urgent,” the latter also featuring saxophone by Junior Walker. Walker later recorded his own (Dolby-less)version of the song with his All-Stars, which can be heard here.
Kicking off this Studio proper is a 1983 “Live Wireless” concert in its entirety –
In 1985, he appeared onstage at the Grammy Awards with Units 1,2, and 4 in a synthesizer showdown –
“…the big surprise was I didn’t expect Thomas Dolby to come out in that amazing wig and tuxedo — which is so him, you know, and brilliant. And that tiny little keyboard!” – Howard Jones, who also explains why some of the performance was prerecorded.
A lot of it was prerecorded stuff that we’d already done in the studio because of the ambition of it, because it was using that amount of technology. I don’t think anybody would have been brave enough to play everything live! So we played some things over the top of it, and then the rest of it was pre-done in studio. I think that’s the only way to have achieved it for the Grammys. I think it would have been very risky otherwise!
Dig those keytars!
More recently, Dolby was involved with “The Toadlickers,” combining techno, bluegrass, and parkour –
He also worked on an online multiplayer game which coincided with his album of the same name, Map Of The Floating City, set in an alternate history. As he described it, “The Floating City is set against a dystopian vision of the 1940s that might have existed had WWII turned out a lot differently.”
Trailer –
Map of the Floating City playlist –
Finally, we finish with Dolby performing his signature song “She Blinded Me With Science!” at Moogfest in 2012, with some commentary about Magnus Pyke and the San Francisco Giants –
Rocktober – Dead Or Alive
Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive is dead. He suffered a “massive cardiac arrest” on Sunday October 23, according to a posting on his verified Twitter page. He was 57.
I first heard of Dead Or Alive around 1984, when the video for “I’d Do Anything” was in brief rotation on MTV. I had become somewhat accustomed to New Wave and other alternative music thanks to MTV, and even the radio was playing some oddball stuff here and there. But it was still a bit different and catchy in its own way., and never really caught fire.
The singer, whose name I didn’t know then, seemed to be really good, but he struck me as pretty damned weird.
Around spring or summer of 1985, the song “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) hit the airwaves and just exploded. It was in constant rotation on radio and MTV for a good while.
It kind of dropped off after a few months, but was usually featured in any kind of 80s-themed event. Eventually it started getting airplay again, and I still sometimes hear it on the radio even now.
NightFlyRadio – No Static At All
Time to put the needle on the record. No sucker Djs, just two turntables and a microphone on the avenue by Radio City with a transistor.
Wdydfae commented on the last post about his memories of radio –
My inchoate fragments of radio memories don’t coalesce into a particular story. Radio wasn’t a big part of my childhood, as far as I can remember, unless I was riding in someone’s car and it happened to be playing.
…Then it moves into adulthood, and radio was in another country and language. Basically, lousy radio selection–just not a radio culture. Then I realized the radio riches I had left behind, with at least a channel for just about any genre you could want. So, belatedly I appreciated that the radio world of the States is vibrant–lot of stuff out there, and a whole way of talking, presenting yourself, presenting sound, pacing things.
Read the full comment here.
Kicking off with Steely Dan’s classic”FM” in spectacular style…. From the YouTube channel of the Empire State Building, followed by a big block of tunes to crank up to 11 –
“On October 29, 2015, the 50th anniversary of the installation of a Master FM Antenna on the top of the Empire State Building, the global landmark synchronized its world-famous tower lights to Steely Dan’s 1978 smash ‘FM (No Static At All).'”
Bonus points if you saw a young Geordi La Forge or maybe Tom & Jerry in there.
Hope you enjoyed the music.
NightFlyRadio
An independent station,
WJAZ
With jazz and conversation…
– Donald Fagen, The Nightfly
Music for your late night from the radio booth.
“The Nightfly” by Donald Fagen was far from the first (or the last) song about radio and disc jockeys, but more than any other song it captured the feel of being a late night DJ spinning jazzy tunes while waiting for callers to ring in with political commentary and crackpot theories, right down to the coffee-and-cigarette fueled solitude and even the advertising jingles.
But as noted above, Fagen was far from the only one to reminisce nostalgic (or not to nostalgic) about such things….
What do you remember about radio when growing up? Discovering new bands and taping favorites with a cheap Maxell or TDK tape? Hearing talk radio and all the politics conspiracy theories? Just listening to a baseball game while grilling out? Leave a comment and tell your story.
More tomorrow.
Saturday Night Studio – 1 Year & Monkeeing Around
This week is one year since I started Saturday Night Studio, which now has it’s own page. Every studio is listed there with a brief description and a link to the post.
Speaking of firsts and anniversaries, this year is the 50th anniversary of the first band I ever liked – the Monkees. Here’s the very first episode from September 1966 –
The first concert I ever saw was in 1986, and it was, of course, the Monkees on their reunion tour. I later picked up a tape (remember those?) of the tour,-
Apparently their influence reached to areas where one would not expect, judging from the story Davy tells at the start of this video…
“We touched a lot of musicians, you know. I can’t tell you the amount of people that have come up and said, ‘I wouldn’t have been a musician if it hadn’t been for the Monkees.’ It baffles me even now,” Jones says. “I met a guy from Guns N’ Roses, and he was overwhelmed by the meeting, and was just so complimentary.” – Chicago Tribune
So the 80s would have been quite different if not for the Monkees.
Other than influencing metal bands, the 80s also saw the debut of The New Monkees, which I’m sure you all remember fondly. I tried to watch an episode once back around 1988, and didn’t get very far.
I recently discovered that the Monkees released their newest album in 2016. They collaborated with several other songwriters and musicians. I found it on youtube, but sadly I can’t say I was all that impressed with most of it (although “Birth Of An Accidental Hipster” did amuse me a bit). However, one song did stand out, the second version of “Me & Magdalena” –
Really digging that tune.
As a kid, I never, ever, ever expected to be hearing new Monkees music in 20-bloody-16!
I Just Wanna Tell You How Someone Else Is Feeling
“If you must write prose and poems, the words you use should be your own, don’t plagiarise or take on loan” – The Smiths, Cemetry (sic) Gates
Melania Trump came under fire for allegedly plagiarizing a speech given by Michelle Obama in 2008. Melania’s speech was also apparently hacked by someone on staff who snuck in a rickroll. However, journalists and music buffs are still discovering more stolen bits that were slipped into her speech.
From the Home Office in Cleveland, Ohio (Hello Cleveland!)…
The Top Ten Other Speeches and/Or Pop Songs “Borrowed” In Melania Trump’s Speech!
10 – You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.”
9 – If the way that you need is too much like greed, decide if you are rich or you’re poor.
8 – Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream.
7 – If we lose the time before us, the future will ignore us, we should use it, we could use it, yeah.
6 – If spending money like water was the answer to our country’s problems, we would have no problems now.
5 – Standing tough under stars and stripes, we can tell, this dream’s in sight.
4 – As a young girl, I dreamed of being a baseball. But tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
3 – Take my thong off and my ass go boom!
2 – Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see ya.
And the Number One speech and/or pop song discovered in Melania’s speech…
1 – What else could I say? Hillary Clinton is gay!
Saturday Night Studio – Getting Ahead with Lionel
Those of you who remember the 80’s can’t help but remember Lionel Richie, whether you want to or not. For you kids, here’s a quick rundown…
Richie was a member of the Commodores for years, with a number of hit songs. We’re gonna skip that and jump to the 80’s, when he went solo. He scored a string of hits, including “Running With The Night” –
Catchy tune.
Soon after came “All Night Long,” with a video directed by former Monkee and music-video-pioneer Mike Nesmith…
There were others as Lionel racked up hit after hit, such as “Dancing On The Ceiling,” which had a novel idea for the time. In true 80’s fashion, it also had keytar.* Another was “Say You, Say Me” (which I hope to never hear again).
But probably the most-remembered (and definitely most-ridiculed) Lionel Richie song was “Hello.” The song was already syrupy enough to supply every Waffle House in America, but the video just added so much more… you just gotta watch it –
Makes you wanna murder a kitten, doesn’t it? Still, he made hardcore bank off that one, adding more “Rich” to the “Richie.”
Jimmy Fallon, music fan unparalleled and former member of Blue Oyster Cult, actually polished that turd –
Brilliant. I am moved. As should you be.
*To be explored in another post soon.
nightskyradio 