Posts about: Dance
Introduction
These days music fans don’t necessarily care about what genre the music they enjoy falls into, but this wasn’t always the case. There was a time where much of your identity was tied to the music you listened to.
Case in point: the rock vs. disco debate that dominated the late 1970s. Today however, it's not a “live by the genre, die by the genre” situation there might have been in the past. Perhaps the last dyeing breath of the us versus them musical debate came in 1979 and was fired by a radio DJ by the name of Steve Dahl.
Artist: Steve Dahl
Song Name: Do You Think I’m Disco
Year: 1979
Note: Humorist. Steve Dahl was a radio personality down in the United States and his, uh, parody or take on the division between genres of disco and rock and roll still. "Do You Think I’m Disco" is not available on any streaming service or for sale on any of the regular download sites. But if you were like me, you had the 45rpm single. Take a listen.
Explanation
Genres are based on the principle of repetition. They codify, organize, classify, group, past repetitions, and they invite future repetitions. These are two very different functions, highlighting respectively the qualities of artworks and qualities of experience, and they have promoted two complementary approaches to the study of genre. Therefor a recognizable genre name is powerful shorthand.
Music comes from everywhere, and so do the names we call it by. There's a longstanding cliche that only the music business needs genre names – everyone else either likes it or they don't. That is, of course, bunk, as anyone who's heard enough people trot out lines such as "I like all music except for rap and country" is aware. Not least because quite a lot of those genre names come from the artists themselves. Music genre classification is an ambiguous and subjective task at best, and at its worst divisive.
Why
Categorization using the concept of Genre is one of the most valuable tools we have for understanding and communicating with one another about music. The responsible use of music classification helps us understand creations in greater context, making it easier to identify patterns, recommend new artists to one another, and find creations that are the most satisfying to our individual tastes.
This may seem surprising for some, as it's not unusual for music fans, artists, and even some journalists to claim that the use of genres is unnecessary, elitist, or in some cases, ignorant. These detractors also frequently claim that genre classifications place restrictions on artists” creativity and diminish personal enjoyment of the music. It’s true that when done improperly, applying labels to music has the potential to be some of these things, and instances of misuse are easy to find. It's also true that genre terms, like all aspects of language, do not convey the subtlety of the listening experience.
However, none of these factors are reasonable arguments against the process of music classification, as the potential benefits far outweigh the troubles caused by their wrongful application. When used properly, music taxonomy or classification, substantially increases the clarity, recognition, and appreciation of artists’ creations.
More often, a genre name will come from a musician's works. Free jazz comes from Ornette Coleman's 1960 album of the same name;
Artist: Ornette Coleman
Song Name: Free jazz
Year: 1960
Note: Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation is the sixth album by jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, released on Atlantic Records in 1961, his fourth for the label. Its title established the name of the then-nascent free jazz movement. The recording session took place on December 21, 1960, at A&R Studios in New York City.
Ditto for blue-eyed soul, which came from the Righteous Brothers' 1963 LP. Not to mention acid house, which originally from Phuture's 1987 single Acid Tracks, has come to mean anything with a yammering, squealing TB-303 on it.
Artist: Phuture's
Song Name: Acid Tracks
Year: 1987
Note: Roland, the manufacturer of the TB-303, have a great article Sound Behind the Song: “Acid Tracks” by Phuture
Sometimes record labels become genre names, as with"Industrial", named after Throbbing Gristle's imprint, established in 1976. Sometimes record labels just mandate new terms. "Outlaw Country", "no wave" and"Techno" all came into use via compilation albums.
The 90s were rife with musician-coined genres. "Riot grrrl" was the name of a 1991 fanzine put together by four of that music's key players: Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman of Bratmobile; Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill.
Artist: Bratmobile
Song Name: Bitch theme
Year: 1991
Note: Bratmobile was a three-piece feminist punk band that, alongside Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, led the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s. Known for the brash lyricism of singer Allison Wolfe, the steady beats and sneer of drummer Molly Neuman and the ferocious yet catchy guitar riffs of Erin Smith, Bratmobile combined the power of rock music and the political-literary influence of zines to spread its message of female empowerment from 1991 to 2003.
Definitions
Music is grouped into genres to describe the music’s form, style, and cultural influence. Crucially, genre names are, on their fundamental level, a reflexive means of description and recognition, not a rigid system of boundaries.
Understanding the categorization of music depends as much upon the music itself as it does the language we use to describe it, the context in which we listen to it, and the social and economic factors affecting the psychology of its choice. Let’s attempt to put a stake in the ground regarding some terms.
Genre
Genre has a slightly more taxonomical meaning, in that it usually relates to an attempt to group music into somewhat arbitrary structurally related genres and sub genres. The genre classification tends to be made on the basis of the audience it's aimed at and can be classified based on the music's instrumentation, its particular use, or ethnicity etc. - e.g. Pop, rock, punk rock; Latin-American music, samba, tango; jazz, trad jazz, bee-bop. The online culture of today is inherently global, so genres that were distinct and contained to geographical locations are now cross-pollinated throughout the world.
If genre classification tends to be made on the basis of the audience it's aimed at let’s examine some of the first attempts made at applying genre to the music field. In doing so we need to take care of some housekeeping.
During the history of modern American recorded music, record companies struggled with the question of how to keep music segregated. I choose the term “segregated"carefully because it reflects the America of the 1920’s through the 1950’s while a case can be made that it still exists to this day. The terms originally chosen by record companies for marketing purposes were at best euphemisms.
Euphemisms: where an unpleasant or offensive thing is described or referred to by a milder term. At there worst the terms were racist and driven by division.
Reflecting the socio economic situation of a racially divided America from the 1920’s through the 1950’s, the promotional catchphrase “race music” was first applied by Ralph Peer a Missouri-born talent scout for Okeh Records. Race records were the first examples of popular music recorded by and marketed to black Americans.
While not considered racist, the term “Hillbilly”, coined in 1925 by country pianist Al Hopkins, does reflect the American class system of the 1920’s from which it emerged. Hillbilly" is a term (often derogatory) for people of various ethnicities who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks.
The music business needs to know what it's selling and who it's selling to.The goal of creating genres was originally tied directly to marketing;
- Keep races and their music segregated
- Help drive sales by ensuring the customer was certain of the product they were buying
The Allen Brothers, a white duo from Chattanooga, sued Columbia Records for reputational damage and $250,000 after their 1927 sophomore release was categorized as a race record instead of hillbilly music. "It would have hurt us in getting dates if people who didn't know us thought we were black," one of the brothers later explained.
Style
Musical Style refers to characteristic features of how music is played or expected to sound, i.e. its actual musical content - the set of expected musical patterns, mannerisms, expressive devices it conventionally makes use of.
Jazz, while constituting a genre, also qualifies as a style (or group of more specific styles), since it makes use of particular performance idioms and techniques.
Style are the detailed characteristics that are brought by the individuals creating the work. Therefor a dance song from the 1980s can be interpreted by applying a style to its playback, thus catapulting the same song in dozens of directions.
Illustrating this point is really easy by using a song such as "When Doves Cry" by the great Prince. Including the original, here are 5 versions of the same song interpreted 5 different ways by as many artists. The real take away here is that an artist is only limited by their imagination.
Artist: Rockabye Baby!
Song Name: When Doves Cry
Year: 2012
Note: Lullaby Renditions of Prince. Listening to the lullaby version of "When Doves Cry" you would never, ever be able to discern the true meaning behind the writer's intent. Instead you enjoy the melody.
Artist: Pursuit of Happiness
Song Name: When Doves Cry
Year: October 2005
Note: Canadian Power Pop band who imbued the Prince classic with a guitar based edge and catchy pop hooks. Although Prince is the song's writer and may never have envisioned a Power Pop version, he still wrote and structured as tune that could be interpreted in just about any style.
In 1988, they signed to Chrysalis Records. Their debut album, Love Junk, was produced by Todd Rundgren and released that year. "I'm an Adult Now" was re-recorded and re-released as a single, making it to the charts a second time.
In January 1989 the song peaked at No. 6 on Billboard's alternative songs chart. It was followed by "She's So Young", which became their biggest hit single in Canada and also received radio play in the UK and became a minor hit there, and "Hard To Laugh". The album sold over 100,000 copies in Canada and was certified platinum.
The band's follow-up album with Rundgren, 1990's One Sided Story, featured the hit singles "New Language" and "Two Girls in One." Although the album did not sell as well as Love Junk it was still a significant hit for the band.
Artist: Shark Alley Hobos
Song Name: When Doves Cry
Year:
Note: Musicians who shared a love of the sea, sharks, pirates, from New Orleans, and proudly self proclaimed hobos. The "Sea Shanty" has gained a lot of traction lately with everyone jumping on the bandwagon it seems.
Artist: The DejaBlue Grass Band
Song Name: When Doves Cry
Year:
Note: They serve up a fresh version of a Prince classic by infusing selection of"Truegrass", piled high with pop and"Newgrass" sensibility, then lightly salted with some soul-shaking gospel.
Artist: Prince
Song Name: When Doves Cry
Year: 1984
Note: Prince was asked by director Albert Magnoli to write a song for Purple Rain, to match the theme of a particular segment of the film that involved intermingled parental difficulties and a love affair. The next morning, Prince had composed two songs, one of which was "When Doves Cry". According to Prince's biographer Per Nilsen, the song was inspired by his relationship with Vanity 6 member Susan Moonsie.
Form
In music, form refers to the structure of a musical composition or performance. In his book "Worlds of Music", Jeff Todd Titon suggests that a number of organizational elements may determine the formal structure of a piece of music.
Most notable are the arrangement of musical units of rhythm, melody, and or/ harmony that show repetition or variation, and the arrangement of the instruments.
Simply... Song Form arranges the structure of songs into an easy to understand framework. Song structure is important because it organizes how songs are written while aiding in how they are recognized and appreciated. Without a song having shape, songs are can become chaotic and unlistenable.
Why is this important? Simply, song form, allows the story to be told so that people listening can better understand and enjoy the experience of the song.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel in order to be creative, however. That’s where song form comes into play. Think of the most common types of song structures as universally agreed upon roadmaps for songs. Song Form reveals to us where the song is going.
Consider that song form helps song writers keep an overview of songs and how sections of music that make up the song will be organized.
Imagine song form as a map made up of locations that we know of as verses, choruses and bridge. What are the parts we are generally concerned with then;
- Verses are similar but differ slightly from each other
- Chorus often differs from verse
- Bridges can be very different
When discussing song forms, a system of letters are assigned to the different sections of a song. Repeated sections get assigned the same letter as was assigned on the first occurrence of that section. The letters then create a map of the overall song.
The assignment of letters is not what you would think, however. We don’t use the first letters of “V” for Verse, “C" for Chorus or “B” for Bridge, but rather the first letters of the alphabet.
For example ;
- A=Verse
- B=Chorus
- C=Bridge
Strophic / AAA / One-Part Song Form Strophic...
What was that? Strophic describes how each verse is sung to the same tune. Strophic Song Form is also called AAA Form or One-Part Song Form. AAA song form is one of the oldest sectional song forms. How far back does it go? Originally it was used in the adaption of poems, with composers setting the poems to music to perform them for the entertainment of the royal courts of Europe. The melody is repeated, in Strophic Song Form, and each time the melody repeats different words are sung to the melody. This makes it an ideal song form for story telling.
The nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb" was first published by the Boston publishing firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon, as a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale on May 24, 1830, and was possibly inspired by an actual incident, however that can't be verified.
Artist: Stevie Ray Vaughn
Song Name: Mary Had a Little Lamb
Year: 1983
Note: Traditional Arrangement. This clip is taken from an appearance in Toronto, Canada, Live at the legendary club the El Mocambo in 1991.
AAB Form - 12 Bar Blues
The 12-bar form used in the AAB song form is strongly associated with the blues. Many Blues songs are in the AAB format. The fundamental structure of 12 Bar Blues is three four-bar lines or sub-sections. Often the first two and a half bars of each 4 bar section are vocal melody, while the last one and a half bars contains an instrumental melodic hook that gives a sense of completion for the line.
Unlike AAA or AABA song forms, which describe the overall structure of the song, AAB describes the structure of an individual verse. AAB is always used as a compound form. The common variants for 12-Bar blues are 8-Bar form and 16-Bar form.
Artist: Elmore James
Song Name: Dust My Broom
Year: 1959
Note: Originally by Robert Johnston in 1936. James played a modified “Kay” hollow-body acoustic guitar, which sounded like an amped-up version of the more "modern" solid-body guitars of today. Just raw....You can hear the guitar distort from being close to the speaker and mic in the room. One take, full of emotion. None of this Pro Tools shit.
AABA Song Form / American Popular Song Form
This is one of the most commonly used forms in both jazz and early to mid-twentieth-century popular music. The AABA format was the song form of choice for Tin Pan Alley songwriters of American popular music, an East Coast USA songwriter scene based in New York City, in the first half of the 20th century. Tin Pan Alley songwriters included songwriting greats like Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, George and Ira Gershwin.
The dominance of the AABA song form faded during the 1960s. The rise in popularity of rock 'n' roll and the rise of groups like The Beatles changed the popular music landscape. Before The Beatles broke off into other song writing formats, they heavily used AABA song form in many songs. It uses this song form in several music genres including pop, jazz and gospel.
Artist: Beatles
Song Name: Eight Days A Week
Year: 1964
Note: While not a huge Beatles fan for many reasons, "Eight Days A Week " is good, solid representation of the AABA song form.
Variation on the basic structure Verse-chorus form or ABA form may be combined with AABA form, in compound AABA forms.
- AAA format may be found in Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'", and songs like "The House of the Rising Sun" and Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".
- AABA may be found in Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue", Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are", and The Beatles' "Yesterday".
- ABA format may be found in Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!" (chorus first) and The Rolling Stones's "Honky Tonk Woman" (verse first).
- ABAB may be found in AC/DC's "Back in Black", Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville", The Archies's "Sugar, Sugar", and The Eagles's "Hotel California".
- ABABCB format may be found in John Cougar Mellencamp's "Hurts So Good", Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do with It?", and ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man".
- Variations include The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang" (ABABCAB), Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" (ABABCBAB), and Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (ABABCABCAB)
Conclusion
Perhaps, in the age of endless ways to express yourself, it’s also less necessary to define your identity in your teenage years by clinging to musical genres. And notions of credibility are still important, so memes about the relative merits of Kanye and Queen will still flood the social media. But these memes somehow seem to come from an older generation and it’s astonishing, how outdated such musical conservatism seems now.
So, if genre boundaries are evaporating, and presuming post-genre music doesn’t become a genre and cancel itself out, will anything replace them? What we’ve seen in the past 20 years is that consumption methods have broadened attitudes, music has changed to reflect that, and attitudes have then changed even further.
Playlists
Although bubblegum has gained a certain cachet of cool in some circles over the past few decades (while remaining a pop pariah in other circles), during its original heyday it was viewed strictly as fodder for juvenile tastes, pure pabulum for pre-teen people. Furthermore, the music was blatantly commercial at a time when such materialistic goals were deemed unacceptable by an emerging counterculture.
Writing in Mojo magazine, writer Dawn Eden put a finer point on her description of bubblegum music. "From the get-go, bubblegum was a purely commercial genre. Producers like Buddah Records' Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz had no higher aspiration than to make a quick buck and get out.
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Bubblegum music held no delusions of grandeur, nor any intent to expand your mind or alter your perceptions. Bubblegum producers only wanted you to fork over the dough and go home to play your new acquisition over and over to your heart's content (and, no doubt, to your older brother's consternation).
Eden went on to note, "Power pop aims for your heart and your feet. Bubblegum aims for any part of your body it can get, as long as you buy the damn record."
You could conceivably think of virtually every cute novelty hit, from pre-rock ditties like “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” to transcendent rock-era staples like “Iko Iko,” as a legitimate precursor to bubblegum's avowedly ephemeral themes.
The Royal Guardsmen. They managed a #2 hit in 1966 with “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron,” a novelty tune based on the funny-looking dog with the big black nose in the Peanuts comic strip. The single combined a campy kid's appeal with a punky bridge nicked without apology from “Louie, Louie.” Although “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” and its lower-charting sequels were certainly precursors to the recognized bubblegum sound, Bill Pitzonka insists The Royal Guardsmen were not a bona fide bubblegum group.
You could conceivably think of virtually every cute novelty hit, from pre-rock ditties like “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” to transcendent rock-era staples like “Iko Iko,” as a legitimate precursor to bubblegum's avowedly ephemeral themes.
The Royal Guardsmen. They managed a #2 hit in 1966 with “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron,” a novelty tune based on the funny-looking dog with the big black nose in the Peanuts comic strip. The single combined a campy kid's appeal with a punky bridge nicked without apology from “Louie, Louie.” Although “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” and its lower-charting sequels were certainly precursors to the recognized bubblegum sound, Bill Pitzonka insists The Royal Guardsmen were not a bona fide bubblegum group.
Let's take a listen to some of the precursors to bubble gum music so you can get a feel for where bubble gum music came from and how it evolved. Let's take it off with Patty Page.
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Artist: Patti Page
Song Name: How Much Is That Doggie In The Window
Year: 1953
Note: written by Bob Merrill in 1952 and loosely based on the folk tune Carnival of Venice. recorded by Patti Page on December 18, 1952, and released in January 1953 by Mercury Records
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Artist: The Crystals
Song Name: Iko, Iko
Year:
Note: One could conceivably think of virtually every cute novelty hit from pre rock era like how much is that doggy in the window to the transcendent rock era staples like IKO IKO as a legitimate precursor to the bubble gums.
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Artist: The Royal Guardsmen
Song Name:Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron
Year: 1966
Note: Novelty tune based on the funny looking dog Snoopy with the big black nose in the peanuts comic. The single combined can't be kids appeal with a punky bridge, Nick, without apology from Louis Lilly. Although Snoopy versus the red Baron and its lower charting SQLs were certainly precursors to the recognized bubblegum sound. Bill zonca insist the Royal garden. We're not a bonafide bubblegum group at any time.
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Artist: Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs
Song Name: Sugar Shack
Year: 1963
Note: Gilmer and The Fireballs were the last American band to chart before Beatlemania hit.
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We heard the Dixie Cups with their version of Iko, Iko from 1965 and then the Royal Guards with Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron from 1966. We ended off this first block of tunes with Jimmy Glimmer and the Fireballs with Sugar Shack from 1963. All the music we've heard sets the stage for music to come, but it really isn't considered to be pure bubblegum.
And, of course, there was no shortage of acts in the mid-'60s actively cultivating some aspect of the adolescent market. Herman's Hermits had a string of cuddly hits, with “I'm Henry VIII, I Am” veering the closest to bubblegum, but they were never quite a bubblegum group. The Lovin' Spoonful had a goofy, good time vibe all about them, but they were far too... well, authentic-sounding to be called bubblegum.
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Artist: Herman's Hermits
Song Name: I'm Henry VIII, I Am
Year: 1965
Note: In 1965, it became the fastest-selling song in history to that point. Originall written in 1910 as a British music hall song by Fred Murray and R. P. Weston it was revived by Herman's Hermits,[1] becoming the group's second number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, dethroning "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". Despite that success, the single was not released in the UK.
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Artist:Lovin' Spoonful
Song Name:Do you believe in magic
Year: 1965
Note: The single peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. And later it came back into the top 40 by teen star Shaun Cassidy in 1978 with his cover version of the song.
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Bubblegum pop (also known as bubblegum music or simply bubblegum) is a genre of music with an upbeat sound contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers, which usually is produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers and often using unknown singers. Bubblegum's classic period ran from 1967 to 1972. A second wave of bubblegum began two years later and ran until 1977 when disco took over.
The genre was predominantly a singles phenomenon rather than an album-oriented one. Acts were typically manufactured in the studio using session musicians, and most bubblegum pop groups were one-hit wonders according to writer Bill Pitzonka, a bubblegum historian and author of the liner notes for Varèse Vintage's brilliant Bubblegum Classics series, "The whole thing that really makes a record bubblegum is just an inherently contrived innocence that somehow transcends that. It transcends the contrivance. Because there were a lot of records that were really contrived and sound it. And those to me are not true bubblegum. It has to sound like they mean it."
Popular music really became more than just a contrivance. It was really the musical roots for a lot of groups that would come in the late 1970 and 80s and further affect music into the 2000s.
We're gonna take a listen to what really are the original bubble gum hits and then play an alternative cover version by a group or artist so you can kind of get an idea of where things went who did what and why they did it. Keep in mind that it was still thing for a popular song to be covered by another recording artist even while the original song was still on the charts.
So let's take a listen Ohio Express' Yummy Yummy Yummy and follow that up with L7’s version from 2016.
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Artist: Ohio Express
Song Name: “Yummy Yummy Yummy,"
Year: 1968
Note: It may be the definitive bubblegum hit, but it was merely a demo that somehow made it on to a 45 before singer Joey Levine knew what was happening; he later had a successful career writing commercial jingles.It reached No. 4 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart. L7 recorded a cover for their album Fast & Frightening in 2016.
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Artist: L7
Song Name: “Yummy Yummy Yummy,"
Year: 2016
Note: L7 is an American rock band founded in Los Angeles, California, first active from 1985. Recognized for being simultaneously subversive and infused with humor. Due to their sound and image, L7 is often associated with the grunge movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The album “Smell the Magic”, was released in 1990 on Sub Pop and earned a four star review by Rolling Stone who stated it was one of Sub Pop's finest hours.
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Artist: The Archies
Song Name: “Sugar Sugar,"
Year: 1969
Note: The Archies' "Sugar Sugar," masterminded by Don Kirshner (after the Monkees' Mike Nesmith supposedly rejected the song by threatening to punch the producer in the face). It was history's first tween pop: catchy, easy to sing, loaded down with references children would love, and presented with an innocence the rest of rock had long rejected.
Written by Jeff Barry and Canadian Andy Kim.
A huge hit by a band that didn't exist, this #1 hit at bubblegum's peak, possibly because singer Ron Dante was already in the Top 10 as the lead vocalist of "Tracy" by the Cuff Links.
reached No. 1 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in1969 and remained there for four weeks
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Artist: Wilson Picket
Song Name: Sugar Sugar
Year:1970
Note: Pickett's cover of "Sugar, Sugar" peaked at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
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1969 also saw the emergence of the 1910 fruit gum company with their song Indian giver. Ironically the pace of Indian giver by the Ramones is incredibly slow compared to their usual frenetic pace and is really actually quite close to the original by the 1910 fruit gum company
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Artist: The 1910 Fruitgum Company
Song Name: “Indian Giver,"
Year:1969
Note: The Company were a "real" band, despite this hit being written by Shondells hit maker Ritchie Cordell and "Montego Bay" singer Bobby Bloom. This may be why both Joan Jett and the Ramones saw fit to cover it.
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Artist: Ramones
Song Name: “Indian Giver,"
Year: 1987
Note: Ramones Mania album.
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Artist: Tommy James and the Shondells
Song Name: “I Think We're Alone Now,"
Year: 1967
Note: The Shondells were the godfathers of bubblegum, "Hanky Panky" notwithstanding, and their string of late-'60s hits began in earnest with this ode to "playing doctor."
Covered by Tiffany in late 1987
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Artist: Tiffany
Song Name: “I Think We're Alone Now,"
Year: 1987
Note: The Tiffany recording reached number 1 on the charts of various countries including the US, UK, Canada, and New Zealand. it really proves. That bubble gum is a timeless.
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Bubble gum music wasn’t limited to just Canada and the USA. In the UK, they developed their own take on the phenomena.
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Artist: Daniel Boone
Song Name: “Beautiful Sunday,"
Year: 1972
Note: Boone was a prominent songwriter on what passed for the British bubblegum scene, but this solo song was the only one to hit big in America—and set records in Japan that have yet to be broken.
The only known perfromance video of Daniel Boone is this god awful version from British TV in 1972.
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Artist: Seiji Tanaka
Song Name: “Beautiful Sunday,"
Year: 1976
Note: The song went to #4 on the Japan single chart and sold 5 million copies. This song was so popular that it's been pre recorded in Japan by more than 25 different artists since 1972.
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Gimme Gimme good Lovin done in 1969 by Crazy Elephant was not the first recording of this bubble gum classic as Spencer Davis group recorded it in 1966 and released it in 1967, thus leading many people to believe this is actually a British bubblegum hit. Actually Crazy Elephant just made the song hugely popular by being in the right place at the right time.
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Artist: Crazy Elephant
Song Name: Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'
Year: January 1969
Note: The single ranked #89 on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1969.
Crazy Elephant was a studio concoction, the Marzano-Calvert Studio Band, created by Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz of Super K Productions, and for some odd reason was promoted in Cash Box magazine as allegedly being a group of Welsh coal miners
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Artist: Helix
Song Name: Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'
Year: 1984
Note:A music video was made for the Crazy Elephant cover "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'". Two versions of this video were filmed: One for music video channels like MTV, and the other being an "adult" version featuring topless models including a then 16-year-old porn star Traci Lords. This version was aired on the Playboy Channel in the United States.
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**The uncensored Version
And last but not least press my favourite bubble gum song of all time is Edison lighthouse’s 1970 love grows where my Rosemary goes.
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Artist: Edison Lighthouse
Song Name: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
Year:1970
Note:Essentially, they were a studio group with prolific session singer Tony Burrows providing the vocals.
At the time it was the fastest climbing number 1 hit record in history.
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Artist: Wayne Newton
Song Name: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
Year: 1970
Note: Wayne Newton with his version of love grows where my rosary goes was a blatant attempt to hippen up the image of the Vegas perennial performers Wayne Newton. He jumped on the bubblegum bandwagon and did a series of albums which were strictly covers versions of current pop hits
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A young Wayne Newton
Playlists
Origins of "Riders in the Sky"
In this episode we take a look at the history of one of the most widely post WWII, "Covered" popular songs in the ASCAP publishing database.
From its humble beginnings as a European folk song to its re-appearance during the American Civil War asa melody for a drinking song, to its eventual use as she basis for a song about a cautionary tale warning a cowboy that if he doesn't change his ways, who will one day join the damned cowboys doomed to try to “catch the Devil”s herd across these endless skies.
Music Videos
While not an official video production from the estate of Marty Robbins, I really do think that this visual interpretation captures some the essence regarding "Riders in the Sky"
From a September 1990 episode of the CBS Television show "Hee Haw". Glen Campbell & Roy Clark play "Ghost Riders in the Sky", with some help from Jeff Dayton. Glen & Roy's version of this song is on the soundtrack album for the 1985 movie "Uphill All the Way", available at finer retailers everywhere!
This is 1961... (Restored footage). Levang was hired as a temporary guitar and banjo player on The Lawrence Welk Show when Buddy Merrill left to serve in the United States Army. Welk was so pleased with his ability that he hired Levang on a permanent basis when Buddy completed his tour of duty in 1961. Levang stayed with the Welk Band until its final show in 1982.
That same year, at the Country Music Association Awards he was nominated for best artist on a specialty instrument, the mandolin.
He was also an accomplished studio musician, playing on several records for artists such as Glen Campbell, Frank Zappa, Bobby Darin, Bobbi Gentry, David Clayton Thomas, Neal Hefti ("Batman Theme"), Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Neil Diamond and Noel Boggs. Levang died in Canyon Country, California at the age of 83.
The ill fated reboot of the Blues Brothers movie franchise in the late 1990s tried to recapture the romance and legitimacy of the original film by relying on trade and true musical icons such as "Riders in the Sky".
Filmed in Toronto, Ontario Canada, most of which was shot in the Cherry Street area of Toronto in what is now the "Distillery District". The timing was right and so were the surroundings. The area had been a staging ground and ancillary storage and processing to the nearby Docklands south of Lakeshore Drive.
I watched the movie filming evolve on a daily basis during 1996/1997 as I drove Cherry St. Daily on my way to work. Sets going up and then controlled destruction of the concert hall included in this clip.
One of the first appearances of "Riders in the Sky" came during a 1949 episode of the movie by the same name. Singing Cowboy Gene Autry sings the Western Classic song "Ghost Riders in the Sky" from his movie "Riders in the Sky" from Columbia Pictures 1949.
By the mid 1980s, Duane Eddy had entered a new career awakening after his work with the Art of Noise and their reworking of the "Peter Gunn Theme". This time out we catch Duane flying his stylings all over our featured track. This video is from an American TV appearance in 1996.
In the USA, and more specifically, Texas is full of lore, legends, and ghost stories. The tale of the Ghost Riders is by far the saddest, most evil, not to mention, the most famous one in the country. This legend is sadly true, a senseless ghoulish tragedy which took place in Crosby County, Texas. You may know it as Stampede Mesa. The legend inspired the classic song “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”
Playlists
Perhaps the most telling statistic I’ve come across about disco and more specifically about the Montreal disco scene was that the police reported in 1970 that 80% of Montreal’s missing young people could be found in discothèques.
During the 70s, for some people, disco was all empty glitz and glamour, smoke and mirrored balls and the pinnacle of 70s exhibitionism. Montreal exemplified those qualities during a time when the the city’s greatness was dissolving after reaching its high watermark during Expo 67. Moreover, disco’s origins were far grittier than the slick veneer of the well know Studio 54. Before your mom was doing the YMCA at weddings, disco was the beating heart of the Montreal underground. It was the music of liberation, inclusiveness and empowerment with a four-on-the-floor bassline as its rallying cry.
Expo 67
In1967 the world came to Montreal for Canada's Worlds Fair. Read about the event and its impact on the city of Montreal and the explosion of cultural awareness that helped usher in the disco era.
Disco TV Shows
Check out this clip of CFCF Montreal's CTV network show "Feel Like Dancin'"from 1977! They were actually pretty cutting edge . . . In this episode they introduce Grave Jones.
Check out this clip of Gino Soccio performing on an Italian music show in the late 1970s
Not to be outdone, watch this clip of Gino performing"Try It Out" from 1981 on Italian TV
A very rare appearance by "Cheri" performing their chart
topping hit "Murphy's Law" on Quebec television.
Another Gino Soccio classic from his studio band "Witch Queen"
performing "Bang a Gong" on a local Montreal Disco TV show.
Finally, take a look at this performance by the Purple Flash,
a.k.a. Pierre Perpall, recorded during one of the live from
the discotheque TV shows that aired in Montreal during the 1970s.
Disco Life
If you really want to get a look at the extravagance of the Disco era take a look at these pictures That Show Just How Crazy 1970s Disco Really Was.
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