MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

Previously on "dEFROG On 45":


I also have this on 45.



You may know it as the theme to Sanford & Son.

I figured I’d post this one separately because, unlike the others, I didn't buy a copy of it until long after the show stopped running. In fact, I never saw a copy of it for sale during its run. I found my copy in a used vinyl store in the early 90s.

Nights in El Segundo,

This is dF

If you grew up in the 70s, liked disco and were under 13 years of age, odds are you had a copy of this song. 



I know I did.

This one came with a bit of local history (well, at state level), since Rick Dees was actually a radio DJ in Memphis at the time, which meant that no radio station in Memphis would play the song, including Dees’ own station. Dees wasn’t even allowed to mention the song on-air, and finally got sacked after he did anyway.

I grew up in Nashville, not Memphis, but a lot of Nashville DJs made references to all this, and I was both surprised and knocked out by the idea that a DJ could make a hit record.

Well, I was 11 when it came out.

Anyway, it’s considered to be one of the worst hit songs of the 1970s. So naturally I’m proud that I still have my copy.

Flapping my arms,

This is dF

Here’s a true story: 

When I was in 8th grade, I took a music appreciation class as an elective. Obviously, we listened to a lot of music, most of it classical. But one of the highlights was that, every Friday, students were invited to bring their own records to class, so we could listen to and discuss the current popular music of the day.

The catch (and you knew there was one), was that there were a few rules on what we could bring. I remember three of them.

1. No songs with naughty words in them (obviously).

2. Nothing Satanic.

3. No acid rock.

I was the first student in the class to contravene Rule No. 3, largely because I actually had no idea what “acid rock” was. I’d never even heard the term before. My brain being what it was, I assumed it meant “acidic” (like battery acid or sulfuric acid), and from there I imagined some kind of RAWK measurement scale, where “hard rock” was at the top – the bad-ass, hardcore rock (this being in the days before heavy metal, black metal, etc) – and acid rock was somewhere below that, but still in the top third of the scale. (At the bottom of the scale was, of course, Shaun Cassidy.)

Anyway, this is the 45 I brought in one Friday that violated the “acid rock” rule.



Naturally, I had no idea at the time that Heart counted as acid rock. And knowing what I know now about acid rock, I’m even less convinced. Maybe it’s the magic references? Or the break in the middle with the wind chimes effect and the Minimoog? Or the lyric “Let’s get high awhile” (which I didn’t know was in there because I couldn’t understand half the lyrics anyway)?

I don't know. The teacher didn’t give any rationale. He just looked at it and said, “No, John, I said no acid rock.”

The next week, I brought my Meco “Star Wars” 45. It got played. And everyone in class said I was a such a dork.

I got that a lot in 8th grade. But then I got it a lot from kindergarten to my high school graduation. Especially when it came to music.

I’m rather proud of that now.

Through being cool,

This is dF

By the time Duran Duran came on the scene, MTV was the new way to promote singles, and they were of the first bands to really leverage that and build a successful career on it.

I liked them a lot, and eventually had a copy of Rio, which to this day I consider to be their high-water mark, musically.

Before I got the album, though, I had the 45 of the title track. And the B-side got just as much play as the A-side to the point that I ended up learning how to play the guitar riff for it.



PRODUCTION NOTE: This is the actual B-side version of the song. The album version is slightly different (it's shorter, has a different intro and the guitars are mixed a little louder).

Also, the above version was ripped from an actual 45. So there’s a skip in it. This is how we listened to music in those days, children – with skips in it.

On the roam again,

This is dF

Coming up on Episode 50 of this series, and people ask: “How come you haven’t mentioned The Eagles yet?”

So let’s take care of that right now.

Obviously The Eagles dominated the airwaves and the charts in the mid-late 70s. And I confess I liked a lot of their songs, starting from “Witchy Woman” and “One Of These Nights” up to all the hits from their album The Long Run.

Interestingly, though, I only ever bought one 45 of theirs – “Heartache Tonight”. And it paled in comparison to the B-side, “Teenage Jail”, which I ended up liking more because it didn’t really sound like a typical Eagles song.



These days, I’m ambivalent towards The Eagles. But I still do like listening to their earlier stuff sometimes, especially the spooky ones.

And of course, “Journey Of The Sorcerer,” which ended up being the theme to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy radio series. That never gets old.

FUN FACT: I almost bought a 45 of “Life In The Fast Lane” once. I was music director at a college radio station where the general manager had very strict rules on swearing in songs, due to the fact that we were part of a conservative college in a conservative town (Clarksville, TN, represent!). He freely admitted the down-side was not being able to play “Life In The Fast Lane”, his favorite Eagles song, because of the lyric “We’ve been up and down this highway / haven’t seen a goddamn thing”.

I distinctly remembered hearing an edited version on the radio when the single came out, with the lyric changed to “damn thing”, which was acceptable to the GM. So I started trawling used record stores to find the 45 version. I eventually found a few, but every one of them had the original album version. So either the radio station in question had a special FCC-friendly copy of the 45, or they did their own edit on tape.

Young, vicious and frail,

This is dF

Previous episodes of this series have mentioned Stevie Nicks and her general ubiquity on the radio in the late 70s/early 80s.

One thing I forgot to mention was that, in addition to Fleetwood Mac and her subsequent solo career, Stevie also seemed to be doing guest vocals for just about everyone else, though by “everyone else” I mean mainly Tom Petty.

But there was also John Stewart.

No, not that one.

This one.



It’s entirely possible that Stewart is another one of those artists like Nick Gilder who sold a lot more 45s than actual albums. My only evidence is that I have the 45, but couldn’t even tell you what album the song is from without Googling it.

Anyway, listening to this again, I’m struck by how simplistically catchy it still is (to say nothing of the fact that I still can’t understand half the lyrics to it). Then I imagine it without Stevie Nicks’ voice on it, and it suddenly seems like less than the sum of its parts. I couldn’t say why, but Nicks just adds the right something to the song to make it work better than it probably should.

Make of that what you will.

Throw in my guitar,

This is dF

As I’ve mentioned before, some of the 45s in my collection were inherited from my parents – mostly from my dad, who recorded for Colonial Records in the 50s, worked for Monument Records in the 60s and owned his own music arrangement business in the 70s, and consequently brought a lot of promotional 45s home from work.

This was one of them – an early 70s novelty record from comedian George Gobel.



Notice the comedy Chinese accent in the second verse. That kind of thing was funny in the 70s, you see.

Naturally, being a little kid when I first heard this, I had no idea why people were being asked if they were turtles.

As it turns out, it’s a reference to the Ancient Order Of Turtles. Which I only found out when I was trying to find a copy of the song on YouTube.

Educational!

Not a Turtle,

This is dF

Seeing as how the Steve Miller Band is seeing most of its pre-platinum back catalog re-released (i.e. everything they did before “The Joker” made them famous), I might as well post about the Steve Miller 45s in my collection.

I have a few of them, yes. Steve Miller Band was fairly ubiquitous on the radio in the mid-70s, and every single sounded like a winner to me. That more or less ended with “Abracadabra”, which I did like but not as much as his previous songs (despite use of the word “panties” in a song lyric, which is an attention-getter when yr a high school junior).

Anyway, it’s amazing to think how little I knew about Miller’s history – how he’s the godson of Les Paul and Mary Ford, his 60s tenure in the Chicago blues scene (playing with Paul Butterfield, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy) and the San Francisco music scene. Miller probably has one of the most impressive music resumés that most people have never seen.

So I do feel a little guilty in saying that one of the biggest attractions for me in the Steve Miller Band wasn’t Miller so much as the drummer, Gary Mallaber, who played on Fly Like An Eagle and Book Of Dreams (where most of Miller's 70s hit songs come from). I just love the drumming style and sound in those classic SMB songs – it’s simple yet distinctive, and was partly responsible for making me want to learn to play drums as a kid.

Which is why I’ll post this song to represent the Steve Miller 45s in my collection.




Not only is it a great song that tells a good anti-hero crime story (and one that reminds me of the kinds of movies showing at the local drive-in at the time – think Dirty Mary & Crazy Larry, that kind of thing), but it’s also got one of the best drum hooks in pop music.

They headed down south and they’re still running today,

This is dF

As long as I’m fessing up my appreciation for 80s pop singers, I guess I should also bring up Samantha Fox. 

Yes.

As you may have gathered, like a lot of guys my age I was a fan of Samantha before she got into music (if you know what I mean, and I think you do), and I admit liking her first couple of albums primarily because of the novelty value. Also I was living in West Germany at the time, so I was already listening to a lot of Europop. (Evidence: I still have Kim Wilde’s first five albums somewhere, and I even have the first two Sandra albums on cassette. I don't really listen to the latter anymore, but that’s not the point.)

So anyway, yes, I liked her at the time. And you can laugh, but by her second album, she was collaborating with heavy pop hitters like Stock Aitken & Waterman and Full Force. So, you know, it’s not like she was goofing off or anything.

Anyway, somehow I ended up with this song on 45 – I think I bought it second-hand for a radio show I was doing at the time (this was before CD players became standard-issue in radio stations – or at least college radio stations with next to no budget).




Temporary love’s so bad but it feels so good,

This is dF

As you can imagine, there are quite a few one-hit wonders in my 45 collection.

This is one of them.



It’s funny how I never noticed it had a lyric about putting the dishes away. Which seems strangely domestic for a song about bell-ringing – and don't think I don’t know what that means. Even in middle school I had a pretty good idea.

Ding dong,

This is dF