A Great Compilation of “The Lick” Found in Music Everywhere: From Coltrane & Stravinsky, to Christina Aguilera

22 Sep 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

(via Open Culture)

by Josh Jones

“…there is one lick in particular, as you can see and hear in the supercut above, that…has managed to seed itself everywhere. “The Lick,” it seems, “pervades music history.” It shows up in Stravinsky’s “Firebird,” Player’s “Baby Come Back,” Christina Aguilera’s “Get Mine, Get Yours.” Writes Santa Maria, “Everyone from Coltrane to Kenny G has put this hot lick to the test.” It even has its own Facebook page, where users submit example after example of appearances of “The Lick.”…

…no one seems to know where exactly “The Lick” came from. At some point, its origin ceased to matter…“The Lick” seems to have worked itself so deeply into our musical unconscious that many players and composers likely have no idea they’re reproducing a musical quotation. For whatever reason, and your guess is as good as mine, “The Lick” has become a genuine musical meme, a “unit of imitation” that propagates musical culture wherever it lands.

Read more: http://www.openculture.com/2015/09/a-great-supercut-of-the-lick.html

 

On This Date…

20 Sep 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

croce

One of the great voices in the history of music left use 42 years ago today. Jim Croce along with 5 others lost their lives when the plane they were riding in hit a treetop on take off from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Maury Muehleisen Jim’s long time friend and music partner was also killed along with charter pilot Robert N. Elliott, comedian George Stevens, manager and booking agent Kenneth D. Cortose, and road manager Dennis Rast. Croce …had just completed a concert at Northwestern State University’s Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches and was flying to Sherman, Texas, for a concert at Austin College. The plane crashed an hour after the end of the concert. Croce was 30 years old.

Jim had finished recording the album “I Got a Name” one week before his death. During his tours, Croce grew increasingly homesick, and decided to take a break from music and settle down with his wife and infant son after his “Life and Times” tour was completed.

In a letter he wrote to his wife, which arrived after his death, Croce stated his intention to quit music and stick to writing short stories and movie scripts as a career, and withdraw from public life.

(via The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge)

What is the Most Influential Song of All Time?

18 Sep 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

elvis

(via The Almanac)

Clive Davis, chief creative officer, Sony Music

Who will ever forget Joan Baez’s leading a crowd of 300,000 singing “We Shall Overcome” during the March on Washington, or Martin Luther King Jr.’s reciting the lyrics in his final sermon? Whether fighting for civil rights in South Africa or in Ireland or in the U.S., can any song be more inspiring?

Alex Ross, music critic, The New Yorker; author, Listen to This

Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, first performed in Mantua in 1607, was the first opera to endure. The Italian master used a dazzling array of styles—fanfares, dances, arias, laments—to retell the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Four centuries later, it still holds audiences transfixed.

Marin Alsop, music director, Baltimore and São Paulo Symphony Orchestras

In 1967, Aretha Franklin made the Otis Redding song “Respect” thoroughly her own. It not only became her personal anthem, winning her two Grammy Awards, but also came to represent the feminist movement. She added the refrain “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” What more needs to be said?

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/what-is-the-most-influential-song-of-all-time/361632/

Video of the Week: The Who on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

15 Sep 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

Recorded 48 years ago tonight on September 15, 1967 (for airing two days later) here is the performance that introduced much of America to the band who had the reputation for smashing their instruments on stage.

Their performance of “I Can See For Miles” and “My Generation” is capped by a pyrotechnic finale that included an explosion so great it caused Pete Townshend permanent hearing loss.

Scorpions’ ‘Wind of Change’: The Oral History of 1990’s Epic Power Ballad

14 Sep 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

scorpions

(via Rolling Stone)

By Richard Bienstock

In the 1980s and very early Nineties, every hard-rock and metal act worth their leathers scored big with a power ballad or two. But only Germany’s the Scorpions can say that one of theirs — in this case, 1990’s “Wind of Change” — also served as a soundtrack of sorts to a political and cultural revolution. The song’s sentiments of hope and peace, broadly stated by vocalist Klaus Meine (“The world is closing in/Did you ever think/That we could be so close/Like brothers?”), not to mention an accompanying, Wayne Isham–directed video that employed footage of the construction and tearing down of the Berlin Wall, led to its being inextricably linked to the end of the Cold War and the reunification of East and West Germany…

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/scorpions-wind-of-change-the-oral-history-of-1990s-epic-power-ballad-20150902#ixzz3lmA1biGp

Video of the Week: Brad Paisley–Geology

14 Sep 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Video of the Week Tags: ,

Way back in the distant past
Five hundred million years or greater
Tennessee was a tectonic plate
Under the ocean near the equator.
In a few million years the plates began
A steady northern migration
Volcanoes blew and the earth arose
To form the Appalachians.
The range of mountains began to form
Four hundred million years ago
And sandstone formations
Along the Cumberland Plateau
The Paleozoic and the Mesozoic
Built the hills just like a mason
And in the Cenozoic era
Appeared the Nashville basin.
Beneath the limestone, sandstone, and shale,
The earth moved as it must
And formed the Blue Ridge mountains
By subhorizontal thrust.
And here on plutonic igneous rocks
On a Precambrian promontory
That is where I first met you
Which is a whole other story…

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