ALO: “Dead Still Dance” (2012)
From the fourth full-length release by California’s Animal Liberation Orchestra. It’s an appropriate album-opening track for a groove-heavy pseudo-jam band record.
Songs You May Have Missed #387
11 Apr 2013 2 Comments
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: alo, animal liberation orchestra, dead still dance, jam band
Drumming Great Bernard Purdie and his ‘Purdie Shuffle’
11 Apr 2013 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: bernard purdie, death cab for cutie, fool in the rain, grapevine fires, home at last, jeff porcaro, jon bonham, Led Zeppelin, purdie shuffle, rosanna, rosanna shuffle, steely dan, toto
Bernard Purdie is the most recorded drummer in the world, having played on over 4,000 albums. In the above video he demonstrates the “Purdie Shuffle”, a pattern he came up with as a youngster and inspired by the pushing/pulling dynamics of a train.
We’ve all heard variations of the Purdie Shuffle, even if we didn’t realize it had a name. Bernard himself played it on Steely Dan’s “Home at Last”, from their Aja album:
Jon Bonham employed a variant on Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain”, from the final album he recorded with the band prior to his death in 1980, In Through the Out Door.
More recently, Death Cab for Cutie used the beat on the song “Grapevine Fires”. In deference to Purdie, Death Cab drummer Jason McGerr resists calling his work on the song a Purdie Shuffle. As he told the New York Times recently: “It doesn’t matter how much I practice, I will never play that shuffle like Purdie. It’s because he has an attitude that seems to come through every time. He always sounds like he’s completely in charge.”
Sounds like a fair approximation to me, though I’ll admit that’s from a non-drummer’s point of view.
And finally, the late, great Jeff Porcaro created his own variant for Toto’s “Rosanna”. Porcaro’s pattern, said to combine the Purdie Shuffle and the Bo Diddley beat, has itself become known as the “Rosanna Shuffle”.
Songs You May Have Missed #386
09 Apr 2013 Leave a comment
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: ecstasy, raspberries
Raspberries: “Ecstasy” (1973)
A blast of hormone-fueled power pop by one of the bands that created the template for the genre. Eric Carmen’s image as a sensitive balladeer may predominate as the result of his solo career and hits like “All By Myself”. But those four albums his former band recorded stand as a reminder that he was once a true belter fronting a pretty hard-hitting rock band.
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2012/03/10/songs-you-may-have-missed-43/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2012/11/17/anatomy-of-a-classic-deconstructing-the-raspberries-go-all-the-way/
Songs You May Have Missed #385
08 Apr 2013 Leave a comment
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: jeff lynne, so sad
Jeff Lynne: “So Sad” (2012)
We used to have good times together/But now I feel them slip away/It makes me cry to see love die/So sad to watch good love go bad…
I’ll tell you what else is so sad: the thought that we’ve probably heard the last of the Electric Light Orchestra, one of the truly iconoclastic bands to emerge in the 70’s. As nice a tribute to the music of his formative years as Jeff Lynne’s Long Wave is, it is also one more reminder that we can’t expect a reunion tour by the band who carved such a one-of-a-kind British symphonic rock niche.
So I’ll direct the following to anyone reading this who was born too early, or too late, or was too much of a rock snob or punk music fan to care about the Electric Light Orchestra:
Beginning with the “Showdown” single in late 1973 (a favorite of John Lennon’s as the story is told) Lynne and his supporting cast released a series of ever more ambitious albums (Eldorado, Face the Music, A New World Record) culminating with the platinum-selling double LP Out of the Blue in 1977. With its gatefold cover adorned with a spaceship that brought to mind 2001: A Space Odyssey and simultaneously punched up the Star Wars/Close Encounters zeitgeist, Out of the Blue was an album you bought and rushed home with. And beyond the eye-popping artwork, the 17-song, 70-minute epic didn’t disappoint musically. In fact, in addition to its four charting singles (“Turn to Stone”, “Sweet Talkin’ Woman”, “Mr. Blue Sky” and “It’s Over”) the abundance of great album tracks is truly stunning. It was the band’s artistic and commercial high water mark.
It was also archetypical of the kind of commercial pop rock (ABBA, Journey, Toto, Foreigner, et al) that has found favor with next-generation fans, musicians and tastemakers. No less a standard-bearer of nouveau geek chic than the Decemberists made “Mr. Blue Sky” an encore of their live set during their breakout tour of 2006. And Doctor Who, Britian’s foremost cult TV phenomenon, dedicated an entire episode subplot to the music of ELO. So if you still think you’re too cool for this band, think again.
Is Jeff Lynne’s Long Wave a bad LP? Not by a long shot. As this cover of the Everly Brothers’ 1960 hit demonstrates, Lynne has a knack for finding the essence of the song, marinating it in that trademark Lynne sound, and creating something pleasant to the ear. Is his sound a watered-down Beatles imitation as some say? Good question. I’ll answer it with two more questions: 1) Aren’t most bands some form of the very same thing? and 2) Is there anyone more worth imitating?
No, I’ll never have a problem with Jeff Lynne being such an obvious Beatle disciple. My only lament isn’t that he gives us “watered-down Beatles”. It’s that at this point perhaps all he can offer is watered-down Electric Light Orchestra.
Recommended Albums #43
08 Apr 2013 Leave a comment
in Recommended Albums Tags: stornoway, tales from terra firma
Stornoway: Tales from Terra Firma (2013)
Impressed by this Oxford, England band’s latest, I wanted to select a representative song to post in another category of this blog. Trouble was, I couldn’t choose between the beautifully haunting song, the smartly philosophical song, or the cheerfully whimsical song. So here we are, under the heading of Recommended Albums.
“Farewell Appalachia” is the haunting melody, and one that shows the band’s penchant for using atypical instrumentation (and even non-instruments). In the past, the sound of a saw or that of carrots being chopped have served as percussion. In this case, and fittingly so, it’s the sound of crunching leaves accompanying the scene-setting first stanza’s lyric “From the cape/To the hook/With a carpet of leaves underfoot”.
The insinuative melody evokes the work of a band like Winterpills or even the Decemberists, whose songs similarly reward repeated listening–even require repeated listening, but then sink deeper into your soul than the ephemeral pop of lesser bands.
A second point of comparison with the Decemberists is a lyric that is both of the caliber and style of Colin Meloy:
And in the house where I last held you
our bed was cast adrift all night
and you were taking me to higher ground
out of my skin above the clouds
“The Bigger Picture” rambles along to an organ/mandolin vibe as vocalist Brian Briggs puts context to mundane concerns by casting them against the larger universe. Briggs’s distinctive dialect isn’t immediately identifiable as English; rather it possesses only a vaguely European quality that lends intrigue to the band’s sound. It’s one more point of similarity to the Decemberists’ Meloy who, despite calling Portland home and being American, possesses a dialect seemingly all his own.
“The Great Procrastinator” takes a cheeky lyric tone with lines like “I’ve been busy as a beaver/And I’ll be damned if I don’t ease the flow” to an arrangement that conjures a ragtime feel, of all things.
Tales of Terra Firma is smartly engaging throughout, and Stornoway are exactly what I’d expect from a band that formed at Oxford University. Not a cup of tea for everyone, mind you. But an aromatic and gently intoxicating blend for people of a certain taste.
Listen to: “Farewell Appalachia”
Listen to: “The Bigger Picture”
Listen to: “The Great Procrastinator”
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2012/02/24/songs-you-may-have-missed-23/
Every Moment Has A Song 