What a great song. From Midnight Cowboy. it is called Everybody's Talkin'" - a folk rock song by Fred Neil from 1966 that was a very large hit for Harry Nilsson aka Nilsson, that reached #2 and #6 on Billboards AC and Pop charts. It also won a Grammy bsed on it being the featured song of the movie soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy. I am not sure if it also won an Oscar that year in the movie song category. Nope. That year the great Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head by Burt Bacharach won best original song from Butch Cassiday and the Sundance Kid. I love that song.Saturday, July 2, 2011
Midnight Cowboy: Everybody's Talkin' at Me
What a great song. From Midnight Cowboy. it is called Everybody's Talkin'" - a folk rock song by Fred Neil from 1966 that was a very large hit for Harry Nilsson aka Nilsson, that reached #2 and #6 on Billboards AC and Pop charts. It also won a Grammy bsed on it being the featured song of the movie soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy. I am not sure if it also won an Oscar that year in the movie song category. Nope. That year the great Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head by Burt Bacharach won best original song from Butch Cassiday and the Sundance Kid. I love that song.
Friday, July 1, 2011
When Frampton Came Alive
I love the halo effect the record wear ring creates around his head. 
So in yesterday's USA Today there was this story about Peter Frampton on tour this summer, playing all of the on songs on this mege-huge, break-out DLA - Frampton Comes Alive! - in order, from start to finish in honor of the 35th anniversary of its release. What a summer that was, 1976. I was working in the basket room of the local pool, biding my time until a life guard spot would eventually open up the next summer. From the liner notes, I read this record was recorded at Winterland in San Francisco, Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, CA. The Island Music Center in Commack, Long Island, and at SUNY Plattsburgh, all on Wally Heider's Mobile Recording Truck. It is likely the biggest selling DLA of all time. Here is the USA Today article: In January 1976, a not-especially-well-known British rocker named Peter Frampton released a live double-album, often the custom in those jam-oriented days of pop music. The album was Frampton Comes Alive! and it killed. More than 6 million copies sold that year, and 16 million to date. It ruled the airwaves with hits like Baby, I Love Your Way and made Frampton an overnight sensation. "My friend (filmmaker) Cameron Crowe perhaps said it best," Frampton, 61, recalls with a laugh. "He said, 'The look on your face (on the album cover) is that of a man who's just been shot into outer space.'" Though Frampton has long since come back into earthly orbit, he's returning to the stratosphere with a summer tour that finds him playing the entire Comes Alive! opus, 14 songs that formed the soundtrack to many a Boomer's life. The album's ubiquity was captured in Wayne's World 2, when Mike Myers' Wayne jokes that "if you lived in the suburbs, you were issued it. It came in the mail with samples of Tide." "It's the definitive musical document of the '70s," says Rolling Stone contributor Alan Light. "It had the long hair and the long songs." The fragmented nature of today's music and media means that shared cultural moments provided by albums such as Comes Alive!— and six years later, Michael Jackson's Thriller— cannot be repeated, Light says. "It's hard to imagine any release today having a cultural-event status like this," he says. "Then again, the very definition of a phenomenon is something you don't see coming." Though Frampton has played snippets in past concerts, he's never revisited the entire set list. "Look, I've moved on, and even won a Grammy" for 2006 instrumental album Fingerprints, says Frampton. "But I figured it would be nice to do the whole thing." Frampton found success as a teenager in his native England, first with The Herd and then with Humble Pie. But nothing before or after came close to the explosion that was Comes Alive! "I wished for that success, and then it hit when I was just 26, and it was nuts, with huge highs and lows," he says. The biggest low: being pressured into rushing out a follow-up, 1977's I'm in You. "I bowed to voices that were focused on greed," he says. "Peter Frampton the musician became buried by Peter Frampton the pop star." The ensuing years ebbed and flowed. He nearly died in a car wreck shortly after Comes Alive!, released albums that didn't sell well, married three times and had four children. With the passage of time, Frampton says he's able to look back on Comes Alive! and smile, knowing that he managed to bottle lightning. "We had an inkling when we went to hear some of the tapes for the first time," he says. Keyboardist "Bob Mayo and I just looked at each other with Cheshire cat grins. "There was an energy and power coming out of those speakers. And absolutely, playing those songs now puts me right back there."
So in yesterday's USA Today there was this story about Peter Frampton on tour this summer, playing all of the on songs on this mege-huge, break-out DLA - Frampton Comes Alive! - in order, from start to finish in honor of the 35th anniversary of its release. What a summer that was, 1976. I was working in the basket room of the local pool, biding my time until a life guard spot would eventually open up the next summer. From the liner notes, I read this record was recorded at Winterland in San Francisco, Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, CA. The Island Music Center in Commack, Long Island, and at SUNY Plattsburgh, all on Wally Heider's Mobile Recording Truck. It is likely the biggest selling DLA of all time. Here is the USA Today article: In January 1976, a not-especially-well-known British rocker named Peter Frampton released a live double-album, often the custom in those jam-oriented days of pop music. The album was Frampton Comes Alive! and it killed. More than 6 million copies sold that year, and 16 million to date. It ruled the airwaves with hits like Baby, I Love Your Way and made Frampton an overnight sensation. "My friend (filmmaker) Cameron Crowe perhaps said it best," Frampton, 61, recalls with a laugh. "He said, 'The look on your face (on the album cover) is that of a man who's just been shot into outer space.'" Though Frampton has long since come back into earthly orbit, he's returning to the stratosphere with a summer tour that finds him playing the entire Comes Alive! opus, 14 songs that formed the soundtrack to many a Boomer's life. The album's ubiquity was captured in Wayne's World 2, when Mike Myers' Wayne jokes that "if you lived in the suburbs, you were issued it. It came in the mail with samples of Tide." "It's the definitive musical document of the '70s," says Rolling Stone contributor Alan Light. "It had the long hair and the long songs." The fragmented nature of today's music and media means that shared cultural moments provided by albums such as Comes Alive!— and six years later, Michael Jackson's Thriller— cannot be repeated, Light says. "It's hard to imagine any release today having a cultural-event status like this," he says. "Then again, the very definition of a phenomenon is something you don't see coming." Though Frampton has played snippets in past concerts, he's never revisited the entire set list. "Look, I've moved on, and even won a Grammy" for 2006 instrumental album Fingerprints, says Frampton. "But I figured it would be nice to do the whole thing." Frampton found success as a teenager in his native England, first with The Herd and then with Humble Pie. But nothing before or after came close to the explosion that was Comes Alive! "I wished for that success, and then it hit when I was just 26, and it was nuts, with huge highs and lows," he says. The biggest low: being pressured into rushing out a follow-up, 1977's I'm in You. "I bowed to voices that were focused on greed," he says. "Peter Frampton the musician became buried by Peter Frampton the pop star." The ensuing years ebbed and flowed. He nearly died in a car wreck shortly after Comes Alive!, released albums that didn't sell well, married three times and had four children. With the passage of time, Frampton says he's able to look back on Comes Alive! and smile, knowing that he managed to bottle lightning. "We had an inkling when we went to hear some of the tapes for the first time," he says. Keyboardist "Bob Mayo and I just looked at each other with Cheshire cat grins. "There was an energy and power coming out of those speakers. And absolutely, playing those songs now puts me right back there."
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Roy Acuff and the Acuff-Rose Music Publishing Company
Roy Acuff. Besides being a charter member and inductee in the Country Music HOF, Roy Acuff founded Acuff-Rose Music publishing co., with Fred Rose. http://www.law.cornell.edu/ says “Acuff Rose Music, Inc., filed suit against petitioners, the members of the rap music group 2 Live Crew and their record company, claiming that 2 Live Crew's song, "Pretty Woman," infringed Acuff Rose's copyright in Roy Orbison's rock ballad, "Oh Pretty Woman." The Court granted summary judgment for 2 Live Crew, holding that its song was a parody that made fair use of the original song. [Copyright Act of 1976]. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the commercial nature of the parody rendered it presumptively unfair under the first of four factors relevant under §107; that, by taking the "heart" of the original and making it the "heart" of a new work, 2 Live Crew had, qualitatively, taken too much under the third §107 factor; and that market harm for purposes of the fourth §107 factor had been established by a presumption attaching to commercial uses.” In Jeff Tweedy’s song called Anodyne, the a lyric goes, "Name me a song that everybody knows; And I'll bet you it belongs to Acuff-Rose."
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Donovan - a Green Album Cover
Blogger's Note - Please let me know what you think about the ad over on the right hand column. I have minimally monetized this blog, using Blogger's Adsense feature. I can easily take that off. I hope it's not too much of a distraction.
We don't normally post Best Of albums. They are impure and unnatural marketing vehicles. Not to mention their covers are usually slapped together and unartful. But - for myriad reasons, we post The Best of Donovan. One, it is a green cover, which is quite rare. B., the photo is very odd, with Donovan's picture in a sepia-like image. It was produced by Terry Kennedy, Peter Eden, and Geoff Stephens. 3., He's Scottish. D., It is on the Hickory record label. Which is/was part of Acuff-Rose Music. Check out his tune called Colours on this record.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Arrival and Departure: Connection
Abba's Arrival and Journey's Departure. What a fun connection. This is one of my claims to fame in vinyl record collecting. The connections. Arrival was recorded in 1976 at Metronome and Glen studios in Stockholm. It is their fourth studio album. It has Dancing Queen, Knowing Me, Knowing You, and Money Money Money, and Tiger. As for Journey's Departure, from 1980 - they were departing (we all were, quite happily) the seventies. Steve Smith drums. And Journey was in their pre-Jonathan Cain era, with Gregg Rolie on keyboards. Among other songs, Departure has Walks Like a Lady, two of my favorites they do - Precious Time, and Where Were You, plus Stay a While. My favorite Journey album remains Evolution. It captures perfectly the end of the seventies. But besides the opposite names of these two records, there is not all that much more in common. I was hoping I could find some relevent connection between the two.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Blues Brothers: B Movie Box Car Blues; Briefcase Full of Blues
Blues Brothers. Briefcase Full of Blues. I love this super group, and I bought this record because it has the best version ever of B Movie Box Car Blues, a great song by a great songwriter - Delbert McClinton. They also do what I think is the best version ever of Sweet Home Chicago - and most every blues act does SHC. They really nail it too. SHC is also a great example of the "Chicago style" of round robin solos, with everyone getting about the same number of bars of solo time to work in as they pass the baton around. Really - this meteoric group was one of the greatest assemblages of top shelf musicians since Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew. Tom Scott, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Steve Cropper, Paul Shaffer et al.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Itzhak Perlman
Itzhak Perlman - Paganini: Violin Concerto No. in D, Op. 6 and Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25. With the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Lawrence Foster conducting. The liner notes begin with, " Itzhak Perlman, the musical product of two countries, Israel and the United States, at 26, acknowledged as a leader among the world's gifted young violinists." This record is on EMI's Angel records. If he is then 26, that puts this record at/from 1971. It looks like it's never been played. The album cover is also in excellent condition. In the fine print on the back cover, it reads Itzhak is an S. Hurok Artist, so I looked that up. That is Sol Hurok.
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