The SUBSIM Music Thread

[Jimbuna]

In memory of one of the greats who has recently left us.

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[vienna]

Originally Posted by fumo30

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@vienna
Interesting, Thank you.
Box of Frogs' song seem to be based on that widely used boogie riff made famous by ZZ Top/ la Grange, Wonderin if the origins of that riff can be found further back in the history.
At least Norman Greenbaum's Spirit In The Sky few years earlier sounds quite similar, if not identical.
Was he inspired by someone.?

Good question about the boogie riff. The name of John Lee Hooker immediately came to mind; he probably is the earliest known musician to use the boogie riff and many consider him the originator of that guitar style; from Hooker's 1948 original:





That recording made a huge impact on guitarists, as did many other of Hooker's compositions (George Thorogood' s entire career is basically a recitation of Hooker's catalog); Hooker himself credited his father for teaching him the riff(s), so its highly likely there are earlier versions/variations out there, but I haven't found any that closely resemble Hooker's renditions. One thing to remember about anything have to do with Blues based music: since it was considered "Race Music", there was very little of the organized structure found in White music styles in terms of record labels watching out for artist's interests, copyright protection, legal representation, etc. The lack of structure and accountability is one of the reasons Black Blues artists were so often ruthlessly ripped off by the White music industry who appropriated major aspects of Blues music and passed it off as the product of White artists. The most cited example is Pat Boone whose career was based on taking Black Blues and R&B artist's songs and 'whitening' them up for mainstream radio and TV:





Almost like R&B/R&R on Valium. Here's the original by The Originator (self=proclaimed); the fierce energy is a major reason the kids gravitated more towards Rev. Penniman than Boone:





BTW< ZZ Top were sued over their song La Grange by the holder of the copyright to Hooker's Boogie Chillen for appropriating the structure and style of the Hooker song and, after winding through many courts and appeals, ZZ Top finally settled out of court; sadly, Hooker didn't have any rights to his song and never saw a penny of the settlement money; however, the case did catch the attention of the US Congress and led to the passage of new intellectual property law protections, including extending those protections to older material...


Even though Hooker lost out on compensation in the ZZ Top case, early in his recording career, he devised a method of maximizing his royalties; Race records were recorded by small time, almost always white, record labels that had a very small distribution, sometimes less than a couple of counties in a given state; knowing that the likelihood one label in one state would have any idea what was going on in another state, Hooker, as he traveled from state to state, would adopt aliases and sign record deals n each location, giving him multiple paychecks; for this reason, Blues researchers and collectors have found themselves trying to sort out whether some more obscure recording that sound like Hooker are indeed John Lee recording under one of his aliases...


Many years ago, I saw documentary on the early years of R&R and there was clip of Elvis in the film, holding a press conference very early in his career, just as he was beginning to become famous; at one point, a reporter asked him about his musical influences; Elvis immediately started to rattle of a list of Black performers like Big Bill Broonzy, Joe Turner, and others; no sooner than Elvis started his list, his manager, Colonel Parker, quickly and loudly interrupted and abruptly shut down the conference; it seems it would do Elvis image no good if his loyal fans knew he was an aficionado of "Race Music" and that some of his hits were originally recorded by 'colored people'...


Speaking of Big Bill, he had a recording, released in 1954, four years after Hooker's boogie in 1948 that was also a precursor to the later Blues boogie guitar styles:











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[fumo30]

Thanks vienna for your profound and enlightening reply. I knew I can count on you.
Its kind a sad theres so much foul play like egoism and greed in the music business.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by fumo30

Thanks vienna for your profound and enlightening reply. I knew I can count on you.
Its kind a sad theres so much foul play like egoism and greed in the music business.

Thanks to you fumo30...

Your questions are an opportunity to get my meager remaining memory neurons a bit of exercise...


A couple of things...

I want to be absolutely clear and fair to Elvis: If you ever see the film clip I described, you would see Elvis with a very surprised and puzzled look on his face when Col. Parker stopped the news conference. Elvis, himself saw no problem with crediting his own influences; the desire to make it seem Elvis' talent was a product of 'whole cloth' was his management and record label (RCA in the US); The power of talent management and the labels was very strong at the time of Elvis' climb to fame and Elvis was a bit too submissive in deferring to their wishes, more out of his upbringing as a polite Southern boy and much less than any personal desire to unduly gain from the works of others. Had he come along a decade later, he might have been able to exert more control over his works in much the same ways The Beatles, and others were able to do...


Re: Pat Boone; I think I may have told this already either here or in another thread, but, when I graduated high school in 1969, our graduating class had a nondenominational/interdenominational prayer breakfast the day of our graduation. It was common for graduates to spend the night before Graduation Day having one last blowout; there was the usual teenage debauchery and, on the next morning, those of us assembled around the breakfast table were a sad collection of hangovers, lack of sleep, and sheepish visages as we listened to the various clergy say how proud they were of us; about halfway through, they announced there was avery special guest and into the hall walked Pat Boone. Now, most of us in 1969 had musical tastes that didn't include the watered-down 'pop/rock' of Boone, so we weren't exactly thrilled to see him; I don't think he fully understood why his comments about how we, the debauched, were shining examples of then current day teenagers caused not a few laughs and snickers...


Pat Boone wasn't just satisfied with trying to sanitize early rock: he once released an album of Heavy Metal songs delivered in that ol' Pat Boone Style:










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[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[fumo30]

Originally Posted by vienna

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Now, thats a quite an arrangement.
He sure knows how to water down certain things.

[fumo30]

Simply not possible for Toni Basil to water down anything at all.


Toni Basil - You Gotta Problem




It do sound like Chuck Berry's Around and Around, so no wonder it also sounds good.


Les Jaguars - Tourbillon






This ain't bad either, they're from Belgium.


The Vice Barons - Fuzzy n' Wild




The Incredible Staggers - Little Sister

[vienna]

...something wicked this way comes...

















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[fumo30]

Shotgun Ltd. - Mixed Nuts

..With the cheesy organ, eh.

[Jimbuna]

[vienna]

Over in the Comment Thread, this was posted:

Originally Posted by Catfish

Accordion with The Who? Never

Well..., (ahem)..., Exhibit A:





I have a bit of a bias against accordion music in general; perhaps its because of all the cheesy accordionists on early TV shows who seemed to grind out endless renditions of Lady of Spain and Beer Barrel Polka; more likely, it was due to an elementary Catholic school classmate whose mother made him take accordion lessons, and, when he would learn a new number, his mom would insist on her little boy (who was also a bit of a school bully) play his newfound repertoire for us in his class; his mother was a big contributor to the church and was de facto leader of what passed for the school's PTA, so the nuns would allow her to foist sonny boy's 'talents' upon us; aside from the fact the kid had really very limited talent for his instrument, he also had the habit, when he made a mistake and played a bad note, of starting whatever song he was playing all over again, from the beginning, thus a song that would normally have passed in two or three minutes stretched out to a quarter hour or more; at least there was the satisfaction of watching the school bully cower under his mother's gaze and sweat profusely as he struggled to get through his song...


Sheryl Crow doing a take on The Who's song and showing off some nice accordion chops...





Another example of a Who song done with accordion by an aptly named group, Those Darn Accordions:





Those Darn Accordions are worth looking up on YT; they have some interesting and clever covers of rock hits and other hits (Led Zep, Devo, Charlie Daniels, etc.) posted...


...and, so far, not a single video of Lady of Spain...








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[Jimbuna]