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Episode 99–Purple Rain

First off, my apologies for the delay in this post. It appears that GoDaddy likes to do scheduled maintenance on Sunday nights, so I’ve been getting blocked out of the site on my end lately. At your end everything looks fine, but I can’t create new posts or transcripts or anything, really.

This week comes to us by request of Innkeeper Freddie, about whom I’ve gushed a little too much already. There are links to his show in the Episode 98 post below. He asked me to do this the day I met him, and who am I to disappoint.

“Purple Rain” the song was one of the last written for the movie, and it only became the title of the movie once the director managed to impress upon Prince how important it was to the scene he envisioned. Once he got a handle on that, Prince then asked him if the movie could also be titled Purple Rain. Given that hardly anyone expected anything to come of the film, the production company didn’t have a problem with it.

The extraordinary thing about the Purple Rain soundtrack is that three of the songs—including the title track—were recordings made of the first time the band ever played them for an audience, at the First Avenue Club in Minneapolis. The other two songs needed a bunch of post-production reworking, but “Purple Rain” only needed to be cut for length and not much else.

It’s unfortunate that, because of the Me Too movement, the film hasn’t really aged well (women are treated pretty poorly), which is a bit of a shame because, considering that it was a first-time director working with an entire cast that had never been in a film before, it’s not that bad. Also, as it turns out, Prince was a bit of a natural in the sense that the concert scenes were shot in about one-fourth of the typical time, partially because he didn’t want to do a million takes of every song, so the director set up multiple cameras and each song was performed three times, tops. And, as the story goes, Prince hit his marks exactly each time, making the editing much easier later on.

For those of you who listen or download here, enjoy this bounty:

And as usual, you can click here for a transcript of this episode.

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Episode 94–Touch of Grey

The Grateful Dead were definitely a rock band, and at the same time they managed to defy most definitions with regard to their specific genre. Sometimes they were funky, sometimes they were bluesy, sometimes they were jazzy, sometimes even gospel. Usually they were jamming, and rather than discouraging fans from recording their concerts, they encouraged it, often even giving them opportunities to plug recorders into their own equipment. Going to a Dead concert was a weird, beautiful, communal experience, and I think the closest equivalent in the absence of Jerry Garcia and Company would be…I don’t know, maybe Phish? The one time I went to a Phish show was in 1999 at what was then the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Now the PNC Bank P.A.C.), and it was a very similar vibe, right down to the joint being passed down the row from god knows where.

They started out as The Warlocks in 1965 but changed their name after they discovered that The Velvet Underground had already released an album with that title. Stories vary with regard to how they came up with the new name: Phil Lesh says that he found it in a Britannica World Language Dictionary; Garcia’s story is that he found it in an old dictionary of folklore. At any rate, the name stuck and the concerts became known as special events to be experienced.

But while they were enormously popular, their records didn’t exactly burn up the charts. While it took them a few years to crack the Hot 100, it was over 22 years before they saw their one and only Top Ten record. And coincidentally, that’s the one we’re talking about in this episode.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

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Episode 85–Can’t Give It Away on Seventh Avenue

This week, we’ve got a super-sized episode of the show (nearly an hour!) as I sit down with Christopher McKittrick, author of Can’t Give it Away on Seventh Avenue: The Rolling Stones and New York City.

Chris and I had a fascinating chat about the band and their long-term relationship with New York. All of them, whether collectively or as individuals, spent a lot more time there than you probably suspect, and McKittrick takes us along on the journey, demonstrating how the city infused itself into their lyrics, perhaps subtly at first in albums such as Goat’s Head Soup, but certainly more overtly by the time they got to one of their best albums, Some Girls.

Christopher took the time to run down a bunch of rumors related to the Rolling Stones, some of them started (as it turns out) by the band themselves. It’s a fascinating journey for fans of both the Stones, the City, and Rock and Roll in general.

If you’re not already subscribing to the show, or if you’re a new listener (Welcome!), here’s the player/download link:

And, as usual, if you’re enjoying this show then please take the time to share it with someone else, and/or leave a rating on your favorite podcatcher.

If you’d like to purchase your own copy of the book, click here to get it from Amazon. This link will take you through the Amazon Smile portal, so if you’re a participant, the purchase will go toward your chosen charity.

Click here if you want to see more of Christopher’s writing (oh, I think you do).

NOTE: Because this show is largely unscripted, there is no transcript for the show at this time. My apologies to anyone who depends on those.

82–Under the Covers 4

itunes pic It’s been a long time since I did a show like this one, and the timing probably couldn’t have been worse.

As I note during the show, I’m on the road for the next several days, so I’ve got a condensed version of my usual recording setup. I can get the job done, but the recording and the editing process are very, very different from what I usually do. Typically after I write the episode I edit all my sound elements and then load them all into a piece of software that keeps them organized until I need them. Then I crack the mic open and play the elements as they’re needed. If I make a huge mistake, I have to find a point where editing won’t show. Because there’s usually background sound going on, I sometimes have to backtrack a lot. But generally it takes me 30-40 minutes to record a 15 minute show. Do a little editing and boom, it’s ready for processing and uploading.

This time around, it’s a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of my recorded voice, plus all the other elements patched in. Plus I have to control audio levels through software rather than through my mixing board, so it’s a whole other kind of thing. And maybe it’s me but recording this way kind of saps some of my vocal energy out of the project.

So after nearly a year, we return to the Well of Cover Songs, wherein we look at songs that you may not realize are covers of another artist’s work. And in my opinion, in each of these cases, the cover is the superior version. That’s not something you can always say (and I cite a specific example during the show).

At any rate, after a few hours of overtime, here’s Episode 82.

Me and The Boss

Image result for rock hall springsteen induction dylan 1988 -site:pinterest.com
The Boss and The Jester (if you believe some “American Pie” theories) at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction concert, 1988.

So about a million years ago, back in Episode 8 (“Like a Rolling Stone”), I spent a bunch of time during that show talking about the snare shot that opened the song, and how it was practically the Shot Heard Round The World and how it Changed Everything on the rock and roll landscape.

I still believe that, and that particular episode of the podcast remains one of my favorites (if you do nothing else, follow the link to the interactive video and have a blast).

But as it turns out, this past weekend I came across a quotation from Bruce Springsteen that underlines and validates everything I said, and maybe a little more poetically, because, you know, Bruce Springsteen can be a brilliant lyricist and I’m just some guy spouting off. Springsteen was the person who inducted Bob Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and this was part of his speech:

The first time that I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother, and we were listening to, I think, WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind, from “Like a Rolling Stone.” And my mother, who was no stiff with rock & roll, she said, “That guy can’t sing.” But I knew she was wrong. I sat there, I didn’t say nothin’, but I knew that I was listening to the toughest voice that I had ever heard. It was lean, and it sounded somehow simultaneously young and adult, and I ran out and I bought the single. I played it, then I went out and I got Highway 61, and it was all I played for weeks. Bob’s voice somehow thrilled and scared me. It made me feel kind of irresponsibly innocent. And it still does. But it reached down and touched what little worldliness a 15-year-old kid in New Jersey had in him at the time.

See? Bruce Springsteen agrees with me, so I can’t be wrong.

72–Total Eclipse of the Heart

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

In 1981 Bonnie Tyler had exactly one hit, 1977’s “It’s a Heartache”, so it was no mystery why people were calling her a one-hit wonder. Her record label cut her loose, so she found a new manager and talked Jim Steinman, the guy responsible for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, into partnering with her for a new album. Steinman wasn’t easily convinced, but ultimately he came to her with a couple of older songs that he thought she could record, and when she agreed to those, he came to her with a nearly complete package: here’s the song, here’s who else is going to be performing on it, you just need to come in and sing your little heart out.

That doesn’t match with the popular narrative, that “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was originally written for Meat Loaf as part of his follow-up album to Bat Out of Hell, but it turns out that the guy responsible for that popular narrative about Meat Loaf was…Meat Loaf. But the story caught on, because if you listen to “Eclipse,” you could easily imagine its huge levels of production as being Meat Loaf-esque. But “Eclipse” wasn’t written for him, nor was the other song (a hit for Air Supply) to which he laid the same claim.

As I noted during the show, the song’s video is about eleven different kinds of ridiculous, and I think New York magazine summed it up best. Click here to read the review (it’s a quick read).

And you know the rest of the bit. Either you have it or you don’t. If you don’t, here it is:

Be sure to share it with someone and/or leave a rating somewhere!

Episode 71–Whip It

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

I was about 15 when I saw Devo performing on Saturday Night Live that October night in 1978. They performed “Jocko Homo”, which gave newcomers (like me) a little bit of an introduction to themselves with that lyric “Are we not men?/We are Devo”.


A friend of mine had already turned me on to Gary Numan a few months earlier, and this felt like the logical next step. And as I sat there in the darkened room (’cause I wasn’t supposed to be up), bathing in the glow from the TV, I was struck in much the same way I was a couple of years later when the B-52s appeared on the same show. “This is SO WEIRD,” I said to myself. “And it’s SO COOL.”

Mark Mothersbaugh jumping back and forth between the microphone and the keyboards, and when the band took off the yellow jumpsuits, and Mothersbaugh had trouble removing his because even though the pants were breakaway, he couldn’t remove the sleeves for some reason, and the whole thing told me that stuff was changing. Music is changing. Maybe even culture is changing. And then they played their cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and at first I admit I was a little put off, but I relaxed into it and even by the time that was over I was all, “yeah, this is cool.” And then it turned out that Jagger really liked it too.

Here’s a link to that performance on Tumblr. Who knows how long it’ll last.

Good stuff. Good memories.

Oh, here’s the cover they did for the Gateway commercial. It’s so stupid that you have to love it. I think this is from 2002:

Your podcast software should already have this, but if you want to listen/download here, have at it:

And as usual, please share the show with someone and/or leave a rating somewhere. I really appreciate any and all feedback!

Episode 67–Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Click here for a transcript of this show.

Apologies for the delay; I’m powering through a wicked chest cold, and then my podcasting host was giving me the blues about the audio file, so I eventually had to upload in a different format. I do hope this doesn’t affect your listening experience. Please let me know if it does!

By request:

Tears For Fears–specifically founders Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal–had been kicking around the music scene in the UK for a couple of years, and even had a pretty popular album over there before most people in the United States had even heard of them. (Which reminds me: yes, the story I tell about meeting Curt Smith is true. What I didn’t know at the time was that he was doing Seeds of Love publicity stuff solo because he and Orzabal had temporarily broken up the band.)

Even when it came time for the band to release a single in the United States, the label interceded and suggested that while “Shout” was a perfectly good song, it wouldn’t make for a very good debut song. They turned out to be right, and “Shout” was saved for later on, a move that turned the Songs from the Big Chair album, and Tears for Fears, into a huge success.

There’s more to the story, of course, but why waste it here when you can put it in your head? Either your podcatcher has it, or you’re gonna listen to/download it from here:

No episode next week; I’m taking a planned break. In two weeks, we’ll dig on some early Linda Ronstadt.

And of course, comments, tweets, FB notes, Instas–whatever. I love hearing from you!