ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 51 of 91

U is for Unique: Sly & the Family Stone

(The second, and final, letter for which I couldn’t find a musical family group.)

Sylvester Stewart was a record producer and DJ in the San Francisco Bay Area; I have a very early Billy Preston produced by him. He changed his name to Sly Stone, and started a band, as did his brother Freddie. The groups merged in 1967 to become Sly & the Family Stone, with sister Vaetta as one of the background singers. The band was unique, in part, because it was racially mixed at a point when that just wasn’t done. Their songs, especially by their third album, Life, was infused with themes about unity and integration.

Sly’s music was so good that it would be sampled years later. At about 40 seconds into that great Fatboy Slim video featuring Christopher Walken, I hear echoes of Sly’s Into My Own Thing [LISTEN to both]. It was clear that the psychedelic soul of Motown, especially by the Temptations producer Norman Whitfield, came from the group’s sound, notably Larry Graham’s bass playing, and the shared lead vocals; George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic and many others would also be influenced.

Yet, except for the title song from the second album, Dance to the Music [LISTEN] (#8 US in 1968), the band was not having much commercial success, despite the addition of sister Rose on that second album.

Things changed with the fourth album, Stand!, which made my list of Top 25 favorite albums of the decade 1961-1970 [LISTEN TO ALL]:
I Want To Take You Higher, #60 US in 1969, #38 in 1970 when it was re-released after their legendary Woodstock appearance that I loved watching on the film
Sing A Simple Song, a B-side that got to #89 on the US charts on its own
Everyday People, #1 US for four weeks in 1969
You Can Make It If You Try
and the title track, #22 US in 1969

But the album I would have rather have put on the list, had it been permitted, was their greatest hits album, which featured these songs not found on other albums:
Hot Fun In The Summertime, #2 US in 1969 (“ooo, Lawd”)
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), #1 US in 1970 [this is a remake]
Everybody is a Star, its B-side

Unfortunately, members of the band, and especially Sly, got caught up in heavy drug use.

The last Sly album I bought, until considerably later, was the druggy There’s A Riot Going On, with two Top 40 singles in the US, Family Affair, #1 for three weeks in 1971, and Runnin’ Away, #23 US in 1972.

The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, with George Clinton as the presenter.

The Family Stone is still playing together in 2014, alas without Sly.

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

T is for Talking Heads

The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple months before the SPAC concert, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House.

One of the two greatest concerts I ever saw was the August 1983 performance of Talking Heads at the Saratoga Performance Arts Center, which someone put online; actually, here’s another recording. It starts with David Byrne by himself on guitar and percussion. He’s joined by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, who were married in 1977, on drums and bass, respectively, for a song or two, before Jerry Harrison joins on guitar. That was the core band, but then the additional players are added in; the process was so organic.

This is the same tour from which the classic Jonathan Demme film Stop Making Sense was taken, but this is the complete concert, not just a truncated show.

The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple of months earlier, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House. LISTEN to the whole album. I always associated that album, along with a few others of that period, as forerunners of the compact disc, for the versions of several songs on the CD, which I got a number of years later, were longer than the versions on the LP, which I had purchased soon after it came out.

The new wave band Tom Tom Club was founded in 1981 by Frantz and Weymouth as a side project. Their big hit Genius of Love [LISTEN], which is in the Talking Heads concert, has been sampled by several artists , including Mariah Carey on her hit single Fantasy.

LISTEN to Psycho Killer from Talking Heads ’77, and the parody Psycho Chicken by The Fools.

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

S is for the Staple Singers

This century, Mavis Staples, who was the primary voice on so many of the Staple Singers’ songs, has been putting out several well-received albums.

A major competitor of Motown serving up black music in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s was STAX Records, which I wrote about extensively HERE.

One of the great groups on the label was The Staple Singers, “an American gospel, soul, and R&B singing group. Roebuck “Pops” Staples (1914–2000), the patriarch of the family, formed the group with his children Cleotha (1934–2013), Pervis (b. 1935), Yvonne (b. 1936), and Mavis (b. 1939)… While the family surname is ‘Staples’, the group used the singular form for its name, ‘The Staple Singers’.”

They had appeared on other labels before joining STAX, releasing songs such as For What It’s Worth [LISTEN], a cover of the Buffalo Springfield hit, that went to #66 in 1967 on Epic Records.

LISTEN to:
When Will We Be Paid (1970 – a description of the song HERE)
Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom) (#27 in 1971)
Respect Yourself (#12 in 1971) – my favorite song of theirs
I’ll Take You There (#1 in 1972) – my second favorite
If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me) (#9 in 1973)
Let’s Do It Again (#1 in 1975) – their big hit on Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom label, after STAX’s demise
The Weight, with The Band, from the 1976 movie The Last Waltz

They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.

This century, Mavis Staples, who was the primary voice on so many of the group’s songs, has been putting out several well-received albums. The first one I picked up was 2007’s We’ll Never Turn Back. “Produced by roots rock and blues musician Ry Cooder, it is a concept album with lyrical themes relating to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Upon its release, We’ll Never Turn Back received positive reviews from most music critics. It was also named one of the best albums of 2007 by several music writers and publications.”

LISTEN to:
99 and 1/2
I’ll Be Rested

“During a December 20, 2008 appearance on National Public Radio’s news show ‘Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me,’ when Staples was asked about her past personal relationship with [Bob] Dylan, she admitted they ‘were good friends, yes indeed’ and that he had asked her father for her hand in marriage.” She ultimately said no, because the interracial relationship would have been too difficult back in that period.

Finally, LISTEN to a live version of Wrote a song for everyone, a tune from her 2010 album You Are Not Alone. That album was produced by Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco.

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

R is for the Roches

“Lucy Wainwright Roche is the daughter of singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright III… and Suzzy Roche, who, along with her sisters (Lucy’s aunts) Maggie and Terre Roche, make up the female vocal group The Roches.”

The Roches are Maggie and Terre and Suzzy, sisters self-introduced cheekily in We [LISTEN to a live version], the first song of their eponymous first album (1979). “We don’t give out our ages and we don’t give out our phone numbers… sometimes our voices give out, but not our ages and our phone numbers.”

As the song progresses: “Guess which two of us made a record” – that would be Maggie and Terre, Seductive Reasoning (1975), after they sang backup on the Paul Simon song Was A Sunny Day [LISTEN]. “Guess what the other one did instead” – Suzzy went to college in upstate New York. “And now a trio we are, born on the fourth of December.” LISTEN to Hammond Song and Mister Sellack.

No sophomore jinx with Nurds. LISTEN to the title track and This Feminine Position and My Sick Mind.

The third album, Keep On Doing, my favorite, starts with one of their few songs not written by the sisters; LISTEN to The Hallelujah Chorus, then to their Losing True. Then READ why the final song Keep On Doing What You Do/Jerks On The Loose has become my more-than-occasional mantra.

The sisters have done several more albums, four of which I own, including some solo work, and some as duets. Wanted to note this interlocking family connection:

Lucy Wainwright Roche is the daughter of singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright III… and Suzzy Roche, who, along with her sisters (Lucy’s aunts) Maggie and Terre Roche, make up the female vocal group The Roches… Lucy is also the half-sister of singer-songwriters Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright (whose late mother Kate was half of the Canadian folk duo Kate and Anna McGarrigle). She has toured with Rufus throughout the years. Through her father, she is a niece of Sloan Wainwright.

I saw the Roches many years ago in the Albany area – couldn’t tell you where or when (probably in the 1980s) – but they were great. More music if you have QuickTime HERE.

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

Q is for Quirky: ABBA

The New Yorker’s 2014 article The Anatomy of an Earworm used Waterloo by ABBA as its example.

(I told you early on there were two letters for which I could not find a family band; this was one.)

When I first started blogging, I came across a blogger named Greg Burgas, who used to say, quite often, “ABBA rules!” That, he opined, was The Name of the Game [LISTEN] (#12 in 1978).

You mean that Swedish quartet comprised of that married couple Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus, and that other married couple, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, whose first initials spelled out their name? Yeah, that one.

He’d probably proclaimed, Knowing Me, Knowing You [LISTEN] (#14 in 1977), you ought to agree.

I used to refer to them as a “guilty pleasure,” though I admitted to liking Dancing Queen [LISTEN] (#1 in 1977). But as I think about a group that was one of the most successful of all time, all across the globe, which generated countless tribute bands – here’s one which came to my city recently – and after their 1982 breakup, and their marital breakups just before that, became MORE famous, then I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do [LISTEN] have to think that Mr. Burgas was totally right (#15 in 1976), though less successful in the US than elsewhere.

Though they faded from view somewhat for a time – SOS [LISTEN] (#15 in 1975):

In 1999, ABBA’s music was adapted into the successful musical Mamma Mia! that toured worldwide. A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year.

I suppose we ought to listen to Mamma Mia [LISTEN] (#32 in 1976). Hey, are the songs from Mamma Mia! considered show tunes?

“The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 15 March 2010.” The Winner Takes All [LISTEN] (#8 in 1981).

The group was in the news this year when it was revealed that they wore those garish clothes for tax purposes: “The band, whose spangly flares, catsuits and platform heels were considered naff even in the 1970s, exploited a Swedish law which meant clothes were tax deductible if their owners could prove they were not used for daily wear.” Ah, time for Money, Money, Money [LISTEN] (#56 in 1977).

2014 marks the 40th anniversary of their first hit “Waterloo.”
Agnetha hinted last November that ABBA could re-form.

She told German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag that she, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson are considering reforming in 2014… “Of course it’s something we’re thinking about,” she said. “There seem to be plans to do something to mark this anniversary in some way. I can’t say at this point what will come of them.” Agnetha is generally seen as the shy one who doesn’t want to perform anymore but in May 2013, she released a brand new album and has since been out there promoting it. But will the other three want to come out and play?

(Wish I had heard Wilco perform Waterloo last year.)

The New Yorker had an article this year, The Anatomy of an Earworm, you know, a song that gets stuck in your head. Guess what song is used as an example? The same song for which ABBA was “honored at the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005 when their hit ‘Waterloo’ was chosen as the best song in the competition’s history.”

I better end with Fernando [LISTEN], (#13 in 1976).

OK, OK, here’s the song that started it all, Waterloo [LISTEN] (#6 in 1974).

ABC Wednesday – Round 14