The Somewhat Delayed Song Thread

[Lat-Literal]

Observer had a list of winter songs last Sunday. As I glance out of the window Mamas and Papas are quite apposite. "All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey". 50 years since it appeared - just doing my O Levels. Great song which I'd not heard for a while. There's a nice mellow-sounding flute bit in the middle and some intriguing lines eg "If I didn't tell her, I could leave today ..." Still not sure what that means exactly.

Wonderful - and I like Mama Cass's solo records even more - the purest pop voice of all time.

Aztec Camera - Walk Out To Winter - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTlDEhPbOkY

....written by Roddy Frame at around age 16-17; recorded at just 18 as was all of that album.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/high-l...n-mw0000312171

"Snowblind......this is life, this is life"......you couldn't ask for anything more, could you really!

And it also has to be the heroic Alan Hull doing one of his plaintive things - Happy Christmas:

Lindisfarne - Winter Song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg_dsk7u26A

Oh..........and Annie Haslam who is one of the most underrated female vocalists of all time:

Renaissance - Winter Tree - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGn4jXtJP6k

[johncorrigan]

Observer had a list of winter songs last Sunday. As I glance out of the window Mamas and Papas are quite apposite. "All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey". 50 years since it appeared - just doing my O Levels. Great song which I'd not heard for a while. There's a nice mellow-sounding flute bit in the middle and some intriguing lines eg "If I didn't tell her, I could leave today ..." Still not sure what that means exactly.

I thought 'Famous Blue Raincoat' was a great call in the Observer list, gurney. If I had to go for one I'd plump for Loudon's 'Winter Song' from his 2nd LP - a real school song. Always comes to my mind around this time of year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsZVUHcHiLI

[Lat-Literal]

I thought 'Famous Blue Raincoat' was a great call in the Observer list, gurney. If I had to go for one I'd plump for Loudon's 'Winter Song' from his 2nd LP - a real school song. Always comes to my mind around this time of year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsZVUHcHiLI

Yes, I like it, JC.

Being currently in the eighties, I have had to rein myself in ahead of this point. These aren't the easiest to "sell" to the unsuspecting. Prefab Sprout. Yes. Long before the man who was County Durham's McCartney was struck down by an illness that made him partially deaf and blind, he was very underrated. Because it wasn't just that he was a McCartney. It was the indie. It was the Disney. The mixture of the parochial, the expansive and the smooth. It was the idiosyncratic lyric. The idiosyncratic chord. The spot on "but does that quite work?" wobbliness in the perfection. And there is just something in his voice, the harmonies, the arrangements - occasionally courtesy of Thomas Dolby - that says "we're here":

Prefab Sprout Part 1

Cruel/Swoon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_GU1rwkYQ
Johnny Johnny - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmiKqRlfX00
Hey Manhattan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDDJPbWq22E
Jewel Thief - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WnATZLcXuA

Produced in his illness, on "listening" to the radio.

It's a collage of sound snippets put together lyrically:

Paddy McAloon - I Trawl The Megahertz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_uV_vypH0o

Interviews - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTx8yoZM7SA

[gurnemanz]

I thought 'Famous Blue Raincoat' was a great call in the Observer list, gurney. If I had to go for one I'd plump for Loudon's 'Winter Song' from his 2nd LP - a real school song. Always comes to my mind around this time of year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsZVUHcHiLI

Thanks fore Loudon link and was glad to get to know the song.

It was good to be reminded by that list of Joni's Urge for Going from 1967. It is a track that might get overlooked, since, as Wiki points out: "Mitchell's own version wasn't released until 1972, as the b-side of the "You Turn Me on I'm a Radio" single." It is on her "Hits" album which, as a bit of a Joni completist, I do have but rarely play because all the other tracks on it are much better known and to be found on their original albums.

[Lat-Literal]

Visuals Enhancing 128% Sound..............

Nina Simone

To Be Young Gifted and Black - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hdVFiANBTk
Ain't Got No......I Got Life - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5jI9I03q8E
Black Is The Colour - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWmCbEbMmeU
The Rescuing of "Feelings" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmO_0tIGo-4

.........When They Are Defined As Character!

Genius!

[teamsaint]

interesting structure to this song.

a major key bridge used twice, in a minor key song.

further reading here !!

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/twst.shtml

[cloughie]

Observer had a list of winter songs last Sunday. As I glance out of the window Mamas and Papas are quite apposite. "All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey". 50 years since it appeared - just doing my O Levels. Great song which I'd not heard for a while. There's a nice mellow-sounding flute bit in the middle and some intriguing lines eg "If I didn't tell her, I could leave today ..." Still not sure what that means exactly.

Ms&Ps were superb - arrangements great, harmonies great, well recorded and the 'covered ' songs were always significantly different from the originals. Class's solo stuff great - a favourite of mine is 'it 's getting better'.
ts, 'Things we said today' one of many great tracks on the HDN album - harmonies good throughout.

[teamsaint]

Ms&Ps were superb - arrangements great, harmonies great, well recorded and the 'covered ' songs were always significantly different from the originals. Class's solo stuff great - a favourite of mine is 'it 's getting better'.
ts, 'Things we said today' one of many great tracks on the HDN album - harmonies good throughout.

The song writing on HDN is full of interesting little devices , very highly skilled. ( EG that long held vocal note at the beginning of " I should have known Better").

HDN was probably my introduction to any pop music, when my older cousin handed down an EP of "A Hard Days Night, I should have known Better, And I lover her, and Tell me why".

must have played that hundreds of times !!

[Lat-Literal]

The song writing on HDN is full of interesting little devices , very highly skilled. ( EG that long held vocal note at the beginning of " I should have known Better").

HDN was probably my introduction to any pop music, when my older cousin handed down an EP of "A Hard Days Night, I should have known Better, And I lover her, and Tell me why".

must have played that hundreds of times !!

How strange the change(s) from major to minor. Great stuff from the best - and most influential - pop group of all time. What I would really like to see next from ITV is a viewers' favourite 50 by the Beatles when they were no longer the Beatles. Sadly, it won't happen. Notwithstanding the rather clumsy but very successful "Ebony and Ivory", the "Tug of War" album was solid and not only commercially. Melodic, a very eighties production but being in the first half of that decade quite warm, and the title track possibly had a bearing on "A Rush and a Pull" by the Smiths. But the song "Tug of War" has a classical style pastoral ending. The Smiths' song is what? Russian or Greek? I guess Russian given its title.

Paul McCartney - Tug of War (1982) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIfPIfuTFXA
The Smiths - Rush and a Pull (1987) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ItKU8wFBRo

[gurnemanz]

Ms&Ps were superb - arrangements great, harmonies great, well recorded and the 'covered ' songs were always significantly different from the originals. Class's solo stuff great - a favourite of mine is 'it 's getting better'.
ts, 'Things we said today' one of many great tracks on the HDN album - harmonies good throughout.

Just listened to it again and took my Wilfrid Mellers off the shelf. He devotes a full page to Thing We Said Today" and when he starts off: "A fierce drumbeat introduces the opening strain which is unambiguously pentatonic, undulating around a nodal G with never a hint of a sharp seventh. The rhythm is grave, the percussion almost minatory, the vocal tessitura restricted, while the harmony oscillates between triads of G minor and D minor", you know you're in for an interesting ride. He goes on: "The second strain hints at the possibility of loss, with a weeping chromatic descent in triplet rhythm, and with rapid but dreamy tonal movement flowing from B flat by way of a rich dominant ninth to E flat: the subdominant triad of which then serves as a kind of Neapolitan cadence drooping back (without the linking dominant) to the grave pentatonic G minor" ... and so on. Good ol' Wilf.

[johncorrigan]

Just listened to it again and took my Wilfrid Mellers off the shelf. He devotes a full page to Thing We Said Today" and when he starts off: "A fierce drumbeat introduces the opening strain which is unambiguously pentatonic, undulating around a nodal G with never a hint of a sharp seventh. The rhythm is grave, the percussion almost minatory, the vocal tessitura restricted, while the harmony oscillates between triads of G minor and D minor", you know you're in for an interesting ride. He goes on: "The second strain hints at the possibility of loss, with a weeping chromatic descent in triplet rhythm, and with rapid but dreamy tonal movement flowing from B flat by way of a rich dominant ninth to E flat: the subdominant triad of which then serves as a kind of Neapolitan cadence drooping back (without the linking dominant) to the grave pentatonic G minor" ... and so on. Good ol' Wilf.

Wow! Who'd've thought it, gurney? I have no idea what it means but I love it!

[cloughie]

Just listened to it again and took my Wilfrid Mellers off the shelf. He devotes a full page to Thing We Said Today" and when he starts off: "A fierce drumbeat introduces the opening strain which is unambiguously pentatonic, undulating around a nodal G with never a hint of a sharp seventh. The rhythm is grave, the percussion almost minatory, the vocal tessitura restricted, while the harmony oscillates between triads of G minor and D minor", you know you're in for an interesting ride. He goes on: "The second strain hints at the possibility of loss, with a weeping chromatic descent in triplet rhythm, and with rapid but dreamy tonal movement flowing from B flat by way of a rich dominant ninth to E flat: the subdominant triad of which then serves as a kind of Neapolitan cadence drooping back (without the linking dominant) to the grave pentatonic G minor" ... and so on. Good ol' Wilf.

I suspect a large input of tweeking suggestions by George Martin on the album.

[cloughie]

How strange the change(s) from major to minor. Great stuff from the best - and most influential - pop group of all time. What I would really like to see next from ITV is a viewers' favourite 50 by the Beatles when they were no longer the Beatles. Sadly, it won't happen. Notwithstanding the rather clumsy but very successful "Ebony and Ivory", the "Tug of War" album was solid and not only commercially. Melodic, a very eighties production but being in the first half of that decade quite warm, and the title track possibly had a bearing on "A Rush and a Pull" by the Smiths. But the song "Tug of War" has a classical style pastoral ending. The Smiths' song is what? Russian or Greek? I guess Russian given its title.

Paul McCartney - Tug of War (1982) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIfPIfuTFXA
The Smiths - Rush and a Pull (1987) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ItKU8wFBRo

Careful Lat - any praise for Macca will have GG on your back!

[Lat-Literal]

Careful Lat - any praise for Macca will have GG on your back!

Given that World on 3 is doing Norwegian indie miserabilism and Japanese rock bands tonight, here is Part 2 of the Prefab Sprout as "warned".

2-4 are their impressively odd "symphonic", their unusual show tune and their "Disney-esque", but first their very bizarre Irish jazz-electronica:

Technique - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGjKnOvIPHw
Jesse James - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqSSNi8ta28
Horsin' Around - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4-QVfL0J5c
Nightingales - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3LwY4TQRLk

[Beef Oven!]

Yes, I like it, JC.

Being currently in the eighties, I have had to rein myself in ahead of this point. These aren't the easiest to "sell" to the unsuspecting. Prefab Sprout. Yes. Long before the man who was County Durham's McCartney was struck down by an illness that made him partially deaf and blind, he was very underrated. Because it wasn't just that he was a McCartney. It was the indie. It was the Disney. The mixture of the parochial, the expansive and the smooth. It was the idiosyncratic lyric. The idiosyncratic chord. The spot on "but does that quite work?" wobbliness in the perfection. And there is just something in his voice, the harmonies, the arrangements - occasionally courtesy of Thomas Dolby - that says "we're here":

Prefab Sprout Part 1

Cruel/Swoon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_GU1rwkYQ
Johnny Johnny - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmiKqRlfX00
Hey Manhattan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDDJPbWq22E
Jewel Thief - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WnATZLcXuA

Produced in his illness, on "listening" to the radio.

It's a collage of sound snippets put together lyrically:

Paddy McAloon - I Trawl The Megahertz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_uV_vypH0o

Interviews - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTx8yoZM7SA

Just picked up on your two Prefab Sprout posts

I saw them twice and replaced all my vinyl albums with CDs (I think I've got all their albums, except the last one).

Haven't listened to them properly in over a decade.

Favourites were always:

Steve McQueen
Protest Songs
From Langley Park to Memphis

As with your 'Waterboys' post, I'm taken back to the eighties and I'm caught by surprise by the strong emotions and memories this music brings back (even stuff that I couldn't stick at the time, but heard often none the less (Lotus Eaters, 'First Picture Of You', Flock of Seagulls 'Wishing' etc)).

I suppose it's got something to do with the fact that during the 1980s I went from a 20 year old to a 30 year old, a pretty definitive period in anyone's life, and the music will stick, emotionally.

I'll never forget the feelings of driving back from a Smiths gig at the Brixton Academy in 1985 with my then girlfriend listening to this (the irony of it!).