danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Though its sonic palette doesn’t strike me as particularly æstival, The Hollies’ “Bus Stop” is, in fact, a summer song, and one I have loved for as long as I can remember.  If music is, as I believe, about conflict and resolution, then two things make the song special: first, the Picardy third coming out of the instrumental break; and, second, the vocal harmonies in the section that follows:

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And we can be glad to learn that, somewhat atypically, the speaker’s love lasts even when summer doesn’t.

Filed under: Musings, Popular Music on August 9th, 2010 | No Comments »

When I was a kid we had something called MTV.  It was great – like our favorite radio station, but with pictures.  Every big hit song was likely to have a corresponding music video, and these videos became popular in their own right.  “Take on Me”, “Sledgehammer”, and “Money for Nothing” were good songs on the radio, but their videos were amazing, and people really paid attention to them.  I recall that a “world premiere” video was a big deal, and kids would wait around all afternoon to see it.  Many of these videos still stick in my mind, even after most people forgot the songs they went to.  Do you remember “Yankee Rose”?

MTV connected with kids because it was on when kids wanted it.  Every afternoon after school, on weekends, all summer, MTV was there with videos, and almost everyone I know watched it every day.

MTV doesn’t exist anymore.  Sure, I understand that there is a channel called “MTV”, but it isn’t “Music Television”.  There may even be “MTV2″ or “MTV [Whatever]“, but videos don’t seem to matter to anybody anymore – at least not like they used to.  MTV cannot be blamed for that, I suppose, since cable television in those days consisted of maybe thirty channels, and, as the only station of its kind, it had a captive audience it cannot take for granted today.

Still, if you were a kid in the 1980s, and you had MTV, you almost certainly remember the video for The Cars’ “Magic”.  This is the MTV I miss.

Filed under: Musings, Nostalgia, Popular Music on July 21st, 2010 | No Comments »

Few songs are more evocative than “4th of July, Asubry Park” (“Wild Billy’s Circus Story” is one).  Every single line is a picture of one magic night in “Little Eden”, an amusement park along the New Jersey boardwalk.  Nothing is working out for our hero, who is unlucky in love and life, and cannot even ride the Tilt-a-Whirl without incident.  Still, “the aurora is rising” above him.

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Filed under: Popular Music on July 4th, 2010 | No Comments »

In the spring of 1971, an English band was on the cusp of stardom.  Their first album, recorded the previous summer, had sold poorly, in spite of the group’s frequent concert appearances.  But their follow-up single, “Bye and Bye”, was receiving generous airplay on BBC 1 and Radio Luxembourg, and everyone was talking about them.

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Unfortunately, a production problem limited the initial pressing to a couple thousand copies.  A near simultaneous postal strike combined to make the record virtually unavailable.  They continued to play shows, and recorded a second LP, but their window had closed, and by the end of the summer of 1972 they were finished.

The band’s name was Heron, and I had not heard of them until last November when my friend Steve, who seems to know exactly what I like in pop music, brought to my attention a song called “Big A”:

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That song is everything I like and nothing I don’t.   Other samples I heard were quite different, but similarly good.  So, after an inexcusable delay, I finally bought a two-CD anthology set called Upon Reflection: the Dawn Anthology, which includes all Heron’s surviving recordings for that label.  It is full of treasures.

In addition to the contents of their first maxi-single, disc one includes their self-titled debut album.  Heron is a folky record, with acoustic arrangements and few drums.  The gimmick was that it was recorded live in an open field.  Indeed, chirping birds and nature sounds are evident.  But the genuine attraction is the good songs.  “Yellow Roses” is a favorite (in spite of a far-too-prominent acoustic guitar).  I particularly like the way the last line of each verse is sung in unison.

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“Smiling Ladies” has a brilliantly subtle lyric.  Listen to the ABCA rhyme scheme in this verse:

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The second disc of Upon Reflection contains Heron’s complete twenty-one-song second album.  It is more folk-rock than folk (to wit: “Big A”), and several of the songs are overtly pop in construction if not arrangement.  Take “Your Love and Mine”, for example:

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With a different arrangement, that song could have been a Motown hit.  And that brings me to this album’s biggest surprise – a cover of a song I have always recognized as a finely-wrought tune, but which is best known in a performance that undermines the genuine tragedy and pathos in its lyrics.  Heron correctly judge the song’s true character:

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“The Devil” would be the perfect musical reply to Michael Nesmith’s “Different Drum”:

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Upon Reflection is, as I say, full of wonderful songs (“Car Crash”, “Take Me Back Home”, and “Minstrel and a King” are favorites), and it leaves one wondering why Heron didn’t make it.  There are several answers, and bad luck is only one of them.

First, to put it nicely, precision of ensemble was not Heron’s strong suit.  Their performance style is certainly casual, and sometimes sloppy.  In vocal lines with two singers, one will invariably be slightly out-of-sync with the rhythm of the other.  In a band with several singers, none had an especially fine voice.

Several of Heron’s most readily suitable hit songs are sadly tardy.  “My Turn to Cry”, for instance, would have been a hit for any band in 1965, but in 1972 it was too late:

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Finally, Heron simply didn’t recognize and promote their strongest, most commercial material.  Hindsight is a luxury, and the band no doubt had its own aesthetic agenda at the time, but how could they suppress “Some Kinda Big Thing”?

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And how could any band not know that “If It’s Love” was a smash hit?

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Motown would have sold a million records with that song.  Even Pilot or Queen would have taken that record to the top.  No other band would have let it go.  It’s almost impossible to believe, but “Some Kinda Big Thing” and “If It’s Love” were not released until Upon Reflection appeared in 2006.

So, sadly, Heron missed their chance, but I am happy I didn’t miss out on hearing them.

Heron: Upon Reflection: The Dawn Anthology – Castle Music 1432

Filed under: Popular Music on June 30th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

In 1997 I moved into a two bedroom apartment in southeast Gainesville with my friend Steve.  It was a decent place, and while it certainly wasn’t the happiest time of my life–I spent the first couple months unemployed, and the next six months too poor to afford meat–I wasn’t alone in my suffering.  My friend Jeff, looking to improve his life a bit, moved to Gainesville about six months after me, and while he was looking for work and a place to live he stayed with Steve and me.

One day in early summer 1998, Jeff came home from being out all day and told us about a song he had heard that day.  “I always immediately turn off a song when I hear ridiculous harmony guitars, but today I decided to listen”.  “What was it”, Steve asked.  “The Boys Are Back in Town”.

“The Boys Are Back in Town” is, strictly speaking, a spring song, since the speaker declares that “it won’t be long till summer comes, now that the boys are here again”.  But whenever I hear it now, because of Jeff, I think back on that early summer of 1998, and the ridiculous harmony guitars make me smile.

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Filed under: Dana Heritage Project, Musings, Popular Music on June 28th, 2010 | No Comments »