Tag Archives: boomers

Echoes of FM Radio in the Summer of Love

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Interesting exercise in nostalgia with irony:

KCUV-FM in Denver is celebrating the official kickoff of summer by recreating the sound of Denver’s FM radio from 1967, complete with news items, radio commercials from back then, and typical playlsists, all presented by the airstaff of progressive radio from the time, including guys like Bill Clarke (who’s on Channel 7 now but came to Denver in the ’60s as an early Top 40 and progrock radio jock), and Thom Trunnell (wow, that’s a name I hadn’t heard in 25 years, from KFML days).

It’s very strange hearing Clarke, who’s on now through 10 am, talking as if the news is happening now, and griping about the cold rainy weather for July 21, 1967 (it’s hot in reality today, and reporting about the Monterey Pop festival as if it just ended the previous week.

It’s going on all day. Kinda weird, but interesting. I’ll tune in all day just to hear strangeness they pull out of the hat.

http://kcuv.com

Tune in, turn on and drop out.

Welcome back, Prince

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I dunno about you, but I find it fascinating that Prince played the Super Bowl halftime show tonight. It’s good to see him again, and damn, he looks good and he’s hot, ripping up the guitar like a diminutive, modern-day Hendrix.

It’s sort of weird to see him playing music so centered around his “Purple Rain” period, but cool to see the marching band playing along, though I can’t really hear them at all.

Just in the past few years during the Super Bowl halftime show we’ve seen Janet Jackson (with her “costume malfunction”) along with Justin Timberlake, P. Diddy, Kid Rock and Nelly; the Rolling Stones ad last year, Paul McCartney.

But Prince? Continue reading →

Meet the Beatles again… sort of

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Although a small label had unsuccessfully released some singles in 1963, most American rock and roll fans were introduced to a new band from England via Capitol Records’ 1964 album, “Meet the Beatles.”

That album, and the subsequent visits by the mop-topped Liverpudlians to the U.S., sparked by appearances on TV including historic performances on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” re-set an entire generation’s emotional gyroscope. Beatlemania brought with it a different kind of music, pop that popped with surging harmonies and was driven by hard, clangy rhythms, shot through with the soul and R&B of rock’s roots but also energized with a new kind of electricity.

The Beatles were the prototype for power pop, a genre that generations of bands, fans and rock critics have been seduced by ever since “Meet the Beatles.”

The list of power-pop artists that have been critically heralded is long even though few have hit the charts and become rich and famous: the Byrds (as much power pop as folk-rock and later, country); Alex Chilton and Big Star, Marshall Crenshaw, Windbreakers, Bram Tchaikovsky, the Records, Flamin’ Groovies, Let’s Active, Bangles, Nick Lowe, Matthew Sweet, Rubinoos, the Shoes… the list goes on and on.

One power pop band that actually has hit songs to its credit, the Smithereens, has gone full circle with its latest recording, “Meet the Smithereens.” It’s a song-by-song replica of “Meet the Beatles,” only done as the Smithereens. Continue reading →

Long live the Godfather of Soul

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James Brown died on Christmas day, a typically dramatic move for the 73-year-old, self-described “Godfather of Soul,” who was known for dramatic endings in concert.

The news of his death caught me off guard, because I hadn’t heard much about the performer in years. Although Brown’s music career was in its sunset years, he was still touring and singing regularly. He was hospitalized with pneumonia just a couple days before, and died of heart failure not long after telling a friend he would perform in Times Square for New Year’s Eve.

The man earned another of his many nicknames, “The hardest working man in show business,” to the very end. Continue reading →

“Love” is one you need: The Beatles reconsidered in a mashup

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It took the urging of Cirque du Soleil, the acrobatic dance performance group, to bring the music of the Beatles – the most iconic of 1960s baby boomer musical catalogs — into the 21st century.

The bulk of the project is a mashup, the digital-era, technology-enabled ability of taking two different kinds of data and “mashing” them together to make something new. Mashups can be a newsworthy online database of crime statistics overlaid onto a Google map, for instance, or it can be cool cultural commentary, like overdubbing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” onto the Destiny’s Child hit, “Bootylicious” (they fit so perfectly, it’s spooky).

Or, mashups can be the melding of two generations of music, like producer Danger Mouse’s weaving of Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” with the Beatles’ own “White Album.”

This time, though, the work of reconstructing and reassembling the Beatles’ recordings was a sanctioned deal. Continue reading →