Wednesday, April 25, 2012


Van Morrison started out as the frontman for Them. Here's one of their better songs, made a hit on this side of the pond, not by Them, but by some American one-hit-wonder band


Steve Winwood was 17 or 18 when he recorded this one. He went on to bigger things with Traffic, Blind Faith, etc. One of the best singers of the era


This is a reunion performance from about seven years ago, but they sure do sound great. By the time this song became a hit in 1968--their biggest hit--the band had already broken up and gone home

Unlike many of the chart-topping bands of their era, the Turtles really could play, and Howard Kaylan was (in my opinion) one of the better singers around. The Turtles were irreverent from the very beginning--listen to Kaylan's over-the-top lyrics--and only became more so. You can see that in this cool live performance


OK, this is pretty silly, but the song really builds in power and has some great moments toward the end, thanks to lead singer Barbara Harris' spunk. And they sure are purdy

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, the words to the song "Lovers Concerto" may be silly, but the music is actually "Minute in G" written by Motzart....watch the movie Mr. Holland's Opus with Richard Dreyfuss. He explains to the kids that lots of Rock songs came from the classics. btw...a great movie to watch how a teacher gets thru (teaching) to kids.

Roy Bauer said...

6:05, I think you mean Bach, not Mozart. That they fused this fluffy girl group stuff onto some Bach is what I was calling silly, of course. (Not that I object to "girl group" music.) This is essentially a novelty tune. As for Mr. Holland's Opus, I gave up on Dreyfuss years before that movie came along. He's pretty shameless. The movie has a rather bad reputation at the college level, I'm afraid, as does Dead Poets Society--Hollywood's daft and cliche-ridden conception of higher education.

Roy Bauer said...

P.S.: when I played this tune on the piano as a kid, it was attributed to Bach. Evidently, the word nowadays is that it was actually composed by Christian Petzold.

Anonymous said...

Good lord, Roy, you've done it again--excavated some fantastic music that many of us (well, I) had lost track of. "Gloria" brings back sweet memories of high school--our local band played it at dances for the "slow" song, and we always swooned. Thank you for reminding me of the demigod Van Morrison--and the wonderful Steve Winwood. And: that Zombies reunion performance does sound *amazingly* good. There's nothing sexier than rockers, even in their '60's or beyond! Now I'm off to wallow in melancholy that I never did (yet!) fulfill my dream of singing in a rock-band.

MAH

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...