When i was youngster, Top of the pops would use Led Zeppelins 'Whole Lotta Love' as the background music for the chart countdown.
Over and over again that heavy guitar riff while Dave Lee Travis made his way through the Top 40 and pausing occasionally to introduce people like Joe Dolce and his appalling 'Shaddup your face'.
It wasn't until years later that i found out that the Top of the Pops music was actually a full Led Zeppelin song and when i finally got to hear it, what a disappointment. The five seconds of repeated riff was it with Robert Plant shouting 'I'm gonna give you my love' over and over. Love the use of Hedgerow in the Stairway to Heaven song though, so English.
It was the same thing with the Doors. There three classics songs 'Light my fire', 'The End' and 'Riders on the Storm' all sound amazing in short 30 second snippets but all royally suck when heard all the way through.
True 'Light my Fire' does have that great twiddly organ intro but after that initial 10 seconds, it's pretty bland although 'The End' by comparison makes it sound like it's on speed. It would need to improve significantly just to have the label boring and dull attached to it.
'Riders on the Storm' promises much with a name like that but limps along to yet another overblown organ solo and then just seems to give up, probably through boredom.
Maybe it is not so much the Doors songs, as insipid as they are, as the sound of the organ which as a musical instrument i hold in the same low esteem as the evil Hawaiian guitar.
As i am ranting about bands and songs that i bizarrely feel disappointed in, I never really got the attraction of reggae. Just the same tune with different lyrics isn't it? I know it is the style but most of the songs are the same pace, if it wasn't for the bits where the songs fade out at the end to warn the listener, you could mistake any UB40 album for one long song.
In short, for any budding musicians, less organ solos, Hawaiian guitars and reggae and more use of the word Hedgerow in song lyrics please.
4 comments:
what?
q
Did Top of the Pops, Dave Lee Travis, Joe Dolce, hedgerows & UB40 not make it to the USA?
not familiar with any of them...
q
I've got a feeling we'd argue over the stereo if you ever came to a party round my house!... :)
I can't stand G'n'R-style 'hair metal' but I love some (admittedly not all) Led Zep & Doors songs... though the ones that I like are not necessarily the ones that you hear all the time e.g. If I never hear 'Stairway' or 'Light My Fire' again, then I could die a contented man.
On the other hand, When the Levee Breaks, Achilles Last Stand, Since I've Been Loving You, Kashmir, Dazed & Confused, No Quarter, Custard Pie, Heartbreaker (Led Zep) and Break On Through, The Changeling, LA Woman, The Crystal Ship, Alabama Song, Peace Frog, People Are Strange, and (yep) The End (The Doors), I think, are some of the greatest tracks in rock music.
As for reggae, I'd say that real fans of this genre hate UB40 more than you do! :)
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