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Re: [ARSCLIST] A Holiday vision
Thank you for proving my point.
A few names for you.
Buddy Holly
Three words "True Love Ways"
Sam Cooke
Any man that could give us both "Twistin' The Night Away",and "A Change Is Gonna Come"is one helluva songwriter.
Curtis Mayfield
Smokey Robinson
Doc Pomus
Carole King and Jerry Goffin
Holland-Dozier-Holland
Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
The Beatles
The Kinks
The Hollies
Brian Wilson
Paul Simon
Pete Townshend
Badfinger
The Raspberries
Harry Nilsson
Paul Weller
The Stranglers
(Pull up "Golden Brown" on YouTube sometime.)
REM
XTC (Andy Partridge and Colin Moluding)
Blur
Need more ?
Even The Grateful Dead.the ultimate "jam band" wrote some damn fine country songs,that the ultimate musical anti-hippie Merle Haggard thought good enough to cover in later years.
I do agree with you about rap,though.I think it helped kill black music.That said, I do admire what certain pioneers of the genre did,to create something entirely different.
Roger
"Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
At the previous turn of a century, a popular song had a specific and
identifiable melody...a tune, if you were...which allowed a hearer to
recognize and identify the song being performed (and also allows TV
shows like "Name That Tune" to exist...!) This pattern continued more
or less unabated, at least until the mid-fifties emergence of
"rock'n'roll" (which usually had identifiable, albeit similar,
melody lines for its tunes). However, from that point onward a
song began to serve more for dancing than mere listening; as well,
the number of available chord/tune sequences seemed to gradually
decline. This was NOT, of course, the END of tunes/melodies...in
fact, I use the tune of "Rockin' Robin" to good effect as a
harmonica interlude in a boogie-based "jam song"...!
However, this past decade brought the popularity of "rap" and
"hip-hop" to the fore; this, rather than specific melodies, uses/d
spoken "lyrics" as the main feature of a recorded song, not a
specific set of notes as a song's "tune" or "melody!" The emphasis
here is on a rhythm...in fact, one that wasn't even new, having
been first used by Chicago blues/R&B artists in the late fifties
and then brought to effective perfection by James Brown (and a
very few others) in the early sixties. The songs of that era DID
have specific "tunes" (as well, a lot of older songs were remade
in a "soul music" style...!).
However, modern pop music no longer seems to have the same specific
tunes/melody lines...! The question here is: "Could you whistle the
"tune" from a current hit record, and have listeners identify it...?!"
Since the rhythm is effectively a "given," this means that only the
spoken "lyrics" differentiate present-day songs...and I leave it to
this august (adjective, NOT month...?!) assemblage whether that
can be construed as an advance...?!
Steven C. Barr
(As well, as the CMFIC of a blues band, there are a handful of
older jazz tunes...dixieland "standards," in most cases...I'd love
to cover...but I rather expect that my sidemen would reply with an
incredulous "You want us to play a WOT chord? Ain't no sech thing...!")
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