My hmphs

I learned from the Mental Floss blog that today is the 17th anniversary of the death of Freddie Mercury, Queen’s lead singer. Queen now limps on with a new lead singer, another example of a band that can’t go on without its heart, soul and voice.

If you haven’t had a chance lately, check out their greatest hits. All three of them. Just look at the titles. He wrote many of the group’s signature songs, including “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Killer Queen” and “Somebody To Love.” And his voice - his range spanned almost four octaves careened between a growl and an operatic tenor.

So many of their hits have become rock icons, some even caricatures of themselves (”We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Champions,” “Another One Bites the Dust”). One was hijacked by a bad white rapper; it took me several years before I could listen to “Under Pressure” without hearing Vanilla Ice’s inane rapping.

In observance of his passing, I’d like for you to listen to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and don’t think of “Wayne’s World.” In fact, try not to think of the 1,782 times you’ve heard it before. Listen to the harmonies, the intricate, sometimes elaborate production, the Jekyll-and-Hyde movements, and mostly, Freddie Mercury’s voice. And think about this:

• The song was mostly in Freddie’s mind, with parts and harmonies scribbled on telephone books and bits of paper. According to some band members, Mercury just worked out the song in his head and directed the band through the song. 
• Members of the group sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. The operatic parts took over 70 hours to complete.
• Since the studios at that time only used 24-track tape, the group had to overdub themselves many times and bounce these down to successive submixes. The tapes passed over the recording heads so many times that the oxide layer was beginning to wear off, causing the normally opaque tapes to become transparent.

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In his song “You Never Even Call Me By My Name,” David Allan Coe sings about how his friend claimed to have written the perfect countery western song. Coe disagreed, saying that his friend hadn’t mentioned “mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin’ drunk.” His friend wrote another verse mentioning all these things, and Coe then agrees that it was the perfect country-western song.

I think that’s exactly what Adam Schlesinger did when he wrote “That Thing You Do!”. He seems to have used every trick in the book to create the perfect pop song. Granted, that’s what he was supposed to do: write a song that a fictional one-hit wonder (like “The Wonders”) would sing in Tom Hanks’ movie “That Thing You Do!” And I mentioned this song’s perfection a few months ago when counting down the Top 10 Perfect Pop Songs.

But after listening to this gem the other night on my way home from a meeting, I was amazed by the number of overt references to Beatles/British invasion groups Schlesinger used. It’s a veritable recipe for a pop song, with every ingredient included:

• The voice. Mike Viola’s voice is similar to John Lennon’s: it’s raspy, but it breaks in just the right places so that girls swoon, like when Viola says “heart” and “heartache.”
• Hand claps. From “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to the Bay City Rollers’ “Saturday Night” and the Go-Go’s “Head Over Heels,” hand claps in a song just entice you to clap along. It’s such an essential, Tom Hanks wrote the recording of the hand claps into the movie.
• Major to minor chords. At the risk of going into music theory geekdom, a lot of 50s pop songs and Beatles songs made use of the major-to-minor chord progression - especially the I - iv progression (Jellyfish’s “The King is Half Undressed”). “That Thing You Do” is full of them. The opening guitar riff at :09 is a good example, and it’s repeated throughout the song.
• Three-part harmony. This song has beautiful harmonies, but it goes one step further, adding the ooh’s and aah’s so prevalent in 50s and 60s music. It also features the echo technique in which the backup singers repeat what the lead singer is singing.
• Corny lyrics. “I know all the games you play / And I’m gonna find a way to let you know that / You’ll be mine someday.” Pure bubblegum. 
• Bridge. A bridge is a part of the song - usually about 2/3 through the song - that sounds different from the regular verse or chorus (It appears at 1:35 of this song). Good pop songs follow the verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - verse - chorus. That’s pretty much the form this song takes.
• The scream. At the end of the bridge, the lead singer screams - just like in “Twist and Shout.”
• Guitar solo. We’re not talking Van Halen guitar solo - It’s more of an instrumental mimicking the verse. Think “I Should Have Known Better” from the Beatles.
• Major seventh for the ending. See the Beatles’ “It Won’t Be Long.”

If you’re having trouble imagining all of these techniques, here’s the song. Listen closely, and you’ll hear it all.

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Hello. I’m back.

After several weeks of electoral hand-wringing, accompanied by a few weeks of redoing our kitchen, I hope to reassemble what’s left of this blog and begin again.

Why? Because I love music.

I know. That’s a lot like the Far Side cartoon with the gorillas sitting under the tree, as one says:

You know, Sid, I really like bananas. … I mean, I know that’s not profound or nothing’. …Heck! We all do. …But for me, I think it goes much more beyond that. 

It does go beyond that. At a party last weekend, a friend and I were discussing music and he asked me something that really hit home: “What would your life be like without music? Can you imagine it?”

It was a rhetorical question. We music lovers - no, we music worshipers - know those times when we have cried over a certain passage in a song. We remember hearing a song for the 50th time and suddenly getting not only the point of the words, but feeling the music at a much deeper level - the pounding of the tom-toms on “With or Without You,” or the desperation in John Hiatt’s voice when he pleads, “Have a little faith in me.”

We see the flashes in the pan go by, the Britneys and Shakiras, but we wait patiently to be blown away by a song once again. It’s like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin. We know it’s a rare moment, but the joy and satisfaction we get from finding a new jewel is worth the wait. 

There is still good music to be found. It’s out there, in some indie artist struggling to finish his first CD. It’s in an overlooked debut from an artist who quickly got canned from her record label because it didn’t go platinum. This blog, and others like it (see my blogroll) is an attempt at telling the world about these amazing artists, CDs and songs.

We are a dim light in a dark time in music. Help the light shine brighter and listen to good music. Don’t settle for what’s in the aisle at Wal-Mart or on the popular morning show. Be different.

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