Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Thursday 3/21/19 Club Bohemia Linda Marks with Woody Carpinella, Kenny Selcer with Roberta Lamb, Tysk Tysk Task Bill Dwyer = plus NEW MUSIC FROM CARLOS SANTANA

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228,582 all-time page views 10:21 am 

NEW CARLOS SANTANA SINGLE!
See Joe Vig review below!
https://youtu.be/1tosh8K1mN8




Event Page here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/435155400557436/






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Santana Announces New Rick Rubin-Produced Album ‘Africa Speaks’ & Shares Single


New Carlos Santana single  "Los Invisibles"
https://youtu.be/1tosh8K1mN8
Review by Joe Viglione 1:55 pm 3-19-19

A very clever and musical five minutes and fifty-four seconds of Carlos Santana featuring Buika has a slamming rhythm 2:14 in that sounds like an updated "Thank You" (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) from  Sly & the Family Stone

You can sing the Sly lyrics over Santana's music:

Stiff all in the collar, fluffy in the face
Chit chat chatter tryin', stuffy in the place
Thank you for the party, but I could never stay
Many thangs is on my mind, words in the way


The maestro's guitar playing is as fine as ever, sweet as wine, even throwing in some licks and sounds that Cream bestowed upon us, lo those many years ago.  At 4:15 it generates Hendrixian flavors as well, vocals come back in a boom boom chant, very catchy, very different, exotic and intriguing.  Well worth your attention!
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Santana releases new single
Led by legendary guitarist Carlos Santana, the group shared the LP’s lead single, “Los Invisibles,” featuring Spanish vocalist Buika.


Last December, the Rock & Roll Hall Of Famer revealed that he recorded several songs over the course of 10 days with Rubin at the producer’s Shangri La Studios in Malibu. The album was recorded by an eight-piece Santana lineup that includes Carlos’ wife, drummer Cindy Blackman Santana.
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Neil Sedaka "Breaking Up is Hard to Do"
Review by Joe Viglione

Shelley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpBs_xIb54

Lenny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J13g4ZSpgb4



Two minutes and sixteen seconds of pure pop magic, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" is the signature tune for performer Neil Sedaka, the king of his twenty-one Top 40 hits. Unlike "The Monster Mash" - which went back to the Top 10 with the same version eleven years after it hit #1 - and "The Twist" which hit #1 in 1960 and came back to do the same thing (with the same version as well) fifteen months later in 1961, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" went to the top spot in July of 1962 and came back in December of 1975 to solidly hit the Top 10 (and #1 on the Adult Contemporary charts) in a cocktail version as dramatic as Burton Cummings humorous revision of Bachman Turner Overdrive's gem "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet". RCA Victor single ##8046 was Sedaka's 9th Top 40 hit while Rocket Records #40500 was his 18th.
It's the same song only dramatically rearranged to fit into the world Neil helped spawn a year before with his second #1 hit, "Laughter In The Rain", as well as with the key song which launched the career of Captain & Tennille in May of 1975, "Love Will Keep Us Together". Helen Reddy, Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton-John, Kenny Rogers and many others owe their soft rock success in part to the Brill Building sound crafted by Sedaka and his various associates and that evolution is precisely documented from the rock & roll sixties sound of the original to the soul-searching re-invention that was the 1975/1976 ballad. In performance it really is two different songs with the same words and the same melody - the music transformed, the energy translated but just as powerful.
The song, like the artist, matured, and it is a significant moment in pop. The Four Seasons - a 1960's group which like Sedaka found re-birth in the '70's - witnessed their latter day #1 going Top 15 eighteen years after the fact in 1994, but that was a dance re-mix, not a re-make per se, of "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)". "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" has the distinction of being a copyright that came back for the original artist in a way that fit the time, a time he helped create, sounds he was identified with in two separate decades. Covered by Carole King, Tom Jones, The Carpenters, The Happenings, Sha Na Na, Eydie Gorme, David Cassidy, Little Eva and a host of others.


What a find!

This Hybrid of versions of the reggae Breaking Up Is Hard to Do is WONDERFUL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNm7xqvz9dY

Blues song with the same title,
Jivin' Gene BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGYUdxK6OJk
\
La Fabrica cover Jivin' Gene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQbH0SZlyUw

The Partridge Family cover Neil Sedaka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc6c6FnS1Jo


WOW!  Anton Ellis



Alton Ellis - Amazing,  Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siawqK8fjGs
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More Rumors

To attempt to remember a quote of Liberace:

all those  rumors you've heard about me?  I started them all

The Magic of the 60's.


So my cousin was the President of the Johnny Crawford Fan Club.

She lived near Bobby "Boris" Pickett of The Monster Mash fame in Somerville

My older sister purchases "Rumors" by Johnny Crawford- so I got to hear it - a lot, and it is a masterpiece of pop music, for a number of reasons.

I always liked the song, but 57 years later I truly understand what absurdly great pop confection is within the melody, production and performance.

1)John Ernest Crawford (born March 26, 1946) (from Wikipedia)
Rumors was released in 1962 so Johnny was around sixteen years of age.  Stunning work for someone so young, and it doesn't sound like the irritating early Donny Osmond records, it sounds sophisticated and adult.

Sure, he was an annoying brat on The Rifleman, which he co-starred on from the age of 12 to 17, the show ending a year after "Rumors," but don't hold that against him, this song offers him redemption.  

And like the original "Osbornes" show, Ozzy and Harriet, television gave a great platform to Ricky Nelson for his music (and chart success) as it did Johnny Crawford.

Crawford's voice is amazing on this record.  Yes, it sure sounds like it is double tracked, replete with echo chamber and effects, but the kid could sing with soul, blue eyed soul, from the gifts of Gene Pitney to Sedaka to the crooners of the day - Vic Damone and Tony Bennett, this material fit right in.   And yes - it hit the same year as Neil Sedaka's "Next Door To An Angel" - songs which have a connection to each other beyond the sonic comparisons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxWvZy4By_g


Howard Greenfield co-wrote "Next Door to An Angel" as he did "Rumors," so Crawford had this amazing hit-making crew which polished this gem to perfection.   Sedaka's hit was Arranged and Conducted (let's face it, "produced") by Alan Lorber - production credited to Nevins-Kirshner but my opinion is, much like the money guys in film are the "producers," in the record biz the money guys are usually the executive producers.  So let's give credit to Lorber for putting the magic into key Sedaka hits.

Not a minor point, in my opinion, again.

What is fascinating to note here is that with such an incredible resume' Mr. Lober recorded Boston area artists to purportedly participate in the Bosstown Sound, the record labels of the day attempting to make Boston the next San Francisco in regards to pop music.

Like, having Moulty & The Barbarians, the G Clefs, Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon and later on the Modern Lovers, Aerosmith, Boston, The Cars etc. etc. on to New Kids on the Block and Medford / Malden's Extreme, you really needed a "Bosstown Sound?"

so back to the masterpiece that is "Rumors"

2)"Rumors" was produced by the late, legendary Gerry Goffin (married to Carole King back in that time period) - it was an honor to have my review of a Goffin lost classic published and getting good attention that the album deserves


Gerry Goffin's name was spelled "Jerry" on Rumors, but rest assured, it is the man purported to be the subject matter of Carole King's smash "It's Too Late" who deserves the credit for making such a memorable hit recording.

Unlike Lorber, Nevins/Kirshner actually credited Mr. Goffin with the production.

Listen to the adult lyrics, the smooth vocal, the amazing piano work way in the background ("The Monster Mash" piano was more in your face, but had a similar tonal quality...perhaps the same session man, perhaps the same piano!)

Goffin simply must have worked with Crawford to get such an indelible imprint onto the tape.

This is the invisible magic many listeners do not know about.

Producer Jimmy Miller got one of the best vocals out of me on "I Want You Sexually" (1985)
https://soundcloud.com/joe-viglione/i-want-you-sexually

having the guiding hand of a major hit-maker - and Medford's own Joe Petruzelli on drums - this song I wrote in the studio with legendary Phil Greene engineering (guitarist with Warner Bros. group Sparrow) still packs a punch decades later.

I fully understand the process, and there's no doubt Gerry Goffin helped get Crawford's amazing vocal to exactly where it sits in these grooves.

Rumors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzMYqLjnak8

Of course being 1962, Johnny Crawford didn't get to blurt out "Look at that man, real slut material over there, think I'll go over and say "hi."

HA HA --- and the married fellow I wrote "Sexually" about (he lived in Stoneham for you archaeologist  types. with a wife and kids...!!!) bumps into a roommate of mine and said to him: "he writes dirty songs about me."  HA HA HA!   Oh the eighties were so much fun! in those gay bars.

Should title an album "All the Married Men in Gay Bars that We Knew and Loved"  HA!

"Rumors" is far more innocent
"People jealous of/a boy and girl in love/started rumors...

and ominous "Everyone in town just wants to put me down, but they're rumors...rumors..."

You won't hear Crawford singing "Got a wife and kids?  Don't tell me your fxxxng problems I don't want to know" as I do on the fade out of "I Want You Sexually."   Oh, Donny, why did you have to go and die on me, we could've tracked down the dude 30 years later and had that threesome that you deep sixed on us!  But we'll always have it tucked neatly in the grooves of this song!

Those chicks in the background on "Rumors" certainly aren't Jo Jo Laine.  And who the hell else are you going to get to sing on a song called "I Want You Sexually" but Ava Electris and Jo Jo Laine (and the third woman will not be named...she's too nice a lady!!!)

Ava: "Joe, come see me at work tonight."

Joe V: "Ava, I'm your friend. I simply cannot go to some club and see you take your clothes off!"

Ava: "It's only flesh."

Ahem.  Yes, I picked the perfect women to sing on "I Want You Sexually."  Johnny Crawford was not afforded that luxury, but did he ever get credited for such a wonderfully soulful performance?

After Johnny Crawford's Living in the Past, Jethro Tull hit with a song by the same name.

Living in the Past
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=267C6vMij-I


just felt like writing about this great song at 2:20 am...enjoy

Copyright (C) Joe Vig etchings, all rights preserved like Uncle Bob's bad hairdo


 when a critic savaged himLiberace retorted, ″I cried all the way to the bank







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