1975 Archives – How Good It Is

I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but when I first launched this podcast, I recorded the first four or five episodes and then decided that I hated them, so I recorded them again, and that’s what went out to the world.

Now, every podcaster looks at their first few episodes and they cringe at how those episodes sound, and I’m no exception to that, but the purpose of re-doing a bunch of these older episodes is to bring them a little more in line with changes I’ve made in formatting and program elements.

So today we’re going all the way back to Episode One, to talk about 10cc’s breakout hit from 1975: where that funky background sound came from, what the title is about, and the rumors about how the band got its name.

Also: listen to the episode before reading the last paragraph.

During the episode, I noted that the song peaked at Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, and that in each of the three weeks it spent in that position, there was a different #1 song. Here are the three songs:

When it first reached #2 the week of July 26, 1975, the #1 song was “The Hustle” by Van McCoy.

For the week of August 2, 1975, The Eagles’ “One of These Nights” was at #1.

And finally, on my oldest daughter’s (negative seventeenth) birthday, it was “Jive Talkin’” by the Bee Gees.

As a 12-year-old that year, I was pretty immersed in pop music and I’d look at the Top 20 chart that was published in Long Island’s Newsday every week. I kind of remember that summer being one in which the charts churned a lot of change from week to week. So remaining in one position, even if it was #2, for several weeks, was still a bit of an event.

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Pardon my allergies; I’ve sounded kind of rough for a week or so. There was a lot of throat-clearing to edit out of this one. I can’t even blame the Southern Studio on this one; it’s the direct result of spending too much time cutting the grass at home. (And THEN I can blame the Southern Studio a little bit, because I went there the next day and it certainly didn’t help matters.)

How does one spend too much time cutting the grass? By having an electric mower and starting the job with a battery that isn’t fully charged, that’s how.

This is an episode topic I’ve wanted to return to for a long time, but for some reason I kept procrastinating. But way, way back in Episode 11, I featured a bunch of songs that had mistakes in them which were discovered before the final product was released, but they decided they liked it better that way and ran with it. And today we return to that well for another dip.

The tough part with songs like this is curating the best ones to use. Led Zeppelin often left in stray noises because they didn’t really care (ringing phones), or because they were actually counting on it (squeaky pedal on Bonham’s drum kit). So finding one that was both inadvertent and improved the recording? Absolute Gold, Jerry. Similarly, The Beatles would make an error in rehearsal or elsewhere and decide that that was something they needed to retain/reproduce (e.g. the wine bottle rattling at the end of “Long Long Long”), so those weren’t really good candidates.

And, of course, you run into a story which is just plain wrong. Yes, Ronnie Van Zant was talking to the board operator when he said “turn it up” while recording”Sweet Home Alabama,” but he did not mourn the loss of doughnuts near the end. (What you’re hearing is, “Montgomery’s got the answer.”)

At any rate, I finally buckled down and did the necessary research, and I hope you have fun with this one as much as I did.

Incidentally, a big shout-out to the newest member of our Wall of Fame. Everyone say hello to Cousin Robert! If you want to join the family, you can click here to become a Patron of the show.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

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In a relatively short period of time, Pink Floyd went from a band with a fairly small but loyal fan base to an international phenomenon. And it was taking its toll on the members of the group. Even as they were putting together this, probably their most cohesive album, they were largely working in isolation. Only occasionally were all four members in the studio at the same time as they worked on it.

This sense of alienation from each other and their newfound audience, plus the cynicism of the record label executives they met up with after the success of Dark Side of the Moon, gave rise to Wish You Were Here. (The story goes that they did, indeed, have someone ask them “Which one’s Pink?”) In addition, the band was sorely missing founding member Syd Barrett, who’d left the group a few years earlier after having a breakdown. There were a few attempts to bring him back, but Barrett just wasn’t able to bring the spark he’d had previously.

Wish You Were Here the album explores all of these themes separately, but I’d argue that “Wish You Were Here” the song ties all of them into a neat little bow. From that point there are only about twelve minutes left to the album. That leaves twelve minutes of a coda bringing the whole thing to a tidy close.

So where have I been the last few weeks? I’ve been doing some pondering about re-working the show a little bit, and getting some new elements in. So you’ll hear some big differences in the beginning of the show (and a little bit at the end), and I’ll be trying out a couple of other things soon as well.

Here’s a for-instance: the show has new theme music! Thanks to the generosity of the show’s Patrons, I was able to commission some custom music for the show. I’ll always have a soft place in my heart for “Surfing Day” but I think this new track has a little bit of the same feel and I hope you like it as much as I do. (You can hear it unsullied by my voice on the Facebook page.)

For what it’s worth, the show has been away for a few weeks, but I haven’t. I’ve been communicating with the Patreon crowd every Sunday morning via the newsletter. If you’d like to see what that’s about, click here to become a Patron of the Show. You won’t be able to see the recent newsletters, but you can see the ones from this past fall.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

The post 138: Wish You Were Here appeared first on How Good It Is.

Bruce Springsteen was a local favorite and a darling of the critics, but that sort of thing doesn’t cut any ice when you’re Columbia Records and your artist has already released two albums without scoring any hits.

But Springsteen had an epiphany about what his next album should sound like, from both a lyrical and a sonic sense, and it was the start of his reputation as a serious perfectionist when it came to his recordings. The result was the album Born to Run, and its title track, which were both released on the same day: August 25, 1975.

The album went to Number 3 and just a couple of weeks later, Springsteen made a kind of history by being the first rock star to land on the cover of both Time and Newsweek Magazines during the same week, on October 27. According to biographer Peter Ames Carlin, that wasn’t a coincidence: Jay Cocks of Time found out that Maureen Orth of Newsweek was doing a piece about Springsteen and convinced his editor to run a piece as well. Time’s piece was all about his music, though, while Newsweek concentrated on the publicity machine that put someone like Springsteen on the map.

I, being only 12 years old at the time, remember seeing the covers but didn’t read either magazine because we didn’t have a subscription. But a pretty big deal was made about it in the newspapers and on TV at the time, so I have a memory of that too.

And as promised, here’s the video of the Springsteen pastiche that appeared on Sesame Street:

Next week’s show was inspired by a suggestion from a listener. In the meantime, have fun with this week’s show:

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

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The post Episode 95–Born to Run appeared first on How Good It Is.

Holy Moly! The show is back!

For those of you who don’t follow the show on Facebook or Twitter, I’ll be posting the pictures here in another couple of days, outlining the New Studio Project. My return to the Podcast Zone was delayed a little bit by a faulty cable I needed to replace, plus I was getting into a weird funk. But fortunately I got a mental boot in the butt by Greg Yates over at the No Head Trash Nation Podcast. I met Greg a few weeks ago when I was in Orlando and, while he considers himself a relative newbie to podcasting, I’m constantly finding myself saying “Yeah, this guy knows his stuff.” “Holy cow, he’s right.” He and I spoke face to face for about twenty minutes and I’m practically ready to follow him into a burning house. Anyway, Greg’s a smart guy and you should check out his show.

But first, you’ve been waiting forever for this show! And here it is! The songs in this show were actually selected several months ago, and I lost the list. (That does seem to happen to me a lot, doesn’t it.) It turned up when I was cleaning out a computer bag, and I took it as a sign from above. Or from my computer bag, whatever.

At any rate, you probably know that most of the songs I talk about today are covers, but I’m pretty sure I still have a couple of surprises for you. Go check it out.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

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The post Episode 91–Under the Covers, Part 5 appeared first on How Good It Is.

It’s been a long time since I did a show like this one, and the timing probably couldn’t have been worse.

As I note during the show, I’m on the road for the next several days, so I’ve got a condensed version of my usual recording setup. I can get the job done, but the recording and the editing process are very, very different from what I usually do. Typically after I write the episode I edit all my sound elements and then load them all into a piece of software that keeps them organized until I need them. Then I crack the mic open and play the elements as they’re needed. If I make a huge mistake, I have to find a point where editing won’t show. Because there’s usually background sound going on, I sometimes have to backtrack a lot. But generally it takes me 30-40 minutes to record a 15 minute show. Do a little editing and boom, it’s ready for processing and uploading.

This time around, it’s a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of my recorded voice, plus all the other elements patched in. Plus I have to control audio levels through software rather than through my mixing board, so it’s a whole other kind of thing. And maybe it’s me but recording this way kind of saps some of my vocal energy out of the project.

So after nearly a year, we return to the Well of Cover Songs, wherein we look at songs that you may not realize are covers of another artist’s work. And in my opinion, in each of these cases, the cover is the superior version. That’s not something you can always say (and I cite a specific example during the show).

At any rate, after a few hours of overtime, here’s Episode 82.

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Before I do anything else, let me give a shout-out to a friend of the podcast, and one of its first fans who wasn’t related to me. Connie Paulson provided the artwork that you see in this post. You can see more of her stuff if you hook up with the show’s Facebook page.

In 1975 Aerosmith was pretty much just another rock band with a modest hit, but when they got writer’s block, a trip to a Mel Brooks movie inspired them to come up with a title, and then Steven Tyler wrote the lyrics over the next day or so–twice, as the story goes. The song was a hit, and ten years later, it was a hit again when Aerosmith teamed up with rap act Run-DMC to cover the song. Check out the video; it’s fun, it’s very creative, and you barely notice that most of the band is missing:

Your favorite podcatcher should have the show by now, but feel free to play it right here, if you’re so inclined. Or, if you prefer to download the episode on your own, follow this link.

And remember: you can also listen to the show via iHeartRadio, Google Play Music and TuneIn.com, which means you can also play it through your Amazon Alexa! (“Alexa, play How Good It Is on Tune In Dot Com.”)

The post Episode 37–Walk This Way appeared first on How Good It Is.

In the 1960s there was a doo-wop girl group called the Blue Belles (sometimes known as The Bluebelles, or Patti and the Bluebelles). After Cindy Birdsong left the group in 1967 to become a Supreme, the group reinvented themselves and became Labelle. In the early 1970s they were a funk-rock group, recording covers of The Rolling Stones, Carole King and all kinds of other stuff that no other similarly-composed group would even consider. But another couple of years went by and they reinvented themselves again, embracing the the Glam Rock look and sound, and it was during that era that they scored their biggest hit, a proto-disco-funk track called “Lady Marmalade”, which went to Number One on the Billboard Chart in March of 1975.

Over the years since then, Labelle’s influence can still be heard in the sounds of groups like En Vogue, the Pussycat Dolls, and Destiny’s Child. Their fearlessness has inspired at least a couple of generations of pop musicians, and even their non-hit tracks are regularly covered. “Lady Marmalade” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003, and I’ll bet you didn’t even know that “Grammy Hall of Fame” was even a thing.

If your podcast catcher hasn’t figured it out yet, you can always just click on the player below to listen right here (or download it, if that’s your thing) while you admire those feathery outfits.

And, of course, it would be a great birthday present to me if you took the time to give the show a positive rating in whatever software you use to listen to podcasts.

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