How Good It Is

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Or, The Episode Where I Can't Speak Welsh.

There's an old Doonesbury strip (Aug 1977) where rock star Jimmy Thudpucker is sitting on Bob Dylan's porch, chatting with Dylan (who appears as a disembodied voice coming from inside the house), and they're discussing the fact that then-President Jimmy Carter has just called him, looking for a quote to use during his next presidential chat with the public. Apparently the President thinks very highly of Dylan, who doesn't necessarily agree with this assessment:

And there's a little bit of this with the Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac song "Rhiannon": Nicks saw the name in a book and was taken with it, so she began to write a song centered around the image that the name presented to her. In fact, she began a series of songs about the Rhiannon that she had in her head.

Later on, she discovered that Rhiannon was a Welsh goddess whose attributes dovetailed rather nicely with the character she'd envisioned in her head. So when the song became a hit, she began to attribute the song as being about "a Welsh witch" (I can barely type that--no wonder I had trouble saying it). But the fact is, she knew nothing about the Welsh mythology when she first wrote the song.

That doesn't take away from the overall quality of the song, but it does, at least a little bit, suck away some of the mystique that Nicks attached to it during the live performance, methinks.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Don't forget to leave a review on Podchaser so they'll send some money to Wheels on Meals America through the #Reviews4Good program.

Warren Zevon was a talented musician and songwriter who had a lot of friends in the business, but didn't have the commercial success that his contemporaries had.

One day in 1975 he, along with guitarists Waddy Wachtell and LeRoy Marinell, are just goofing around with their guitars when someone asks them what they're playing. Zevon, referring back to a joke he'd recently heard, told that person that they were writing "Werewolves of London". The joke actually started to take shape, but was quickly abandoned.

That is, until other artists picked it up. According to Wachtel, it was one of the toughest recordings he'd ever done, but the appeal of the finished product—to practically everyone but Zevon—was undeniable. It became Zevon's highest-charting single, and even at that, it wasn't the monster (heh) hit people remember it being.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Holy Moley, kids. It's another overstuffed episode of the show for you. But, I guess that's what happens when you're dealing with a song that goes clear back to 1933.

"Blue Moon" was written by Rodgers and Hart, and it was going to be used in a movie, then it wasn't. Then it was going to be used in another movie, then it wasn't. Then it was again, and the publisher at MGM thought the melody would make a pretty nice popular song, so he convinced Lorenz Hart to change the lyrics. And it did take some convincing, for reasons you'll get to hear about during the show.

While you're here, let me give extra thanks to Bill Tyres for his permission to use the audio from one of his YouTube videos. You can find his over at his main webpage, or through his YouTube channel. Tell him I sent you.

Also, as promised, here are the stories about the woman who claims her dad was the true composer of the song:New York Times article (soft paywall)Liz Roman Gallese's website.

And finally, as a little bonus, here's Elvy Yost, singing the first incarnation of the song. She appeared on an episode of The Catch singing a later version of it (and it looked like a YouTube video in the show), but it doesn't appear that she actually made a video for YT consumption.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

The Go-Go's (somehow that always looks wrong) started out in the late 1970s as a punk band in Los Angeles, and they were a pretty solid presence in that city's Punk scene. But as they started to grow in prominence, they moved away from that edgy sound and into more of the pop scene.

When IRS records finally signed them in 1980, they cut their first album, which included a re-recording of their first single. If you listened to college radio, you probably remember the original version of "We Got The Beat," which was an import here in the US and was actually part of their demo record. You probably also found yourself wondering what happened to it when you finally heard the song released as a single in the early days of 1982, while "Our Lips Are Sealed" was making its slow climb back down the charts.

Well...wonder no more, because I've got that story for you right here.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Last week's show was short, time-wise, and I promised I'd make up for it. And make up, I did, because this is one of my longer non-interview shows, clocking in at 20:30. If you listen to this show during your morning commute, you may have to circle the block a few times before going in to work.

But it's so packed with stuff that I don't think you'll mind. This week we're looking at songs that were inspired by books, a topic that's turned out to be HUGE, and we'll be visiting again in the future if you're digging it.

As promised here are links to the stories I talked about during the show.

This is the link to "The Sound-Sweep." It's a little on the long side, but I think you'll like it.

This is Ray Bradbury's "Rocket Man." I think it was scanned into someone's computer because there are some weird typos.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

First up: this should be the end of the oddball uploads. The show itself is completely migrated, and I've gotten a few personal issues out of the way, so I should be back to Sunday night releases beginning next week.

Are we good now? OK.

This week's show is a little bit on the short side, largely because there wasn't as much story to tell as I thought there'd be, but I'm definitely going to wind up making up for it with next week's show. At any rate: Styx's attempt at a rock opera kind of concept was both very successful and very confusing to a big chunk of their fan base, who stayed away in droves. It managed to fracture the band at the end of the tour, and for thirty-five years they refused to play it in concert.

For those of you who are interested, here's a picture of the original Kilroy from the World War Two era:

This image, in fact, can be found etched into the World War II memorial in Washington, DC, and it's a pretty typical version of the image. Sometimes the words appeared below the line, or at another point, but you get the idea. And Kilroy does have dots for eyes; they're kind of tough to see here because of the granite surface.

Click here for a transcript of this show.

John Fogerty had already picked up some popularity with his band The Golliwogs, but Uncle Sam came a-calling in 1966. In order to avoid being sent to Vietnam, he instead enlisted in the Army Reserves, where he served for a while until he was discharged honorably.

In the days that followed the discharge, he wrote a song that he knew immediately would be a hit on the level of the bigger songs of the Tin Pan Alley days. And, given that other artists recorded the same song within a few months of its release, he was correct in that regard.

The new owners of their label, Fantasy Records talked the band into changing their name to something a little less offensive in exchange for the opportunity to record a full-length album (rather than the singles they'd been making), and the band, not being fools, agreed immediately. The original name had come from Fantasy's previous owner, so they weren't really married to it anyway.

Thus it was that The Golliwogs became Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Bayou Country their first album.

Click here for a transcript of this show.

True story: I hire models from Fiverr to do these pictures. All three of them, coincidentally, are from the same (non-US) nation. I don't do that on purpose but I'm starting to think I have a "type".

Thanks for your patience as the show migrates from one server to another. As I noted on the social media, I'm working hard to make it as invisible as possible if you listen via Google or Apple or Spotify, etc. And the website here is going to look kind of weird for awhile with a lot of double posts for previous episodes, until I pick my way through and fix them, one by one. Fun, Fun, Fun!

This week, we're taking yet another look at a few songs which you may not have known were covers, and nearly all of them were suggested by a listener named Kim, who didn't feel that a shout-out was necessary, but obviously I don't feel the same way. Kim had a list of songs that could work, and I said "Sure" to most of them, with a single exception, and that's mostly because the story is a little convoluted and I may have to turn it into an episode of its own down the road a ways.

Anyway: a new hosting partner means a new player here on the webpage for you, and I do have a little bit of customizing control over it (something I didn't previously have at all), so I'm happy to hear your suggestions. And, of course, please let me know if you hit any weird technical snags.

Finally, as promised: here's the original French song I discussed during the show. Check out those lyrics; it's rather poignant.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Enjoy the photo. I spent five bucks on it. You're welcome.

First up: A Hat Tip to Jeremiah Coughlin of the podcast Brine Time, a podcast dedicated (but not limited to) the Portland (OR) Pickles baseball team. He wanted to hear about some Foreigner, and coincidentally I just picked up a copy of Agent Provocateur, so we were off to the races. Anyway, Jeremiah and his partner Jake Silberman are a funny couple of guys who know how to convey their fandom in a fresh way. And now I kinda have an idea for another podcast. Aberdeen Ironbirds, are you paying attention?

Anyway.

I think I'm the one person who didn't hate Agent Provocateur as an album when it first came out in December 1984, because the critics gave it a beatdown. It ultimately yielded four singles, two of which did...okay, and the other two did very well, including this one, which was their only Number One track in the US and the UK, not to mention a bunch of other countries around the world.

Not bad for an album everyone hated.

But while the work was good, Lou Gramm was itching to work on a solo project, and he used "I Want to Know What Love Is" as one of his reasons for bailing out for awhile, so he could go work on his solo album Ready or Not almost simultaneously with their sixth album, Inside Information. And it seems like both albums suffered as a result.

So here's the show, and then go listen to Jeremiah and Jake.

And click here for a transcript of this episode.

Released just before Christmas 1984, this became Foreigner's one and only chart-topping hit in the winter of 1985, and it was a nail in the band's coffin.