Song a Day 2020

Do it Again by Steely Dan

More of Fagen and gang…

Don’t Stand So Close to Me by The Police

Surprise! More Police.

Soft Core by Maurice & The Clichés.

This is a very special post, and for my buddy Rex who regularly checks this blog, thank you for reminding me of this song over the years; feel free to fill in any details in the comments and please scroll down to watch the video.

Around 1983-84ish(?), I first heard this song with my friend in a vehicle driving around the Bay Area (my car, his car, I can’t remember) on radio station K*** (Rex, fill in the rest of those call letters…). From the opening bass riff to the sultry French woman narrating over a typewriter, leading into that strident keyboard solo, we we’re hooked. Then, add the lead singer with that English accent and vocal fry- we couldn’t stop grinning. Cue the wicked guitar solo somewhere after vs. 2: we totally lost it! But for some reason, we didn’t get the title of the track that day. It eluded us for years. For a time we were certain the lead singer was Tim Curry of Rocky Horror fame. Now the rest of the story is fuzzy, but I recall that Rex’s brother somehow discovered the track many years later and identified the group as Maurice & The Clichés.

Once we had discovered the artist, we just needed the french translation…

Special Thank You! to Arch for the French translation:
Dear Mr Editor/Director I am a young woman.. I seek a position with your film I’m terribly interesting and very pretty as well I ??? And my three loves are: My Porsche, the American cinema, and my dear horse ‘Roger’ My father is very generous with his money! Each weekend, I like exploring new things…
A note from Arch:
It’s difficult to convey the idiomatic aspect of the French, but it’s perfect for her character–slightly trashy and quite pretentious. In particular, the last phrase “des nouvelle avenues” in this context has a clear sexual implication.

So You Say by The Bird and The Bee

I know, I know. Stop yelling. It’s true- a campy, formulaic, feel good song on this blog? Yes! And Inara George’s voice is so sultry. Reminds me of Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles.

No Rain by Blind Melon

‘No Rain’ came from when I first moved to California, and I was playing songs on Venice Beach for change. I was having to come up with the material during the week after my construction job, and then I would get my guitar and go down to the beach and open up a guitar case. I’d play on the Venice Beach boardwalk for change, for enough money to pay for parking and chicken teriyaki. That was my weekend.

So the song is about not being able to get out of bed and find excuses to face the day when you have really, in a way, nothing. It was like rock bottom. I wasn’t even on drugs or drinking. It was just tough. It was just a tough point in my life. And the cool thing about that song, I think a lot of people do interpret those lyrics properly and can connect with it on that level, where “I don’t understand why I sleep all day and I start to complain that there’s no rain.” It’s just a line about, I’d rather it be raining so I can justify myself by laying in the bed and not doing anything. But it’s a sunny day, so go out and face it.

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/the_story_behind_no_rain_by_blind_melon-66809

Oh, Good Grief by Vince Guaraldi Trio

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise) by Beatles

The idea for a reprise of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s title track was suggested by The Beatles’ assistant Neil Aspinall, who thought the album should be bookended with words from the imaginary compère.I said to Paul, ‘Why don’t you have Sgt Pepper as the compère of the album? He comes on at the beginning of the show and introduces the band, and at the end he closes it. A bit later, Paul told John about it in the studio, and John came up to me and said, ‘Nobody likes a smart-arse, Neil’… That was when I knew that John liked it and that it would happen.

https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-reprise/

Rush by Big Audio Dynamite II

For all the lengthy magazine retrospectives and weighty biographies that rightly claim the Clash were musical pioneers, there’s also a strong argument to be made that BAD were more forward-thinking – or perhaps more of their time, more now – than Jones’s previous band. Less confined by the constraints of rock’n’roll and determined to shake off the Clash’s formidable legacy, Jones – the member who brought hip-hop into the Clash and wrote their sole No 1 single – set out to create a sound that utilised the emerging technologies used by dance and rap music and took a more multimedia approach to their presentation.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/jan/20/big-audio-dynamite-clash

Fishing Creek Blues/Alabama Traveler by Dan Crary

Listen carefully to what is happening here. It’s really amazing. And then watch Dan play below:

Rikki Don’t Lose that Number by Steely Dan

Now writing and painting in Port Townsend, she [Rikki Ducornet] doesn’t complain when asked to tell, again and again, how she became the “Rikki” of pop radio fame in the summer of 1974. The song was pretty much inescapable at the time as Steely Dan’s third studio album, “Pretzel Logic,” peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100.

https://www.ptleader.com/stories/rikki-dont-lose-that-number,62090