there's a neat little minigenre of recordings (from the mid/late 60s forward) that use '50s doo-wop/early r'n'r styles in what one might call a 'revisionist' way: either the music itself is parodied through an exaggeration of certain traits (chirpy background vocals, etc.) or the form is employed to back lyrics that fall far outside the accepted doo-wop themes, or both. there are other good examples on frank zappa's freak out.
first of all, can people name more examples? i know there are many more.
second, what is the meaning of this subgenre? does it signal a decisive break in the self-identity of rock music? is the music being parodied (typically affectionately) effectively declared 'dead' by the act of parody? does this genre suggest a new awareness, or rather creating, of a decisive split between 'the 50s' and 'the 60s'?
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:26 (nineteen years ago) link
oh yeah the vu 'i found a reason' is another one.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:29 (nineteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:29 (nineteen years ago) link
― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― Neb Reyob (Ben Boyer), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:30 (nineteen years ago) link
by the time of david lynch and sonic youth you have a very complex intermingling of these different modes of appropriation (although even zappa hints at that, way back when)--they both employ the forms as a kind of signifier of innocence, but also seem to be unearthing some less-than-innocent aspect of same in the process.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― dickvandyke (dickvandyke), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:35 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:36 (nineteen years ago) link
― xexy, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:38 (nineteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:40 (nineteen years ago) link
anyway, i think i submit the beach boys to this thread. im not sure if their harmonising style is directly from doo wop though!
― dickvandyke (dickvandyke), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:40 (nineteen years ago) link
because i think in their early (pre-66?) stuff, their doo-wop covers and appropriations have an innocent-homage feel. or not even homage necessarily, just a cover version like any other. there is only the faintest--not that it isn't crucial--sense that they are enshrining some 'classic' mode of pop form (hence acknowledging it as an anachronism?). but later in their career, the appropriations feel more self-conscious, and are wedded to 'post-"conscious"' lyrics (i.e. post-dylan, post-beatles, whatever).
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:43 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:45 (nineteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:47 (nineteen years ago) link
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is Eno doing Afropop, not doo-wop, as I recall. I'd go more with "Cindy Tells Me".
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:48 (nineteen years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:50 (nineteen years ago) link
the zombies example i offered above is basically a doo wop homage filtered through the beach boys. and they use it as an unexpected musical punctuation to a pop song about a woman getting out of prison. and it's clearly some kind of comment on something, and not just on rod argent's penchant for strange arrangements.
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:50 (nineteen years ago) link
it really goes for the 'exaggeration of certain effects' i mentioned upthread. and the rough-hewn (ahem understatement) quality of beefheart's voice serves to set the rest of the song--played straight, more or less--in relief.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:53 (nineteen years ago) link
― xxxexxxee, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:05 (nineteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:07 (nineteen years ago) link
― xex, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:13 (nineteen years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:16 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:20 (nineteen years ago) link
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:21 (nineteen years ago) link
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:23 (nineteen years ago) link
Thus proving my point about Eno's version being revisionist afro-pop, though perhaps inspired by his love of doo-wop — an interesting connection to be sure.
BTW, I kind of hate this song.
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:34 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:38 (nineteen years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:46 (nineteen years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:53 (nineteen years ago) link
― xexxee, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 20:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― xexxe, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 20:05 (nineteen years ago) link
re: beach boys, i would say all comparisons to doo wop should be heavily cautioned until one has listened to a few records by the four freshman and parlor jazz of that ilk. my impression of brian's early esthetic is that he looked to the somewhat complex jazz harmonies for technique on the ballads, and doo wop for the fun rock sound which in beach boys rock songs [as on jan & dean etc] tend to be fairly one-dimensional and unstartling chord progressions. that said, i think barbara ann is a prime example of revisionist doo wop - it's intentionally sloppy yet clearly that's what makes it great.
the revisionist doo wop undercurrent also had to contend with 2 types of latter day doo-wop derived music both of which had reliable chart action: soul groups/girl groups such as the miracles, impressions, shirelles, dixie cups ruled the mid 60s; and that despicable [to me anyway] four seasons sound. there are elements to both that can be viewed as intentionally ironic, but this is clearly something we are reading in to a great extent. i guess, now that i think about it, there was a slew of stuff like "happy together" that deserves mention here as well.
another important element in this is the function of backup vocalists in garage rock bands in the mid 60s. not to make a general rule, but the more rudimentary the backing vocals called for by a cover song, the more likely the poor-voiced non-singers in the band will shout them out. therefore, songs like "searchin" or "night and day" almost always have these simplistic backing vocals, but - what is relevant to this discussion - they are typically delivered in a half-assed way.
the masked marauders hoax lp has some excellent half assed doo wop...i think rama-lama-fa-fa-fa [mc5] counts. some of nilsson's early stuff, as well as simon and garfunkel on the feelin' groovy side of things, is very respectful yet fully aware of the unreclaimable distance between their revisioning and the real thing.
xexxe, dunno exactly what you're saying, but if you are interested in the original african recording of wimoweh, it's called "mbube" and was recorded by solomon linda & the evening birds, in 1939 i think. it's available on several different compilations, including one of the secret museum discs [where i heard it] and is pretty great.
― mig (mig), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 20:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 21:09 (nineteen years ago) link
― Rockist Scientist, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 22:20 (nineteen years ago) link
― Thea (Thea), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 22:53 (nineteen years ago) link
maybe sun ra continued to use doo-wop elements as he "advanced" (ugh that word, but you know what i mean) into his own version of jazz? that would be interesting. the art ensemble of chicago sometimes used r&b elements in the mix, but in a way very very different from the other folks mentioned on this thread--there isn't a hint of ironic distance in their appropriations, i think.
in any case i'll have to pick up that cd, thanks for the tip!!
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 1 July 2004 03:07 (nineteen years ago) link
― JaXoN (JasonD), Thursday, 1 July 2004 03:13 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 1 July 2004 03:14 (nineteen years ago) link
amateurist, the best i can do is make a tape of it. i don't have a cd burner connected to my record player. interested? email me.
― JaXoN (JasonD), Thursday, 1 July 2004 03:19 (nineteen years ago) link
― mig (mig), Thursday, 1 July 2004 15:57 (nineteen years ago) link
I've only seem him once, in Ann Arbor, and I don't know what sort of recordings he has. But I swear by the awesomeness of that one show.
― ben tausig, Thursday, 1 July 2004 16:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 1 July 2004 16:32 (nineteen years ago) link
― mig (mig), Thursday, 1 July 2004 19:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 1 July 2004 19:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 1 July 2004 19:07 (nineteen years ago) link
P-Funk, as an outgrowth of the Parliaments, was and remains very doo-wop based.
Favorite nouveau doo-wopper of mine to search for: The Tymes' "You Little Trustmaker." The "doobie-doobie" bass part used to knock me out as a kid. Nowdays when I listen to it I imagine I can hear the exact moment when doo-wop vocal soul morphed into disco.
― briania (briania), Thursday, 1 July 2004 19:25 (nineteen years ago) link
who is/was "mig" -- his/her posts here are wonderful.
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 10:11 (fourteen years ago) link
also where can i find these matt bauder doo wop tunes?
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 10:14 (fourteen years ago) link
there were a lot of bands in the new york punk and postpunk orbit that were fascinated by all things 50s and early 60s that pulled what to me are an astonishing number of doo-woppy moves but to them may have simply been basic tools of rock and roll, if a bit kitsch
am thinking of Bomp! Records, the Aural Exciters, people like that
― Tracer Hand, Sunday, 9 August 2009 10:58 (fourteen years ago) link
Interesting thread. I might be wrong, but I've always assumed that the early '60s doo-wop revival (concurrent btw with the 1962 "oldies weekend" depicted in American Graffiti) was mainly a Belmonts-spurred white Italian thing, what with Vito and the Salutations and all. Am I wrong about that?
Also, a couple records people haven't mentioned here are the Belmonts' great 1972 comeback-w/o-Dion album Cigars Acapella Candy (which Greil Marcus put in his top 10 of the decade) and the 1982 compilation Everything Old...Is New Again on the (I assume only briefly extant) doo-wop revival label Ambient Sound, on which four or five new or revived or never-disbanded doo-wop groups each did an original song and covered a song by a current performer like Jackson Browne or REO Speedwagon ("In Your Letter," as much as doo-wop homage as the Billy Joel one mentioned above) or Joey Ramone ("Doreen Is Never Boring," which I'm pretty sure he wrote for the occasion.) Some or all of the groups each put out their own full albums on the label as well. The comp (which I used to own and wish I still did) and one or two of the single-group LPs made a couple critics' top ten lists that year, then were never much spoken of again, as far as I can tell.
Nostalgic doo-wop references show up through a lot of '70s and '80s pop and country music too. Here's something I wrote on the Rolling Country thread earlier this year, about the Every Which Way But Loose soundtrack, from 1978:
There's another "instrumental" that actually consists of doo-wop voices, not unlike the doo-wop homage toward the end of the Move's rocking nine-minute "Feel Too Good" off their fun 1971 Looking On LP. Makes me think somebody should do an EMP project on ironic/nostalgic doo-wop homages on '70s non-doo-wop records someday. (Though not me.)
Years later there's also Grizzly Bear, who some fans seem to claim are "doo-wop influenced," though (hater that I am) I don't hear that at all myself.
― xhuxk, Sunday, 9 August 2009 14:04 (fourteen years ago) link
i have some of those ambient sound LPs, e.g. two by the jive five. there was a CD-era comp too, a reissue of the best stuff, but i imagine this too is OOP. these LPs get very warm reviews in one of the dave marsh-edited volumes of the rolling stones record guide. this inspired me to buy them. they are just OK, the highlight being the jive five's excellent and surprising version of steely dan's "hey nineteen."
but these albums are contrary to the spirit of "revisionist doo wop" as i tried to define it upthread. they are extremely sincere, straightforward, sensitive "updatings" of the classic sound. there is nothing distanced, impish, ironic, faintly over the top about them.
i don't know if i ever stated this pithily upthread, but what interests me most are the doo wop pastiches by '60s rock acts who are identified with the counterculture -- since as soon as these start cropping up, i think a line is drawn, across which there is no going back and forth. maybe this is obvious? it seems one interesting barometer of some larger changes, i guess.
i can hear the grizzly bear thing, but frankly it seems more just a beach boys-esque interest in vocal harmony. doo wop has a very limited and identifiable set of chord structures that they don't seem very interested in.
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 15:45 (fourteen years ago) link
here's a great 1982 article by robert palmer about the ambient sound phenomenon:
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/23/arts/doing-all-right-by-doing-doo-wop.html
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 15:47 (fourteen years ago) link
and here's the ambient sound CD, for about $5: http://www.amazon.com/YOURE-YOUNG-TWICE-Ambient-Doo-Wop/dp/B000NYXE4M
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 16:04 (fourteen years ago) link
anyone else remember this nickelodeon spots with the voice of the jive five's eugene pitt?: http://vimeo.com/2703001
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 16:15 (fourteen years ago) link
Ben Tausig posted on ILX??
― jaymc, Sunday, 9 August 2009 16:32 (fourteen years ago) link
ben tausig wrote a really awful and uninformed hatchet piece about alan lomax when the latter died. frankly tausig seems like a pretentious poseur.
what i want to know is who is mig?
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 16:45 (fourteen years ago) link
A Russian pilot?
Didn't the Ramones write a song for one of those Ambient records, "Doreen Is Very Boring" or something like that?
― Horace Silver Machine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 9 August 2009 16:57 (fourteen years ago) link
yes
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 17:03 (fourteen years ago) link
Haha, okay. I've never read any of his music writing, but he's one of the main reasons I got into crossword construction, so.
― jaymc, Sunday, 9 August 2009 17:18 (fourteen years ago) link
Ah, "Doreen Is Never Boring." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPBR8sB1W30
There was also a thread about Songs That Use The Doo Wop Progression" but I can't find it.
― Horace Silver Machine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 9 August 2009 17:20 (fourteen years ago) link
Sorry, that thread is gone, must have been sandbox or 17 days stuff.
Don't know who mig is. Maybe Michael (I?) McGonigal?
― Horace Silver Machine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 9 August 2009 17:28 (fourteen years ago) link
On that thread I posted about the Love song "7 And 7 Is," which ends with a (nuclear) explosion and than a few seconds of ironic doo wop chords. As if in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, they would go back to basics and listen to doo wop.
Didn't Sha Na Na play at Woodstock? Before they become a joke. How does that figure into this?
― Horace Silver Machine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 9 August 2009 17:34 (fourteen years ago) link
All I can find out about mig is that his real name is Mitch G., he's American, and he was born in 1973.
― jaymc, Sunday, 9 August 2009 17:38 (fourteen years ago) link
how did you find that out?
― amateurist, Sunday, 9 August 2009 17:43 (fourteen years ago) link
name's mitch g.
still looking for a good handle after being smacked by mitchlastname and i thought skinny jet name would be horrorshow.
― mig, Thursday, May 1, 2003 4:00 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
xmas eve eve, '96, 23 yrs old, that year i had been finally getting into the fall, they seemed more and more to be the rome towards which all my musical roads were heading [classic postpunk, 90s lofi and noise & shoegaze, 80s brit synth, 60s garage rock, and krautrock were my interests]. i lived in iowa and had a hard time finding their stuff, especially the good things - back then everything 77-79 was oop. anyway i met up with my family in sacramento for the holidays and spent a very long day on bus pilgrimage visiting record shops in sf. i ended up buying about $120 worth of fall cds, including perverted by language - and i played this first, cos it had the best title, cover art, and date [1983 being the link, supposedly, between their really gonzo stuff none of which i'd heard yet, and the more accessible late 80s stuff].
it was about 8 pm, i was supine up in a loft type area in my uncle's giant cedar cabin-mansion surrounded by govt. land, looking out the windows on 3 sides and ceiling to an endless maw of firs and the stars like bite marks. the first song [eat y'self fitter] was like an andy kaufman joke, alternately funny then not then funny again because it keeps going. its minimalist structure seemed like a narrow chute which i fell down into the harrowing see-the-bruise-colors-whirl-inside-your-retina crash of the next song, the neighborhood of infinity, which became, and still is i think, my favorite song of all time.
i don't really know why that song does it for me, but it just seems to be the most menacing, cryptic, razor-vined inca object at the heart of a borges story left in a jungle, too heavy to lift maybe, or explicative of the future death of someone i have never heard of. i had that feeling then, and still get it, of little chills; we all get this on songs we like a lot, and i get it stronger and more pleasurably with this than with anything else. i also get a sort of rush of dream-associations, like when you remember a face you saw in a dream you had the night before, and that makes connections for you.
― mig (mig), Thursday, July 22, 2004 6:00 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― jaymc, Sunday, 9 August 2009 19:01 (fourteen years ago) link
Too bad he didn't choose an anagram of his name as his screen handle.
― Horace Silver Machine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 9 August 2009 20:17 (fourteen years ago) link
I just started listening to Dawn of Doo Wop. Fantastic stuff. My favourite song is probably I Sold My Heart To The Junkman.
― Nathalie (stevienixed), Sunday, 9 August 2009 20:32 (fourteen years ago) link
Speaking of revisionism, isn't there a story about that, that The Bluebelles released a version that was actually recorded by somebody else?
― Horace Silver Machine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 9 August 2009 23:09 (fourteen years ago) link
I am sooooo confused as to why jaymc reposted all that. Nice read, though.
― Kevin John Bozelka, Sunday, 9 August 2009 23:20 (fourteen years ago) link
If you have to ask...
― Horace Silver Machine (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 10 August 2009 15:34 (fourteen years ago) link
Sha Na Na's woodstock performance is some crazy bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDxaLLwyr6I
― dat conehead beldar (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 13 August 2009 02:28 (fourteen years ago) link
counterrevolutionary rocksteady
― BIG HOOS's wacky crack variety hour (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 13 August 2009 04:03 (fourteen years ago) link
we've discussed it, and it's less "revisionist" than "earnest homage," but let's face it this song is beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XgQhMPeEQ
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 7 May 2012 19:36 (eleven years ago) link
though are those really backup singers on the record or is that billy joel multitracked to infinity?
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 7 May 2012 19:37 (eleven years ago) link
now that distance between that video and the present day is greater (!) than the distance between the video and the music it is paying homage to, the video and song has revealed itself to be just as authentically moving and beautifully crafted as many of the doo-wop records to which it was no doubt compared unfavorably in 1984.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 7 May 2012 19:38 (eleven years ago) link
also sudden unexpected nostalgia for those 80s music videos that actually had nice-looking, well-choreographed tracking shots and an editing rhythm that actually lets you see stuff, etc. see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCuMWrfXG4E
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 7 May 2012 19:41 (eleven years ago) link
also christie (sp?) brinkley is stunning.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 7 May 2012 19:44 (eleven years ago) link
i dunno why but for some reason i'm expecting joe piscopo in jerry lewis getup to pop out at any moment in these videos.
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 7 May 2012 20:15 (eleven years ago) link
it's a reasonable expectation.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 7 May 2012 20:47 (eleven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYAIX96v1mI
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 01:21 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a6A6oTFdcw
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 01:42 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UspGqdwcbQs
― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 01:52 (ten years ago) link
thanking amateurist for reposting the Nickelodeon doo-wop interstitials... I missed the link upthread and they are great. I'm not sure if, as a kid, I really grokked that they were meant to be an homage to anything, as opposed to just, like, weird wacky music that fit the strange visuals. Maybe I did, though.
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 03:04 (ten years ago) link
That Neil Young song is also great, wow.
There's a great section of the Ian Svenonius book about the line from street gangs through doo wop groups to rock groups
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 03:13 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTUPwJTRcI
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 03:27 (ten years ago) link
whoopshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTUPwJTRcI
& toop briefly traced the line thru to hip hop
A brother group to The Jesters, and "equally fine" (Warner: 269) were The Paragons—"real hoodlums, real zip-gun, street-warring hoodlums", Paul Winley recalled to David Toop in 1984, "but at the time I was young and crazy myself, so it didn't make any difference". (Toop: 98) The Paragons Meet The Jesters (1959), with its street gang cover and vocal duels inspired by doo-wop's street corner singing battles and live show group competitions, was "one of the first rock and roll compilation LPs" (Warner: 231) ... Relic Records have collected Winley doo-wop on The Best of Winley Records (RELIC 5019) with liner notes by Donn Fileti detailing their lo-fidelity, almost ad hoc independent approach creating a valuable and unique New York sound. Quoting Fileti, David Toop makes the point that these are comments that can equally apply to Winley's hip hop output. (Toop: 99)Winley Records resurfaced in the 1970s with a series of releases which—like the street corner practices of doo-wop foreshadowing those of hip hop (see Toop: Ch. 2)—would in their different ways presage the advent of commercially recorded hip hop even as that movement blossomed in the Bronx and spread to the streets of Harlem. Winley released a series of speeches by Malcolm X, tied into a tradition of black oratory and to be sampled a decade later by Public Enemy and others.
Winley Records resurfaced in the 1970s with a series of releases which—like the street corner practices of doo-wop foreshadowing those of hip hop (see Toop: Ch. 2)—would in their different ways presage the advent of commercially recorded hip hop even as that movement blossomed in the Bronx and spread to the streets of Harlem. Winley released a series of speeches by Malcolm X, tied into a tradition of black oratory and to be sampled a decade later by Public Enemy and others.
from the wikipedia page for winley records of "zulu nation throwdow" fame
― time considered as a helix of semi-precious owns (zvookster), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 03:27 (ten years ago) link
yeah he mentions the continuation to hip-hop as well. it's probably all based on what guys like toop write - he's not a sociologist or anything
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 03:28 (ten years ago) link
don't the beatles do this again on "revolution 1"
― time considered as a helix of semi-precious owns (zvookster), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 03:30 (ten years ago) link
Discussion about Beefheart's "I'm Glad" upthread has me thinking that, you know, they were contemporaries of a group like Thee Midniters.
I've also got these compilation albums from the mid-'60s called "Godfrey Presents: 18 R&B Flashbacks" and I guess they were kind of oldies compilations (like the Laboe, Oldies But Goodies comps) but there are records on these (possibly even some of the doo wop) that were pretty contemporary.
― timellison, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:03 (ten years ago) link
those nickleodeon bumpers (esp the one w/ the pineapple singing falsetto) never fail to make me smile
also jonathan richman in the era when he was touring/recording w/ the rockin robins is very akin to that nickelodeon stuff in the childlike sense of fun with which he appropriates doo wop stylings
surely the neil young song is as much or more an homage to rockabilly and the poppier side of country than it is to doo wop
finally sometimes that fleetwood mac song up above is my favorite fleetwood mac song ever--but again, to be precise the harmonies and melody sound more like lou christie or gene pitney than doo wop to me. similar to some stuff on bruce springsteen's tunnel of love LP in that way
maybe i'm splitting hairs
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:12 (ten years ago) link
this is more ink spots/orioles-type R&B stuff (which predates doo wop) but ian's post inspired me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoidXDF_vuA
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:14 (ten years ago) link
IIRC that's the robins (of smokey joe's cafe, etc.) under an assumed name.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:15 (ten years ago) link
so maybe not orioles but clovers/early coasters/clyde mcphatter-type stuff
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:16 (ten years ago) link
I suppose it's a little off topic for this thread, but the characterization of "I'm Glad" was this:
"basically doo-wop taken straight, without any overt indications of ironic distance"
I guess I'm just thinking that there was no reason that someone like Beefheart would have even considered the question of irony with that song, especially given what one seems to read about '60s L.A. (perhaps specifically East L.A.) culture.
― timellison, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:30 (ten years ago) link
And thinking back, "I'm Glad" never seemed to me to be something that stuck out stylistically on that album.
― timellison, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:40 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-n5vG2SjJY
― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 21:11 (ten years ago) link
so was kenny cool enough to come up with this intro? i want the facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edHhe8HyekE
― scott seward, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 21:19 (ten years ago) link
anybody got his home number? he'd probably just take credit for it even if he didn't come up with it. that bastard.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 21:20 (ten years ago) link