Classic Rock Song of the Day (Deep Cuts now being featured!!)

[Orbert]

"You can even hear the music at night" is followed by a pentatonic piano run.  Pentatonic scales are often associated with Chinese and other Asian music, so the line is supposed to be what you might hear if you were hanging around China Grove at night.  Except Tom Johnston had never been to China Grove; he just wrote the song, imagining what the place might be like with a name like that.  But it's not a little town settled by Chinese immigrants, and the sheriff and his buddies don't use Samurai swords (which are Japanese anyway).  It got its name from the China Blossom trees which grow in the area.

Great song, though, one of my favorite Doobie Brothers songs.


I told this story just recently in the "Disappointed" thread, but what the hell.

A coworker and I flew down to San Antonio on business and thought it would be cool to go to China Grove and have dinner, just so we could say we'd been there.

It was practically a ghost town.  The first thing you see upon entering China Grove city limits is an abandoned gas station with weeds growing through the pavement, looked like it had been that way at least 20 years.  Then nothing for a while, then the General Store, some nameless restaurant, and Nixon State Bank.  Past that, more nothing; you're back in the sticks again.  That was China Grove.  The restaurant stunk of cigar smoke when you opened the door.  Six pickup trucks in the parking lot, five of which had rifle racks.  We didn't stay.

This is me, standing in front of Nixon State Bank in China Grove, Texas, a sleepy little town down around San Antone.  The camera in my old phone sucked, but it was all I had with me.



As far as I can tell, it is one of three businesses in China Grove.  These are the other two:

[KevShmev]

Cool story!

[Podaar]

I love the feel, grove, and rocking harmonies on this song, but...man. This is one of my nominees for the absolute worse lyrics in rock history. "Lord, they're a caution." Really? 

[Orbert]

What's wrong with that line?  It's a common expression.

[Podaar]

 

[Orbert]

Meanie. 

[DebraKadabra]

Whoops - got behind again.
 
Midnight Confessions - I can't really comment on this one, as I don't think I've heard it.  I'll YT it when I get home and edit the post.
 
Happy Together - I like the song well enough, but I LOOOOOOOVE the version of it on Frank Zappa's Fillmore East album.  Can't beat Flo and Eddie making fun of what put them on the map in the first place.
 
Paint It Black - LOVE.
 
All Along the Watchtower - Jimi's is definitely the superior version.  For those of you who've seen the 2004 version of Battlestar Galactica, this song features VERY prominently in the third season.
 
China Grove - I think I liked this song more when I was a kid.  Now?  Eh.  It's okay, but definitely not my favorite of the stuff before the band became "Michael McDonald and The Doobie Brothers".

[masterthes]

Really fun song. That riff kicks so much ass

[KevShmev]

AC/DC - Back in Black

AC/DC is definitely a band I almost never go out of my way to listen to, largely because I heard them so much back in the day, but this is still a song I will crank up and enjoy the hell out of.  It's a timeless classic and never get olds.

[Podaar]

This song, Hell's Bells, and Big Gun (love the guitar) really do the trick for me like no other AC/DC tunes. I'll always enjoy them and crank them up but like you I wouldn't seek them out to listen to.

Great rock 'n roll! 

Also, this is applicable. Back in Black Scat.

[Orbert]

AC/DC is something like a guilty pleasure of mine.  I don't have any of their albums, and I can't really say that I like them, but there are a couple songs of theirs that really kick some ass, and this is one of them.

[DebraKadabra]

Still love it.  First heard it on the radio back in the day and was
 
First cassette tape I bought with my own $$$ too.

[Cool Chris]

About as good of a straight up good old rock and roll song as you can get.

[jjrock88]

About as good of a straight up good old rock and roll song as you can get.

[BlobVanDam]

AC/DC is something like a guilty pleasure of mine.  I don't have any of their albums, and I can't really say that I like them, but there are a couple songs of theirs that really kick some ass, and this is one of them.

What's to feel guilty about?
Great rock song from an all time great rock album. Not really much else to say.

[Orbert]

I guess the "guilty" part is because from the moment I first heard them, back in the Bon Scott days, I didn't like them.  The voice bugged me, the guitars and music overall seemed very crude, very simplistic, and 100% formulated to appeal to the lowest common denominator: idiotic, hormone-ravaged teenaged boys.  And I was exactly that demographic.

At the time, I was "progressing" from KISS and Aerosmith into stuff like Yes and Genesis, and liked to think of myself as musically enlightened or something.  I know, I know.  I'm getting better about that.  But this was high school, and there was this one radio station that played AC/DC all the time.  It was obviously somebody's favorite band there.  But it was the radio at work, and it was the only station we could get because of some weird confluence of meteorological phenomena and where the radio sat, so I couldn't get away from it.  Two AC/DC songs per hour, every hour.  And every time they came on, I thought "Here we go again."  Drove me fucking nuts.

But as happens so often in such situations, I eventually came around.  I started to like it.  And I felt strangely guilty about it.  I had been manipulated.  This was music specifically written to appeal to me, and I should not fall for it.  But they had a couple of really good songs, and this is one of them.

[TAC]

AC/DC - Back in Black

One of the best classic hard rock songs ever written. Phenomenal.

[KevShmev]

Supertramp - Dreamer

The first time I heard this song, back in 1992, I thought it was a Yes song, since the singer sounded just like the singer in Yes.  I quickly learned that it was by Supertramp, a band that already had a few songs I knew I liked.  I ran out and bought their greatest hits, which my first serious girlfriend Jennifer and I both enjoyed the hell out of for much of 1992 (which ran parallel to me getting into a lot of Rush's stuff, so while it got plenty of play time, it still paled in comparison to the play time Rush got).  Eventually, we broke up, and I think she had the copy of the greatest hits at the time, which I never got back, but by then, I was ready to buy the three main studio albums, so I didn't care.  The more Supertramp stuff I heard, the less I liked Dreamer (which I never thought was anything more than pretty good anyway). Something about the way Roger Hodgson croons for much of the song is kind of annoying.  I like the end when Rick Davies comes in with some lead vocals line as well, but overall, this is not a song of which I can call myself a big fan.

[Orbert]

Whoa, Roger Hodgson sounds nothing like Jon Anderson!  Sure, they both have high voices, but that's it.  Roger's is thin and honestly kinda whiny.  Jon's is much rounder and is commonly mistaken for falsetto (it is not, it's contralto).

I like the song, but really hate Roger's vocal performance here.  It's hard to separate the two, I know, but it's possible.  I just get really tired of Roger's whiny voice.  I really like a lot of Supertramp, and Roger's voice works most of the time (Fool's Overture, Take the Long Way Home, etc.), despite being really annoying.  Here, it's just really annoying.

[KevShmev]

Okay, but I was 18 at the time, so I didn't know any better.   The obvious difference between the two was more than clear once I started really listening to both (at that time, I still only knew a handful of Yes songs).

[Orbert]

Well... okay.

But man, you really had me worried there.  I saw Rush mentioned in the same paragraph and I thought you were even gonna say that one of them sounds like Geddy.  I've heard people say Rush and Yes sound the same because the singers both have high voices.  This just plain blows my mind.  Do all high-pitched voices sound the same to most people?

[KevShmev]

I think some people are just lazy when it comes to that kind of stuff, especially music they do not care for.  I used to have people tell me that all of Rush's stuff sounds the same.  Same with U2.  Two absurd assertions.  But when you have qualities as identifiable as Edge's guitar or Geddy's voice, the minute some hear either, to them, that is sounding the same as everything else by the band.  It's lazy, yeah, but it's just how some people work.

[Orbert]

I guess.  It's true that the more you listen, the more you begin to understand and recognize the differences, and also similarities, with a given band's music, or a given genre, or anything else for that matter.  But if you're not familiar with it and/or don't care to be, then you'll never reach the point where you can distinguish anything.

It's kinda like what happened with me and AC/DC.  I really didn't like them, but Q106 in Lansing, Michigan played them all the fucking time.  Eventually, I could tell the songs apart, then one time I found myself singing and air-guitaring along with them, and I thought "How did this happen?"  In general, though, that's gotta be the exception.  You can't force yourself (or anyone else) to like something.

[DebraKadabra]

Ugh, Dreamer?!    Sorry, if I never hear that one again it'll be too soon.

[El Barto]

Ugh, Dreamer?!    Sorry, if I never hear that one again it'll be too soon.

Yeah, no shit. And 2 minutes ago was the first time I ever heard it. Not a Supertramp fan and it didn't get any airplay.

[jjrock88]

I can tolerate hearing Supertramp on the radio in the background.  No interest in them beyond that.

[King Postwhore]

There are better tunes from them but this did get a lot of airplay up North here.


BTW Orbert did you know Roger almost joined the reformed Yes in the 90s before Jon returned.  He wrote the song "Walls" with Trevor on the "Talk" album.

[Orbert]

Yes in the early 90's was a mess.  The band, such as it was, was Trevor's band, his vision, because of how it came about before it was even called Yes.  Jon Anderson was off with Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe, and Talk is basically a Rabin solo album with the backing band mostly Yes and former Yes guys, although you could say that about any of the Rabin-era albums.  Then Jon came back and they didn't need Roger any more.  At least that's how I remember it.

[jingle.boy]

Back in Black... never tire of the song, or the album.  AC/DC is just meat-and-potatoes hard rock.  Nothing flashy; nothing but toe tappin, head-noddin great music.   

Dreamer... was the first Supertramp song I ever heard in the early-80s.  My older brother had Paris on vinyl.  Dreamer for whatever reason was being played a lot on the radio, so it made the jump to pop radio.  I didn't know any better.  It wasn't until the late 80s that I realized there was much, MUCH more to Supertramp.  CotC is such a great album... though Dreamer is definitely at the bottom of the pack.

[KevShmev]

Well, since we've got them on the brain at the moment...

Yes - Long Distance Runaround

Great little song, featuring an intricate, yet catchy, little unison lead by Howe and Wakeman, while Chris Squire throttles us with a crazy bass lead, and Jon Anderson sings an extremely infectious melody. They really do jam pack a ton of great stuff into this little three and a half minute song.  Some stations would often play Squire's The Fish with it, including those here in St. Louis, but I thought it'd be simpler to just feature Long Distance Runaround.

[Orbert]

Well, the two songs run together on the album, and a lot of people are used to hearing them that way.  I, for one, get pretty annoyed when the only play "Long Distance Runaround" but not "The Fish".  But then, I'm a Yesfreak, so there you go.  Both of the classic rock stations around here usually play them together.

The unison between Wakeman and Howe breaks into harmony later, during the break.

Fun little song.  Very short by Yes standards, so that's another reason to let it run into "The Fish".

[King Postwhore]

Agree with Bob 100%!!

[Podaar]

I agree with King agreeing with Orbert.

The drums and bass always blow me away on this song no matter how many times I hear it.

[KevShmev]

I agree with Podaar agreeing with king agreeing with Orbert.

[Orbert]

I agree with Kev.