WNEW | Where Rock Lives

Happy Birthday ... YouTube style!

Happy Birthday to You is easily one of the most recognizable songs in this country, let alone the world. Since, well, forever, people of all origins and backgrounds have been singing the song to friends, family, colleagues, or anyone else who happens to be celebrating a birthday. But due to copyright laws - Sunny-Birchard Music currently owns the rights to the song and isn't afraid to collect royalties - anyone outside the the comfort of one's home (eg., anyone playing, performing, or using the song for profit) usually tends to dabble in other pro-birthday songs. While this is bad news for anyone looking to hear their favorite rocker bust out a hooky "Happy Birthday to You" during a concert, it has led to some stellar improvisation ...

... and considering today is the birthday of this writer, I figured it would be an appropriate time to watch/listen some of the best examples of this. So, without further ado, here are the best "Happy Birthday" songs that aren't Happy Birthday to You:

The Beatles - Birthday
Not much is better than a birthday. Not much is better than the Beatles. So, what does one get when the two are combined? A pretty stellar song on the topic.

This Beat Goes On: Still More With Mister Zero of the Kings

(Part 3 of 3)

In 1980, This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide by the Kings blasted onto American radio and into rock history. But the group’s 1981 album Amazon Beach disappointed both the band and their record label, and they sound found themselves back on the club circuit in Canada. In part 3 of our interview, Kings guitarist Mister Zero talks about the Kings today and reflects on the legacy of their biggest hit, explored in the new DVD Anatomy of a One-Hit Wonder: The Kings’ “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide.”

It was 1995 before you made Unstoppable, and 2002 until Because of You.  

Unstoppable was basically financed by me from my day job working on movie sets here in Toronto. It was a real labor of love that took a year-and-a-half to make in fits and starts, but it is a great record full of great songs. Because of You was made with the support of Bullseye Records of Canada, an indie label run by a friend of ours, Jaimie Vernon. He had a U.S. backer with enough money to do it right, so we were able to do it in a proper studio and do it every day for a month, not just on weekends or what-have-you. Again I think there are a lot of quality songs on there, and we are quite proud of it.

The DVD features over an hour of videos, and some of those tunes are indeed fabulous. Which are the ones you’re proudest of, or best represent what the band is all about?

You do know that songwriters think that all their songs are great and should be hits, right? In our case we have some that are not great, but we do have lots that really are great, and if we hadn’t fallen from grace the way we did, maybe they would have been hits. Some are on the DVD, and some we never did make a video for. One called Shoulda Been Me is one of those; it’s just an obvious hit song. I remember playing it when we opened for the Beach Boys. The audience had never heard it, and at the end they gave it a big hand. I remember thinking, “You know, that thing could go!” It did get some play here [in Canada], but because it was our own indie thing, it didn’t do what maybe it could have. One song on the DVD that got a lot of airplay here in Canada was If We Don’t Belong Together, which is a ballad that Sonny Keyes and I wrote. The MOR stations loved that one ...

Other songs that I like on the DVD are Parting of the Ways, Your Old Boyfriends, Bad Side of Town, and Partyitis. A personal fave is Cosmic Groove. I think the lyric I did in that one is spot-on. And it’s a nine-minute jam-fest with lots of me showing off on guitar. As a player I’m not great, but I have fun.

On the DVD, you tell about your first American show, where you opened for Jeff Beck, and the disaster it turned into. Surely the gigs got better, though.

We did play a few more dates with Jeff Beck, and they turned out better, but it wasn’t a great fit. We also opened for Eric Clapton once, and it was like the Jeff Beck thing -- here we are again opening for a guitar god and the place is full of guitar players, and I’m the first axe man of the night. No pressure there! I think that might have been the show where my guitar strap was on wrong, and I walked out and dropped the bloody thing! So I went to my spare and it was out of tune! Shit! After the show, Eric Clapton went up to Dave [Diamond] and said, “Hey, great singing, man,” which was incredible, but he didn’t say “boo” to me!

I know there’s YouTube video of some recent Kings gigs, like the Andy Kim Christmas Show last December.

The show with Andy Kim was a lot of fun. It was sold out and packed, which is always good, and we got to meet and hang a bit with Lawrence Gowan, who plays with Styx now, Ron Sexsmith, a super songwriter, Andy Kim of course, a very nice guy with some iconic huge hits, and also Alex Lifeson from a little Toronto band called Rush. I think the finale might be on YouTube as well. Everyone is up doing Rock Me Gently, Dave is close to the front stage left singing backup, and I’m behind, faking it on a guitar that isn’t plugged in! It’s pretty cool. [Watch it here.]

There are some great videos I made after I finished the DVD. You can see them on our website, thekingsarehere.com. In fact I may swap them into the DVD if we go into reprinting it. We have better versions of Clean Shot and My Habit for example, which are both terrific tunes as well.

I’m curious about what you think of the phrase “one-hit wonder.” Are you frustrated by having had just the one hit? Or is having made one of the greatest party songs of all time, one that’s fondly remembered by so many people, a fair exchange for scoring just once?

I have a saying: “It’s better to be a one-hit wonder than a no-hit nothing.” . . . When I was growing up, I never really looked down on the one-hitters. I was always rooting for them to succeed with more great songs. And as we found out more about the music business, we began to realize that there are a lot of factors that have to line up perfectly for a hit to happen. Some bands never really charted a lot in a conventional Top 40-type way—you may have heard of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I recently read a book about Neil Diamond, and I was shocked to learn that Switchin’ to Glide charted higher than Solitary Man! That kind of blew my mind, and I intend to boast about that for years to come.  

Seriously, we certainly are grateful for our hit. People have asked, “Do you ever get sick of playing it?” and the answer is, honestly, no. From the stage, you can feel the energy level rise as soon as I play that great riff that Dave wrote. People love it and so do we, and it is an honor to be part of people’s lives and memories like that. People have told us how it has helped them through bad times, how they got laid to it, drove too fast to it, partied to it, and all sorts of different things. It really is an amazing accomplishment to achieve even once. We have talked about how it will be around forever and outlast us, and that is more than OK. It’s great, in fact.

The DVD Anatomy of a One-Hit Wonder: The Kings’ “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide” is available now through the Kings’ website (http://thekingsarehere.com). Kings music is also available through the website, and at iTunes.

Video Classics: 'Us and Them'

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

At well over seven minutes, Us and Them is the longest track from Pink Floyd's 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. It is also one of the most quiet songs in tone and dynamics from not only the album, but also the entire Pink Floyd catalog. For the first two minutes, until the vocals fully come into their own, one could almost see the song making its way onto the airwaves on a 'cool jazz' format, especially with the addition of the relaxed saxophone solo.

Us and Them was originally known as 'The Violent Sequence', which seems rather out of place, given the piece's sound. The title actually comes from early in the song's development, years before The Dark Side of the Moon was released. From Wikipedia ...

The tune was originally written on the piano by Richard Wright for the movie Zabriskie Point in 1969; this is where the "Violent Sequence" title came from. Director Michelangelo Antonioni rejected it on the grounds that it was too unlike their "Careful with That Axe, Eugene"-esque work, which was the style of music he wanted to use. As Waters recalls it in impersonation, Antonioni's response was, "It's beautiful, but too sad, you know? It makes me think of church." The song was shelved until Dark Side of the Moon.

Us and Them comes in at #267 on the 1991 Firecracker 500, rising to spot #217 on the 1996 list. The video below is taken from the performance at the famous 1994 P*U*L*S*E concert.

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...

A.M. Nuggets: Did You See The Dead? Did You Stay Out Of Jail?

The Dead have come and gone, rolling through the NY/NJ/CT area over the last week and truckin' on to finish off the rest of the dates on their Spring tour. Evan caught their show at the Izod Center in NJ on Tuesday - check out his review and photos here.

As Scotty B. has noted on HT, these shows have received wide-ranging reviews from "awesome" to "awful". I saw the MSG show over the weekend and while not blown away, certainly enjoyed myself, so I guess I'm right in the middle.

This poor guy never made it into that MSG show - check out his story of spending the night with NY's finest.

From the Front Row: The Dead at Izod Center 04-28-09; Review, Setlist, Photos

As I pulled into the parking lot with my windows down to hear the heartbeat of the tailgating crowd, I was greeted with the familiar saying “I need a miracle!”. And just like that, I was back in high school – it was like being in a time warp being just as excited as I was years ago, getting ready for the experience of a Dead show. Once you arrive, all you want to do to run out to the parking lot and become part of the scene. At the buzzing community of vendors, friends, and fiends, I saw some interesting stuff outside of the usual unlicensed Grateful Dead and Phish shirts, stickers, memorabilia, hemp necklaces and hand made glass accessories.

One guy prowled the aisles shouting “Look Mom, no hands! 100% hemp beer holder necklaces! Get ‘em while I’m still kinda sober!” while another vendor of glassware showed me a pair of Eyes of the World custom made iron sunglasses comprised of hand carved designs of a globe on one eye, a steal your face symbol on the other with lyrics etched on one side and lighting bolts on the other. And what is the asking price for this piece of art that took over 100 hours to make? $2,000! Who brings $2K (in cash) to a Dead show? “You’d be surprised” he told me. We made our way into the show and the guys started with a ripping version of U.S. Blues that gave us the signal that we were going to get something special tonight.

A Dozen Records That Say Spring, Part Twelve

All through the month of April, Fusion 45 surveys an arbitrary list of records that inspire thoughts of young love, blooming flowers, warm weather and fuzzy puppies. Or, in some cases, fast cars, loud music and singing along with the windows wide open.

Sly & The Family Stone - Greatest Hits

For the hardest core of the hard core Sly & The Family Stone fan -- of which I count myself one -- it's almost sacrilege to suggest that a greatest hits compilation could be a better choice for a spring soundtrack than, say, A Whole New Thing or Stand!.

But the fact that it does dispense with the harder core funk and the deeper core messages is precisely what makes Sly's Greatest Hits album so perfect. There's no Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey, no Africa Talks to You just the fun of Dance to the Music, the come together groove of Everyday People and the prescient shuffle of Hot Fun in the Summertime.

Or, in other words, free your CD player and your mind will follow.

This Beat Goes On: More With Mister Zero of the Kings

(Part Two of Three)

The Kings had spent much of the 1970s playing clubs in Canada, looking for a break. They got it in 1980 when producer Bob Ezrin consented to work on their first album, The Kings Are Here, which contained the radio classic This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide. In part 2 of our interview, Kings’ guitarist and songwriter Mister Zero talks more about that landmark hit.

I remember hearing Switchin’ to Glide all by itself on some radio stations. I’m guessing that a short version was a necessary evil, since radio stations were going to be reluctant to play a six-minute record by anybody in 1980, let alone a six-minute record by bunch of unknowns. How did the whole segue end up on so many stations?

The record company logically thought that we wouldn’t have much chance of getting the segue played, so they released Switchin’ on its own. It made a bit of noise, but not much. From what I remember, our camp was pressuring the label to put the segue out, and they finally did. Then we started to see success with influential FM stations like the Loop in Chicago, WRIF in Detroit, and WMMS in Cleveland. They found out that the Kings got great phones. People wanted to hear that weird song again, it was very fresh and new-sounding. With that kind of encouragement, the promo department at Elektra got into high gear and really started going ...

A biggie happened when we were at the Elektra office in New York. They told us we’d been added on WLS, and they broke out the booze. Being as green as we were, we had no idea of the significance, but we never turned down a party. It so happened that WLS was one of the largest AM stations in the U.S. out of Chicago and they played us a lot. We eventually got to #9 on their chart, with a piece of music over five minutes in length! We also landed CKLW out of Windsor, Canada [just across the river from Detroit], another powerful AM station with massive U.S. coverage. AM stations can reach out over huge areas, especially at night, so millions of people were now being turned on to the Kings.

After that a lot of key stations in major markets got on the bandwagon from New York to Texas to California, and the phones kept ringing with requests for the Kings. That kind of buzz is what led our future manager, Randy Phillips, to our door.  In case you didn’t know, he is now the CEO of AEG Live, one of the biggest music companies in the world. And he hasn’t taken our calls in 20 years! Love the music biz!

So in January 1981, the Kings got to be on American Bandstand.

That experience was great, going to the ABC studio in Hollywood and seeing the set. They did a bunch of shows in one day, so you had to wait your turn. The show they taped before us had Kool and the Gang doing Celebration, which was something to see. We shared our episode with Nick Lowe and Rockpile, who did Teacher Teacher and one other song. We performed Switchin’ to Glide and Don’t Let Me Know, and if I do say so myself, we blew those Englishmen off the stage.

 

Video Classics: 'Something'

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

Much has been said, both in Video Classics and elsewhere, about the songwriting acumen of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Always jointly credited on Beatles songs, the two possessed different but comparable musical talents, and unfortunately the egos that often go with a skilled artistic temperament. Friction between the two would contribute greatly to the Fab Four's ultimate dissolution. During those months when the handwriting was on the wall and Lennon and McCartney were barely speaking (and Ringo Starr just wanted everyone to stop sulking and get back to making music, already), it was George Harrison who most often tried to cast himself in the role of peacemaker.

But Harrison himself had a bone to pick with Lennon and McCartney, namely that he felt his own skills as a songwriter were being overlooked next to those of his bandmates. This complaint wasn't entirely unjustified, as the 1969 song Something proves.

Something originally appeared on the band's Abbey Road album, and was Harrison's first A-Side. The song achieved critical acclaim and commercial success. In fact, it topped the charts in America, the only song of Harrison's to do so while he was still a Beatle. Even after the band's breakup, Harrison's song remained popular, and has been covered by some 150 artists to date. In any other band, Harrison would have been a principal (if not the principal) songwriter. He just had the bittersweet fortune to share the stage with two of the 20th century's best.

The video below grew from a short that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were shooting that then became attached to Something, featuring shots of the band members and their significant others at the time of the song. Something comes in at spot #385 on the 1991 Firecracker 500, and #301 on the 1996 list.

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...

This Week in Rock History: You're Outta Here

Rock music has a robust history, so every Wednesday, J.A. Bartlett of the Hits Just Keep On Comin' talks about the biggest and most intriguing moments from years past...

This week in 1987, Bon Jovi played a concert in Rockford, Illinois. In the neighboring town of South Beloit, the local high school moved up its graduation ceremony several hours so that students would actually attend, instead of blowing it off to go to the show.

... in 1983, bluesman Muddy Waters died at age 68. As the founding father of Chicago blues, Waters created much of the basic blues repertoire, including Hoochie Coochie Man and I Just Want to Make Love to You, written in collaboration with Willie Dixon. Other fabled Waters songs include Mannish Boy and Got My Mojo Working.

... in 1977, Eric Clapton recorded Wonderful Tonight, a ballad about his wife Pattie, who had also been the inspiration for Layla. During the same week in 1988, Pattie filed for divorce. 

... in 1976, Bruce Springsteen, who had been on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously the previous October, jumped the fence at Graceland, Elvis Presley's home in Memphis, in an attempt to meet the King. When Springsteen told security guards who he was (and mentioned the magazine covers), they were unimpressed, and they escorted him off the premises.

Did we miss something this week? Add it to the comments below...

A.M. Nuggets: Peter, Bjorn and John do Spinner's Interface

This band seems to polarize people, I hear from lots of folks who were not into PBJ's last album, despite the smash success of Young Folks. But then there are lots of people who really dig these guys - in particular those who have seen them perform live.

Peter, Bjorn and John's new album seems to have a similar effect, on me as well. I was not a big fan of the first single Nothing To Worry About until I saw this video on the Interface over at Spinner. Much harder and more guitar-driven than the album version, this studio session redeemed PBJ in my eyes. Sure the "young ones" are still singing behind this track (though where are all the kids in this video? Hiding behind the drum machine?), but I can now picture this on the big stage and I imagine it will rock.

Anyway decide for yourself - this is Nothing To Worry About live on the Interface. Leave me a comment, let me know how you feel about these guys.

Rock 101: "Smile"

Not everyone is a rock expert, so here is your weekly Thursday primer on the events and happenings that shaped Rock and Roll from J.A. Bartlett of the Hits Just Keep On Comin'...

The "competition" between the Beatles and the Beach Boys during the mid-1960s was mostly a creation of fan magazines. Competition never drove the artists as much as fans believed it did, but that doesn't mean each group didn't pay attention to what the other was doing. After Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys heard Rubber Soul in 1965, he started working on a concept album of his own. Pet Sounds, released in 1966, was a masterpiece of production, incorporating track upon track of unusual instruments and sounds a year before the Beatles scaled similar heights with Sgt. Pepper. Although Pet Sounds contained a couple of big hit singles, Wouldn't It Be Nice and Sloop John B, it was the Beach Boys' least-successful album to date in the States. In Britain, however, it was much more popular, and in the year-end music polls for 1966, the Beach Boys topped the Beatles in some categories. (Paul McCartney would later say that God Only Knows, a track from Pet Sounds, was his all-time favorite song.)

Later in 1966, Wilson returned to the studio determined to outdo Pet Sounds. For several months, he collaborated with songwriter Van Dyke Parks on an even-more elaborate album to be called Smile. Wilson said he intended it as "a teenage symphony to God." A taste of the album, the single Good Vibrations, went to #1 at the end of 1966, reportedly requiring over 80 miles of recording tape to make. Based on promises by Wilson, Capitol Records had scheduled release of Smile for January 1967, but it didn't happen. And over the next several months, Wilson started to crack up. His use of drugs didn't help matters any, although there's some dispute over how much Wilson was using at the time. The other Beach Boys bickered over the project, and Parks quit entirely in March. In May, the band's publicist announced that the whole thing was being shelved. Not only that, but they backed out of a headlining spot at the Monterey Pop Festival that June.

Had the Beach Boys appeared at Monterey, they might have gained some of the rock credibility Wilson had been seeking with Pet Sounds and Smile. As it turned out, they spent June and July making Smiley Smile, which was released in September 1967. It contained several alternate version of tracks intended for Smile, along with the first album appearance of Good Vibrations. But by the time it came out, the Beatles had released Sgt. Pepper. After that, nobody talked about "competition" between the Beatles and the Beach Boys anymore.

After Brian bowed out of the Beach Boys, some of the Smile material remained behind. A reworked version of Surf's Up, which would have been the centerpiece of Smile, appeared as the title song of a 1971 album. Tracks from the Smile sessions were released on the 1993 Good Vibrations box set, and in 2004, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks would complete the album, releasing it as Brian Wilson Presents Smile. Nearly 40 years after its conception, it brought Wilson his first solo Grammy award,

Not the way you heard it? Add your thoughts below or check out Rock 101s past...

This Beat Goes On: An Interview With Mister Zero of the Kings (Part One)

It’s the early autumn of 1980, and a new song comes on your radio. The opening riff is a killer; when the organ kicks in, it gives the record a new-wave edge that the lead singer’s voice confirms. You reach for the volume control to crank it up. Halfway through, the song changes into a different one that starts with an all-time true lyric line: “Nothin’ matters but the weekend/From a Tuesday point of view.” By now, you’re wondering, “Who the hell are these guys?” They were a Canadian band called the Kings, and their record was This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide. Don’t remember it? Go here and listen. We’ll wait.

Beat/Glide (as we called it in the radio biz back then) went only to #43 in Billboard and #50 in Cash Box at the end of 1980, but those numbers don’t reflect its true popularity then or now. It was Top 10 on WLS in Chicago, and it got significant airplay on album-rock stations around the country. To this day, it ranks as one of the greatest party songs ever recorded, and it’s still making radio-station phones ring when it plays. A new DVD called Anatomy of a One-Hit Wonder: The Kings’ “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide” tells the story of the song and the band. It’s being sold through the Kings’ website (http://thekingsarehere.com), and is produced and directed by John Picard, whom Kings fans know better as guitarist and songwriter Mister Zero. I recently interviewed him from his home base in Toronto.

On the DVD, bassist and lead singer David Diamond says This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide was born while he was tuning up on stage one night. True, or was there more to it than that?

One of the funny things about making this DVD was realizing how we all remember things in different ways. When Dave says that he just happened on the opening riff for This Beat Goes On while tuning his guitar during soundcheck at a strip joint, I believe him, but I don’t remember it as a specific thing. I do remember the gig, and I guess [keyboard player] Sonny [Keyes] remembers the moment as well, but I don’t. I left some of our conflicting memories in the DVD because I find it funny that while we all usually line up on things in general, the details are often different. And a lot of the time it seemed like the four sort-of-fuzzy memories added up to one clear one. So, while I may not remember it, something obviously happened and that riff was memorable enough to work on later.

Was it always two songs segued together, or were they entirely separate at some point?

The songs were written totally separately, and I think they came together as part of the process where you try new ideas. The music and lyrics were both rewritten when it seemed like the two songs might be better together than apart. Then there was a lot of tweaking to maximize the hooks.

Beat/Glide and your first two albums were produced by Bob Ezrin, who had produced Alice Cooper, KISS, and Lou Reed, and was just off producing The Wall for Pink Floyd. How is it that a guy who could have worked with anyone in the world at that moment chose to work with you?

We were recording in what was probably the best studio in Toronto, Nimbus 9. We had made demos in other smaller places but we felt that we were ready to step up. We got some dough together and went in knowing full well that this was the place where the Guess Who, Alice Cooper and others had made records. Bob Ezrin was back in Toronto after being away working on The Wall. He had produced the Alice Cooper stuff at Nimbus and came in one day to hang out. Of course, the word spread that this big dude was in the house, and one of our managers went and sweet-talked him into having a listen. Something must have caught his ears because he took our tapes home, and when his kids thought we were good, I guess he thought we maybe had a shot. At first he agreed to mix a couple of things, but when he got into the process of tearing apart the tracks to mix, he realized that we really did have some good material, but we didn’t have much of a clue about making a real record. So that started the ball rolling, and then it was Cinderella story-time.

On the DVD, drummer Max Styles says that Ezrin put you through “rock and roll boot camp.” How so?

Well, when you are dealing with a major label and a real producer, making a real record, you learn in a hurry that there is hard work involved and very little is left to improvisation. All the players’ parts are worked on for maximum hook exploitation. Your goal is to make every note count, and therefore every bass note, every vocal line, every drum beat is there for a reason. So, the boot camp came from weeks of rehearsing, especially the rhythm section, because you build records from the bottom up. Dave and Max would work with Bob and come up with a solid foundation, and then we would leave them to drill the parts over and over until they were seamless. We would go eat or hang out while they were drilling—it was great! The effort paid off, though. You can hear how all the parts are organized. It’s not just some off-the-cuff jam session.

Coming next: The record gets on the radio, the Kings’ rocket ride begins—and then it ends.