Hello, party-goers! Welcome to another fabulous episode of the Sneaky Dragon Listening Party
On this episode, we get back on track after our popular Top 5 intermission episodes and listen to Side 1 of a mixtape made for Bob Evans. However, there’s always time for a Top 5 list and Dave gives us his Top 5 Alternate Partridge Family Songs. We know you’ve been waiting for that one!
Come on into the Listening Party rumpus room. We just picked up a new beanbag chair so don’t miss out on your chance to perch awkwardly while attempting a look of aloof coolness.
This episode we are spinning:
- The dBs – “Ask for Jill” – Repercussion, 1982 – 19:13
- Tommy Hoehm – “Blow Yourself Up” – Losing You to Sleep, 1978 – 26:16
- XTC – “Ten Feet Tall” – Drums and Wires, 1980 – 36:13
- The Purple Gang – “Granny Takes a Trip” – The Purple Gang Strikes, 1968 – 59:10
- The Go! Team – “My World” – Proof of Youth, 2007 – 1:09:46
- Whitney – “No Woman” – Light from the Lake. 2016 – – 1:18:14
- The Partridge Family – “Morning Rider on the Road” – Up to Date, 1971 – 1:26:20
- Local Rabbits – “Lowdown on the Download” – Basic Concept, 1998 – 1:58:36
- Jeffrey Frederick and the Clamtones – “Oh Me, Oh My” – Spiders in the Moonlight, 1977 – 2:06:47
- Neil Young – “Tired Eyes” – Tonight’s the Night, 1975 – 2:22:40
- The Feelies – “Slipping (Into Something)” – The Good Earth, 1986 – 2:37:58
Also on the old Victrola:
- Bob Evans – “Norwegian Wood” – 4 on 6, 2007 – 4:24
If you’d like to know more about Bob’s music and maybe support his work, follow this link.
- XTC – “Ten Feet Tall” – US Single version, 1980 – 51:35
- The Go! Team – “Everyone’s a VIP to Someone” – Thunder, Lightning, Strike, 2004 – 1:31:15
Dave’s Alternate Top 5 Partridge Family Songs (for Louise):
- “Morning Rider on the Road”, Up to Date, 1971 – 1:26:20
- “Brand New Me”, The Partridge Family Album, 1970, 1:36:57
- “Looking Through the Eyes of Love”, The Partridge Family Notebook, 1972 – 1:40:00
- “I Got Your Love All Over Me”, Crossword Puzzle, 1973 – 1:43:39
- “If You Ever Go”, Shopping Bag, 1972 – 1:47:52
Thanks for listening.
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Thanks for the alternate Partridge Family song list! I didn’t realize the albums included tracks that never made it to the TV series. I’ll have to give them a listen. Looking further into the subject, I read there were even more songs that were recorded but weren’t chosen for the show OR the albums. Wow, that’s a lot of music. If the PF songs sound like they’re from musicals, it may be because of David Cassidy’s fairly dramatic singing style. He grew up exposed to theatrical singing. His father Jack Cassidy was a Broadway performer, as were his mom, Evelyn Ward, and his step-mom and co-star, Shirley Jones. Even as a young performer, he knew how to sell a lyric to a target demographic and he respected the material the songwriters created for his character to sing.
He also did Broadway musicals himself, post-Partridge. In the 90s, he and his half-brother Shaun (also a former pop idol) famously took over the title roles in the Broadway production of Blood Brothers with Petula Clark as their mother. (One of my favourite musicals to weep openly at.) There’s a video of them singing the show’s finale, “Tell Me It’s Not True” which their characters don’t sing, but that they worked up as a duet for an appearance on Regis and Kathy Lee’s show. They achieve a good blend on the harmonies despite never singing together growing up, but you can see the difference in their singing styles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgQ3xxpedhc (duet starts at 6:00)
This episode has me so intrigued! I’d love to learn more about that tack piano style of music like we heard on “Granny Takes a Trip.” I’ve always been drawn towards songs like “Lady Godiva” by Peter & Gordon and “Words of Love” by The Mamas and the Papas because of that player piano kind of ragtime sound those songs have. I’d love it if you went into more detail about more songs like this, I know you could educate us with what you know. Shooting all over YouTube didn’t help me, I need David and Mary for my guides. I watched a few videos on how tack pianos work then went off what you said about The Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band and watched them for awhile. Realizing Neil Innes was involved with the Bonzo Dogs, I followed his videos right into the Rutland BBC stuff. At some point I even wandered over to watch Paul McCartney explain and play the Mellotron a bit, now I’m fascinated with that instrument. I immediately connected its sound with “We Had a Good Thing Going” by Cyrcle, another band that has that same kind of antique sound to them. I found them on Spotify but I can’t remember how (This happens a lot!). I’ve been meaning to write about this style of music to you and Mary in hopes that you may cover some more on the podcast but you kind of met me half way on this episode by discussing it. Up until I heard this podcast, I didn’t have a way to formulate the question, so now I hope this all makes sense combined with what you’ve already covered.
Another story for you. You were discussing the process of buying “Stock Music” for projects that didn’t provide a lot of money. Back in 2006 there were two commercials that played the same music in the background, one advertised Hummers and the other was for Captain Morgan Rum…and I had to find it! Before the internet, I’d be hard pressed to find music I heard somewhere, there was no Shazam app. So I’d call places, look at the fine print and find someone who knew someone who could tell me about the music I heard…it was actually fun and the payoff was great once I finally found it. So when I heard the music on the two commercials I mentioned, I found a website called Ad Tunes that featured references and links to every sort of music used in every ad you could think of. To my surprise there were many others on this site looking for the same piece of music. Some thought it was an unproduced composition by John Barry but we persisted in helping one another find out what it was. Some weeks later, somebody nailed it down as a piece of music from a stock collection composed by Larry Hochman. Someone reached out to Hochman and invited him to the message board at Ad Tunes, he was so flattered by the outpouring of us searching for his music and thinking it was from John Barry that he gave us the music for free! The song is titled “Courage” from one of Hochman’s music collections of stock compositions, he actually gave us access to his private server to download the entire collection. We bent Hochman’s ear a bit while he was on the message board and asked him where we could find more of his music. At the time he said he was working on “Spamalot” which would later win him a Grammy nomination. Since then Hochman is most notable for his orchestrations from “The Book of Mormon”, which he was also nominated for and won! So I guess this is my brush with a Grammy winner and a really great musical experience.
By the way, I just actually found the actual message board where all this took place!
http://adtunes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66731&page=5
You can hear “Courage” in it’s entirety here (Along with some other Hochman compositions for film)
https://www.universalproductionmusic.com/tc-hk/discover/albums/5100/music-for-the-movies-2
And if you want to have some fun looking through a stock music site, try this one!
APM Music
https://www.apmmusic.com
Thanks for posting the link to Courage, etc., Edward. Those are truly superior stock music tracks! Love the description of 09: Art Film. “Medium tempo obtuse art film woodwind and drums.” Is that code for “Woody Allen movie?” I also got a kick out of hearing those classic melodrama piano tunes like 29: Sneaky! In the 90s, I worked on a kids’ series that did a lot of parodies of commercials, TV shows and movies which needed sound-alike music. At first the show used what they were calling “cleared music.” Sometimes we the writers would be asked to find a track as not all producers had an ear for music. What a pain it was to go through track after track on CDs to find a good match. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…” It was especially hard to find current-sounding music for our teen viewers as the CDs would lag a couple of years behind the trends. Eventually we got a great up-and-coming Halifax music composer named Blain Morris to make original tracks for the show. Soooo much better! He’s still working in the industry. Coincidentally a couple of days ago, my mother was watching an old promotional video that I helped her write and shoot for a local Girl Guide Camp. The production house that edited it for her gave her some stock music CDs to choose from for the background music. Hearing the music again took me right back to going through them trying to find the right genre, mood and the perfect tempo to edit to. It’s amazing how fast you can tell when the music isn’t right. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…”
That’s great! As an Art Director, I do the same for a living but with visuals instead of music, so yeah, I’ve been there too. I wish I could have just a fraction of that time back I’ve spent with the “Nope, nope, nope, nope….” from the last 30 years. Still, it’s rewarding when it works well, isn’t it? I guess someone has to do it…
Highlight of this biweek’s show has to be the wonderful version of Norwegian Wood by Bob Evans. As David Hepworth has said, the Beatles didn’t just write the best songs, they also made the best tracks. Most covers just remind me of how much better their originals were. But Bob’s instumental was a fresh, charming delight, played not just with technical expertise, but great wit and warmth. I’m checking out his website now.
On the mix itself, I’m sorry to report I struggled with all of the first four songs, though the dBs grew on me with repeat listens. Things picked up with the Go! Team, and Whitney were fantastic.
Partridge Family were just about worth it to provide an excuse to play the Go! Team again, but the top 5 was too much for me. Enough with the sugar, already!
Local Rabbits and Jeffrey Frederick provided a welcome return to greatness.
Tonight’s the Night may be my favourite Neil Young album, and Tired Eyes is one of his best and most powerful songs. I was sorry Mary didn’t go for it. Pretty much everything he’s released in the past 10 years has been so lifeless and boring as to make me doubt whether he was ever any good in the first place. Thanks for reminding me of his past ragged glory, and the faint possibility that the muse may yet return again.
The Feelies – great groove, fine guitars, kind of a Television vibe alongside the Velvets influence. Personally, I really like lead vocals placed way back in the mix and I thought this was a brilliant closer.