Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

More vintage AOR

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:31:00 -0700

I can't call these "deferred listening" because I actually had the records at one point, but I don't think I do anymore. Still, they are of a piece with the songs in my last Deferred Listening post: AOR also-rans, songs that got played on the rock stations in the years around 1980, just not very much. The Marc Tanner Band's "Hot and Cold," from the 1981 Temptation album, is underpinned by a particularly sweet acoustic guitar riff (sorry, the YouTube fan video is the only file I can find):

Marc Tanner Band Hot And Cold

"DB Cooper"'s 1980 album Buy American included the minor hit "Heart Freeze" with a nice chunky electric guitar sound. He/they is/are sometimes classified as "power pop" (a.k.a. stealth new wave), but I think the music is closer to the standard album-rock of the time:

[07] D B Cooper - Heart Freeze

D B Cooper

Now if only I could find "All the Young Heroes" by Gary O', my AOR collection here will be ~~complete~~ closer to complete. Any help?

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AOR addendum: New England

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:30:22 -0700

There was one more minor AOR hit I wanted to include in my last post, but there was no audio file to go into the Seeqpod player. "Don't Ever Want To Lose ~~You~~ Ya" by New England was one of many songs I taped off the radio in 1979, but never got the album. Their marketing angle was being "Produced by Paul Stanley of KISS," and they were a hairy bunch who looked like they might have been Kiss without the makeup. But if power pop was stealth new wave, as I contend, then New England was stealth power pop behind the hard-rock facade:

NEW ENGLAND - Don't Ever Wanna Lose Ya

Wow, it sure was windy in that studio! Don't you love how earnestly the keyboardist Jimmy Waldo sings along on the chorus? And how about drummer Hirsh Gardner's hair?! He should've been in Journey with Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie, that would have been the ultimate hair band. But getting back to the music, it's not far from bona fide power pop anthems such as "Tomorrow Night" by The Shoes:

Tomorrow Night - Shoes

But the visuals from New England's video remind me of something else... Hmmm.....

The darkness-Love is only a feeling

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More stealth new wave, a.k.a. power pop

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:17:54 -0700

A couple more new-wave-leaning songs that got regular airplay on staunch AOR station WAVA were Bram Tchaikovsky's "Girl of My Dreams" (1979) and the Motors' "Love and Loneliness" (1980). I always think of those two songs together because Tchaikovsky (actually Peter Bramall) was a member of the Motors before going "solo" (in quotes because Bram Tchaikovsky was one of those "yes it's the lead singer's name but it's also the name of the band" deals), and also before the Motors recorded "Love and Loneliness". So the only link is a shared history, but that's enough for me. One of Tchaikovsky's early bands, Heroes, recorded a version of Springsteen's "Growing Up," so it's not surprising to hear Bruce's "Born To Run" motif in "Girl of My Dreams"--

06 - Girl of My Dreams

Bram Tchaikovsky

"Love and Loneliness" also sounded familiar when I first heard it, but it took Ira Robbins of Trouser Press to make the connection for me:

The chorus of the best-known track, "Love and Loneliness," sounds exactly like Steve Stills' "Love the One You're With" — and that's as good as the record gets.

Sure enough; there are plenty of worse songs to copy. But there's a double-time beat in the bass and keys (though not in the leaden drumming) that would come to define a large chunk of the New Wave sound:

Motors - Love And Loneliness

The Motors

You may recall this album cover as being die-cut, with the top left and bottom right corners cut off in alignment with the steps. There are probably people who collection such things, but I'm not one of them (yet).

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My first New Wave record

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:05:41 -0700

For a couple years, roughly 1978-80, "new wave" music could be heard on rock (or AOR, "album-oriented rock") radio stations. Either new wave had yet to forge a distinct identity, or rock fans had yet to notice anything different and voice their displeasure, but several of my favorite WAVA songs from that era were, in retrospect, definitely of new wave pedigree. The first such song was "Yachting Type" by the Yachts, from Liverpool. I remember the first time I heard it, the DJ said "Plug your ears into this!" before playing it:

12 - yachting type

Yachts

I was a fan from that very first exposure. I bought the album and listened to it over and over, and it bore the repetition: there are a lot of good songs on it. I had no idea that it was New Wave, I just liked the hooks and the organ. After that first album the Yachts changed bass players, put out a lackluster second album, and broke up. The core of the group would later resurface as It's Immaterial, whom I also liked, without even knowing about the Yachts connection, which I only learned recently. But back to the topic at hand, which is new wave music sneaking onto AOR airwaves, another favorite from those days is the anthemic "The Shape of Things To Come" by the Headboys*:

01 The Shape Of Things To Come

The Headboys

I never did get around to buying that album, but I taped the song off the radio, and that was good enough. I've now heard the whole album (thanks to the Power Pop Criminals blog), and the rest of it is more pub-rock than new wave, but still fun, and I might have gotten into it back then anyway. Belatedly, I learned that "power pop" is the category assigned to these under-the-radar new wave bands, and I have several more examples of their infiltration of AOR airwaves, but I'll start with just these two.

* Headboy keyboardist Calum Malcolm has owned Castle Sound Studios in Scotland where the Headboys lp was recorded for over 20 years and has produced records for The Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout and others. (from Lost Bands of the New Wave Era)

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