I wound up having to create a bookmark for this thread in my browser because of the non-notifications. I get them, but funny how many people aren't. If I were a conspiracy theorist, i'd say it was sabotage by the gorts.
What I think you're saying is that a lot of disco songs you don't care for don't have a traditional western pop music structure. They don't have the traditional two or three verses, chorus, bridge instrumental break, and coda.
Around here, school has been in session for two weeks already, and we still have another holiday coming up.
I liked parts of “Tusk” - most of Lindsey Buckingham’s cuts and a few other songs like “Sisters of the Moon.” It was a double album, so it had some filler, and was priced higher than other double albums. I remember that the high priced definitely turned some people off. It’s also a weird album because it’s clear that the band members are going in different directions, which was bound to polarize fans. All that being said, it’s a very interesting record.
It also didn't help Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac that the industry, right at the point Tusk came out, was about to enter a protracted sales slump that would last quite a few years (and from which such formats, such as the 45, would never really recover), this in the midst of a massive recession which limited people's purchasing power - especially for records. We already saw, in this year: - 20th Century-Fox Records latching onto RCA for distribution (as we will see over the next few years, this would cement a reputation RCA had in some corners as the "elephant's graveyard" of label distributors - where distributed labels end up dying) - A&M entering into a distribution agreement with RCA, where both parties ended up with others' arrays of pressing plants (RCA increasingly pressing A&M product, RCA's product pressed by other plants such as Monarch and - in much less frequency - Columbia) - ABC Records being bought by MCA, then discontinued and its artists' roster folded into MCA's - United Artists Records, which Artie Mogull and Jerry Rubenstein bought from Transamerica the year before, taken over by Capitol-EMI after M&R (which had borrowed heavily from that company to finance their acquisition) defaulted - GRT (which owned Janus Records) declaring bankruptcy, not long after discontinuing Janus; one factor blamed for GRT's demise was ABC's (they were a big GRT client) - Pickwick also going into bankruptcy And that's not counting the massive purges of label staff which followed all through the industry. All of which, as time passed, would have an effect on how the music would sound. (Beyond that, I have no intent of unnecessarily jumping ahead.) And they probably thought disco was why punk didn't "catch on" here the way it had in Britain. There are those, unfortunately, that in many ways and manifestations are possessed of a "zero-sum" mentality. I've met far too many of those in my life.
I don't know if this is the right time, or if it was a few months from this . . . but there was another up-and-coming artist who around this period had his first significant hit which I wonder if anyone thought, when first hearing it, that the guy in question was a Michael Jackson ripoff . . . I ask as to when would be the time to reveal which song and artist this was.
I don’t know the exact date, but I believe it was during the reign of “Rise” at #1 that my family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, which I now consider my hometown. Before that we’d been living outside Wilkes-Barre, PA. If you know anything about Wilkes-Barre, you know it’s the very epitome of a dead-end crumbling factory town, the kind of place that makes you feel like you’re living in a Springsteen song (if not a parody of one!). But I didn’t know that in 1979, because we lived in an idyllic apartment complex with well-kept green lawns and plenty of sidewalks for us kids to ride our bikes on. The place looked like a cross between a college campus and a suburban 1950s movie setting, literally. I was only six and it was the only home I remembered (we’d lived there since I was two), and needless to say I did NOT want to leave! I still recall playing with my Matchboxes on the floor when my dad came home and asked, “How’d you like to move to New England?” And I still recall saying no! That, coupled with the fact that Manchester is (or was in 1979) also a crumbling milltown and this time I was aware of it from day one (we lived on the right side of the tracks, but just about two blocks from the tracks), meant I spent most of my late childhood and some of my adolescence pining for the good old days in PA. Every time I had a bad day at school or got lonely because I didn’t have a lot of friends, I couldn’t help imagining the grass was a lot greener back there. Needless to say it drove my parents crazy, as they knew what the old neighborhood really had been like! I once heard a child psychologist say most kids go through “a decade of meanness” from age 6 to 16, when bullying is most likely to happen. Those happened to be exactly the ages for which I lived in Manchester, and I did indeed endure my share of bullying. I now know that likely would have happened no matter where we lived. I was a quiet, shy boy who wasn’t good at sports, liked bright colors, cried easily...I might just as well have had a target painted on my back! But I had no way of knowing at the time my experience was universal. Especially not since when we moved again, to the DC suburbs when I was 16, I wasn’t bullied at my new school. That was partly because no one there knew me as the kid who cried so easily back in grade school, partly because I was in mostly honors classes where most of us were a little more mature for our age, and partly because I just fit in much better there than back in Manchester. But again, I had no way of knowing that at the time. I just figured I’d been incredibly unlucky and - once again - that I’d have been better off if we’d never moved in the first place. (If you’re wondering, no, it never occurred to me that the other kids probably thought I was gay. I wasn’t familiar with those stereotypes at the time, and so I had no idea that I happened to fit quite a few of them - especially not since I was just as girl-crazy as any adolescent boy ever was. I don’t even know for a fact now that the jerks I grew up with did think that, but it seems more than likely.) So it was quite some time before I figured out that it really wasn’t a matter of where I’d grown up, that bullying and teenage angst are a fact of life everywhere. All of which is my longwinded way of explaining how - for years afterward - I longed for my innocent, happy days back in PA, having no idea that I was seeing them through rose colored glasses. It’s all too fitting if - as I think - those days came to an end while Herb Alpert was atop the charts, for I was a huge fan of the 60s Tijuana Brass albums when I was a little kid in PA. They remained my favorite until I discovered the Beatles in eighth grade, and to this very day they take me back to my earliest, most innocent memories. Curiously, I don’t remember “Rise” at all from when it was a hit, though of course I’ve come to know and like it since then. If I did hear it back then, I had no idea it was Herb Alpert (for that matter, I had no idea that his albums that I knew and loved were a decade and change old at the time - I thought they’d just come out!), and I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have approved of his vastly changed style if I had known. I imagine I’d have been crushed at how much my hero had changed. I was quite a bit older before I understood that most musicians' styles change with the trends in music in general. Which, really, makes it all the more poetic that it was probably the #1 song during the most unwelcome change of my life! Now, with a lifetime’s worth of more perspective, I like it a lot. It’s got a nice middle-of-the-road style and a fun melody, and now it takes me back in a good way. It's nothing like his earlier works that I loved so much as a little kid, but it's great in its own right. I feel like I probably ought to add here that I didn’t hate my childhood or anything. I hate some of the things that happened in those years, but I do also have plenty of nice memories. Still and all, it’s fair to say growing up in Manchester had a lot to do with making me want to roam and see the outside world! (The summer I was 12, my favorite song not by Herb Alpert was “Gentle On My Mind”, for example.) I guess my current location speaks for itself as far as all that goes. “Rise,” with all the promise of the West Coast and the wild life and glamor I saw in all the TV shows I grew up loving, is emblematic of that as well. Now, of course, I do have friends who actually grew up in LA and its suburbs in those years, and for the most part they’re not much fonder of their hometowns than I am of mine! Live and learn.
I always thought "Rise" was pretty forgettable. Just listened again for the first time in many years, and... yeah, still forgettable. Inoffensive, but not memorable. That it hit no. 1 kind of amazes me.
“Rise” – Herb Alpert There are a number of stories regarding “Rise” by Herb Alpert. This was his second Number One making him the only artist to have a Number One both as a vocalist and as an instrumentalist. The idea of the record is reported to have started with Herb’s nephew, Randy Badazz, who wanted his uncle to capitalize on the disco craze. His idea was to go into the studio and do some disco versions of the old Tijuana Brass records. Randy disavows this story, however. Bottom line is that when the disco versions just weren’t working, the studio time was still booked, so Randy whipped out a composition that he and Andy Armer had written. It was an up-tempo song called “Rise” (pronounced “Ree-sa”, as it was a former girlfriend’s name). After playing through the up-tempo number a few times, the drummer on the session (Steve Schaefer) made the suggestion that they slow the tempo way down to 100bpm, making it more of a slow burn, which is where the magic happened on the track. Nevertheless, when it was finished, "Wrecking Crew" marimba player and friend Julius Wechter, who was playing on the track, told Herb straight-out that he thought it was the worst thing that Herb had ever done. So much for Julius’ ability to pick hits! The record, now called "Rise", rhymes with skies, was picked up by the ABC-TV soap opera GENERAL HOSPITAL to play during the “Luke & Laura” rape story and was repeated often over the weeks as memories of the event were played out in the story. With the constant repetition, sales began to soar and the record ended up at Number One. The album version clocks in at 7:40, while the edited single is 3:47. On CD, the shorter, single version has only appeared on a UK/Canadian comp called THE VERY BEST OF HERB ALPERT, and it most recently was placed on the A&M 50: The Anniversary Collection 3 CD set. “Rise” has appeared on a few 12” vinyl singles as well including clear vinyl. When DJ’s from England got hold of the 12” single, it had a speed of 33 1/3 RPM printed right on the label, but they had become accustomed to 12” singles at 45 RPM, which is how they played it. As a result, the record started to become a hit over there at the wrong speed.
Yup, the song had stalled until General Hospital - which was just beginning its rise to the top of the daytime TV ratings here in America - picked it as the soundtrack for Luke's rape of Laura. And then came all of the flashbacks. For months. In these days before MTV, there was nothing else that could provide a song that kind of exposure. Radio began adding it, sales took off and the rest was, as they say, history. It was a very odd storyline, but powerfully resonated with audiences as it played out over the summer of 1979. I was just about to turn 11 and tuned in most days during summer vacation, while mom was watching the show and doing the laundry. I was old enough to understand what was going on, how shocking it was, and how frustrated all the characters involved were with how the situation unfolded - it was great drama, and the ratings exploded. I found this description of the setup online, which I think perfectly outlines how it went down, and why audiences were riveted: Laura was a teenager with a sketchy past, trying to be a good wife to Scott, who was a little controlling. Laura worked at the Campus Disco, which Luke managed. Over time, Luke became attracted to Laura, and she also was attracted to Luke. But because Laura was a married woman, she felt conflicted, guilty and ashamed about her attraction to Luke, and she resisted him. Then, the incident at the disco. It was a horrific scene that was played initially as a sexual assault by a drunk and despondent Luke. Afterward was different undercurrent – Laura refused to name Luke as the rapist, still conflicted about her attraction to him. It was a very complex story that moved slowly, with the two of them skirting the issue and then confronting each other, and culminating in Laura and Luke running off together eluding Luke’s mob bosses, Scott, and the law. Essentially, bad girl trying to be good meets bad boy trying to woo (not so) good girl, they hit it off, he falls off the rails and does something awful but predictable, and she's traumatized by it but at the same time is deeply aware that nobody's perfect, and that in fact both of them are pretty far from perfect. She won't have him charged, he goes on the run to evade the mob, and she goes along with him. So you've got flirting, attraction, chemistry, betrayal, assault, conflicted feelings, regret, danger, adventure and (maybe) a shot at redemption. This setup had everything but Klingons! It occurs to me you could actually play out the exact same storyline today and ignite an absolute cultural maelstrom online, provided you had two actors with the chemistry Anthony Geary and Genie Francis exhibited onscreen. You couldn't take your eyes off of them. Was it the right/responsible thing to do? No. I'm sure there's a generation of women out there who tried - and failed - to turn their rapey, abusive boyfriends "good" the way Laura turned Luke. How romantic! On the other hand, a guy can now be "cancelled" when he hauls out his junk during a makeout session and his prospective partner voices no complaints and sticks around for half an hour sorta/kinda gettin' it on. So we seem to have overcorrected into an opposite-land realm featuring a different flavor of insanity.
In addition to being the first #1 placed there by a soap opera (but arguably not the last), "Rise" was also noteworthy for being the first digitally-recorded #1. That's right! Herb could afford the best - he owned the label - and the multitracks of his album Rise were the first recorded on A&M's brand new 3M 32-track Digital Audio Mastering System. They apparently didn't much care for the sound of the digital mixdowns though, so instead mixed down to some - I've always thought - fairly grungy, tape compressed analog 2-tracks. Still, the album retains a degree of the sonic signature of that 3M digital multitrack - it sounds a bit like a CD of The Nightfly recorded loud on someone's Nakamichi deck, using normal bias tape. I've created a Spotify playlist of records known to have been recorded on that 3M Digital Audio Mastering System, if you want to check some of them out. I'm sure there were many more than these, but I haven't been able to compile a more extensive list yet.
FWIW, I've always adored "Rise". It's a fantastic, funkified, atmospheric jam and the last thing on earth anybody expected from Herb Alpert. As bizarre a delight as "Tusk", and way more fun to dance to. Herb enjoyed a miniature career renaissance after this. Followup single "Rotation" made it to #30, while the Jean-Michel Jarre-esque "Beyond" off the 1980 album of the same name got limited radio play, making it to #50, but wound up being a used quite a bit by TV producers and the like as background / commercial bumper music. I love it - as with "Rise", going all Equinoxe was the last thing you'd expect Herb Alpert to do, and was delighted to see the album is on Spotify. His greatest subsequent chart success would happen late in the next decade though, with a little help from a young lady his label hadn't yet signed in 1979...
Sad Eyes As far as boring ballads go, this one is not the worst. But it's still kinda amazing that it got to #1. Not much more to say, really. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough The Off the Wall album hits the perfect sweet spot for me vis a vis Michael Jackson. It's after his voice stopped being squeaky like in the early 70s, but before Thriller turned his annoying grunts and moans into a non-stop irritant. He is past his days as a freakishly talented midget, but he also hasn't yet started his long decline into plastic surgery and weirdness (he actually looks incredibly normal on the record cover!). I actually enjoy both Rock with You and this song, which might be the last time you hear me say such a thing about any of his songs (just you WAIT until I get to the Thriller cuts. Hoo boy!). Don't Stop bops along nicely, and I actually quite like his high voice in it. I have not the slightest idea what he is saying. I should finally look it up and learn, but I always hear: Wake up, in the post op, don't stop til you get enough. The post operative ward? What was the operation he had? One of his plastic surgeries? If he is singing about his surgeries, then perhaps he should have stopped long before he had had enough!
Rise I had a French teacher in high school who was really into Chuck Mangione and Herb Alpert, and we would have to listen to language practice tapes in the library which he always started with a small snatch of one of their songs (often Rise). So that is always the first thing I think of when I hear this tune: Tijuana brass followed by French language phrases. The second thing I think of is that Alpert was one of my mom's favorite artists in the sixties and seventies. She had several of the Tijuana Brass albums in her collection (yes, including THAT one), and those tunes were the soundtrack of my young life. She also bought Rise, or whatever the album was called, on cassette, and we would always listen to that when she picked me up from school. For no good reason, as it looked in my mom's record collection: (Hey, consider yourself lucky; I almost posted the parody cover featuring William Shatner) OK, my mom liked Rise. But did I? Yeah, I did. It not only has a lot of nostalgia value for me, he did a good job of updating his sound while still keeping the same vibe as his sixties work. And come right down to it, I just am a sucker for this type of thing, even if the album cover didn't have a pregnant naked lady covered in foam on it. Can't win 'em all! (yeah, she was pregnant. Fun fact!)
Very important to use the Watched Threads option instead of your very unreliable alerts link, as someone else brought to my attention about three years ago. That is the only reliable way to be aware of new postings. I almost ignore alerts.
I was one very unhappy teen when I plucked down about $15 for that dog of an album. That was a lot of money back then. But upon reflection, was expecting Rumors 2 fair? As you rightly said, that was actually very daring, risking their career daring, and it’s not even that it’s a bad album. I get it now, though I still think it’s pretty out there, especially for it’s time. Very risky to completely change your sound like that, and perhaps not very fair to your fans to change so abruptly. Warners must have had an absolute fit. But they made it up to those like me with Mirage, and I do respect what Lindsey did. Just wish I could get my $15 back with interest.
I would suggest more frequent number one listings when it gets slow. If I remember correctly, soon there will be a pretty good lull of exciting songs until maybe ‘82 while the industry was trying to figure out what the heck we wanted to listen to after disco blew up. I’m trying not to look ahead at my Billboard Charts book.
Seems like the bigger the thread, the harder it is to ping the notifications link. The Watched Threads link is far more accurate imo.
