Tuesday, November 14, 2006
45s: Brother albatross
I’ve heard the Little River Band three times in the last week. That has to be God’s way of telling me to write a blog post.
One of my longtime fascinations with pop music genres concerns what used to be referred to as The Singles Band (or Singles Act—though that sounds tawdry). In other words, a band with seemingly no interest in making the album-long statement so beloved of critics and hipsters. The singles band was a collection of pure entertainers, out there looking to channel a vibe, to turn on the audience, to string out the modest ideas they have into enough hits to keep them busy for five years, max.
I at first failed to put LRB into this genre. When my wife mentioned she’d heard "Cool Change" while driving to work, I thought, boy, the Little River Band, they sure came and went.
Then I realized they also did "Take It Easy On Me." That led to other seldom-explored neural pathways and the lyrics to "Lady." And the wuss rock epic "Reminiscing." And everything else listed below.
So clearly LRB were less a two-hit wonder and more the Australian version of that very personification of the Singles Band, the Guess Who. They were also one of the first Aussie acts to hit it big in the United States.
LRB built their hitmaking machine on the dominant Southern California sound. And whatever else you say about the group, they nailed those big harmonies. Add in the requisite power ballad guitar solos and plenty of hirsute-and-sensitive man-emotion and at times LRB sounded like the Eagles of an alternative universe, where Joe Walsh never joined and Glenn Frey teamed with Randy Meisner and Tim Schmit instead of Don Henley.
Alas, LRB had a darker side, too—the ghastly ready-to-be-your-ad-jingle pop found in the catalogs of Orleans and Ambrosia and Player.
Unlike those bands, however, LRB had staying power. Over six or seven years they produced enough popular songage to allow them to legitimately fill a greatest hits disc with…. hits.
No one’s more surprised than me. I waste valuable brain cells pondering the place of the Grass Roots in music history. And whether or not I should set up a "Freebird" versus "Stairway to Heaven" death match. And new ways to make fun of hair bands. Thus, I flatter myself that I would remember a band this successful.
Allow me, then, to humbly confess I am newly-schooled on LRB. Here I had thought of them kind of like a drive through Illinois—another of the vast, bland pauses in life we must endure as we wait for something interesting to happen. Instead, they were—to my lingering bafflement—successful, and on that level, at least, of actual interest as another Singles Band.
"Lady"
The song I most associate with the band. First, a terrific chorus. I’m putting that out there now. Deride if you must, but the harmony vocals soar. The refrain does what a refrain should: it sells. In fact, LRB distills the most sellable sound of the decade into ten seconds of crystal-clear product and even tosses in a little sincerity—free of charge! Good thing. They needed help overcoming verses like this:
Look around, come to me
I have no answers, but know where I wanna be
I look around, play a part
I was born in the winter and cooled by a warm heart
"Lady" uses the kind of build one associates with Styx or, ye gods, Meat Loaf. A tinkling guitar part over an earnest vocal to kick off. Near-stop. More tinkling. Weird background sound effects. Then the climb into harmony. The snap of the chorus. Just when you think you’ve had enough tempo changes, you can forget it, the LRB go back to the song’s opening to take you through again. A fairly complex structure for a Top Forty hit of the time. Hey, I didn’t say they weren’t pros.
"Reminiscing"
One section of the music world reacted to disco by rocking harder—see Nugent, Ted. Another took stock of the landscape, both personal and professional, and packed it in—see Zeppelin, Led.
A large segment, however, went in for a kind of retro pop-lounge phase, informed by songcraft and slickness, replete with nostalgia, rarely personal (and unrevealing when it was), and as often as not put together by studio pros of long service.
The reward? Showers of Grammy Awards and enough cash to buy a heap of cocaine. Don’t remember Ambrosia or Player? How about Toto? No? Okay. Think of the lowest example: "The Pina Colada Song."
"Reminiscing" was LRB’s billion-selling contribution to the movement.
What a cloying piece of crap. Referencing Glenn Miller and Cole Porter? Check. Written from the POV of the future, looking back on the night the narrator knew it was true love? Check, with gagging noise. Old songs. Memories come along. Cheesy saxophone. Please make it stop.
"Cool Change"
Not just yacht rock, but a song about, well, being on a boat. I pin my shamefaced affection for this song on a single rhyme:
Well I was born in the sign of water
And it’s there that I feel my best
The albatross and the whales
they are my brothers.
The albatross and the whales, my friends. Embrace us, oh Gaia!
I blame this on early childhood, because whatever brings me to embrace "Cool Change" had already manifested in kindergarten. One of the kids I played with owned Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and man, I dug that, too, with the major most. Let me add I have not listened to JLS in years. Not that I am ashamed of having liked it. Little kids should be into songs about animals. I consider that normal. That I listened to Badfinger 45s at the same age is what marks me as unusual.
"Lonesome Loser"
Here the band embraced what, for lack of an alternative, we must call a harder sound. A good example of the kind of impersonal pop-rock product that dominated mainstream radio after disco’s implosion circa 1980. The war to kill disco had many casualties. This was not what they fought for.
"Night Owls"
The Little River Band plus "edgy" guitar equals generic.
"Take It Easy On Me"
A bit of the earlier emotion returns. Not much more to say.
One of my longtime fascinations with pop music genres concerns what used to be referred to as The Singles Band (or Singles Act—though that sounds tawdry). In other words, a band with seemingly no interest in making the album-long statement so beloved of critics and hipsters. The singles band was a collection of pure entertainers, out there looking to channel a vibe, to turn on the audience, to string out the modest ideas they have into enough hits to keep them busy for five years, max.
I at first failed to put LRB into this genre. When my wife mentioned she’d heard "Cool Change" while driving to work, I thought, boy, the Little River Band, they sure came and went.
Then I realized they also did "Take It Easy On Me." That led to other seldom-explored neural pathways and the lyrics to "Lady." And the wuss rock epic "Reminiscing." And everything else listed below.
So clearly LRB were less a two-hit wonder and more the Australian version of that very personification of the Singles Band, the Guess Who. They were also one of the first Aussie acts to hit it big in the United States.
LRB built their hitmaking machine on the dominant Southern California sound. And whatever else you say about the group, they nailed those big harmonies. Add in the requisite power ballad guitar solos and plenty of hirsute-and-sensitive man-emotion and at times LRB sounded like the Eagles of an alternative universe, where Joe Walsh never joined and Glenn Frey teamed with Randy Meisner and Tim Schmit instead of Don Henley.
Alas, LRB had a darker side, too—the ghastly ready-to-be-your-ad-jingle pop found in the catalogs of Orleans and Ambrosia and Player.
Unlike those bands, however, LRB had staying power. Over six or seven years they produced enough popular songage to allow them to legitimately fill a greatest hits disc with…. hits.
No one’s more surprised than me. I waste valuable brain cells pondering the place of the Grass Roots in music history. And whether or not I should set up a "Freebird" versus "Stairway to Heaven" death match. And new ways to make fun of hair bands. Thus, I flatter myself that I would remember a band this successful.
Allow me, then, to humbly confess I am newly-schooled on LRB. Here I had thought of them kind of like a drive through Illinois—another of the vast, bland pauses in life we must endure as we wait for something interesting to happen. Instead, they were—to my lingering bafflement—successful, and on that level, at least, of actual interest as another Singles Band.
"Lady"
The song I most associate with the band. First, a terrific chorus. I’m putting that out there now. Deride if you must, but the harmony vocals soar. The refrain does what a refrain should: it sells. In fact, LRB distills the most sellable sound of the decade into ten seconds of crystal-clear product and even tosses in a little sincerity—free of charge! Good thing. They needed help overcoming verses like this:
Look around, come to me
I have no answers, but know where I wanna be
I look around, play a part
I was born in the winter and cooled by a warm heart
"Lady" uses the kind of build one associates with Styx or, ye gods, Meat Loaf. A tinkling guitar part over an earnest vocal to kick off. Near-stop. More tinkling. Weird background sound effects. Then the climb into harmony. The snap of the chorus. Just when you think you’ve had enough tempo changes, you can forget it, the LRB go back to the song’s opening to take you through again. A fairly complex structure for a Top Forty hit of the time. Hey, I didn’t say they weren’t pros.
"Reminiscing"
One section of the music world reacted to disco by rocking harder—see Nugent, Ted. Another took stock of the landscape, both personal and professional, and packed it in—see Zeppelin, Led.
A large segment, however, went in for a kind of retro pop-lounge phase, informed by songcraft and slickness, replete with nostalgia, rarely personal (and unrevealing when it was), and as often as not put together by studio pros of long service.
The reward? Showers of Grammy Awards and enough cash to buy a heap of cocaine. Don’t remember Ambrosia or Player? How about Toto? No? Okay. Think of the lowest example: "The Pina Colada Song."
"Reminiscing" was LRB’s billion-selling contribution to the movement.
What a cloying piece of crap. Referencing Glenn Miller and Cole Porter? Check. Written from the POV of the future, looking back on the night the narrator knew it was true love? Check, with gagging noise. Old songs. Memories come along. Cheesy saxophone. Please make it stop.
"Cool Change"
Not just yacht rock, but a song about, well, being on a boat. I pin my shamefaced affection for this song on a single rhyme:
Well I was born in the sign of water
And it’s there that I feel my best
The albatross and the whales
they are my brothers.
The albatross and the whales, my friends. Embrace us, oh Gaia!
I blame this on early childhood, because whatever brings me to embrace "Cool Change" had already manifested in kindergarten. One of the kids I played with owned Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and man, I dug that, too, with the major most. Let me add I have not listened to JLS in years. Not that I am ashamed of having liked it. Little kids should be into songs about animals. I consider that normal. That I listened to Badfinger 45s at the same age is what marks me as unusual.
"Lonesome Loser"
Here the band embraced what, for lack of an alternative, we must call a harder sound. A good example of the kind of impersonal pop-rock product that dominated mainstream radio after disco’s implosion circa 1980. The war to kill disco had many casualties. This was not what they fought for.
"Night Owls"
The Little River Band plus "edgy" guitar equals generic.
"Take It Easy On Me"
A bit of the earlier emotion returns. Not much more to say.
// posted by KC45s @ 7:41 AM 
