Should Have Been Contenders

 

 

So what does an old geezer do when he can’t drive to most of his favorite places for two years and wants to avoid the 800 pound political gorilla of autocrats undermining and making war on democracies?

I covered in a post or two back that I had been playing a lot of guitar to while away some creative time most days.  That works for an hour or two on a daily basis, but hardly fills up the 16 waking hours I’m accustomed to living currently. Yard work sporadically can make a bit of time pass efficiently with a little nod to the jobs well done when you’ve made a visible difference on the landscape.  I just can’t do the yard on a daily basis, or for any length of meaningful work measurement past 90 minutes. It’s just not a healthy choice for me.

Videos, the internet clips, cable and other visual offerings some days work to engross a self into a good space and explore, just not as a steady diet por moi.  Some of the interesting stuff I’ve discovered I’ll try to pass on and you can make the determination if my take fits what works for you. Music and books, though, take me out of time and space completely which fulfills some deeper need and intellectual curiosity I require to get through the continual disappointment of today’s American and world reality.

Today, I thought of how I had found some of the recently added tunes to my collection. Many articles and statistics show the current trend of much older music being the choice du jour for listeners now. What’s old is new, or if I did not get to it in the past I have time for it today and the tunes sound fresh and new in this 2022 setting.  A song on my iTunes player may inspire me to search the band through Google on the web and look for purchasing options. This might cause a spark to listen to another group from that era or look for the producer of the record and other acts he did production work on and so it goes. I am my own human algorithm. I refuse to use the stream method.

 

 

For the record, I’m just not a music stream person. For many, the subscriptions and streams work by tossing out the algorithms to find the similarities in music acts that entice them to stay connected to the particular site doing the stream. From 2016 to today streaming by either subscription or through advertisements has been the dominant method of listening to tunes here in the USA. Pay to play services with math genies allowing you not to think of what that next selection will be without Mr. DJ, or you, getting in the way. The machine will find the better choice for you every time. You the listener are only important as a revenue source or a click/eyeball for advertisers. The music? Just a means for revenue not an art form, not an elegant and powerful communications method, just one more lane to make money on the endless internet highway. And the best part of this new era? No true human interaction. Not for me, sorry.

 

I’ve got a City Boy song, The Day The Earth Caught Fire, mesmerizing me as I type.  I remember finding out about this group in 1978 with a High Fidelity magazine review, or was it a Stereo Review music column? Maybe it was in both mags, which would have been unusual for an obscure Brit act but not impossible if some people with some dough were really pushing the record.  It was a lucky find for me. Living in California all my life the reviews from out west usually centered on west coast acts, or those major players from England. This was that rare under the radar act here on the west coast that the eastern seaboard critics embraced but most in my circle had never heard of. The band had tremendous vocals and harmonies reminiscent of Queen, 10cc & The Hollies with great guitar chops and arrangements with top notch production from Robert John “Mutt” Lange. Lange produced the first 5 City Boy albums, and this group was his first major production credit.

“Mutt” Lange today is known as one of the greatest producers in the rock era with astounding successes coming with AC/DC, Def Leppard, The Cars, Foreigner, Graham Parker, Boomtown Rats, Brian Adams, Celine Dion, Shania Twain and many more. City Boy had one modest semi-hit from the seven albums they released during their brief stay (1974-1982) on the rock media stage, 5-7-0-5. They lasted for the exact same time ABBA did during that period, just without the sales results. I will say to anyone reading this little blurb that should you have some affinity for Queen or 10cc you should download, or stream, this band’s albums. The group sounds current, fresh and innovative with themes that still matter 40 some years after being recorded.

 

Don’t just take it from me. I use You Tube frequently to check on various pop culture items I still peruse, and one reliable source for music has been Pete Pardo’s Sea of Tranquility show. His show is a great source for prog/metal/power pop acts specifically, but as he goes along his show grows to embrace more diverse musical acts current and past. I find it a great resource. Muchas Gracias, Pete.

Here’s the part where I usually bemoan the sad financial state of the forgotten or hard luck band members. Not so with this outfit. The guitarist, Mike Slamer, went on to work with Steve Walsh after he left Kansas on few of Street’s records released in the 1980s and 1990s. He’s also done a ton of work as a studio session player for various artists and for soundtracks on television projects. Steve Broughton was incredibly successful after leaving City Boy when the original members started wrapping it up. He wrote songs and produced records for the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett, Peter Frampton and Jefferson Starship to name a few. He headed up the A&R division for Jive Records bringing acts and hits to Britney Spears, NSync, Justin Timberlake and following that became a top executive for Atlantic Records in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. He’s been a music making money machine, like “Mutt” Lange, just not with his original band members.

While reacquainting myself with City Boy, another band that came and went during the 70s into the early 80s started bouncing echoed beats on my eardrums recently. This band actually had several major hits, unlike City Boy, but bad timing, bad luck and horrific management killed the band’s hopes and aspirations. This power pop machine was the first act signed by the Beatles for their Apple Records label which was formed in 1968. This ill fated group was Badfinger.

 

Seemed fitting almost nine years ago while watching Walter White die (or did he?) at the end of Breaking Bad  to hear the Badfinger song, Baby Blue, the color of Heisenberg’s chemical genius of crystal meth, end the series. End of brilliant creativity and long relationships that once held much promise undone by lies and betrayals.  Fade to green felt, and the chorus takes me back to a Bakersfield locale circa 1970-74 on Chester Avenue with a big sign reading….The Cue Ball.  

 

Snooker & eight ball with my good pals, Lynn & Lou, were the games we played on the various tables in downtown Bakersfield in the early 1970s, when we weren't on the concrete shooting hoops. We played for chump change and beers with the goal of holding the table we’d chosen to play on those many evenings at the Cue Ball, Little’s & the Brew House.

 The best listening behind the games was the power pop of the day at The Cue Ball. Badfinger was always on heavy rotation with Come & Get It, No Matter What & Baby Blue to go with The Hollies and The Air That I Breathe, Alice Cooper’s School’s Out, The Raspberries’ harmonize Go All The Way with Deep Purple blasting Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, oops, Smoke on the Water all reverberate in a memory quadrant of the brain from those days.

At the time, Badfinger looked like a sure bet to be a regular at the top of the pop charts with the Beatles backing coupled with a track record of pop hits. But, no matter what great songs the band wrote from that point in time they never got paid, the tunes seldom got played, and they never found that elusive magic between management and record company to give them some financial peace. People move on …..David Bowie, T-Rex, Queen, Earth Wind & Fire, The New York Dolls and Etc. Etc. Etc. came on the immediate scene.  With changes in the music landscape to go with the loss of their two key creative forces due to financial ordeals, stress, bad litigation and bad suicide Badfinger became a mostly forgotten group by the mid 1980s. You can read about some of the tragic details here if you’re interested.

 I‘ll try to keep the focus on the redeeming fact that great songs never disappear. The echo-chamber of our physical atmosphere and the multitudes of ear canals find the great songs and keep them in some form of rotation while our Earth wobbles on its axis, even 45 years after the brief heyday of the song.  Name Of The Game is the Badfinger story told in poignant and heartbreaking honesty with an arrangement that on every listen always seems understated and eloquent. February of 2022 marks the 50 anniversary of its release. George Harrison loved the song and worked on it as a producer for awhile, but other Beatle litigation matters drew him away with Todd Rundgren taking over and getting the final production nod and credits. Timeless is another epic song that seems to have retained magic for over 45 years. Their catalog is sincerely worth checking out in detail, especially for the Beatles fans in the house.

 

If you’re looking for that twinge of nostalgia with a unique blend of today mixed to bring out the best mental images of a zone beyond time and space for a moment or two, check out what these somewhat forgotten groups of the 70s are all about. You won’t be disappointed. There are seven City Boy albums and nine Badfinger releases to connect with on a variety of platforms.  

Thanks for the visit. I'll see you soon.