song of the day – “Give Peace A Chance” | PLASTIC ONO BAND | 1969 / 1981.

There’s one thing I consistently wish for every Christmas, and that’s peace.  I’m sure I’m not the only one.  John Lennon was one of those people.  In the Spring of 1969, during of the Vietnam War, in a hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote a song that became this huge anthem for the anti-war movement here in America during the 1970s.  That song is “Give Peace A Chance.”

The recording session took place at that Montreal hotel on June 1, 1969, and featured many journalists and celebrities, including Timothy Leary, Petula Clark, and Tom Smothers of The Smothers Brothers even played acoustic guitar with John Lennon on “Give Peace A Chance.”

From the recording of “Give Peace A Chance,” June 1, 1969, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

It was released a month later, and became the first solo single released by a Beatle (the band was still together at that point), though it was credited to the Plastic Ono Band, and not directly John Lennon.  The song was a huge success, reaching No. 1 in The Netherlands, and the Top 10 in a least a handful of other countries, including the U.K., where it reached No. 2.  It peaked at No. 14 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 here in America in early September 1969.

Following the tragic death of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, “Give Peace A Chance” (along with many other of his songs) re-entered the U.K. singles chart, and in 1981, peaked at No. 33. 

Over the years, the song has been covered by the likes of U2, Hot Chocolate, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Louis Armstrong, Aerosmith, and even by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as a tribute (and testament) to John Lennon and his message to “Give Peace A Chance.”

In 1991, Yoko Ono and her son with John, Sean Ono Lennon, along with Lenny Kravitz, spearheaded a new version of the song in response to (what eventually became) the Gulf War.  This version recruited many artists from all over the music landscape, including Cyndi Lauper, Peter Gabriel, Ofra Haza, Adam Ant, Terence Trent D’Arby, Dave Stewart, Bruce Hornsby, Little Richard, LL Cool J, Michael McDonald, Wendy & Lisa, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Little Steven Van Zandt, Don Was, Iggy Pop, MC Hammer, Sebastian Bach of Skid Row, Randy Newman, and members of the Zappa family, including Dweezil and Moon Unit.

From L to R: Cyndi Lauper, LL Cool J, Sean Ono Lennon and Lenny Kravitz giving peace a chance in 1991.

Sometimes it’s hard to find peace, especially this time of year.  Right now, the so-called “leader” of America is responsible for a partial government shutdown because he didn’t get funding for an unnecessary border wall between the United States and Mexico.  Millions of Americans (including many government workers) are affected by this partial shutdown this holiday season, something they had nothing to do with.  Will they have peace this holiday season?  One can hope.

Back in November 1989, people were tired of the long-standing Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin (and Germany as a whole), and the fall of the Berlin Wall began.  Within two years, the Wall was removed, save for sections serving as a memorial.  East Germany and West Germany became one Germany.  That was almost three decades ago.  So, what’s happening here in America?  Why can’t Mr. Trump take his DeLorean and go back in time to see why it’s wrong to build up walls, and why people don’t want them?

The beginning of the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 1989.

Much like Germany back in the 80s, the United States of America is not so united these days, sadly.  The country is split in two, like there’s a wall between it.  When you build walls, whether it’s between countries or within yourself, there’s no room for peace.  When you build walls around you, you shut everyone else out.  Mr. Trump’s vision is limited because there is a wall in front of it. 

I think John Lennon, who so loved this country, would have been deeply disappointed about today’s America.  But, I also think he would have done everything he could to give peace that chance it so deserves.  And I know he would have loved the fact that his 49-year-old anthem for peace is still cherished by millions around the globe today. 

My annual Christmas wish for peace for everyone will continue to be my wish. Happy Xmas everyone…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yU0JuE1jTk

song of the day – “Not Just Another Girl” | IVAN NEVILLE | 1988.

On June 15, 2014, Casey Kasem, host of the longtime countdown program, AMERICAN TOP 40, passed away at the age of 82.  From my first blog post (and prolly some more inbetween then and now), I explained how, in 1979, I was a geeky, lanky and somewhat lost 12-year-old living in Central Maine, had a few friends and not a lot of interest in much of anything, but at some point early that year, I discovered AMERICAN TOP 40, and was glued to it every weekend.  Not only could I hear the 40 biggest songs in the country every week, but also Casey’s cool trivia and facts about the songs and the artists, a trait I treasure to this day.  For me, the show was No. 1 with a bullet.  And still is (thanks to the re-airing of broadcasts of AT40 on iHeart Radio).

In honor of my radio hero, Casey Kasem, for the entire month of June, I will be highlighting a song each day (some days will have two songs!) that peaked in the Top 40 of the BILLBOARD Hot 100 (including five (real) one-hit wonders of the 80s), and with every blog post, just like on AMERICAN TOP 40, the hits will get bigger with each post.  On June 1, 2017, I featured a song that peaked at No. 40.  On June 30, I’ll feature a “song of the day” that went all the way to No. 1. 

As Casey used to say on AT40, “And on we go!”

In the Fall of 1988, I heard a song on the radio that sounded pretty cool and reminded me of Huey Lewis.  It turned out not to be Huey, nor did Huey have any connection to the song.  That song was “Not Just Another Girl,” the debut single for Ivan Neville, the son of the amazing Aaron Neville, and the nephew to the members of The Neville Brothers, who actually DID open for Huey Lewis & The News in Portland, Maine back in 1985.  (HA!  See, I knew there was a Huey connection there somewhere!)

“Not Just Another Girl,” from Ivan’s debut album, IF MY ANCESTORS COULD SEE ME NOW, debuted on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 at No. 81 in early October 1988, about two months after Ivan turned 29.  The highest-debuting song on the Hot 100 that week?  “Small World” by Huey Lewis & The News!  Another connection!  I should stop.

Though Huey wasn’t involved, Ivan Neville had some heavy hitters on IF MY ANCESTORS COULD SEE ME NOW, including his dad, Aaron Neville, Jason Neville, Bonnie Raitt, Jim Keltner, Jeff Pocaro of Toto, J.D. Souther, Randy Jackson (of AMERICAN IDOL fame), and Danny Kortchmar, who not only produced the album, but played guitar, keyboards, bass, drum programming, and he was responsible for the sax on “Not Just Another Girl.” 

“Not Just Another Girl,” which appeared on the soundtrack to the Dan Aykroyd film, MY STEPMOTHER WAS AN ALIEN (and included the incredible “Pump Up The Volume” by M/A/R/R/S and the Top 10 hit, “Room To Move” by Animotion), reached the Top 40 of the Hot 100 six weeks into its chart run, and spent a week at its peak position of No. 26 in mid-December 1988, and hung around until the day before my 22nd birthday in February 1989.

Ivan Neville had one more Hot 100 hit, with the follow-up single to “Not Just Another Girl” – “Falling Out Of Love,” a duet with the aforementioned Bonnie Raitt, which reached No. 91 in March 1989. 

The New Orleans native released three more solo albums between 1994 and 2004, worked with Keith Richards and several other artists, and in 2003, he formed a Funk and Jam band called Dumpstaphunk (great name).  They are still together and have had three releases to date.

You can also hear Ivan on the fantastic soundtrack to the brilliant 1990 film, PUMP UP THE VOLUME, with “Why Can’t I Fall In Love,” a song that Christian Slater’s on-air character “Happy Harry Hard-On” dedicated to his love interest, Nora (Samantha Mathis):  “I’m gonna cut out now with this unusual song…  I’m dedicating to…  an unusual person…  who makes me feel kind of…  unusual.”

Well, I can’t say “Why Can’t I Fall In Love” or Ivan Neville makes me feel kind of unusual, but I can say I really love “Not Just Another Girl,” which didn’t even need a Huey Lewis connection for me to really dig it.  And, for a guy who hasn’t concentrated on hit singles for most of his career, his debut single was pretty awesome…

“She could have been from anywhere / She could have had most anyone / I bet the girls in another world / Not just another girl…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCLTxx2vFbo

song of the day – “The Way It Is” | BRUCE HORNSBY AND THE RANGE | 1986.

There are some songs out there that can’t be grouped in with ballads or Dance or straight up Rock ’n’ Roll songs because they don’t fit in any of those categories.  But, you know, just because you can’t shake your booty to them or you prolly can’t slow dance to them at a wedding reception doesn’t mean they aren’t good; it just means they don’t really fit into any particular category you’re used to.  Case in point, at least for me, is today’s “song of the day” – “The Way It Is” by Bruce Hornsby And The Range. 

Bruce Hornsby, a native of Williamsburg, Virginia, first got his music “start” in 1974 in a band put together by his older brother, Bobby (then a student at the University of Virginia), called Bobby Hi-Test And The Octane Kids, playing covers of songs by The Band, Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers at frat parties. 

That gig didn’t last long, but Bruce’s association with music continued.  He studied music at the University of Richmond, Boston’s Berklee School Of Music, and the University of Miami, where he graduated from in 1977.  After college, he went back to Williamsburg for a short time and played piano in clubs and bars before meeting up with his younger brother, John, in Los Angeles in 1980. 

QUIRKY FUN FACT(S): You can find Bruce Hornsby at the ol’ 88’s and hamming it up for the camera in Sheena Easton’s late 1984 hit, “Strut,” a song that was co-written by Charlie Dore, one of the (real) one-hit wonders of the 80s with her own 1980 hit, “Pilot Of The Airwaves.”  Bruce Hornsby was a member of Sheena’s touring band, and he also appeared in the video for Sheena’s Prince-penned and PMRC target practice favorite, “Sugar Walls.”

Yes, that’s really Bruce Hornsby in the 1984 video for Sheena Easton’s “Strut.”

In between his time in L.A. and touring with Sheena Easton, he formed a five-man Rock band called Bruce Hornsby And The Range, and they were signed to RCA Records in 1985.  Their debut album, THE WAY IT IS, was released on April 1, 1986, and seven of the nine songs on the album were written by Bruce Hornsby and his younger brother, John.  Bruce wrote the songs “Every Little Kiss” and the album’s title track.

The first incarnation of the album, was, oddly enough, targeted to New Age listeners (which I’m still trying to figure out).  The album even had a different cover that prolly most people who are familiar with the album haven’t seen, with an impressionistic shot of Bruce Hornsby playing the accordion.

The original cover art for THE WAY IT IS album.

A couple of months following the release of THE WAY IT IS, the first single released from the album was “Every Little Kiss,” which took two months to debut on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 and stopped at No. 72 in August 1986, but which still managed to stay on the chart for a couple months.

Well, once “Every Little Kiss” started getting airplay, THE WAY IT IS album got remixed, and a new cover was commissioned, this time with a darker, sepia-toned color, with a simple shot of the band in the foreground, and a shot of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in the background.  The change must have worked.

The last week “Every Little Kiss” was on the Hot 100, the album’s title track debuted at No. 86.  By the following week, it had already surpassed the peak of “Every Little Kiss.”  “The Way It Is” reached the Top 40 in mid-October and the Top 10 a month later. 

I think what latched me onto “The Way It Is” at first was the impressive way Bruce Hornsby knew his way around a piano.  You don’t normally hear piano solos in Pop songs, let alone two of them in the same song.  Still impresses me to this day.  It didn’t sound like anything else, and it certainly didn’t sound like a Pop song, popular at the same time as songs by Bon Jovi, The Bangles, Peter Cetera and Amy Grant, Huey Lewis And The News, Duran Duran and Wang Chung. 

This is a song which brings up homelessness, the welfare divide of the rich and the poor, the Civil Rights movement and racism: “Well they passed a law in ’64 / To give those who ain’t got a little more / But it only goes so far / ‘Cause the law don’t change another’s mind / When all it sees at the hiring time / Is the line on the color bar, no…”

Well, it may not have fit in at wedding receptions or night clubs, but “The Way It Is” was a big hit with record buyers and radio listeners, and it spent a week at No. 1 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 in mid-December 1986, and finished at No. 8 for all of 1987.

Around the globe, “The Way It Is” reached No. 1 in Holland, No. 3 in Belgium, No. 4 in Canada, No. 8 in Ireland, and the Top 20 in the U.K., Germany, South Africa and Switzerland.

After the success of “The Way It Is,” Bruce and his band picked up the Best New Artist Grammy Award and would release two more studio albums together, going on to have hits with “Mandolin Rain” (No. 4, 1987), a re-issue of “Every Little Kiss” (No. 14, 1987),  “The Valley Road” (No. 5, 1988), “Look Out Any Window” (No. 35, 1988) and “Across The River” (No. 18, 1990). 

Bruce Hornsby would also have a songwriting credit (with his brother, John) on a No. 1 song by Huey Lewis And The News – “Jacob’s Ladder,” which spent a week at No. 1 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 in mid-March 1987, and which Bruce and The Range would record for their second album, 1988’s SCENES FROM THE SOUTHSIDE.  Incidentally, Huey Lewis co-produced THE WAY IT IS album, and played harmonica and provided backing vocals on the album track, “Down The Road Tonight.”

In a 2015 interview with Kate Mossman of the NEW STATESMAN, a political and cultural U.K. magazine, Bruce Hornsby was asked why “The Way It Is” was so successful, which he couldn’t do.  But, he did say, “I see it as a novelty record.  There are things that set it apart.  I feel the same way about ‘Sultans of Swing’ by Dire Straits.  It goes down easy and isn’t that what a lot of pop is about?  But at the same time, it’s a completely different sound than you’d heard.  Even the big piano guys like Elton and Billy Joel, they didn’t really solo like that.  A pleasing sound with solos.  Like Mark Knopfler on ‘Sultans of Swing.’  That’s how I explain it.  But that’s complete crap, too, probably.”

That same year, Elton John had said when Bruce Hornsby played piano on Bonnie Raitt’s 1991 beautiful heartbreaking gem, “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” it made him “seek perfection.  It is sublime.  He is one of the best pianists – if not THE best – out there.”

Bruce has long since left Pop music and has gone his own way, playing music from a plethora of genres, like Jazz, Blues, Bluegrass, Jam Band, Gospel and most recently, performing with his Rock / Folk touring band, The Noisemakers.  Interestingly enough, on their fourth studio album, REHAB REUNION (released in June 2016), Bruce Hornsby does NOT play the instrument for which is world-renowned, but instead plays the dulcimer, an instrument that the incomparable Cyndi Lauper has embraced on her albums and tours for many years.  There’s even a sweet, almost unrecognizable seven-minute folk version of his 1988 hit, “The Valley Road,” on the album.  It’s actually quite lovely.

Bruce Hornsby sure has come a long way from appearing in Sheena Easton videos and picking up a No. 1 hit of his own.  And, for more than 30 years, he had some success, and has performed with some of his music heroes, like Sting, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Grateful Dead, Don Henley, Ricky Scaggs and Bonnie Raitt, to name a few.  Now, Bruce is 62, married with twin adult sons, plays basketball when he’s not playing music (he’s 6’ 4”), and plays music for the absolute love of it.  You gotta respect that.  I know I do.

“That’s just the way it is / Some things will never change…”  Or, in the case of Bruce Hornsby, maybe they do…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeKidp-iWo

song of the day – “Belly Of The Whale” | BURNING SENSATIONS | 1983.

Your benevolent 80s overlord is back!  That wonderful term of endearment was the creation of one of my best friends, Hopey T.  We collaborated on many radio shows over the years, and last week, we started on our first writing collaboration, a screenplay for a Comedy / Drama film set in the 80s.  It’s gonna be pretty bleeping cool, much like Hopey T herself. 

Speaking of Hope, she got a song stuck in my head last week that I’ve never forgotten about, but just hadn’t thought about in awhile – the wonderful “Belly Of The Whale” by Burning Sensations.

Formed in the Los Angeles, California area in 1982, Burning Sensations was a Rock band founded by Tim McGovern, the former lead guitarist for The Motels (and former love interest for that band’s leader and lead singer, Martha Davis). 

Tim had been with The Motels for their first two albums, and during the 1981 recording for their third album, titled APOCALYPSO, Tim had disagreements with the album’s producer Val Garay, who has worked with many artists like Kim Carnes (they shared a Record Of The Year Grammy Award for “Bette Davis Eyes”), Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton, Ringo Starr, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Armatrading and much more.

Well, by the end of 1981, Martha Davis and Tim McGovern broke up, he left the band and the APOCALYPSO album never materialized (Capitol Records said it was “too weird” and “not commercial enough”).  What turned out to be The Motels’ third album, 1982’s ALL FOUR ONE, would become their big breakthrough album and featured the Top 10 hit, “Only The Lonely,” plus “Take The L” and even a couple of songs co-written by Tim McGovern, “Art Fails” and “Tragic Surf.” 

After his departure from The Motels, Tim McGovern founded Burning Sensations, whose name might be a throwback to Reggae group names like The Wailing Souls or The Mighty Diamonds, or even non-Reggae acts like The English Beat. 

Burning Sensations released one EP (BELLY OF THE WHALE in 1982) and their self-titled full-length album in 1983, which featured covers of songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival (“Down On The Corner”) and Jimi Hendrix (“I Don’t Live Today”). 

The BURNING SENSATIONS album also featured “Belly Of The Whale,” a song which fuses Rock and Calypso and whose sound may or may not have been inspired by that Motels album that didn’t work out.

Though “Belly Of The Whale” did enjoy some success on MTV (the video features a tribute-of-sorts to the biggest music act of that year, Michael Jackson), it was never a hit, a fact that still surprises me to this day.  But, as I’ve come to realize over the years, some of the best songs ever released were never really hits at all.

Burning Sensations contributed one more cover in their short time together, with a cover of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” featured on the 1984 soundtrack to the cult classic, REPO MAN, with a sound harkening a bit to Wall Of Voodoo.

The six men who comprised Burning Sensations would be together for just five years, and broke up in 1987.  At last check, Tim McGovern leads a Classic Rock band in the Pacific Northwest called Knucklehead.  But, I’ll remember Tim most for writing one of the catchiest and danceable classics of the 80s that never became a hit, though it’s always been one with me.  Maybe even Ishmael and Jonah would agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZgtKt8K3ho