Monday, February 07, 2005
childhood favorites
I just found a Sonny & Cher CD for $5 at Walgreens, you KNOW I had to cop that, S & C were running the show on 8-track in my family's wood-paneled station wagon back in the early 1970s when we'd take long car trips, sure we had others (The 5th Dimension, Hair and Godspell soundtracks, Barbra Streisand's awesome Butterfly) but I knew Sonny and Cher were closest to my parents' hearts
I think my dad wanted to identify with Sonny (the clever one who gets the beautiful babe through hard work and can-do attitude) although my dad has always been a good-looking guy. I think my mom wanted to identify with Cher because she was sassy and foxy (no comments here, I don't know if my mom was foxy, but she had two kids by the time she was 21 and the other moms couldn't compete). Together, of course, this is supposed to be a great couple
Sadly, it was horrible, both for Sonny and Cher and for Al and Sue, but the songs are actually pretty awesome even today. Sonny had a serious tack piano fetish, I think he thought it was rock and roll, Cher knew how to warble and that was about it, but somehow a lot of these tracks still work today: "You Better Sit Down Kids," the divorce one, is pretty freaking sad, and I'm digging the long live versions on the disc's second half because one of the records we had was Live in Las Vegas Vol. 2 and there are some 6-minute vamps for a three minute song, Tin Pan Alley / California Soul / prog-rock all up in here
"Mama Used to Be a Rock and Roll Singer (Papa Used to Write All Her Songs)" fails pretty spectacularly, mostly because it's about 5.5 minutes of repeating the same couplet over and over in different ways and different orchestral timbres, and the couplet, about only being able to sing in two-part harmony, doesn't really work because who the hell sings in higher-part harmony than that, barbershop quartets and the Mamas and the Papas, wtf
Anyway, grooving on a nostalgia trip, back to you at the studio
¶ 2/07/2005
I just found a Sonny & Cher CD for $5 at Walgreens, you KNOW I had to cop that, S & C were running the show on 8-track in my family's wood-paneled station wagon back in the early 1970s when we'd take long car trips, sure we had others (The 5th Dimension, Hair and Godspell soundtracks, Barbra Streisand's awesome Butterfly) but I knew Sonny and Cher were closest to my parents' hearts
I think my dad wanted to identify with Sonny (the clever one who gets the beautiful babe through hard work and can-do attitude) although my dad has always been a good-looking guy. I think my mom wanted to identify with Cher because she was sassy and foxy (no comments here, I don't know if my mom was foxy, but she had two kids by the time she was 21 and the other moms couldn't compete). Together, of course, this is supposed to be a great couple
Sadly, it was horrible, both for Sonny and Cher and for Al and Sue, but the songs are actually pretty awesome even today. Sonny had a serious tack piano fetish, I think he thought it was rock and roll, Cher knew how to warble and that was about it, but somehow a lot of these tracks still work today: "You Better Sit Down Kids," the divorce one, is pretty freaking sad, and I'm digging the long live versions on the disc's second half because one of the records we had was Live in Las Vegas Vol. 2 and there are some 6-minute vamps for a three minute song, Tin Pan Alley / California Soul / prog-rock all up in here
"Mama Used to Be a Rock and Roll Singer (Papa Used to Write All Her Songs)" fails pretty spectacularly, mostly because it's about 5.5 minutes of repeating the same couplet over and over in different ways and different orchestral timbres, and the couplet, about only being able to sing in two-part harmony, doesn't really work because who the hell sings in higher-part harmony than that, barbershop quartets and the Mamas and the Papas, wtf
Anyway, grooving on a nostalgia trip, back to you at the studio
¶ 2/07/2005
