[Hulk01]

Damn I wish I had started this thread months ago,

The impetus started on January 4 when I read a Facebook post by a woman whom I love named Susan.  She paid small tribute to Phil Everly, who had died the day before. by mentioning how much she hated being awakened each morning of her youth to the Everly Brother’s “Wake Up Little Susie.”  “It was not my genre,” she wrote. 

I responded long, writing hat the Everly Brothers created rock and roll.  The Beatles copied them purposefully, as did The Beach Boys and then the Hollies, Bee Gees, Turtles, Buckinghams, and Crosby Stills.  They brought harmony particularly but also country and folk, to popular music.  (And Buddy Holly invented the group, by the way, by adding the drummer and bass guitar.)  Almost sixty years later, no one tries to sing like Elvis Presley but you hear Everly Brothers everywhere.

brobdingnagian like to hear Publius salute the Ronettes.  Ronnie Spector’s duet with Eddie Money of “Be My Baby/Take Me Home Tonight” ranks among my ten favorite songs ever and is a brilliant melding of attitudes and voices.  These two songs always should have been sung as duets.  Plus when the video for it was made, Ronnie could still strut and saunter and get under your skin, just as she did John Lennon’s.  Yow.

And Publius, I will give another chance to the earlier Killers’ stuff/  I love Brandon Flowers and it does seem unlikely that they could have created three great songs and nothing else.

I will add an unexpected choice as All-Time Great: Dion’s “Yo Frankie.”  Lou Reed once said that Dion created cool.  Looks that way from here, too.  “King of the New York Streets” makes my all time top 50 and “I’ve Got To Get To You” cracks my top five.  Dion was yearning for a woman at this time and it’s palpable. 

A big historical note:  Dion was part of the Winter Dance Party tour that famously claimed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper en route to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.  Dion would have died in that crash too.  But when he heard the plane fare for the flight on that Beachcraft Bonanza to Davenport was $36, he realized that was exactly what his parents paid for their monthly rent in the Bronx.  Dion insisted that could not go and told Valens to take his seat.  Valens then won the seat in a coin flip and hours later, the music died.

[Hulk01]

Damn I wish I had started this thread months ago,

The impetus started on January 4 when I read a Facebook post by a woman whom I love named Susan.  She paid small tribute to Phil Everly, who had died the day before. by mentioning how much she hated being awakened each morning of her youth to the Everly Brother’s “Wake Up Little Susie.”  “It was not my genre,” she wrote. 

I responded long, writing hat the Everly Brothers created rock and roll.  The Beatles copied them purposefully, as did The Beach Boys and then the Hollies, Bee Gees, Turtles, Buckinghams, and Crosby Stills.  They brought harmony particularly but also country and folk, to popular music.  (And Buddy Holly invented the group, by the way, by adding the drummer and bass guitar.)  Almost sixty years later, no one tries to sing like Elvis Presley but you hear Everly Brothers everywhere.

brobdingnagian like to hear Publius salute the Ronettes.  Ronnie Spector’s duet with Eddie Money of “Be My Baby/Take Me Home Tonight” ranks among my ten favorite songs ever and is a brilliant melding of attitudes and voices.  These two songs always should have been sung as duets.  Plus when the video for it was made, Ronnie could still strut and saunter and get under your skin, just as she did John Lennon’s.  Yow.

And Publius, I will give another chance to the earlier Killers’ stuff/  I love Brandon Flowers and it does seem unlikely that they could have created three great songs and nothing else.

I will add an unexpected choice as All-Time Great: Dion’s “Yo Frankie.”  Lou Reed once said that Dion created cool.  Looks that way from here, too.  “King of the New York Streets” makes my all time top 50 and “I’ve Got To Get To You” cracks my top five.  Dion was yearning for a woman at this time and it’s palpable. 

A big historical note:  Dion was part of the Winter Dance Party tour that famously claimed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper en route to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.  Dion would have died in that crash too.  But when he heard the plane fare for the flight on that Beachcraft Bonanza to Davenport was $36, he realized that was exactly what his parents paid for their monthly rent in the Bronx.  Dion insisted that could not go and told Valens to take his seat.  Valens then won the seat in a coin flip and hours later, the music died.