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Friday Nov 13, 2020
Friday Nov 13, 2020
On this episode of Rock Pop and Roll, we focus on the peculiar history of Rod Stewart.
Some Good and a Little Bit of the Bad: Rod Stewart In the 1980’s.
Rod Stewart is nearing 60 years in the music business, right up there with the Rolling Stones and The Who. He's in the Rock and Roll Hall of fame, inducted in 1994. He released 32 solo albums, not counting live and greatest hits compilations.
During the 1960s, Rod Stewart was a part of the Jeff Beck Group. In 1969, he joined The Faces. If you don’t know The Faces, you need to. Black Crowes fans out there? They were essentially a 90s version of the Faces. A party on stage, a swaggering rock band that was loose, riffing like the Stones, and probably underrated in their place in the rock timeline. Stewart joined them as his solo career was getting going, creating an odd dynamic.
Stewart scored his first solo success with the album Every Picture Tells A Story, which featured the hit single "Maggie May" in 1971. That same year, the Faces had their biggest US hit with the song "Stay With Me.”
Stewart had dual recording contracts with different labels, as both a solo artist and as a member of the Faces. In 1975 Ronnie Wood began working with the Rolling Stones, and the band broke up. And that’s where Rod’s career both took off and fell apart, depending on what you like.
Somewhere along the line, he morphed into something different than before. What the hell happened? Stewart moved to a more new wave direction in 1980 by releasing the album Foolish Behaviour. The album produced one hit single, "Passion", which reached No. 5 on the US Hot 100 Billboard Charts. The hits kept coming – although pretty disposable if we look back at them today. A time capsule of the era more than great tunes.
They all had the signature Rod Stewart rasp. That was the key - highly recognizable and gives even the smoothest song a bit of grit. That’s his gold.
It is the curious case of Rod The Mod.
LINKS:
Hear Spotify playlist: Rod Stewart in the 80's with bonus cuts
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Friday Sep 18, 2020
Friday Sep 18, 2020
RockPopandRoll / Episode 12
• A legendary – maybe the most legendary Australian rocker - who couldn’t break through in the US• An influential Cowpunk band that had big names push them • A rock band from the United Kingdom that had millions of fans and only one American sorta hit.
This week on RockPopandRoll, our show is: "3 Underrated, Under the Radar Rock Bands that Never Hit the Top 40"
Host Rob Nichols, a radio vet and longtime music writer, revisits rock and roll and pop music from the playlist of the decade of the 80s
The Alarm
Originally a punk band formed in Wales, The Alarm played with U2 in 1981 while they were still gigging with three acoustic guitars. In December 1982, they played four shows with U2 with Bono joining them on stage. In 1983, the Alarm went on their first tour of the U.S., supporting U2 on the War Tour. The Alarm's highest charting single in Britain was 1983's "Sixty Eight Guns", which reached number 17 in the UK Singles Chart. The Strength album brought them into the top 40 of the US Billboard 200 album chart for the first time and they got some rock radio play in America with the single "Rain in the Summertime". Bowie producer Tony Visconti helped them to their biggest rock his with "Sold Me Down the River" They sold more than five million albums worldwide. But no US Top 40 hits. They sounded like U2. Maybe, in retrospect, too much like U2.
Jimmy Barnes
Cold Chisel was an Australian band that became a great live band, and the biggest band in Australia for a time. Barnes went solo in 1984, and released a song "Working Class Man" in 1985 in the U.S., written by Journey’s Jonathan Cain, and got his first small taste of American love. He had a rock radio hit with the great “Good Times”, with INXS for Lost Boys soundtrack and then went on to accumulate nine Australian number-one studio albums and lots of hit singles including "Too Much Ain't Enough Love", which peaked at No. 1 in Australia. Barnes was inducted into Australian music hall of fame for his solo career and with Cold Chisel. He is still making music today, just not as an American music star.
Lone Justice
Lone Justice had its chance - and the right people helping out - but for some reason never really made it. Lead singer Maria McKee had the chops and the music was written and produced by superstars. But the punk-roots-rock-pop sound just never did it for them until their influence was figured in years later. Their self-titled debut in 1985, followed by a tour in support of U2, got them noticed, but gave them no hits. The single, “Ways to Be Wicked”, was written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell while “Sweet, Sweet Baby” was written by Little Steven and Benmont Tench. The second album, “Shelter”, had two singles co-written with Steve Van Zandt. Still, no chart love. They broke up, but had an influence on the alt-country movement that came a decade later.
LINKS
Hear Spotify playlist: The Alarm/ Jimmy Barnes / Lone Justice with bonus cuts
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Sunday Aug 23, 2020
Sunday Aug 23, 2020
RockPopandRoll / Episode 11
Remember Jessie’s Girl? #1 in 1981? It is the iconic power pop song that threw musician Rick Springfield, a musician on lean times, back into the music game. He’d been in music since the late 60’s in Australia. A rocker, blessed and cursed. Great looking dude, with the “I’m on a TV show albatross” to carry. He was a career songwriter and guitar guy who had already waded through the teen idol swamp and come out OK. Mostly.
This week on RockPopandRoll, our show is: Power Pop and Rick Springfield: Here’s 6 Songs You’ll Love if you Dig Jessie’s Girl”
Host Rob Nichols, a radio vet and longtime music writer, revisits rock and roll and pop music from the playlist of the decade of the 80s
I get it. Here’s the common word on Rick Springfield - he isn’t a legitimate rock and roll guy. I call bullshit. If you take the music he has made, especially from 1981 to now, he qualifies. A couple bigtime hits. A dozen stellar pop, rock, and power pop songs that cracked the top 40. And a career that he revived in the late 90s and still has rolling.
Springfield sometimes tries too hard with overwrought lyrics. Heavy handed. A bit cliché. And some of his music, when he is not trafficking in the sugary, rocking thing, it doesn’t work well. There’s stuff he has put out – in his heyday of 1981-86 or so, and in some of his more recent albums, that is sincere but just doesn’t hit it his pocket for me. Like he tries too hard.
But then there’s the Rick Springfield that is a star because of the Working Class Dog record, a wholly under-appreciated power pop album – a genre part of rock and roll and radio rock in the late 70s through 1983 or so. The album had “Jessie’s Girl”, “I’ve Done Everything For You”, a minor hit in “Love Is Alright Tonight”, and a bucketful of non-hit, guitar rock and pop songs. It was as good as it really got if you liked the Cars, Rockpile, Cheap Trick, The Greg Kihn band, the Knack, the Romantics, Phil Seymour, and Dwight Twilley. Harmonies, guitars, big drums, some 80s keyboards, and songs about love, girls, and heartache.
If you turn it up when the guitar power chord solo comes around in the middle of “Jessie’s Girl”, here are 6 songs you will love. He’s at best when guitars dominate in a poppy, rocky, throwback-to-FM-radio hits way. Turn it up
SONGS
“Love Screws Me Up”
“Light This Party Up “
“It’s Always Something”“Bruce”
“Kristina”
“I Hate Myself”
LINKS
Hear Spotify playlist: Rick Springfield / Six songs you’ll dig if you like “Jessie’s Girl” plus bonus cuts.
Read review of Rick Springfield show at Indiana State Fair / 2010
Subscribe to RockPopandRoll:
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Find us on twitter at 80srockpoproll Email us – rockpoprollpodcast@gmail.com If you like the show - Share it with someone. Share it with a fan of 80s pop and rock and roll. Write in the comments section. Give us a review. We thank you.
One Last Fact We Learned: “I’ve Done Everything For You”
The Working Class Dog rocker first appeared on Sammy Hagar’s 1978 concert album All Night Long before it would be a Top 10 hit for Springfield, a follow up to “Jessie’s Girl.”
Springfield wasn’t the first person to consider “I’ve Done Everything For You” as cover material. Hagar says producer Keith Olsen brought it to Springfield after first trying to get Pat Benatar to do the track. They made of a demo of it, but they decided to use their own song, “Heartbreaker.
Rick got the song.
Saturday Aug 01, 2020
Saturday Aug 01, 2020
Their debut album was “Get the Knack”. It had one monster song, a lesser follow-up single and then the band rode the wave of success as best they could, before breaking up, reforming, and never duplicating the initial explosion. But how could they, right? The rest of their albums? Nothing as good. Or even close. But they kept the idea alive that you could be a band that takes the tropes of 60s rock and roll and 70s power pop, blend them, and make a sound that was their own.
Thanks for listening to the podcast
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Tuesday Jul 14, 2020
Tuesday Jul 14, 2020
You ask me what is the greatest rock/pop guitar album of the 1980s and I say Reckless from Bryan Adams. Lyrically, it's mostly sophomoric. No deep thoughts. But that was never the strength of Bryan Adams. His reason for being was that he made straight-ahead rock and roll music that never ventured into pop-metal – though his 1991 album Can't Stop This Thing We Started – produced by Mutt Lange – did make him sound like Def Leppard. Bryan Adams was radio rock for the 80s. Other than "Heaven", it was guitar and drums, shouts and rasps, stops and starts. Hooky rock and roll. It was a rock/pop candy bar. That sugar rush felt good, even after multiple listens It had just enough curveballs - like a still underrated Tina Turner duet – that made it last. And it sounded really good loud. And that’s worth points in my rock pop and roll book.
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Monday Jul 06, 2020
Monday Jul 06, 2020
Sports isn't fancy. It's rock music played tightly and with enthusiasm by the band, recorded cleanly. The songs are first-listen friendly and held up after the set became a monster hit, spending more than a year all over Top 40 and rock radio. It ultimately ranks as one of the great pop-rock band albums of the 80s. Huey Lewis and The News earned themselves lots of hits singles, with a couple really good album tracks. It is bar band rock and roll with a shine, as they made a radio-ready album with really great harmonies, and big, fat sugar smack hooks in the songs that are easy to like really quickly. And people did. But here is the hard truth: His two greatest radio songs were not on this record. One came right before and one right after. We discuss.
Released in September 1983, Sports made a slow climb up the charts throughout late 1983 and early 1984. This is a record that predated the explosion of Purple Rain-era Prince, and Bruce Springsteen's Born in The USA, and John Mellencamp's Scarecrow album. It was before Bryan Adams and Reckless. It was an influential part of the hit radio transition from the Cars-y new wave of the early part of the decade, to the heartland rock that had an impact on music and radio in the mid-80s. We talk about the sound, the unassuming innovation that pushed other artists, and the videos that were really a key part of the band's success.
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Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
This episode is "Friday 45" and features Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers. The band released Rumble in 1988, followed by Guitar Trouble in 1990. Conwell ended up in Philadelphia and The Hooters’ producer Rick Chertoff got Conwell and the Rumblers signed to Columbia and he produced “Rumble” After the band released their first album on their own “Walkin’ on the Water” in 1986, which was produced by Conwell and The Hooters’ bassist Andy King.
They had two radio hits in addition to the featured 45, with "If We Never Meet Again", and "I'm Seventeen". In 2019, Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers finally released a new studio album, their first in nearly 30 years, called Showboats and Grandstanders
Today's song was a #1 US mainstream rock radio hit in 1988 and peaked at 74 on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart. It is a greasy, raw enough to love, cowbell-infused, crunchy guitar rocker called "I'm Not Your Man". It was the best thing anyone would hear from the band. Not enough to make them big stars, but big enough to be remembered. We do.
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Wednesday Jun 10, 2020
Wednesday Jun 10, 2020
The thing – one of the things – I can't stand about classic rock radio stations, and why they have become unlistenable, is the playlist that has stagnated. It's not that the bands are at fault. Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Foreigner, Def Leppard, Van Halen, Bob Seger, Journey, Pink Floyd – they all rock, right? But when the typical classic rock and roll station in the US plays the same 3 or 4 songs from each band and has played those same songs since 1990, how can you stop me from hating what the stations sound like?
My point of contention is the deep catalog all these bands – plus Springsteen, Petty, Bryan Adams, Rolling Stones, and Pat Benatar and other big rockers, and even the less mass popular bands too, like Traffic or The Pretenders – have great catalog songs that don’t get played.
So we dig a little deeper, well past where the radio stations stop, and find some songs that, for whatever reason, were just minor hits for Big 80’s bands. How come it wasn’t a big radio song? We try to figure that out on Rock Pop and Roll. with Five Overlooked Minor Hits For Five Big 80s Bands.
Subscribe to Rock Pop and Roll on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Look for new full-length episode dropping each Wednesday
If you like the show and want to help us out, it’s really easy to do: tell someone. Share the show with a fan of 80s pop and rock and roll.
You can leave a review wherever you listen – that helps us know what you like about the show.
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Email us – rockpoprollpodcast@gmail.com.
Have an idea for a show? Let us know. And thanks.
Sunday May 31, 2020
Sunday May 31, 2020
Did Hair Metal change the world? Well, some of the songs and the bands were part of the continuum that is rock music. It was really a flash - a bomb of hairspray rock and roll that hung around for about five years. We always like to offer a bit of an explanation. A Definition. A clarification of what we are searching for. What is Hair Metal? Pop Metal? Glam Metal? How is it different than hard rock? What makes it what it is? Sugary background vocals. That 80s era snare drum - the gated reverb- that keeps the 4/4 beat. Guitars that sounded like a good time. It was the glam rock movement of the 1970s combined with heavy metal or hard rock to create a template. The Los Angeles Sunset Strip music scene with Motley Crue, Ratt, Quiet Riot, and Dokken. Def Leppard played a part. Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister, Poison, Skid Row, Cinderella, and Warrant too. Lots of others. We take a dive into figuring out some of the big moments and some of the bands that kicked the door down for hair metal to rule radio.
Friday May 22, 2020
Friday May 22, 2020
This episode is a look at four bands that had a big hit and then tried to capitalize on it with something called a "momentum hit" in the 80s. Or at least most had the followup hit.
What's that even mean? Here's how we define it: Sometimes a band would have a hit single, getting significant radio play on rock or top 40 stations, and then follow it up with a song was usually not as good, but was still a hit, because the fans of that big hit single wanted more of that same sound.
Superstars have benefitted from this practice too, but it's the new bands that are most interesting.
Episode 4 of Rock Pop and Roll discusses whether a big hit for a new band means a second hit. We have four artists that we’ll hear and see some different outcomes.
It's not science, but it is kinda cool. We call the game "A Hit Plus One".
Hear whether the hit songs from David + David, Michael Stanley Band, Randy Meisner, and Charlie Sexton produced a good followup hit. Or not.
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