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Saturday Mar 27, 2021
Saturday Mar 27, 2021
Kool & The Gang mastered the transition from funkmeisters to smooth pop R&B. A band since 1964, they are still tour ready. Top 40 radio dug them for the better part of ten years. I mean, really loved them.
The band's first taste of pop success came with the release of their fourth album Wild and Peaceful (1973), which contained the US top-ten singles "Jungle Boogie" (#4) and "Hollywood Swinging" (#6).
Disco didn’t really work for them. Back in the 70's, they had more in common with Sly and the Family Stone than Donna Summer. We dig in to the 80’s Output of Kool & The Gang, with a peek into the workmanlike, early funk before they had a middle career making hit music on the radio, and showed themselves to find success with the slow pop song too.
In 1979, J.T.Taylor had joined the group and they found a producer with a love for ear candy, hooks and choruses. Emergency (1984) remains their highest selling album and spawned four US top 20 singles. By this time, they ha smoothed the rough edges and became the only band to have four top 20 singles from a single album in 1985. We dive into the hots and more.
Links:
Hear Spotify Playlist: Kool & The Gang Mixtape
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Sunday Jan 31, 2021
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
There’s always been bands that had some part of their success because they – a little or a lot- sounded like other bands. The Beatles and Badfinger. The Beatles and a band called the Knickerbockers with a 1965 hit song called “Lies”. “Oh Sheila” was a hit for the band Ready For the World that had a sound like Prince. An R&B singer named Fontella Bass sounded a whole lot like Aretha Franklin with a 1965 hit called “Rescue Me” - Greta Van Fleet sounds eerily like Led Zeppelin. So did the 80s band Kingdom Come.
And I always kind of wonder what happened to a band. How did they go from having hits to having sorta hits, not really being a band anymore. Did they burn out. Fade away? Get taken advantage of? Dropped by the record company. Implode?
In this podcast, we revisit three bands that had hits – big hits – in part because the albums they made sounded a little - or a lot like a more successful band. Not that it made them bad. But that’s the truth. Let’s dig into the careers of Quarterflash, The Outfield, and John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.
Links:
Hear Spotify Playlist: Tracks From Bands That Sounded A Little - or a Lot - Like Other Bands
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EMAIL: rockpoprollpodcast@gmail.com TWITTER: http://twitter.com/80srockpopandroll
WEBSITE: rockpopandroll.com
Monday Jan 04, 2021
Monday Jan 04, 2021
As big as Bob Seger is on the radio – arguably one of the top half dozen classic rock artists to still have a big footprint on rock radio – in his entire career, he actually only had seven top 40 hits that cracked the top 10. He spent a lifetime on the road. A classic rock mainstay. But big top 40 hits? Hardly.
Bob Seger’s only #1 hit? - "Shakedown" from 1987 and the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack.
His other top 10’s?
“Night Moves” #4 in 76
“Still The Same” #4 in 78
“Against The Wind” #5 in 1980
“Fire Lake” #6 in 1980
But there are other tunes that were big that have slipped away. You want to the deeper catalog of Bob Seger? It’s not always on the radio any more – outside of stations in Michigan, where he is still the hometown hero across there. I know. I lived in Michigan for almost 20 years. The amount of Bob Seger - deep Seger – on the radio is astounding. Album tracks from Live Bullet. Album tracks from Against the Wind. Lots of the cuts from the Stranger in Town and Night Moves albums. Go to Detroit. He’s the man.
But elsewhere? Not as much. The stuff that was once a radio hit but faded away. So what has been become overlooked from this rock and roll giant?
The story is pretty well known. Bob Seger was a regional star for a long time, building his reputation as a great live performer while not getting much love nationally.
But he just kept driving the roads and playing the gigs, and ultimately broke big nationally with the Live Bullet double album recorded at Detroit’s Cobo Hall in 1975 and released in 1976. That’s the record that vaulted "Turn The Page" into a rock radio classic.
On Rock Pop and Roll, We take look back at five songs that were big but have gotten lost in the years passing and radio playlists tightening.
Links:
Hear Spotify playlist: Bob Seger - Underappreciated Hits and (much more)!
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Contact us:
EMAIL: rockpoprollpodcast@gmail.com TWITTER: http://twitter.com/80srockpopandroll
WEBSITE: rockpopandroll.com
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Monday Dec 21, 2020
By 1982, and 1983, Brian Setzer’s group, The Stray Cats, had earned three top 10 hits: “Rock This Town”, “Stray Cat Strut”, and “She Sexy and 17”. And in late 1984? That was the year Setzer decided to break up Stray Cats in the midst of their success.
Why?
He told the Los Angeles Times in 1986 that he thought the band had run its course. “I didn’t want to make another rockabilly album.”
Setzer made a couple album in the two years away from the Cats, including one that stands out as a forgotten but near classic take on heartland rock and roll.
The Knife Feels Like Justice became the debut album solo album for Setzer. It had a roots rock sound, in the style of John Cougar Mellencamp. He formed a band for the album that was pretty damn impressive It was roots rock. Heartland rock. Springsteen-ian rock. At the time, bands like Mellencamp, Springsteen, the BoDeans, The Gear Daddies, Jason and the Scorchers, The Del Fuegos, The Wagoneers, and others were mining that heartland sound. It was the heyday of heartland rock, and he crossed it with some punkish/post-new wave middle America sensibility.
The sound of the album fit the time. Not any real radio airplay other than some scattered rock stations. The album peaked at number 45 on the US Billboard album chart in April 1986.
Though a bit forgotten, in Setzer’s career of more than 30 albums between solo, the Stray Cats, and his Brian Setzer Orchestra, this was one of only five albums to crack the Top 100. For Setzer, he scratched that roots rock itch. The Knife Feels Like Justice album is this odd little outlier in his career – made at a place in time where the sound was hot, and he went to work on it. For one album and one year, he drove a little different musical, drum-smacking, guitar-crankin’ road.
Links:
Hear Spotify playlist: Brian Setzer - The Knife Feels Like Justice and (much more)!
Subscribe to RockPopandRoll:
Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher Google Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcasts.
Contact us:
EMAIL: rockpoprollpodcast@gmail.com TWITTER: http://twitter.com/80srockpopandroll
WEBSITE: rockpopandroll.com
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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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.
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:
Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher Google Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcasts.
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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If you like the show and want to help us out, tell a friend. Share it with a fan of 80s pop and rock and roll. Leave a review wherever you listen – that helps us know what you like about the show.
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Have an idea for a show? Let us know.