Artist: Daryl Hall & John Oates
Album: Abandoned Luncheonette
Song: "She's Gone"
November 1973 Atlantic Records
July 1976 RCA Records



Rob Thomas & Daryl Hall




Original video for "She's Gone"



This video is great once you know the backstory. It's like one big middle finger to the people forcing them to make it. John O's performance is poetry in motion. Here, they have one of the most passionate, emotional songs of the decade, or the rock era, and they're dead-panning it to death. And whoever thought of tossing play money while devil walks by, deserves a Grammy.

The Story: Shot for cheesy pop show Summertime On The Pier, it features John in a vest and bow tie, Daryl in a bathrobe, a kazoo and their co-writer Sara Allen – immortalised in Sara Smile – walking past chased by a lurex devil.
John takes up the story: “The show was hosted by Ed Hurst, a real dweeb who used to be an insurance salesman. We said we just couldn’t lip-sync on it, but got told that we had to do the show.
“My sister Diane was in film school, so we wrote a script. We took all the furniture from our apartment – the big armchair that Daryl sits in
– and drove to this square, straight TV station. They expected us to lip-sync and as Diane was a young college girl, they didn’t want to listen to her at all.”
Reluctantly, the duo got their way. “And once they saw that wacky video, that TV station got real pissed. They went to our record company and said, ‘These guys will never perform in Philadelphia again! We’ll blackball them on the radio! Their career is over!’ I think it might be the best video we ever did.”
It also kickstarted Diane’s career – she became a producer for ABC TV, won an Emmy and has overseen TV coverage of three Olympic Games.

Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, March 29, 1943 – May 17, 2022, known professionally as Vangelis.


some of you may remember hearing this song, but might not know the name...

Artist: Vangelis
Album: Albedo 0.39
Track: "Alpha"
September 1976 RCA Records




or rather...




REST IN PEACE MASTER VANGELIS,
THANKS FOR ALL THE MUSICAL GIFTS YOU LEFT US!

Te-jas stylin'...

Artist: Glass Eye
Album: Marlo (ep)
Song: "Vegetable Wheel"
1985 (self-released)

My son’s other latest release

My son’s latest release

Saturday mornin' and afternoon...kids sports (in this case: Hockey!) fun in the sun (HOT) and great tunes (the following)...ENJOY!

Artist: Steve Miller Band
Album: Book of Dreams
Song: "Jet Airliner"
April 1977 Capitol Records



Artist: Micheal Hutchence with Jimmy Barnes
Album: The Lost Boys: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Song: "Good Times"
(Easybeats cover)
December 1986 Mushroom Records



Artist: Easybeats
Album: Vigil
Song: "Good Times"
July 18, 1968 Parlophone Records

Artist: V.I.C. with Soulja Boy
Album: Beast
Track: "Get Silly"
February 14, 2008 Warner Bros. Records

Andrew "Fletch" Fletcher performing with Depeche Mode in Milan, 2018. Picture: Sergione Infuso/Corbis via Getty Images


Depeche Mode in the mid 1980s: Dave Gahan, Andrew "Fletch" Fletcher, Martin Gore and Alan Wilder. Picture: David Corio/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Depeche Mode's Andrew Fletcher dies, aged 60

Quote:"Fletch" was one of the founder members of the British electronic pop act.

Andrew "Fletch" Fletcher, one of the founding members of Depeche Mode, has died aged 60. Rolling Stone has confirmed that he died of natural causes.

The band broke the news on social media on Thursday evening (May 26th), saying: "We are shocked and filled with overwhelming sadness with the untimely passing of our dear friend, family member and bandmate Andy 'Fletch' Fletcher."

Fletch helped form Depeche Mode in 1980 in Basildon, Essex with Vince Clarke, who would later leave to become one half of Erasure. Together with bandmates Dave Gahan and Martin L. Gore, Fletcher as Depeche Mode was inducted into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame in 2020.

The musician has appeared on all of Depeche Mode's fourteen studio albums, including Black Celebration (1986), Music For The Masses (1987) and Violator (1990). The band has had 14 top ten studio albums in the UK, and international chart success with songs including "Enjoy The Silence", "Personal Jesus" and "Just Can’t Get Enough". He also enjoyed a successful DJing career and launched his own label, Toast Hawaii, in 2002.

Fletcher is survived by his wife Grainne and their two children.

Quote:With the band having not always employed a full-time manager, Fletcher handled many of the band's business, legal, and other non-musical interests over the years.

He was also said to be the member who was "the tiebreaker" and the one that "brings the band together". According to interviews, Fletcher built the compromise between Gahan and Gore that settled their serious dispute following 2001's Exciter album and tour over future songwriting duties within Depeche Mode. In the studio and during live shows, Fletcher contributed a variety of supporting synthesizer parts, including bass parts, pads, strings and drone sounds, and various samples.

However, he was notably the only member of Depeche Mode who did not sing. Although he can be seen singing in videos of Depeche's past live performances, usually Fletcher's vocals were either mixed very low or heard only through his own stage monitors. Fletcher was renowned for his skill at chess. Neil Arthur of Blancmange has mentioned in interviews "never winning a game of chess with Andy Fletcher!" According to sources, in later years, "Fletcher's deepening depression resulted, in the summer of 1994, in a full nervous breakdown."


[quote]
http://pic.twitter.com/RlB7QM6ckW
— Depeche Mode (@depechemode) May 26, 2022

Artist: Depeche Mode
Album: Violater
Song: "Enjoy The Silence"
March 19, 1990 Mute Records/Sire Records

Artist: Paul Hewson & Dave Evans
'surprise' performance in Kyiv subway station
May 8, 2022

I found this performance interesting not for any political reasons, but solely as a callback to when my guitarist friend and I used to perform many of these same songs in much the same manner with just a voice and one guitar for a few folks gathered on a street, a bus stop or a small eating establishment some time ago lost to any history. Of course, we were younger then...

Songs: "Vertigo" 0:00
"Desire" 3:44
"Angel Of Harlem" 7:29
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" 11:01
"With Or Without You" 17:10
"One" 20:46
"Walk On" (2022 version) 27:30
"Stand By Me" (Ben E. King) 34:59

Got it in the mail last Friday.... damn good album from them.

***********

Been revisiting some classic soundtracks:






And since Maverick is out... probably ought to fire up this:

Legendary synth pioneer, the "Father of MIDI" and Sequential founder Dave Smith has died at 72

Quote:He bought a Minimoog in 1972 after becoming interested in electronic music and synthesisers due to Wendy Carlos’ late ‘60s album Switched on Bach. “[It was] just interesting to hear something electronic, sounds,” Smith said at a 2014 Red Bull Music Academy lecture. “It was just so lifelike the way she played was just, it sounded like an acoustic instrument. We all know what’s electronic and what’s not. It just had this life into it that was just amazing to hear and the way she played it.”

From there, Smith built his first analog sequencer and founded Sequential Circuits in 1974, and was working full-time with the company three years later.

The famed Prophet 5 was released in late 1977 which was the first commercial polyphonic and microprocessor-controlled synthesiser, changing the face of the synth in not just design, but functionality.

In the early ‘80s, different synth manufacturers had systems that meant their products could only speak to themselves, and not to a different manufacturer’s synth.

Oberheim had its ‘System’ to sync up its drum machines and sequencers, Roland had its ‘DCB’ and ‘DIN Sync’, but Smith envisioned that with a little collaboration and some elegant simplicity, they could create a standard that meant all these instruments could talk to each other.

He published a paper on Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) in 1981, before pioneering the implementation with Roland’s Ikutaro Kakehashi.

In 1982, the Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 was released; the first instrument with MIDI.

The new standard was introduced at the Winter NAMM Show in 1983, when the Prophet-600 was successfully connected to a Roland Jupiter-6, and from there, he earned the nickname the “Father of MIDI”.

In 2013, Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith were awarded a Technical Grammy for the invention of MIDI. It’s made modern electronic music production what it is today and continues to evolve.

In 1987 he was named a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) for his impact and continuing work in the area of music synthesis.

Since then, Smith’s work can be seen almost everywhere you look in synthesisers and electronic music instrument design, from R’n’D teams at Yamaha and Korg, to developing world’s first software based synthesiser running on a PC, to launching Dave Smith Instruments which later rebranded to Sequential.

His impact did not slow down until his sudden and unexpected passing, as he will remain one of the most influential figures in synthesis and electronic music instrument design.

he ain't gonna live forever....

Former Bon Jovi bassist, founding member Alec John Such dies

Jim Seals, half of ‘Summer Breeze’ duo Seals & Crofts, dead at 80

Artist: Seals & Crofts
Album: Get Closer
Song: "Get Closer"
April 1976 Warner Bros. Records



Artist: Seals & Crofts
Album: Summer Breeze
Song: "Hummingbird"
January 1973 Warner Bros. Records




In the early 2000s up to 2008, Seals embarked on various tours with his brother Dan ("England" Dan Seals, of England Dan & John Ford Coley), billing themselves as Seals & Seals and performing their successful hits from Seals & Crofts and England Dan & John Ford Coley, Dan's hits from his solo career and a few original songs written between the two brothers. A few shows featured Jim's sons Joshua on bass guitar and backing vocals and Sutherland on electric guitar.

Seals and Crofts were instrumental in England Dan and John Ford Coley becoming adherents to the Baha'i Faith, some 28 years before Coley became a Christian. Dan Seals died of cancer in 2009. At the time of his death, Dan and Jim Seals had been working on songs together.

Artist: England Dan & John Ford Coley
Album: Dr. Heckle & Mr. Jive
Song: "Love is the Answer"
Songwriter: Todd Rundgren
October 14, 1977 Bearsville Records

Artist: Bay City Rollers
Album: Rollin'
Single: "S-A-TUR-DAY NIGHT!"
June 29, 1973 Arista Records




...BTW, that was Harry Casey who did the intro...

Artist: Electric Light Orchestra
Album: Discovery
Song: "Don't Bring Me Down"
August 24, 1979 Jet Records

Artist: Julee Cruise
Album: Floating into the Night
Song: "Falling"
Songwriters: Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch
1990 Warner Bros. Records




She had lupus. Unfortunately, she decided to take her own life.

Artist: M People
Album: Elegant Slumming
Song: "Moving On Up"
September 13, 1993 Deconstruction Records



(not the song you thought it was gonna be, huh?)

...isn't it great in life where we are doing mundane things and suddenly we randomly break out into song and dance for apparently no reason with dancers appearing seemingly out of nowhere and choreographed together with whatever song we just happen to be singing?

Artist: Rick Springfield
Album: Living in Oz
Song: "Human Touch"
April 1983 RCA Records

Artist: Sierra Hull
Album: Daybreak
Song: "Tell Me Tomorrow"
2011 Rounder Records

Artist: Ultravox
Album: Quartet
Song: "Reap The Wild Wind"
September 16, 1982 Chrysalis Records