Keep listening, I need the Bread!
To my horror this week, I discovered I taught my 5-year-old son a Bread song. Lately, when I release him from his car seat, I sing the lyrics to “Mother Freedom”: Freedom! Keep walkin’ etc. I honestly did not know it was a Bread song! He wanted to hear the whole thing, so we YouTubed it and …there we were.
Checking the YouTube comments on this song are kind of funny:
Bread could rock when they wanted to.
Really — in between “If,” “Diary,” and “Lost Without Your Love” they could really kill it I’m sure.
One of my guilty pleasures, ABC, put out what at the time was considered a rock album called Beauty Stab that stalled them out for about 5 years in the ’80s.
Power of Persuasion
So do you have any favorite Soft Rocker Rock Songs?
The Osmonds’ “Wild Horses” immediately springs to mind.
Funoka, you and I are the core of the ABC fan club, but I wouldn’t call them Soft Rock (certainly Beauty Stab is the opposite of what they were before). I would also like to say that thanks to the healing powers of RTH, when I listen to any of my ABC cds, I have now come to peace with my adoration (especially of Lexicon of Love) and display it prominently on the front car seat rather than shamefully stashed in the door side pocket.
Like cdm and others on this site, I admit to a love of many soft rock gems from the 70’s (including Bread). I was thinking of one of my favorites just the other day when I was traveling up 101 in Southern California: “Ventura Highway, in the sunshine…”
Well, the rest of the song is as wussy as any of their others, but the Carpenters’ “Goodbye to Love” has a remarkable searing fuzz guitar solo that will shock anyone who still hasn’t heard it. Another one that always got me was this obscure Christian folk band, The Last Days, whose song starts out as light as anything you’ll ever hear, but then at about 2:55, the power chords come in… Listen for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZ4S1dG9Wg
For some reason my CD-R of it has the guitar mixed a lot louder than this youtube dub, but it’s still pretty surprising.
Interesting — love that album cover for The Last Days . . . I guess they were in for a few more days since 1972.
Lexicon is such a great album — too bad the video they did for the title track is horrible. I like Beauty Stab, and even its follow-up, How to Be a Zillionaire, but ABC lost me “When Smokey Sings . . .”
I can’t get that Mother Freedom song out of my head this week . . . I’ll need to do some rock therapy tonight.
Another fan of Lexicon.
Incidentally, it was pointed out to me recently that two songs on that album have the same exact drum fill at pretty much the same time (2min, 35 sec):
Look of Love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcchCQuXrH8&t=2m32s
Poison Arrow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpOSMOgpQWU&t=2m32s
What is that 80’s drum roll thing called? There must be a patented RTH descriptor for it…I’m guessing that since Trevor Horn produced the album, that would explain that synthesized drum fill.
Funny, and probably ladymiss’ note regarding Trevor Horn is apt. He was interviewed recently in TapeOp, where he spent a lot of time talking about his painstaking work in programming drum parts for the albums he produced in his heyday. Maybe that fill was a staple in his bag of programming tricks.
I’ve never cared much for anything I’ve heard from the band, but didn’t the usually soft-rocking Decemberists put out a heavier “prog” album a couple of years ago? I remember hearing a few songs once and not liking it any more than their regular releases.
Very interesting, I don’t think I’d ever heard that “rockin'” Bread number. I think generally the less said about Bread the better, but in my weak moments, which are probably more frequent than I’d like to admit, I think the hook to “Everything I Own” is so beautiful that it redeems the wussier verse parts of the song (especially the 2nd verse when the freakin’ inevitable strings wash over the listener) and the bridge or middle eight or whatever it is. Ok, I’ve said more about this than I ought to.
I kinda liked Lexicon when it came out, but later think I may have turned against it when I kept reading in Q or Mojo how it was like the greatest record of the 80s or something. Which it isn’t. But I still love hearing “The Look of Love,” though. “Poison Arrow,” not so much.
I unreservedly and without shame LOVE many softer rock songs.
I was just thinking about the GIT-tar Man the other day. Things get all wonky and disturbing in the middle during the breakdown…
Makes a good cover song, too.
Big fan of The Decemberists although I’m never surprised when people say they’re not a fan. Very polarizing.
The album(s) that you are referring to is The Hazards of Love and to a lesser extent The Crane Wife. They are weak albums although The Crane Wife has a lot more interesting moments. But, the hard rocking just doesn’t suit them at all.