I've found my new "Mystery Song"
A couple of years ago, I had big fun playing a "Mystery Song" at my shows. It was a contest.
I played the song, and you had to identify the song's author and/or another song from the album I'd heard it on.
Back in 1976 or so, I had an album that had a HUGE hit song on it. I liked the hit song, but I loved the album. And it turned out that there was one song that really struck a chord in my psyche- a precursor to my love of mixing modern music with medieval sensibilities. The song was labelled "Love Song" and it was a tale of longing and rejection and unrequited desire set against a backdrop of medieval pageantry. The Album was _Paper Lace_ who's hit song was "The Night Chicago Died" (and they also wrote "Billy Don't Be A Hero". Anyway "Love Song" proved to be a beatiful "Mystery" song, as it got all kinds of guesses as to where it came from and who'd done it- some close, but all wrong. And I remained mum for over a year as I tortured people with this beautiful tune.
Eventually my downfall came playing it one night for fizzygeek who turned around and schooled ME on the song's real origins with another group. She'll probably pwn me with my new mystery song as well, but so it goes.
The new "Mystery" song came to me on a journey that started with Cheap Trick's "Surrender" going thru me head for no good reason as an internal soundtrack to my snow shovelling this past week. Maybe it was just a good "shovelling shanty". So today, to scratch that itch, I went and looked it up on Youtube and that (as it all too often does) set me on a journey where I found yet another band from the early 70's to dig.
I never got to hear them then, as they were tragically obscure, but I would have LOVED them. They had everything that would have appealed to my 13 year old self then, and very little of the baggage of what later came to annoy me in pop music and push me off the pop radio stations and into heavier Rock & Roll.
And it turns out, their work was not entirely unkown to me after all. A handful of excellent bands and artists have covered some of their work over the years, and I remember always liking the songs when I'd heard them.
So I picked one of their songs, and will be arranging a cover of it.
If I play the song and you can tell me who wrote it, you'll win one of my CDs. If you can get the "bonus" question, you can have a copy of each CD in my whole catalog (which is 4 right now!).
I played the song, and you had to identify the song's author and/or another song from the album I'd heard it on.
Back in 1976 or so, I had an album that had a HUGE hit song on it. I liked the hit song, but I loved the album. And it turned out that there was one song that really struck a chord in my psyche- a precursor to my love of mixing modern music with medieval sensibilities. The song was labelled "Love Song" and it was a tale of longing and rejection and unrequited desire set against a backdrop of medieval pageantry. The Album was _Paper Lace_ who's hit song was "The Night Chicago Died" (and they also wrote "Billy Don't Be A Hero". Anyway "Love Song" proved to be a beatiful "Mystery" song, as it got all kinds of guesses as to where it came from and who'd done it- some close, but all wrong. And I remained mum for over a year as I tortured people with this beautiful tune.
Eventually my downfall came playing it one night for fizzygeek who turned around and schooled ME on the song's real origins with another group. She'll probably pwn me with my new mystery song as well, but so it goes.
The new "Mystery" song came to me on a journey that started with Cheap Trick's "Surrender" going thru me head for no good reason as an internal soundtrack to my snow shovelling this past week. Maybe it was just a good "shovelling shanty". So today, to scratch that itch, I went and looked it up on Youtube and that (as it all too often does) set me on a journey where I found yet another band from the early 70's to dig.
I never got to hear them then, as they were tragically obscure, but I would have LOVED them. They had everything that would have appealed to my 13 year old self then, and very little of the baggage of what later came to annoy me in pop music and push me off the pop radio stations and into heavier Rock & Roll.
And it turns out, their work was not entirely unkown to me after all. A handful of excellent bands and artists have covered some of their work over the years, and I remember always liking the songs when I'd heard them.
So I picked one of their songs, and will be arranging a cover of it.
If I play the song and you can tell me who wrote it, you'll win one of my CDs. If you can get the "bonus" question, you can have a copy of each CD in my whole catalog (which is 4 right now!).