Twice in the last week, I punched up the local “classic rock” station on the car radio, and *twice* heard the exact same song the moment I switched to the station. I’ve attached an audio collage of snippets from the tune, processed a bit to do a decent job of masking the artist in question. Your task: summon all you know about classic rock playlists — and tune your nerdy earbulbs — then tell me the artist and the song in question. First correct answer gets a coveted RTH No-Prize, and the opportunity to rant at length about how totally lame today’s “classic rock” playlists are.
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Postscript: please note that these two times I tuned in the classic rock station were the *only* two times I’d tuned to the damn station in about three years!
Reelin’ In The Years?
Al is right
Save on mailing costs and package that No-Prize up with that Felder autobiography and a Hear Factor disc.
I never realized that that guitar solo is a fractal. No matter how small a piece you take of it, it maintains all the characteristics of the whole. That was the only giblet I recognized outright, but the ID was immediate, and set off the Pavlovian pleasure response that sound gives me every time. I’m not a big fan of Steely Dan, but that song always works for me. Not to rain on anyone’s rant about radio. I just like that tune. I remember:
When I worked in a Philadelphia sheet music/piano store we were forced to listen to Philly’s only classical music station. They sold the station when some egghead finally calculated that classical music doesn’t pay. Anyhow, one day we counted Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” 3 times. For those who don’t know it, believe me, you know it. So, it wasn’t part of any special programming, it was just so much the epitome of 400 or so years of music that they couldn’t *not* play it for more than a couple of hours. And that year, the promo poster for said station was a fancy lettered list of Mozart’s works. x number of operas, x hundred symphonies, and on through concertos, chamber works, oratorios, &c. I just had to keep picturing the guys having the poster up in the studio as they reached for the same 3 numbers by Mozart. Even after the exercise began to annoy me, I kept picturing it. As one of their Top Picks would come on, I pictured the engineer staring blankly at that poster as he pushed play on my worn neural pathways.
Good work! I just listened to it and the best guess I would have had was “Marrakesh Express”.
Al, the Hear Factor disks will be sent out. The delay is ALL on ME. The Felder book is in the hands of his publicist. We’ll look into that one.
Mr. Mod, I would have guessed that the publicist is the hold up on the Felder book and I know you are the hold-up on the Hear Factor discs and if I cared about either one then there might be some resentment. As it is I just saw a chain that I could give a tug to. Thanks for having a hold of the other end!
It took about half a second till that solo revealed itself. I used to work in a warehouse where they played WMMR for 45 hours a week. Its been about twenty years before I could listen to most of those over-played chestnuts again.
We had dinner at a Polish place in Dorchester last week. About the second time in, we realized that the loop of Polish-language pop songs that was playing was only five tracks long. It played five times in toto while we were eating.
I need to check in more often. I can name that tune in 3 notes. If course The Dan is my dad’s favorite band of all time so I know these tunes since preschool. This solo is all over the place in a cool kinda way that nobody would ever put in a “pop” record anymore.
The natural desire may be to reject my parents music, but I have to say almost all of my favorite records were played for me as a child (Who’s Next, Tommy, Abbey Road, All Things Must Pass, No Dice, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers,Layla, Can’t Buy A Thrill,Katy Lied, Band On The Run,Cold Spring Harbour, Ziggy Stardust, White Album) It also helped that my uncle was into prog stuff (And was much younger than my folks) and played Led Zeppelin, Yes, Rush, Queen, Pink Floyd, Moody Blues cranked up to 11…or handed me the headphones and turned it up to 12 (that will blow the mind of a grade school kid!)
Back to Steely Dan – saw them the last 3 times they have been in town and they keep sounding better. I have a board tape of their show from 2007 (Charlotte?) that was the same week as the show I saw – the tour with Michael McDonald – and it proves that they still got it.
I think this quizlet has taught us much about the importance of guitar tone as a music mnemonic. Look for a full inquest to be performed by RTH Labs soon. Please render your men in lab coats as much help as they require.
HVB
This reminded me of the anecdote about Eno’s ‘drop the needle’ game. I finally found a brief explanation in one of his interviews from 1990:
“I used to play a game with my brother and his wife: I’d take a pop record out of the collection, drop the needle on – literally half a second – and take it off again. It was amazing how frequently the record could be identified from that. He’d say, Oh, that’s The Clash, or That’s The Beach Boys. If played you a fifth of a second of Bach you wouldn’t be able to tell it from Beethoven or from anyone else, because the texture of the sound is nearly identical in each case. But with popular music, so much of what has happened is to do with sound itself as a musical language.”
That fact that you found Eno briefly explaining anything is a wonder, BigSteve.