Friday, June 28, 2024: The Grass Roots - Midnight Confessions

 

Remember when bands used horn sections? 

Released in 1968, and eventually reaching number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, Midnight Confessions is that beautiful slice of late 1960s pop/rock orchestration that, while gaining traction at the end of the decade, would explode in popularity in the 1970s.

There's Elvis Presley singing "That's All Right, Mama", but then there's Elvis being introduced onto the stage with the full orchestra blasting "Also Sprach Zarathustra."

Man, I wish horn sections would make a comeback.  I don't even care about the genre; Soul, R&B, Ska, hell, even the blues.  You, young kid, go get yourself a copy of B.B. King's live album "Live at the Regal" (1965), to see how much a great horn section adds to The Blues. 

Maybe "Songs With Big Horn Sections" could be my next Theme Week?

We'll see.

 

Thursday, January 12, 2012: The Roots - Make My (Ft. Big KRIT)

I don't have to tell you that 2011 was a bad year.


I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!'

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!'

Things have got to change.

But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"