Posts Tagged ‘Holly Holy’

Today’s Top 5: Songs I’d Pay Diane Birch to Cover (If I Had the Cash)…

Posted: October 6, 2018 in 2010s, 2018, Diane Birch, Dusty Springfield, Laura Nyro, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, Paul Weller, PledgeMusic, Sandy Denny, Style Council, Top 5
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I rarely discuss matters of faith, but – when or if pressed – will confess to membership in the cross-denominational Church of Birch, whose charismatic prelate turns on the light of love and salvation in her melodic testimonies.

I’m speaking of singer-songwriter Diane Birch, of course.

Yesterday, she unveiled a PledgeMusic project. One could say she’s passing the donation plate to fund her next album, and promising a plethora of cool premiums in return. I pledged last night, though not for the premium I most desire – a cover song of my choice. That clocks in at a reasonable $400; if not for our impending move, and the upfront costs that will entail, I’d have clicked on it without a second thought. (Instead, I’m settling on the dream journal and USB thumb drive of demos.)

The Pastor Birch has a knack for turning the songs of others into her own. The first time we saw her live, in July 2009, she turned a fun rendition of Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels” into a way-cool moment by linking it with the Beatles’ “I Got a Feeling.” The second time we saw her, in 2010, it was a Hall & Oates song – “Rich Girl,” I believe. And in-between those two shows, on French TV, she turned in a mesmerizing spin of Gossip’s “Heavy Cross” that spliced in a little Screamin’ Jay Hawkins…

Which leads to today’s Top 5: Songs I’d Pay Diane Birch to Cover (If I Had the Cash)… 

1) Carole King/Gerry Goffin – “Up on the Roof.” My first choice. Simply put, it’s one of the greatest songs ever written…and Diane would send it into the stratosphere. Here’s Dusty Springfield’s take on it…

2) Laura Nyro – “The Sweet Sky.” My Diane’s first choice would be this deep cut from Laura Nyro’s 1978 Nested album.  (That’s Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals on electric piano, by the way.)

3) Paul Weller – “The Soul Searchers.” From Weller’s recent five-star album, True Meanings, this song is perfect fit for DB. I think she’d do wonders with it.

4) Neil Diamond – “Holly Holy.” DB would slay this stirring stream-of-consciousness song. It’s perfect for her.

5) Sandy Denny – “I’m a Dreamer.” Recorded for Sandy’s final studio album, Rendezvous, in 1977. Here’s an alternate take from the Notes and Words box set. (It’d go doubly well with DB’s own “Stand Under My Love.”)

And two bonuses…

6) Karla Bonoff – “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me,” which was recorded by Linda Ronstadt for her 1976 Hasten Down the Wind album. 

7) Style Council – “Shout to the Top.” I realized, looking at the first six picks, that I’d leaned hard on mid-tempo tunes. Here’s a remedy…and what a remedy!

Today’s Top 5: December 27th, 1969

Posted: October 9, 2017 in 1960s, 1969, B.J. Thomas, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Neil Diamond, Peter Paul & Mary, Steam, The Supremes
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It was a chilly December day in 1969 when my father, then 38, arrived home from Vietnam, where he’d worked the previous 15 months as an electronics field engineer attached to the 5th U.S. Marine Base at Da Nang. He maintained the Marine Corps’ communication system called TRC-97 at fire bases and outposts between Da Nang and the DMZ, and sometimes took sniper fire while riding a motorcycle from one site to the next. He wasn’t a G.I., having left the Army after serving in the Korean War the decade before, but an RCA employee.

According to the thorough family history written by my grandfather the following year, my dad left for Vietnam on Sept. 16th, 1968, and returned stateside on Dec. 15th, though I imagine he first touched ground in Hawaii or San Diego and, even if he flew straight through, made it home a day later. What I recall: my mom crouching beside me, who was all of 4 1/2, and pointing to a tall man dressed in fatigues walking toward us. “Daddy,” she whispered in my ear. I ran to him, arms outstretched, and bellowed the same.

Young children welcoming a parent home from war: It’s a scene played out many thousands of times every decade, it seems. And, as with me, I’m sure it’s the first memory many have of that parent.

I was reminded of the day by Herc’s thoughtful write-up of The Vietnam War, the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary series that recently aired on PBS. I haven’t watched it yet, though at some point I likely will, but it got me to thinking of December 1969 and the winter that followed – it’s the last time, I think, that I enjoyed snow. By the next Christmas we were in Saudi, and snow and frigid weather were non-factors for the next five years.

Anyway, Christmas of 1969, as I remember it, was great; the family was together and, in addition to my dad, I received one of the greatest gifts ever: Billy Blastoff. (It was an action toy, not a doll!)

To pull the magnifying glass away from me, major events of this month included, on the 1st, the initial draft lottery; on the 2nd, the 747 making its official debut; and, on the 6th, “Woodstock West,” aka the Altamont Free Concert, erupting into violence. Unemployment for the month was just 3.90 percent, but was about to begin a gradual climb to 6 percent by the end of 1970; and inflation was relatively high, at 5.5 percent.

(For more on 1969, see here and here, though each now features a clip that’s gone AWOL from YouTube.)

Movies released this month included A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Hello, Dolly!, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Topaz and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Top television shows included Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Mayberry R.F.D. and Family Affair. Brady Bunch aficionados will know that the kitsch classic’s lone Christmas episode, when Carol came down with a bad case of laryngitis, aired on the 17th; another historic Christmas-tinged TV moment came 10 days earlier with the first airing of Frosty the Snowman.

And, with that, here’s today’s Top 5: December 27th, 1969 (via Weekly Top 40):

1) Diana Ross & the Supremes – “Someday We’ll Be Together.” This, Diana’s final single with the Supremes, closed out the 1960s in spectacular fashion. (Producer Johnny Bristol can be heard harmonizing along, and giving Diana encouragement.)

2) Peter, Paul & Mary – “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” I never knew this was written by John Denver until the mid-2000s, when I watched an excellent PPM biography on PBS. There’s this, too: PPM recorded it in 1967 for Album 1700, but didn’t release it as a single until October 1969. It promptly ascended the charts and, on Dec. 20th, became their only single to hit No. 1. This week, it dropped a notch to No. 2.

3) B.J. Thomas – “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” Written for the Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid film, this classic Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, which won an Oscar, has been covered more times than than ASCAP/BMI can count. (Just a joke.)

4) Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Down on the Corner”/“Fortunate Son.” The double A-sided hit  – one of the best – dropped to No. 4 from No. 3 (its peak) this week.

5) Steam – “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.” Who knew, as 1969 came to a close, that the chorus to this ditty – which topped the charts for two weeks in early December – would become one of the de facto sing-alongs at sporting events within a decade’s time?

And two bonuses:

6) Neil Diamond – “Holly Holy.” The No. 6 this week is this gospel-tinged classic, which may well be Neil Diamond’s greatest song. (And even if it isn’t, it certainly feels that way when he’s singing it.) Here he is performing on the BBC in 1971:

7) Gladys Knight & the Pips – “Friendship Train.” Topping out at No, 17 is this under-appreciated Norman Whitfield-penned call for peace, love and understanding. Here’s Gladys & the Pips performing it in 1972:

 

Today’s Top 5: A 1970s Potpourri

Posted: December 6, 2015 in 1970s, Billy Jack, Carl Douglas, Neil Diamond, Room 222, Saudi Arabia, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Top 5, TV
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Some things just take me back – the opening to Room 222, for instance. I’m immediately transported to one summer in the early 1970s when we visited my grandparents on my dad’s side. I remember sitting on the living-room floor in their one-bedroom apartment, eyes glued to their color TV, in awe of the big kids walking across their big campus. I couldn’t wait to grow up.

Those were the years, I should mention, that color TV was a big deal to me. As I wrote a few years ago, we moved to Saudi Arabia in August 1970, when I was 5, and lived there until late May 1975, a month and change before my 10th birthday. While we owned a portable black-and-white TV, and Jeddah’s lone TV station carried some English-language fare, there wasn’t much to watch – Mighty Mouse, The Brady Bunch, The Invaders and UFO are four shows that I recall seeing over there, but never on a regular basis. Often, you’d turn on the TV to find old men playing traditional Middle Eastern music on traditional Middle Eastern instruments – or a test pattern. There either wasn’t a set schedule or I was too young to decipher it; and, even if there was, there were so many other things to do that watching TV was a second- or third-tier activity.

In other respects, however, life – from my perspective, I hasten to add – wasn’t that different than if we’d remained in the States: We lived in a community with other American families, took a bus to an American school, and watched American movies – the compound had an outdoor movie theater, which is where I first saw one of my all-time favorite films, Billy Jack. (Oh, I know: It’s far from a five-star classic. Yet I enjoy it. Like Room 222, it takes me back.)

And, just like other families, we took summer vacations – not to the shore, but Beirut, Ethiopia and Disney World, plus back to Philadelphia to see the grand folks.

Music had yet to become an omnipresent force in my life at that stage, but Johnny Horton’s Greatest Hits received a lot of play on my portable record player, especially the novelty historical songs.

Another novelty song that my friends and I enjoyed – Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting.”

My parents, on the other hand, weren’t into novelties. They preferred Neil Diamond, including “Holly Holy” –

– and the second side of Tap Root Manuscript.

Returning to the top: TV themes. This is another one that takes me back – though not to the early ‘70s, but 1977 or ’78, or thereabouts, when I started watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show in reruns. Like Room 222, it made me want to grow up faster.