William's Song a Day Blog - est. September 2007

I have noticed that most of the ABBA songs I like are usually off of one of their two last albums; this one being the title track off of their last album. Their music became less "poppy" and more progressive during this period. This is another very interesting song with excellent and odd arrangements; it's very "electronic" in sound and the lyrics are a bit cryptic to say the least. To me, this song has always seemed to be about someone who had a mental disorder that was paranoid and thinking that the person at the door was someone who meant ill will. However, later I found out that the song was about meetings between people in Soviet occupied countries trying to avoid the secret police; I guess that I was kind of right. The song has a lot of layers to it and I almost find it impossible to hear everything at once, every time I listen to it I hear something else that I missed before. The main "hook" to this song that I really like is when it moves from ...

This is an excellent song from the late 60's/early 70s that was in need of being picked. Blues Image was a band that had great potential but ended up being a flash in the pan so to speak. This was really their only hit, however many members of the band went on to join other acts of renown, such as: Alice Cooper, Three Dog Night, Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to name a few. Here is a fan video with the studio version on YouTube. +

Needing a good uplifting and fun song today; Mr. Winwood did not fail me. This song is at least in my top five compositions by Steve Winwood if not my favourite. It has an interesting quality about it, the sound is not dated and feels fresh even though it is twenty years old; a nice mix of soul and rock. What is amazing is watching him perform live; this guy does it all on stage. Probably the best aspect of his live performances is watching him play the organ whilst singing. You see him playing intricately on the manuals and playing the pedalboard as well while singing; simply mindblowing. Here is the studio version on YouTube. Here is the music video on YouTube. +

This song just fit my mood today, so I am picking it. This song is was kind of the "cool off" song at the end of the " Live and Loud " album and is quite maudlin. Probably my favorite memories of this song was while playing the original Grand Theft Auto . If you let the level load then changed out the disc for a music CD it would play the music off of the CD in place of the game music. It was quite comical chasing people around the city with a flamethrower while this song played. Here is a recording on YouTube. +

The other day this song came on the radio and I was planning on picking it since, but other songs got in the way. From what I have read, this song is about a rock and roll revival concert that happened in '71 at Madison Square Garden where he and other greats of the 1950s performed. He did not change his fashion to fit the event and played music that he was into at the time, which was more Country influenced. This apparently did not fit well with the audience, and as the legend goes, he was booed off stage. Another story was that the audience was booing the police that were trying to control the crowd and Ricky Nelson thought it was him who was being booed. Here is a live performance of the song on YouTube. +

I have been picking a song from each Jethro Tull era on Sundays from their first to their current. For me, this is the 12th era, which consists of two 'Tull albums and two Ian Anderson solo albums; from about '94 to about '02. The previous eras can be found in this blog on songs: 100, 107, 114, 121, 128, 135, 142, 149, 156, 163, and 170. This era was best known for the eastern and middle-eastern influences in the music; it's a very creative, artistic era. The album Roots to Branches was a very different album than I had ever heard before from 'Tull and took quite a while for me to warm up to it. It seemed a bit too cynical and dark at times, but it has good messages in the songs and sees a lot of play in my rotation to this day. J-Tull Dot Com was not as different from previous albums when compared to Roots to Branches , so it was a little less difficult for me to get used to. It has a lot of harder songs in it and is a bit more uplifting than Root to Branches in...

Last night I rented the movie Across The Universe , which is a musical movie similar to the film: " Grease ." All of the music in the film was Beatles music sung by the cast of the movie. One of the aspects of it that I didn't like was constantly hearing software compensating for the actors' vocal shortcomings, although there were a few that actually were good at singing. It was funny seeing Bono play a Timothy Learyesque character and Joe Cocker made random appearances as well. Here is the studio version on YouTube. +