Category Archives: Music

Music Video of the Day: A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum (1967, dir by ?????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What to say about A Whiter Shade of Pale?  This is one of the essential songs.  I grew to love it as a result of it showing up on the soundtrack of some of my favorite movies.  If you’re watching a film that’s set in the 60s, chances are that you’re going to hear A Whiter Shade of Pale at some point.  (The song is also used to haunting effect in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves.)  To be honest, even before I knew the song’s title or that it was originally recorded in 1967 by a group called Procol Harum, I knew that organ melody.

A Whiter Shade of Pale was one of the biggest hits of 1967.  John Lennon reportedly loved it so much that he would often play it over and over again in his limousine.  I don’t blame him.  It’s good driving music.  There’s a lot of debate as to what exactly the song is actually about.  Who or what are the Vestal Virgins meant to represent?  Who is skipping the light fandango?  What’s up with feeling seasick?

Here’s what lyricist Ken Reid told Songfacts about the song’s meaning:

“It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It’s about a relationship. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. It’s got a thread running through it….I feel with songs that you’re given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale,’ and I thought, There’s a song here. And it’s making up the puzzle that fits the piece you’ve got. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into.”

As for the video itself, this is actually the second video that was made for A Whiter Shade of Pale.  (Of course, in 1967, they were called promotional films and they often played on a type of jukebox known as a scopitone.)  The first video featured footage of the band walking through the ruins of a castle and playing the song.  It also featured a few quick cuts of Vietnam War footage.  This was considered so controversial that Top of the Pops banned the video from airing.  Hence, a second, far less political video was filmed.

(Apparently, a third video was filmed in the 80s.  It featured Harry Dean Stanton and, since it’s on YouTube, maybe we’ll feature it at some point in the future.)

Anyway, I really like the video above.  It’s a real time capsule, even if it is bereft of references to Vietnam.  I like the fact that the members of the band appear to be struggling to keep a straight face throughout most of the video.

Plus, it’s just a kickass song!

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: My Type by Saint Motel (2014, directed by A/J Jackson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day is Saint Motel’s My Type.  I don’t have too much to say about this one, beyond the fact that I like the retro feel of both the song and the video.  This is a fun song to dance to and that’s certainly something that this video captures.

This video was directed by A/J Jackson, Saint Motel’s lead vocalist.  Jackson has said that he was going for a cross of “early 70s cigarette ads and New York street photography.”  Myself, I like to think of the video as being an outtake from a lost Joe Sarno movie.

This video’s cinematographer was Mario Contini while Cody Fusina is credited with production design.

Enjoy!

 

Music Video of the Day: Upfront With You By Universal Honey (1996, dir by ?????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As we all know, music video of the day has always been and always will be Val’s baby.   Starting with If You Don’t Know Me By Now in June of 2016, Val has shared and analyzed over 300 music videos!  It’s become one of my favorite of our regular features here on the Shattered Lens.

As most of you know, for health reasons, Val is taking a temporary break from this feature.  Until Val comes back, I figured that I might occasionally share a video or two.  Admittedly, I do not have Val’s encyclopedic knowledge of music (and I should admit that my musical taste pretty much begins and ends with EDM) but what Val and I do share is a deep appreciation for a little Canadian show called Degrassi.

See, it was that love of Degrassi that led me to the video below.  Earlier tonight, I was rewatching Death of a Disco Dancer, the third episode of Degrassi’s fifth season.  In this episode, Paige is upset that her friend, co-worker, and classmate, Alex, doesn’t seem to care about going to college.  When Degrassi hosts a college fair, Paige attempts to entice Alex to attend by offering her a joint.

“Will you go if you’re high?” Paige asks.

“I’ll go if you’re high,” Alex answers.

The two of them duck into an alley and light up the joint.  What follows is perhaps the best three minute montage in the history of Degrassi as a very stoned Paige and Alex walk through the fair, giggling at all the Canadian college recruiters.  It’s all good fun until Paige discovers that a friend of her mother’s is at the fair.  Uh-oh!

Anyway, I’ve always loved the song that plays during the montage.  It’s called Upfront With You and it’s performed by a Canadian band called Universal Honey.  After watching the episode tonight, I looked the song up on YouTube and that’s when I came across the video that was made for it in 1996.

Now, despite doing a handful of Google searches, I can’t tell you who directed or worked on this video.  I can tell you that Universal Honey has been around since 1992 and the band is made up of Leslie Stanwyck and Johnny Sinclair.  (Before Universal Honey, they were both in a band called The Pursuit of Happiness.)  Up Front With You is off of their first album, Magic Basement.

Not surprisingly, this is a Canadian band.  One of the great things about Degrassi is that it exposed me to a lot of Canadian bands that I, as an American, might otherwise have never heard of.

Anyway, enjoy!

Song of the Day – “Go” by Moby

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

I wanted to throw this one in before we’re all done with the Twin Peaks marathon this month. From the very first episode of the show, there was something strangely familiar to me about Angelo Badalamenti’s theme for Laura Palmer. I found out that I already heard a version of it years ago, via Moby’s “I Love to Score” album. He had a song called “Go”, which uses the theme. Of course, after a month of everything Twin Peaks, it’s hard to get it out of your head.

Book Review: STICK IT! MY LIFE OF SEX, DRUMS, AND ROCK’N’ROLL by Carmine Appice with Ian Gitting (Chicago Review Press 2016)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

About three weeks ago, I attended the Vanilla Fudge 50th Anniversary show at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, MA. It’s a great venue to see a concert, with an intimate 280 seat capacity. Three of the four original members performed (bassist Tim Bogert is retired from active touring), and their psychedelic, proto-metal stylings had the joint rocking hard. Keyboard wizard Mark Stein, guitarist Vinnie Martell, new bass player Pete Bremy, and legendary drummer Carmine Appice tore the house down with their renditions of hits like “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”, “Take Me for a Little While”, and “People Get Ready”.

Much as I enjoyed all their musicianship, the main reason I went was to catch Carmine Appice,  one of rock’s all-time greatest drummers. The band did a meet-and-greet after the show, and I snatched by a copy of Appice’s recent book, STICK IT! MY LIFE OF SEX…

View original post 318 more words

RIP in Blues Heaven, J. Geils

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

Appropriately, I was just leaving Fenway Park in Boston with my friends when we heard the news that guitarist J. Geils had died. The J. Geils Band were legendary here in Massachusetts, a gritty, down-to-earth blues rock band who had a string of hits in the 70’s, then reemerged again in the 80’s at the height of MTV’s heyday. The band, fronted by charismatic lead singer Peter Wolf and propelled by the bluesy harmonic licks of Magic Dick, released their first album in 1970, and hit the road to tour the country incessantly. They became known as one of the hardest working (and hardest rocking) bands in America, and hit it big on FM radio with their 1972 LP “LIVE! FULL HOUSE”, featuring the single “Lookin’ for a Love”:

The first time I caught them was in ’73, touring in support of their album “BLOODSHOT”, with the hit “Give It to Me”…

View original post 143 more words

Rockin’ in the Film World #10: THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT (20th Century Fox 1956)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

Frank Tashlin  combines two of 50’s America’s favorite obsessions, sex & rock’n’roll, in THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT, Jayne Mansfield’s first headlight headlining role. When Jayne sashays across the screen, turning heads, melting ice, boiling milk, and cracking eyeglasses a star is born, in CinemaScope and gorgeous DeLuxe color. But the film is stacked with more than just Jayne’s Twin Peaks; it features performances from rock royalty like Little Richard, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, The Platters, and a host of others.

The plot is very simple (and very familiar): a goony gangster (broadly played by a hilarious Edmond O’Brien ) hires a down-on-his-luck agent (Tom Ewell of THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH) to make a singing star out of his honey (our girl Jayne). Only problem is, Jayne can’t carry a tune in a bucket, shattering lightbulbs whenever she starts to warble. Seems she doesn’t want to be a star…

View original post 468 more words

Musical Sequence of the Day: “Notorious” from Donnie Darko (dir by Richard Kelly)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s musical sequence of the day (which is a temporary feature that I’m doing until Val’s internet is working again and she can return to doing her music videos of the day), we have the “Notorious” scene from 2001’s Donnie Darko.

In this scene, Sparkle Motion performs onstage while, miles away, Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) burns down the house of creepy motivational speaker, Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze).  Playing throughout this scene: Duran Duran’s “Notorious.”

Why does Drew Barrymore hate Sparkle Motion?

This is the second scene from Donnie Darko to have been featured in this series.  Check out the “Head Over Heels” scene here.

(And yes, one reason why I love this scene is because I very much related to it.  Sparkle Motion is perhaps the most realistic part of Donnie Darko…)

Musical Sequence of the Day: “You Never Can Tell” from Pulp Fiction

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the passing of Chuck Berry, today’s musical sequence of the day is a bit of a no-brainer.  This scene, from 1994’s Pulp Fiction, is already one of my favorite dance scenes and, today, it takes on a special poignance.

It’s funny.  Whenever there’s a montage of classic dance scenes, we always get at least a few seconds of John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing at Jack Rabbits Slim.  In fact, I’ve seen this dance featured in so many montages that it’s easy to forget which song they were originally dancing to.  I’ve seen this scene scored with everything from Sinatra to punk to Britney Spears to EDM.  And, every time, it’s worked beautifully.

But really, “You Never Can Tell” is the perfect song for this scene.  Pulp Fiction is so many thing that I think people sometimes forget that, at heart, it’s truly a celebration of Americana.  Seeing John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing to Chuck Berry serves to remind us of this fact.