Too Tall's blog

Classics classic rock October 17

Many classic rock songs have been based on.well..the classics. Because by The Beatles was based on Beethovens Moonlight Sonata played backwards. In the sixties The Toys had a hit with Lovers Concerto which was Bach's Five Finger Piano Exercise, Beck's Bolero was based on Ravel's Bolero, Eric Carmen lifted I'll Never Fall In Love Again from a Rachmaninoff melody...Frank Zappa, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Dave Edmunds and others all lifted classical riffs. Perhaps the most well known classic inspired song was the 1967 number one hit A Whiter Shade of Pale from Procol Harum..it was based on the Bach Contata Sleepers Awake...it was so popular that more than 800 recorded cover versions are known. The original organ riff was played by Matthew Fisher who 39 years after the fact took Procol Harem to court claiming that he had written the piece and he deserved a writing credit...ignoring the fact that Bach deserved more credit the court awarded Matthew 40% of the copyright value and future royalties...6 months ago an appeals decision reversed the earlier outcome..still no credit for Bach though..

Back Off Boogaloo Oct.10

Did you know that Cher, under the name Bonnie Jo Mason once recorded a Beatlemania style album called I Love You Ringo...well we all love Ringo but there has always been a debate as to wether he was a good drummer. In a famous interview John Lennon was asked if Ringo was the best drummer in the world..John replied Best drummer in the world? He isn't the best drummer in the Beatles. John recanted years later by saying Ringo's a damn good drummer. He was always a good drummer...Some of the worlds greatest drummers agree..Max Weinberg of Springsteens band, Phil Collins, Kenny Aronoff of Mellencamps band all say Ringo defined the role of a drummer in a band and he's their favorite. Starr is also considered to have advanced modern drumming techniques. In a recent poll Paul Mccartney was chosen as number 5 of The Coolest Drummers on The Planet..ouch..no Ringo in the top ten. Paul did drum on a lot of Beatles songs especially on the white album after Ringo walked out and then sent Ringo a postcard saying.You really are the greatest drummer in the world....Ringo commented..he was lucky that he was surrounded by three frustrated drummers that could only drum in one style..

Let's get happy October 8

Psychologists at the University of Leeds in England conducted a study earlier this year in which they asked people to recall moments in their lives that were linked to the music of The Beatles..they compiled the information..three thousand memories from 69 nations..with the hope that it will help them better understand how music can help humans tap into long forgotten events of their lives. The results were revealed recently in Liverpool at The British Association Science Festival...the age of participants ranged from 17 to 87 but most respondents were teens during the Beatles hey day in the sixties...and it showed the memories showed an expected reminiscence bump..a time in life which is remembered vividly and often coincides with teenage years..The early teenage years are the years during which you are making your musical decisions..by the age of 14 most people have made up their minds, and that is the age when music makes the most powerful impressions on us..the Beatles song that generated the most memory associations was She Loves You..although in the States it was I Want To Hold Your Hand..memories generated by Beatles music were on the whole overwhelminly positive...leading scientists to conclude..memories of the Beatles could be used therapeutically to help people suffering from depression..

Chicken a la Cooper October 7

Alice Cooper is coming to town on October 15th playing Theatre St.Denis. In a recent interview Alice says he still gets calls when he arrives in a city from the local Society for the Prevention of cruelty To Animals asking if he'll be killing any animals at the show..Alice replies that he has never killed any animals. The urban myth that he does stems back to an incident at a concert in Toronto in 1969 where someone threw a chicken on stage,..and Alice not knowing whether Chickens could fly or not..passed the hapless bird back to the first row of the audience..the audience tore it apart..Alice says the first two rows were people in wheel chairs so that made it even more bizarre...next day in papers around the world it was reported that Alice rips heads off chickens onstage and drinks the blood. Alice says..But it was great for my image I guess..Frank Zappa phoned about the incident and suggested..what ever you do don't tell anybody you didn't do it...Some claim this is when shock rock was born. I've heard that Alice Cooper tickets have No Chickens allowed printed on them..but that may be another urban myth..

Bootlegs October 6

A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance ,live or even in a studio, that is not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. Even in this digital age, bootlegging, which is not quite pirating continues to thrive. The most celebrated bootleg recording is The Black album by Prince, released in 1987, then immediately withdrawn..bootleg copies sold over 500,000 copies. Ironically the very first bootleg recording was called The Great White Wonder...a double Bob Dylan album released in 1969 without Dylans or the record company's approval. It was created by two Los Angeles based men who called themselves Ken and Dub..it was a cut and paste bootleg, compiled from multiple sources including the basement tape sessions with the band and stuff recorded in Dylans girlfriends apartment. Almost immediately radio stations in California started playing the album and the craze took off..bootlegs from The Beatles, The Stones and Led Zeppelin soon followed...and eventually fake bootlegs by The Who and Aerosmith. Said Ken and Dub of the Great White Wonder phenomenon..All of a sudden we just started having fistfuls of money..we didn't realize what we had gotten into...Perhaps some of that money will now be going to Dylan as he has just released his own comprehensive Bootleg collection.

Bootlegs October 6

A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance ,live or even in a studio, that is not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. Even in this digital age, bootlegging, which is not quite pirating continues to thrive. The most celebrated bootleg recording is The Black album by Prince, released in 1987, then immediately withdrawn..bootleg copies sold over 500,000 copies. Ironically the very first bootleg recording was called The Great White Wonder...a double Bob Dylan album released in 1969 without Dylans or the record company's approval. It was created by two Los Angeles based men who called themselves Ken and Dub..it was a cut and paste bootleg, compiled from multiple sources including the basement tape sessions with the band and stuff recorded in Dylans girlfriends apartment. Almost immediately radio stations in California started playing the album and the craze took off..bootlegs from The Beatles, The Stones and Led Zeppelin soon followed...and eventually fake bootlegs by The Who and Aerosmith. Said Ken and Dub of the Great White Wonder phenomenon..All of a sudden we just started having fistfuls of money..we didn't realize what we had gotten into...Perhaps some of that money will now be going to Dylan as he has just released his own comprehensive Bootleg collection.

For the love of money October 3

Rock and Roll music is the music of teenage rebellion and became, especially in the late sixties anti-establisment. When old classic rebellious rock and roll songs started to be used in commercials there was intially a shock heard around the world..Dylan's The Times They are A Changin in a spot for a financial institution...wow..nowadays nobody bats an eye as just about every rock song ever is heard on commercials..sometimes the song is in a commercial before its released ala John Mellencamp. It now seems its all about making money..Kiss puts out their own brand of Ketchup and David Bowie has an online bank with its own credit cards...and here's a flash a new company called Song Vest will have a major song auction where you will have a chance to own a percentage of a writers share of a song...Some of the tracks on the block will include Aeromiths Gotta Love It, Ozzy's Denial and Bon Jovi's Two Story Town and even a Ringo song...Every time the track makes money, so will the winner of the auction although they won't have a say how the songs are used, whether in commercials, movies or TV shows...

it was 30 years ago today

Well today is a special day I guess...it was September 7, 1977 when I started working at CHOM.  I had arrived in Montreal in April of that year and shortly after applied for a position at CHOM.  I had quite a bit of radio experience already, having worked out west in both FM and AM formats since about 1968.  However I was told that nothing was available at CHOM.  I am nothing if not persistent so I kept at it and finally found a crack...in the production department.  I was asked if I could write commercials and I said I would give it a go.  A few days later I

I'm back

Well it's been a while since I blogged and I'm about to take a few weeks off so I'll have lots to talk about when I come back.  This Saturday its another live broadcast from La Ronde...they're celebrating their 40th anniversary so a lot of special events are planned. This weekend its also the Grand Prix so with the the screams coming off the rides, F1 cars roaring in the  background and the weather being great..it will feel like summer in Montreal.  Made In Canada will still air...this Sunday night at nine p.m. check out Montreal's Miracle Fortress...Graham Van Pelt is channeling Brian Wilson I think..also the Montreal/Ottawa band Tim's Myth.  Next Sunday June 17 both Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings are calling in to talk about their new album Jukebox..also calling in is Jeff Jones who is in the Bachman Cummings backup band The Carpet Frogs but he also has a solo out which features Mike Sadler of Saga on one song. Then the following week its old school rock with Vancouver's Pride Tiger and Kim Bingham drops in.  Kim was once in Me Mom and Mortgantaler, Mud Girl and The Kim Band but she's on the show to talk about the soundtrack of the TV show Les Invincibles.  Kim is the musical director of the show. Lots of her songs on the album.

problem solved

Well in my last blog entry I mentioned my computer biting the dust and over the past week I've had problems connecting to the internet.  Its amazing how cutoff I feel from the world not being able to log on.  I called my service provider to report the problem and spoke to no less than three tech supporters with each having me go through a number of tests .  After running all over the house and plugging in my modem to check phone lines it was concluded that they could not find the problem and an agent would call me to discuss moving to a slower up-link.  I finaly got the call and a tech came over to the house. It took all of two minutes to figure out that my modem had died.  It seems they only last about four years.  None of the previous three techs mentioned that his might be the reason I was not connecting although it was the most obvious reason.  Is there a modem patrol out there constantly replacing worn out units? This must happen quite often.  It reminds me of when I bought a printer that stopped printing shortly after I started using it.  I phoned the company and a tech ran me though a series of procedures that took close to an hour.  He finally suggested I take the printer back to the store.  As I was putting the printer back in its box I noticed in the manual that the cartridge only came with a small amount of ink.  I plopped in a new cartridge and problem solved.