{"id":276,"date":"2006-01-09T15:42:49","date_gmt":"2006-01-09T22:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/01\/09\/dear-eloise\/"},"modified":"2006-01-09T15:42:49","modified_gmt":"2006-01-09T22:42:49","slug":"dear-eloise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/01\/09\/dear-eloise\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Eloise"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I’m blowing the cobwebs out of my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 So, expect a lot of stuff from me today.\u00c2\u00a0 As Bobby Brown would say, THAT’S MY PREROGATIVE!\u00c2\u00a0 (Or, did Britney Spears say that…)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As you well know, I’m a diehard XM fan.<\/p>\n

And I’ll tell you why.\u00c2\u00a0 They played Bryan Adams’ "Cuts Like A Knife" on the HITS channel.\u00c2\u00a0 That was never a single.\u00c2\u00a0 At least I never heard it on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 But, it’s a hit in MY book.\u00c2\u00a0 And the programmer at Top Tracks KNEW that.<\/p>\n

Program by statistic and you’ve got terrestrial radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Let humans do the job and you have a living, breathing thing.\u00c2\u00a0 That other humans FLOCK TO!\u00c2\u00a0 Even if, like with Top Tracks, there’s no announcer\/deejay whatsoever.<\/p>\n

ANYWAY, I have one friend who doesn’t like XM.\u00c2\u00a0 My ONLY friend who doesn’t like the outlet.\u00c2\u00a0 She says she can’t find HER station.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s missing the point.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole SERVICE is your station.\u00c2\u00a0 You find the twelve or fifteen stations you love and you push the button.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S how you listen to XM.<\/p>\n

Which is how I found myself at the Sixties on 6, listening to the Hollies’ "Dear Eloise".<\/p>\n

I could break out my Joel Whitburn book, maybe this track charted somewhere.\u00c2\u00a0 But I never even heard it until I bought a Hollies greatest hits album WAY past the band’s peak.<\/p>\n

Funny band the Hollies.\u00c2\u00a0 One could argue, QUITE STRONGLY, that the act’s best track came AFTER their heyday.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m speaking, of course, of "Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)".<\/p>\n

Saturday night I was downtown
Working for the FBI!<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, it’s that slapping guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 That long, back-tickling intro.\u00c2\u00a0 God, this is a masterpiece one can listen to forever.\u00c2\u00a0 In the league of Free’s "All Right Now’, but even BETTER!<\/p>\n

Still, it’s the original period that we remember.\u00c2\u00a0 That we SHOULD remember.<\/p>\n

Maybe the most famous cut is "Bus Stop".<\/p>\n

But maybe the BEST track is "Look Through Any Window".<\/p>\n

And you’ve got to mention "Stop Stop Stop", "Carrie Anne" and "On A Carousel".<\/p>\n

Then they start to get a bit more obscure.<\/p>\n

There’s "Jennifer Eccles".\u00c2\u00a0 The slightly more obscure "Pay You Back With Interest".<\/p>\n

Yet the one that would blow the mind of newly-minted anglophiles, kids under the age of twenty five exploring the golden era, would be "King Midas In Reverse".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got the driving sound of the deeper, more meaningful ALBUM-ORIENTED English acts.\u00c2\u00a0 God, the intro sounds like it’s off a latter-day Faces record.<\/p>\n

"Dear Eloise" is not as modern, it’s not a breakthrough record, rather it’s got that MIDSIXTIES feel.\u00c2\u00a0 From the era of Gerry & the Pacemakers and Herman’s Hermits.<\/p>\n

Then again, with a LOT MORE sophistication.<\/p>\n

The amazing thing about "Dear Eloise" is all the different musical sections!\u00c2\u00a0 It starts off slowly, then takes off on a tear.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s not only a chorus, but a BRIDGE!\u00c2\u00a0 And a vocal nonsense workout of the type which the Turtles would perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 And, there’s a STORY!<\/p>\n

You hear something like this on the radio and it IS nostalgic.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not the music itself that’s retro.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s that hearing these sounds brings you back to that era, like a great book, a great movie.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a window to a past world.<\/p>\n

Listening to these Hollies songs makes the case that Graham Nash was certainly Crosby’s equal in their partnership with Stephen Stills.<\/p>\n

As for Stephen…\u00c2\u00a0 Well, of the initial solo albums, Graham Nash’s "Songs For Beginners" was the best!<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m blowing the cobwebs out of my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 So, expect a lot of stuff from me today.\u00c2\u00a0 As Bobby Brown would say, THAT’S MY PREROGATIVE!\u00c2\u00a0 (Or, did Britney Spears say that…) As you well know, I’m a diehard XM fan. And I’ll tell you why.\u00c2\u00a0 They played Bryan Adams’ "Cuts Like A Knife" on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-4s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}