I am now starting to receive suggestions for Horn Sections Make Rock Better. Because I am not cool, I was unfamiliar with JJ Grey & Mofro. I give you their ballad to home, which for them is just over the Florida-Georgia line. It is just awesome how much power you can get out of a two-horn horn section.
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Modern Love
Another Bowie song, this from the pop album Let’s Dance, produced by Nile Rodgers, featuring other elements of Chic. (And an unknown Stevie Ray Vaughn!) I have been dutifully chided by my much cooler brother for really liking this album. Sometimes you just can’t help being mainstream. Those horns, though. … I will note a sequence that I think is …
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Because I’m Me
It is difficult to explain exactly what the Avalanches are. It’s like dance music completely made of samples. I wrote that sentence, then looked up the band. Wikipedia tells me they are an example of plunderphonics, plundering other music to create new music exclusively from the samples. When my college roommate and I discovered “Frontier Psychiatrist,” we couldn’t stop quoting …
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Why Can’t We Be Friends?
I had no idea War produced these music videos in the 1970s. This is lighthearted and definitely a different take on racial tension than what would be produced today.
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Gotta Jibboo
I have lost a few friends over the last few years. I recently found a mix CD one of them made me. I looked at the calendar and realized today was the birthday of another of them. So in honor of my lost brothers, here’s a track from the mix CD. What, it’s not a live Phish recording? Well, the …
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: What Is Hip?
Have we featured Tower of Power before? Yes. Should we feature them again, despite the repeat of a song and a white guy dancing? Yes.
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Sir Duke
If you need this artist explained to you, our society really has crumbled.
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Ray Stevens and Marty Robbins
Something a little different this week. I’ve featured Ray Stevens before. I just love him. And I just found out Marty Robbins put him on his show in 1977. The whole thing is on Facebook here. My mom saw Marty Robbins in concert and said he was a nut. So I suppose they were two nuts in a shell, so …
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Dancing in the Street
Such a happy song. And because I am of a certain vintage, I always associate it with an episode of Growing Pains: At a dance, Kirk Cameron’s character was opposed to his little sister dancing with his best friend Boner. It ended, as I recall, with this tune and the focus on just having fun. Which is certainly what this …
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Vehicle
We’re apparently sticking with the ’70s right now.