DISQUS

tvh · 1 year ago

Worst song possibly ever: Far Corporation, "Stairway to Heaven"

FIXED.

I hadn't thought about that abomination in years. While I view Stairway as less sacred than I did 20 years ago, the Far Corporation idea is still irritating.

And really, what says heavy metal more than Don Felder? I love the tune though - thanks for that.

I look forward to Bottom Feeders every Wednesday - keep up the great work!

Jamie Lyon · 1 year ago

Was it all a horrible nightmare, or do I remember the Far Corporation's cover of "Stairway to Heaven" having Bobby Kimbal of Toto doing the vocals on the "And as we wind on down the road..." part of the song? Ah, the 80's!

steed · 1 year ago

It might still be a nightmare, but Bobby Kimbal can be heard!

twostepcub · 1 year ago

OK, Toto and Zep have merged and a new portal to hell has arrived. All beware.

Jeez now all I can hear is "stairway to heaven" mashup with "Africa", which it basically is.

WHarrisBullzEye · 1 year ago

I'm not entirely proud of it, but...sigh...for many years, the Far Corporation version of "Stairway to Heaven" was the only version I owned. Indeed, to this day, I still do not own a single Led Zeppelin album on any medium, nor have I ever. I just got burned out on their music from listening to classic rock radio, and I never felt a need to buy any of their stuff. I plan to remedy that one of these days...but not today.

BTW, when it comes to Figures on a Beach, please GOD don't remember them for their BTO cover. Remember them for the song "No Stars," which is awesome.

RLB · 1 year ago

I love "No Stars." Always finds its way onto my jogging mixes.

twostepcub · 1 year ago

wow. Now I have to go scrounge for the "Just Say Yes" comp sire records used to put out that had "No Stars" on it. It's down somewhere in the basement. Thirds on the awesomeness.

DavidMedsker · 1 year ago

My brother bought the Felony record, where we both realized that "The Fanatic" was the only song to have any real personality. The rest was just a bunch of guys playing instruments at the same time. You've heard nothing until you've heard "666 Beware."

I have a soft spot for Figures on a Beach's cover of BTO, because the girl who would one day become my wife put it on the very first mix tape she ever made me...along with "I Like 'em Big and Stupid" by Julie Brown.

steed · 1 year ago

"I Like 'em Big and Stupid" huh...That would have won me over too! :)

I don't own The Felony album. I've been searching for a cheap version for a while now. Maybe I don't need to bother.

arensb · 1 year ago

Is it possible to shuffle a playlist?

I believe the trick there is to simply click the "shuffle" button at the bottom left of the iTunes window. IIRC it remembers which lists are shuffled and which ones aren't. I'm not sure whether shuffled-ness gets transferred to the iPod, though.

it puts the songs in alphabetical order by song title, rather than artist

In iTunes, click on the artist name, or whichever column you want to sort by. This doesn't work on an iPod, obviously.

why is it when I download an album by a person it gets alphabetized by their first name in the playlist?

Because the software isn't smart enough to figure out first and last names, so it can't tell that "Ben Folds" goes under F, while "Def Leppard" goes under D. However, if you select a song (or a bunch of songs) and pick "Get Info" in the menu, you'll see a "Sorting" tab. That'll give you entries for "Name" (the title as you want it displayed), "Sort name" (the name for sorting purposes), and the same for "Artist" and "Sort artist". So set "Artist" to "Ben Folds", but set "Sort artist" to "Folds, Ben".

If you're asking why songs downloaded from the iTunes store don't already have this set, I don't know. Maybe the Apple monkeys don't know the difference between Ben Folds and Def Leppard either.

steed · 1 year ago

Thanks for the suggestions here. I never reallly listen to tunes within the iTunes interface, only through the iPod itself... I'll try that Shuffle option you mentioned as I'm not sure I've ever noticed the shuffle button before.

And the sorting thing will most definitely work. I love that! Thank you.

Pete · 1 year ago

Also, on the main menu of the iPod, under Settings, is a shuffle option. If you change that to "Songs", and then select the playlist you want to listen to, no matter what song you select to start with the rest will be shuffled and not play them in the original set order. This setting works also when you choose all the songs by a certain artist as well.

drcastrato · 1 year ago

I agree with your ipod assesments. I love the thing, but it's still kind of clumsy even after all these years of improvements. (Although, I'm still kind of clumsy after 32 years of improvements...). The click wheel is a neat novelty, but is it really the best interface for device like this?

steed · 1 year ago

I'd really just rather have a touch screen where I can hit FOR and get all the Foreigner I want.

arensb · 1 year ago

Wouldn't that button give you all the foreign artists, though?

JonCummings · 1 year ago

I'm surprised to be the first commenter to commence the swooning and raving over Fairground Attraction vocalist Eddi Reader, who has gone on to a career full of outstanding solo albums. She tempered the brightness of "Perfect" a little bit and has become an exquisite vocalist, and has put her pipes to work on an eclectic assortment of music--including, recently, the poetry of Robert Burns, which has amped up her Scottish popularity to no end.

She apparently is set to perform a batch of standards in Richard Linklater's new film, coming out next year, so hopefully she'll get some of the US attention she's always deserved.

jack · 1 year ago

I'm with you Jon. I first heard "Perfect" on a trip to England, where it was a much bigger hit at the time. Took me years to find it stateside after I returned (damn pre-internet world. How did we ever survive?!?!?). Her solo albums are amazing, and her duet with Stuart Adamson of "Fragile Thing" on Big Country's Driving to Damascus CD is beautiful.

I also love her brother's band Trashcan Sinatras. They're last release "Weightlifting" had at least three "in a perfect world this would have been a hit" songs.

jefito · 1 year ago

Count me in for the Eddi bandwagon, too -- as well as the "Weightlifting" love. As for the last BC record, I was partial to "See You," but I think that's probably due to a personality flaw on my part.

tyme · 1 year ago

Thank you for all these 80s posts. That era already encompasses my music tastes, but I find some great sh*t in these parts everytime a new one comes out with only enables me to explore some more.

twostepcub · 1 year ago

Well, Dave, I feel your pain. I refused the I-Pod simply cause I already spent hours correcting the names in Window Media Player to last names first. I have a Zune (80G as well) that works great. I still have to fix 'em in WMP to begin with, but that's it. Only thing with both of them is you can only search duets under the first artist (In WMP you can do both, just do Artist 1;Artist 2). But neither Zune nor Ipod will do that. It can't be that hard, eh?

Wow. Well, it's the first time I've heard the FC version, I was half-expecting Milli Vanilli-like rhythm, instead of karoake material.

Best Song (for me) - Fagen's "Century's End". probably because I love the Bright Lights soundtrack so much. "New Frontier" is a close second.

I'm ashamed to admit I own the Festival album. Hey, it was before the Madonna one, so this was as close to gay campy dance Broadway as I could get.

Even more shameful is one of my FAVORITE groups is coming up next (I think). I have all of their albums on CD, two of them giving 2 BF each. I'll expound next week. They were a definite "Guilty Pleasure".

I know the second part of the clue (which is ironic given one of the songs this week) but clueless on the first part.

Great job, as always.

Cheers,
Ernie
2SC

ElCartero · 1 year ago

"I know the second part of the clue (which is ironic given one of the songs this week) but clueless on the first part."

Let me take a guess on the first one: Jim Steinman (Fire Inc.) Am I a winnah?

steed · 1 year ago

That's a fine, fine guess. But not the answer. Although he could well represent this series, I kind of like him. The person I'm talking about is actually not an "F" artist but simply a collaborator one on the songs next week.

twostepcub · 1 year ago

and writer of one of the songs this week, right?

steed · 1 year ago

Hmmm...I don't believe so.

twostepcub · 1 year ago

hmm. oh wait I meant the second part of the clue wrote one of the songs this week... but I may STILL be wrong LOL

steed · 1 year ago

Oh, I got it. I thought you were talking about the first part. Now you just might be right.

JP · 1 year ago

Re: Richard "Dimples" Fields...the 45 version of "If It Ain't One Thing..." is far better...it actually fades down just before he starts quoting the Bible verbatim.

wags · 1 year ago

So much to comment on here Dave so I'll try to be concise:

I largely agree with you about iPod/iTunes comments. If I hadn't been given one as a gift I don't think I'd still be using it especially since there seem to be so many mp3 players on the market at much more reasonable pricing. I see one of the commenters sorted you out on some of the issues. But even those things mean that iTunes is user-UNfriendly -- which I thought was supposed to be Apple's big claim to fame. And I'm glad to learn that you can add file under info but it does seem like that should be coded in the songs. And you didn't even cover one of my biggest gripes which is say I download and mp3 from here and I want to listen to it on the iPod instead of just on the home computer. I've got to manually import each track so that iTunes can create a whole new file -- wasting memory on my windows machine as it duplicates the track into its proprietary format instead of just being able to read and play music files.

Sheesh. I've lost my steam. Anyway, I didn't know that Stairway to Heaven had been covered in the 80s. I sorta wish you could take that track back out of my head. Though, it wasn't until after this track came out that I became aware of Led Zeppelin so if the Far Corporation has any connection to revival of Zep, which in my opinion, saved "popular" music as we moved in the 90s, I'll give them some props for that. I still never want to hear it again. ;-)

And I'll give you some props Dave for introducing me to the hidden gems by Felony, Suzanne Fellini and Cee Farrow. Never heard them before now and they were all pretty good.

Finally I can definitely see a young Snoop Dogg being influenced by Dimples... good connection!

steed · 1 year ago

it took me a long time to enjoy that Fellini song - her voice really got to me for a good few years - but listening to it again as I was writing it up, it really isn't that bad of a tune.

Steve · 1 year ago

I look foward to the Bottom Feeders posts. There's always an obscurity listed that I had long forgotten. "Century's End" is an example.

Flaregun · 1 year ago

I also look forward to wayback Wednesdays for bottom feeders. Here is my take on the letter F and more QUICK HITS:
Best song(s): Tie between FYC “I’m Not the Man I Used to Be” and Felony "The Fanatic"
Worst song: Far Corporation, “Stairway to Heaven” (you nailed it!)

steed · 1 year ago

I was definitely temped to put "The Fanatic" as the best, as I love that track, but I just can't get enough of the Thunderbirds.

Worst song was probably the easy choice in the 30 weeks I've done this. I find it amazing it was so easy to choose that song when Disco Evita was present.

twostepcub · 1 year ago

maybe you can rationalize that the "Fanatic" gets docked for being in the Pia Zadora vehicle "The Lonely Lady"...eh?

DDay · 1 year ago

Wow, what a brilliant post this week.
Wrap It Up: I had completely forgotten how brilliant the Thunderbirds were! Thx for reminding me.
Donald Fagen: I'm a huge fan, so always nice to see these tracks reintroduced. Pure class.
The Family: I didn't even know this charted. And yes, as a Prince collector I do have an original CD copy :-)
Fat Boys: couldn't agree with you more. They're underrated, and certainly not (only) a novelty act.
Richard 'Dimples' Fields: what a discovery. Never heard this track before, but it's awesome.
FYC: brilliant, brilliant group. Their The Raw & The Cooked album is a classic.

As for the cover songs, I quite like Figures On A Beach (first time heard as well), let's not talk about the others :-)

steed · 1 year ago

You have an original CD of The Family. Totally jealous. I only have the vinyl

Malchus · 1 year ago

Wait, Felder's "Bad Girls" didn't even crack the top 100? No wonder he gave up on his solo career!

breadalbane · 1 year ago

Glad to see the love for Eddi Reader. She's fantastic. "Angels & Electricity" is my personal favourite ER album, but there's nary a bad one in the bunch.

Oh, and if you're thinking that her Robert Burns covers might be noble-but-uninvolving-folk-roots exercises, do yourself a favour a check them out. Burns earned his reputation as The People's Poet by being honest and direct, not fancy and high-falutin, and Reader (while still singing and arranging things gorgeously) honours that.

By the way, Joe Fagin sings the "As Time Goes By" theme, but he sure didn't write it -- it's the immortal Herman Hupfield classic made famous in "Casablanca".

idogcow · 1 year ago

Can still see the Felony clip from MV3 in my minds eye - esp. useful for illustrating the "...couple of them too..." line.

sfenn · 1 year ago

I kind of like that Simon F song. He's one of those guys that was always in the pages of my Smash Hits magazine whom I had never heard. Until now. The backing vocals remind me more of Bowie's 'Absolute Beginners' than the Beach Boys. Maybe that's what I like.

Also digging the instrumentation of the 'Around the World in a Day'-era Prince on The Family tune. Might have to track down that record.