Popdose - Latest Comments in CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

Lex — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:32:45 -0000

All I know about the Long Cool Woman's dress was that it was black. (Of course.)

[[it's harder to write at length about good pop songs than it is to brutally dismember crappy songs.]]

Not true of all forms of art criticism, however. I remember reading a piece in the New Yorker years ago about how the critic found it easy to write reviews of good plays because he would leave them feeling energized, whereas crap plays just sort of sucked out his soul.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

amy777 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:15:23 -0000

not that anyone asked me to weigh in again, but i agree w/dw. what i mean when i said it was too short is that i like the extra links and youtube postings and any weirdness about the song or singer or songwriter that can be found on wikipedia. and that's whether you like the song or not, no matter how cheesy it may be.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

DwDunphy — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:04:16 -0000

Beau, it's the razor's edge. You can't be too clinical with a bad review because, well, they're boring. If you really don't like it, and the audience knows as much, they want you to shred as much as you, the writer, want to.

Good reviews, however, are so much more difficult. You have to almost be clinical here, otherwise you sound either dispassionate (I guess you really didn't like it) or like a drooling fanboy (of course you like it, you'd like an hour of the band farting into the mic.) As a fan, you wouldn't want to harm prospects by misappropriating admiration, at the same time you want to put across that you actually liked the damn thing.

My advice: have Al Green write them. No one ever can argue with Al Green.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

Beau — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 02:59:38 -0000

Quick clarifications/comments:

1. I wasn't intending to dis Al Green at all. Just saying this sounds similar to a couple of his other songs, and frankly, I don't mind. This isn't Rick Astley's producers recycling the same synth programming. This is a master of music revisiting the same themes.

2. I work for USA TODAY. We're brief. You have no idea how tough it was to write my thesis.

Actually -- and I wonder if other Popdosers want to weigh in -- it's harder to write at length about good pop songs than it is to brutally dismember crappy songs.

I really should expound on Jim Croce, though. I think I can name four of his songs off the top of my head. Two are irresitable catchy folk tales. The other two are brilliant ballads. "Operator" is an underrated classic -- a great story of conflicting emotion told very well. For concise storytelling, can anyone top a line like "She's living in LA with my best old ex-friend Ray"?

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

jabartlett — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:47:57 -0000

I rise, sir, to defend "Goodbye to Love" and "Brandy."

The former contains a completely wack guitar solo that dropped in from somebody else's record by mistake--the sort of thing that you would expect to have killed Karen Carpenter merely by its rocking-ness. The Carpenters never recorded another record remotely like it. The latter is, quite simply, one of the perfect pop records of the 1970s. Sorry you don't hear it that way.

Good call on the "Free Bird"/Mac Davis thing, though.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

sini — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:37:13 -0000

The horn interlude in "I'm Still in Love with You" is pretty unique in his repertoire. It may be his quietest, mellowest hit from from the golden period.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

DwDunphy — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:40:52 -0000

First concert experience: Keith Emerson dry-humped his fireball-shooting keytar.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

Miss_Lisa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:15:42 -0000

The O'Jays were R&B philosopher kings to me as a kid and taught me a lot about social interactions, good and bad. The proliferation of afros in the Soul Train clip is very cool.

The Zombies just toured America and Rod Argent, with his Argent bass-player regaled us with "Hold Your Head Up." Their awesome 70s appearance on the John Denver Show is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

I love the scene in "Freaks & Geeks" where Lindsay gets stoned and reminisces about her childhood love of Mac Davis. "His hair looked so SOOFFT..." This is the only time I've ever seen an appreciation of Mac Davis within modern media channels.

I agree, this Chart Attack was too short! 1972 had it all, man.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

drcastrato — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:32:45 -0000

no way! brandy, it's a fine song. what a good song it will be. such a fine song.

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

amy777 — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:42:08 -0000

this was a really short chart attack. that makes me sad, because we only get one once every 2 weeks and to only write a sentence or two under each track with only two youtube videos...that's not good enough. we also haven't gotten a mellow gold breakdown lately either. please make your entries longer. thanks!

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

JonCummings — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:26:39 -0000

Aside from my head exploding from your dismissiveness of Al Green--though I admit that the horns on "Still in Love" and "Let's Stay Together" are practically interchangeable--this is a supremely amusing Attack! You even had me going on Gary Glitter for a second, there. I mean, if Mike Love can meet the Maharishi and come back still a dickweed...

My first pop concert, 1973: Mac Davis in Nashville, with Helen Reddy opening. My parents dragged us to Nashville (I was 7) because my mom WAS woman, hear her roar. Everyone else was there to see Mac, and these two guys in front of us chatted/snarked their way through poor Helen's set, to my mom's verging-on-apoplectic disgust.

Finally she'd had enough; Helen announced to the crowd, "Now I'm going to sing a song called 'Time,'" and one guy said to the other, "Hey! What time IS it?" My mom leaned forward and, in a voice she normally only used with my brother when his laundry had piled up under his bed for six weeks, hissed, "It's time for you to SHUT UP!"

Go ahead. Somebody try to top my first-concert story. Good luck...

Re: CHART ATTACK!: 9/2/72

outsidecounsel — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:24:52 -0000

"Brandy" has always been my candidate for worst song of all time. It is hysterically bad-- so bad that even the Mac Davis song on this chart can't beat it.