Episode 41 – “All these people want their piece of Earth. Doesn’t matter what the cause is worth”

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, with your host, Mark Bradbourne.

Welcome to Episode 41 of Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you for taking the time to check out the episode, I really appreciate it. This podcast is all about new music, and generally I’m talking about rock, alternative, country, you know, kind of the more mainstream stuff, but there’s another genre that I have not touched yet, and I want to talk about that today, because I had a really cool experience. This week, I got to witness a new piece of music be debuted. The University of Akron Wind Symphony debuted a piece that was commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Honorary Fraternity and Sorority for College Band members. Those organizations are known as Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma respectively. Now I am a life member of Kappa Kappa Psi, I was initiated at the University of Akron back in 1994, and was honored to be able to donate to this project to leave a lasting musical legacy for future generations. The piece is called Uplift (We Rise Together), and it was composed by Kevin Day. The piece is fantastic, completely blown away by it, and I cannot wait until there is a recording of this piece so that I can enjoy it again. The whole process though got me thinking about how new music, especially symphonic music or orchestral music or classical music, depending how you refer to it, how that whole thing comes to fruition. Now you have composers, the dead ones, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, who I don’t know how their process worked, but today there is this commissioning process basically, and there are thousands of contemporary composers out there. There are college programs where you can get a bachelor in music composition, and a lot of them go on to do these kind of commissioning projects. Basically what happens is you contact a composer and they will create different pieces of work for special events like this 50th anniversary, or maybe specific orchestras will commission pieces for them to play specifically, but unless you’re deeply tied in and involved, you will never know that this new music is being released. So Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma have commissioned well over 100 pieces of work since 1931, and that’s at both the national levels and the district and local levels, and that’s just one organization. So think about the amount of kind of orchestral or symphonic music that has been released.

And speaking of which, if you’ve never been to a symphony or an orchestra or a wind ensemble, I highly encourage you to go. Seeing a band like a rock band where you have three to five members and a bunch of amplifiers is one thing, but seeing a large ensemble of musicians, generally 40 plus who have rehearsed this very complex piece of music, and they create this wall of sound with no amplification at all, it is such a different experience that everyone should have. If you’re a metal fan or specifically a prog rock fan, you will find a lot of common elements between classical music and metal. There’s a lot of influence that they draw from the classical music genre. So highly recommend that you check that out.

For the brain bending cover this week, I was debating with myself on which cover to share. Originally, I was going to share a cover of Eleanor Rigby by Aretha Franklin. It’s probably one of the more covered Beatles songs. And that her version is amazing because it’s just very different. But I’m going to do something else. So go give that one a listen. Go look it up Eleanor Rigby by Aretha Franklin. It’s great. But I’m changing course. And this week, I’m picking a cover of the song You Don’t Own Me, which was originally done by Leslie Gore, and this version is done by Deep Sea Diver. This song has appeared in so many different places over the years, different movies, different artists have covered it. And it was really cool to find an updated version of it. This version came out in 2019. And while it stays pretty true to the original, there’s some sonic changes that occurred that kind of really make it stand out to me. The synth sounds in particular are really cool. There’s one, which I would call the primary synth sound that kind of sets the whole song in motion that sounds like it’s almost underwater. It’s got a cool little effect to it. Vocally, this one has a very, it’s got attitude, right? It’s got a little more attitude than the original, which makes sense because it’s a different time. It’s like 60 years, 70 years since the original came out. Like I hear a lot more pain and a little bit more aggression in the vocal. And after the key change, it’s really cool because she starts playing with the melody and the notes a little bit, which I really dig, like she’s kind of putting her own stamp on it vocally, which is cool. Right at the end, there’s a very dissonant guitar solo where the player is kind of playing with how far away from the key signature they can get. And then it kind of brings it all to this nice musically messy end, which is a lot of fun. So go check out both of those songs.

All right, let’s get into the new music, shall we? If this is the first time you were listening, welcome, I appreciate you stopping by. Appreciate you checking what I’ve got to offer. Each week, I listen to anywhere from two to 500 songs, which is a less than 1% of the music that gets released every week in the world. It’s overwhelming. The good news is, well, I don’t know if it’s good news. The news is that most of it is crap. And that’s why I do this. I basically go through a bunch, I find a handful of songs that I can share with you. My target is generally five, the last couple of episodes I’ve only found four. This episode is no different. So I hope you enjoy these.

The first song this week is Running Start from Sufjan Stevens. I was first introduced to Sufjan Stevens back in 2005, when the Illinois album came out. Musically, it’s very easy to be blown away by him. The compositions he creates are a little bit mind-blowing. And this song is honestly no different. At first listen, I was really just listening to the layers that he builds as he kind of creates this beautiful sonic landscape. The more I listen to it, it dawned on me that this song is not in quote unquote common time. It’s in some variant of an odd time signature, which I’m thinking is five, four, but I could be very wrong. Most mainstream music is in four, four. And that translates into four beats to a measure of music with a quarter note getting one beat. So you’ve got four beats in a measure. And then it divides and subdivides from there, and I’m teaching a music theory class. But this song has five beats to the measure. Now the question is, is it the quarter note getting the beat, or is it subdivided into kind of the eighth note? Not sure, but it’s really interesting because the reason that I did not catch it initially is because he was singing the lyrics in four phrase groupings, which when you do the math, you get 20. So it feels like five measures of four rather than four measures of five. Really cool trick. I mean, it took me probably a half dozen listens before I picked it up. Super nerdy, obviously, but super cool, all the same.

The second song this week is Walking on Ice from Last Dinosaurs. Now I will be honest because I think being honest is important. I went back and forth as to whether or not to include this song. Ultimately, it was the one song, though, that kept getting stuck in my head, and I caught myself subconsciously humming it, specifically the hook. There’s obviously this repetitive nature to it that apparently works as an earworm. And the more and more I listened to it, it started to remind me of Weezer a bit stylistically. Maybe Holly came to mind as far as songs that I felt there was a comparison to. But Last Dinosaurs, I feel it’s a little more straightforward. And there’s some nice harmony work happening in here. And there’s moments kind of in the middle of the song where I was thinking, it was reminding me of the Beach Boys, some of their really beautiful harmonies that they have going on. So yeah. So like I said, I was on the fence, so I’m curious, so I’m going to try something new. So if you are a Spotify listener, you may have noticed that there is a Q&A on the page there where you can listen. But there’s also the option to have a poll. So I’m going to put a poll on the Spotify page. If you listen on other platforms, take a chance and go over to the Spotify page and see if you can find the polling. And I want you to throw me a vote and let me know if you would have kept this song in or not.

The third song this week is Light Rail Blues from the Deadbeat Cousins. Now this song is parenthetically known as Heart Attack, since that’s what shows up in the lyrics. And the Dead Cousins are employing lots of classic blues moves. A lot of blues-based bands will do things like this. So it’s something, something blues, and then parenthetically here’s the lyric that repeats. But there’s another one that I found interesting that I wanted to point out. Black White does this in his bands and I’ve heard the Black Keys do this as well. Basically what happens is they have this fantastic guitar riff, but if they played it through the whole song, it would get super repetitive and you would hate it the more you listen to it. So what happens is they play the riff and then the guitar drops out and the vocal sings the melody and maybe the bass and the drums or the drums, one of the two, they keep going and they act as a bridge to get to the next time the guitar comes in and plays that super catchy riff again. Then it goes into the chorus and the guitar riff changes and it’s all magic, it all works and it’s been happening for decades in blues music. And for some reason it never gets old. Like you can listen to 100 different blues artists and they’re doing the same kind of structure and it works. It is just a cornerstone, it’s foundational when it comes to blues music.

The fourth song this week is Pocket Full of Rain from the Paper Kites. This is the second song that I featured from the Paper Kites and I am trying to make a conscious effort to not repeat artists if possible, but this one is so different from the first song that I shared with you, which was June’s Stolen Car, a few episodes back that I just had to share it. I love when artists will completely strip down to the absolute basics of music, right? So most songwriters, they start with an acoustic guitar and an idea and from there they will write lyrics and build it out from there and figure out the harmonies. But the fact that they left it pretty much raw is just something that is endearing to me. It is beautiful to listen to and they continue to have really great vocal harmonies. There’s some slide guitar happening in there that adds some really nice texture to the song and there is just something really soothing about the lead vocals on this track and I’m not sure which singer it is from the last track who was doing it, but it’s just, here’s the recommendation, right? Get some great headphones, put them on, close your eyes and enjoy this song. All right, that is it for this episode.

As always, spread the word of the podcast to your fellow music fans. That is the best way to support the show. You can follow the show on social media, interact with the posts. That always helps. We’ve got a website, songsthatdontsuck.net, where you can send me recommendations of songs. All feedback is welcome and thanks for listening and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’tsuck.