08:29 – Netflix sends me emails when a new season is released of something in our queue, but for some reason they don’t send emails to warn when something unwatched in our queue is about to expire. For that, I have to go in periodically and scan the queue. When I did that the other day, I noticed that two concert films I’d put in our queue for Barbara were going to expire on the 16th, Jackson Browne and America.
Guys my age will remember the pop/soft-rock group America from their college days. Most women loved America; most guys couldn’t stand them. Their lyrics generally made no sense at all, and appeared to have been constructed with the aid of a rhyming dictionary. But I fired up the concert film during dinner last night, because I knew Barbara had been one of those many girls who liked them back then. When it started, I commented that the only track they’d ever done that showed any musical merit was Sister Golden Hair, and that they’d probably close with it. Sure enough, they did. They didn’t do a particularly good live performance of it, so I came into my office to find the original studio version on YouTube. (Apparently, Jackson Browne had a lot to do with that track, including I suspect writing the music and lyrics.) But what I also found was a video of a bunch of teenagers doing a cover version. No surprise there. What was surprising was that this bunch of kids did a better version live than America did in the studio.
You didn’t like A Horse With No Name or Ventura Highway?
I agree, these kids sound better than any version by America I have ever listened to.
Nope. See my comment on rhyming dictionaries.
I have 25 items in the music category of my Netflix queue. 20 are expiring on the 16th.
Note that, based on past experience, the last day to view them is the day before, the 15th. The date they show is not so much expiring as expired.
That performance is more than a cover, it is more like a carbon copy. And I can’t see why you say the performance is live.
I wasn’t particularly interested in America way back then and I never paid attention to their lyrics. Just another band on the radio. My tastes were shaped more by the British invasion.
Speaking of lyrics, I’m rather fond of what Al Stewart found worth putting to music.
I agree that without directly comparing to the original, just about anyone including probably America itself would probably assume they’d done it. Except that the singer changed “damned depressed” to “darned depressed”.
As to being live, I can’t say I tried to do a detailed analysis, but off the top of my head it looked to me like a bunch of kids playing live in the backyard with several camcorders recording the video and presumably a decent multi-channel recorder capturing the audio. It didn’t look lip-synched to me. I think that would have been obvious several places, particularly with the slide guitar section in close-up.
Perhaps Chuck will comment.
No way that video is “live”. And Jackson Browne didn’t have anything to do with the song, other than inspiration for the style of lyrics.
However, they are a very good cover band. Of course, the acid test is can they write their own material? It’s all fine and well to say “better than America” but for the fact they didn’t write the song. Far too many cover bands go completely silent when challenged to define their own sound.
Al Stewart, OTOH, is a poet with a guitar.
Much of America’s output was produced by George Martin. I always thought he had George Harrison do the lead guitar on Sister Golden Hair. Sounded so much like Harrison that I don’t think many musicians would have willingly copied that style so closely, nor do I think Martin would ask somebody else to.
Progressive rock had died by the ‘80’s and the sound was much softer. I guess America was really a ‘70’s group, but they were the precursor to a softer sound. I guess we hyped-up teens of the ‘60’s had slowed down by the ‘80’s. My friends who went into radio had mellowed considerably from the screaming fast-talking jocks they were in the early and mid-60’s. I really liked the ‘80’s music output, and still thought of it as rock ‘n’ roll, although it was far from what had been produced in the ‘60’s in terms of energy levels.
That piece by the kids was pre-recorded and lip-synced. The dead give-away is that there is no ambient sound whatever in the background, even though you can see there is wind, and people are playing volleyball in the background. Also, the tambourine is going double-time in the track but in the video is only keeping the beat. The scenes that are perfectly synced are short. It is easy to sync short scenes; longer ones are what requires the players to not miss a beat.
BTW, if you are wondering how you sync things perfectly, you start by syncing the audio. When the tape is playing for the lip-sync filming, you are also recording the audio directly onto the video being shot. Then in editing, I always had the editor sync the audio by playing the main track in one channel/ear, and the stuff you want to sync and video insert in the other. While playing you bump one or the other one frame at a time, until you hear it go through sync, then out-of-sync; then you back up a frame to get the perfect sync. Even so, the actors may still be slightly off (not usually with music, though). So you can bump it visually a frame or two at a time to compensate. Before the average person can see that things are off, it has to be a good 3 to 5 frames off. A good editor can see it when it is only 2 frames off. One frame off is nearly impossible to tell, which is why syncing audio is more reliable than video—except for the visual clapper after the slate just prior to recording the scene. Even on the clapper, the mic cannot be farther away from the clapper than it is from the actors, or the sync between video and sound would be off; which is why the slate is most often done directly in front of the talent—same distance from the mic.
Those kids are very good, and make my long-held point that kids are coddled way too much. Teens should be turned loose and allowed (required) to do much more for society than is demanded of them today. And now, Nobamacare is going to coddle them until they are 26, just exactly like Germany does. If you read Tommy James’ book about his recording career, he makes it clear that in his day, the mob ran the recording industry as a cover for their ‘other’ businesses (jukeboxes having been one: you WILL have a jukebox in your hamburger joint and we will be around regularly to collect), and were so busy with the illicit stuff that they let the kids do almost all of the music business—except for the money. You can get an education any time in life, but if a kid wants to pursue something like music, instead of education—more power to them. My dad got a Master’s and a JD after my brother and I were born and while he was working; my mom got 2 Master’s degrees similarly. Music output today would be FAR better if the adults would just turn the whole thing over to the kids, like it was in the ‘60’s before the mob landed in jail and Time-Warner and Sony ended up in charge of everything and destroyed the music. James noted that ironically, he got no royalties at all when his records were popular, but when the owner of Roulette went to jail and sold it to Sony, he suddenly started getting regular and large royalty checks for his music that is still being bought today. The mob kept the royalties; it took big-business Sony to play it straight with the artists and composers. But—today they don’t let kids make the creative decisions, and that shows in super-uncreative output.
I would be surprised if those kids in the video shot and edited it, however. It is just too well done for beginners to have made it. Most would not even know what to shoot, much less how to put together a story with the pictures, which that video does well. I do miss the slide on the very ending note that was on America’s version. There have got to be what I call ‘payoffs’ in creative work, and the slide ending note was the payoff for that whole song.
The guys in America were not good instrumentalists; in fact, there are stories of their embarrassment following some of their early concerts. As their abilities grew, things got better; however, lead-singer Dan Peek maintained in a biography that drug and alcohol abuse was common during their nearly endless road excursions and performances. It is hard for anybody to play or sing well when stoned and/or drunk. Peek ultimately found that imaginary and fictitious savior called Jesus, which motivated him to leave the group to escape the drug life. He died at 60 not long ago.