Week 5

The listening for this week is a fascinating collection of the historical “heart” of popular music.  It’s appropriate that we have so many great Beatles charts this week as it coincides with the 50^th Anniversary of their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.  With them, we have Motown and the Beach Boys.  The listening is actually a collection of the original “boy bands.” 

Good Vibrations has a much more “modern” sound than the bulk of the listening we have.  The electric guitar parts use sounds that are unique for their time.  Most electric guitar lines of the time sound just like basic rock guitars, where Good Vibrations utilizes something akin to distortion pedals.  I am not conversant in guitar lingo beyond this, so I’m not quite able to articulate what I hear, but I’ve always thought that this chart was more of a late 1970s tune than the mid-60s.  Perhaps it was my own exposure to the chart on the Saturday night “Super Gold” oldies program on the local radio station that my parents listened to (I’ve referenced this in my discussion posts), so I heard it out of context, but it always struck me as later than it actually was. 

The four Beatles charts are as different from each other as they are from any of the other listening for this week.  They contain lyrics that are of significant poetic quality, ballads, and straight rock ‘n’ roll.  Please Please Me appears in tons of pep band books, and is a chart that’s stood the test of time, as are Hard Days Night and Eleanor Rigby (and Lady Madonna for that matter).  The Beatles tunes are also interesting in that they use a great deal of interesting harmonies.  Suspensions and double suspensions (a la Bach) abound throughout.